Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: We are live.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that appropriation? Yes. It's Friday. February 7, are continuing our testimony on FY '27 budgets. We got an agency of citizen services for this today. I'll let you introduce yourself for the

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: record and give us your information.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: For the record, my name is Bradley Hughes. I'm the secretary for and also the state's chief information officer.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: And for the record, Jason will go to the vice of chief financial officer for

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: the agency. I will

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: put

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: a warning out out front that there's definitely a level of complexity that has not allowed to achieve a thirty minute overview. So I wanna make sure that I stick with what's in the most interest of the committee to go over because we've had opportunities over the course of the last few years to show the progress that we've made, and this year, you see it reflected in the budget Okay. Around making changes to how technology is funded at the foundational operations level. I think we're gonna get into that in this presentation, but then also if there's a desire to go to the crosswalk team.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. And if we need to, we can go back as we get through things.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Always happy to be active.

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: Thanks, Anne.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Perfect. I've got John Kelly on IT support here. Just as a recap, these are the four strategic principles that we have focused our attention on around maturing and making more predictable the finance and finances of technology procurement across the state. User experience has been at the top of that, ultimately being Vermonters, as well as across the state, users and agencies and departments across the state. Standards as well, making sure that we're employing the appropriate standards and that becomes reflected in annual or tri annual audits that are happening. We're starting to see some significant improvements there as well. Predictability, which is what we're gonna talk a lot about today, and then reducing complexities as well. We've done that in a couple of different ways. One is we had an overhaul of our leadership structure so that we are organizationally structured in a way that allows for us to better support state government, Then focusing around service based budgeting, which you can hear more about today. Portfolio alignment that we're going to talk about at a future opportunity, and then services creation. That's more forward future thinking. Let me hand over the metrics to you, because this dashboard that you're looking at, or going to be looking at, are looking at, is one that is part of our annual report and how we interpret the requirements that we have as an agency to provide these details to legislature and to government.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So we presented this format in years past to kind of give a high level overview of where our agency stands based on the last year. Things we report on is certain metrics found in here, like our online transactions, our public facing services, our current vacancy rate, which is relatively low. And then one thing that we're required to report on annually is our savings to date. So we, since the creation of our agency, we have achieved or voided costs for the tune of over $50,000,000 In the last year, we're looking at

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: oh, I can't even use that most. We

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: added one one point oh, dollars 5,500,000.0, sorry, in savings. And that's through efforts where we can look at consolidating licensing where necessary, or shutting down legacy systems and standing up more efficient systems. Those are validated numbers with each agency to hammer exactly what the stages were on a statewide basis. On the left side of the chart, you'll see what our budget ask is for FY twenty seven. So we're coming in with a request of $96,500,000 in total. And the breakdown is across a variety of funding sources, many of them internal service funds. So in the past, we've come forward for spending authority in the information the technology information fund, as well as the vision fund. This year, you'll see that there's actually some additional internal service funds that we're looking to establish to support our budget. And we'll get into that later as to exactly why we're looking to do that. It's more around transparency for all of you, as well as our other partners in state government. We also are, for the first time, receiving a substantial or seeking a substantial request of general funds. In the past, our general fund balance was around $0.02 $5,000,000 We're looking at $9,300,000 this year. And that's to help support core enterprise services. And we'll get into that a little bit deeper in the presentation as well. So those are some of the big changes in our budget aspects here.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: Senator Brent? Quick question. Looking at security events monitoring, is that $258,000,000,000? Yes. So what does that come down to on an average day?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: A lot. The security events of anything that happens across the environment, whether or not it's somebody logging into a system, where they're logging in from, how they're logging in, network traffic, application monitoring. That's the encompassing of everything that we have visibility visualization too. It's not security.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Attempts to

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Yes. Do track those to be more to many attempts, and those are closer into

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: million from civilians. Okay. Thank you so much.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: On your Yes. Budget On your pie chart, which municipal and regional planning, they have their, version of SLA or something?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: No, the two bottom funds that you're seeing, they're both the municipal and regional planning and the Vermont Center for Geographical Information are both for the GIS That's the only division that is what we're facing. That's part of the charter and requirements of organization to work with the regional planning commissions, to work with the general public and others.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: That fund is supported through the property transfer tax. Is actually a percentage that's brought in

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is the Vermont Center for Geographic and Vote not part of it yet?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: They've been part

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: of it.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Oh, okay. Yeah, BCGI. They came to

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: us in the consolidation of the agency.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, wow. Okay. But everything else is probably general fund, but unless it's coming I guess there probably some special funds. Even though you have your general fund, these other ones are other agencies paying but we put general fund into their account and they use that general fund to pay you.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: That's correct. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: most of it is general fund. $95,000,000 But somebody might call it out of

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: the phone. We don't have visibility into that. We have a wonderful individual from finance management here listening in to make sure that we can provide that. We don't have visibility into the source funding when our invoices are paid by the agencies. Finance management can pull that information, but this is the first time you're ever seeing 9,000,000 specific to general fund that is not protractable. And so that reduces the cost for the agencies and departments of those services, but all of the other six, well, I shouldn't say six, four of the other funds are internal service funds that are sending authority to invoice the agency's back.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: And it's a mix of general fund, federal fund, special fund. Right. It's a variety of funding sources that support the changes to them.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: And if you recall from last year when we talked about four enterprise services, it was the opportunity to look at the foundational IT services for supporting the enterprise. And we have 13 categories that I don't think we're gonna go into deep detail on in this presentation, but I think it's part of the deck where you see where the general fund applies to. So in the event of somebody would like to have conversations around usage of data or data services for a particular project, but there is no IT project that is funding associated with them, that general fund covers that initial discovery, flushing things out, getting an RFP out the door, but you don't have the money to bring in a PM to do so. This gives the highly skilled resources and the AES the opportunity to work with anybody across state government, and so it creates the equity that we've talking about. But it's only a portion of the overall ZES service. We can probably skip through the highlights, but if you want to go back to the presentation and look at all the things that we've done, you're welcome to do so.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That BT is the state's AI.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: It's the same internally hosted GPC service, yes. And that's not, that is hosted solely by AES in our cloud infrastructure. It is not extensible beyond just chat service, and then it gives state employees an opportunity to ask, not highly sensitive based information, but sensitive enough that you wouldn't put it out on a public consumer basis, chat DBT. It gives them some controls and some governance to do that.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Members of the committee may recall that a few years ago, there was an IT modernization fund that was established to support projects across state government. That's not included as a base, so you didn't see it in that original list. These are one time funds that are granted spending authority to ADS to then manage the cost the projects themselves report back on the cost of those projects. It does flow through a specific fund. That fund in the past was spent by general fund dollars. We don't have a plan for long term fundings to support this fund yet. It is something that each year we think think about, and we haven't had a chance to actually design what that would look like yet. But the original projects that were approved by the legislative body are listed here on this chart. And this just shows you the original appropriation for each one of those projects and where we are currently the spending on those projects.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And this goes back three or four years?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Yeah. That's four years I believe. Yeah. That's only four. I think 2022 was the last was the first issuance under here. Okay. The DMV core system is complete, so that won't show next year on here. Unemployment insurance will be complete before, potentially by the end of the fiscal, but definitely before the fall.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That was a success from my time on transportation. Was on time and underfunded or on budget. On budget on

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: time, yeah. Yeah. Yes. And we're seeing the same reflect of the unemployment insurance. It does speak Is it the same vendor? Is the same vendor. Yep. Different instance, different configuration, different team, but the same approach. And and also both were IT mod funded so that the oversight feasibility had layers to it, so that it was collective oversight between legislative and the of the European Union. Yeah.

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: Because the BTO issues before that were pretty spooky. I know.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: In the lines when I came on too.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I'm very

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: confident because before that, it it was quite a few years of getting them. Yeah.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: And I It's no consolation, but we weren't the only state. It was something that was unbundled across government as a whole, as an industry, and we've all become more focused and more intent about resolving that, and I think Vermont has, in many areas, resolved that, which is why we're focusing our attention on some of the improvements in the internal operations, so that we don't have continuous, unwieldy, unexplained, or unknown costs popping up everywhere, and moving from a transactional based model to a service based model.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: ERP, can you explain that?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: ERP is the replacement of vision in DTHR, and then

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: just the DTHR the system. Is that what I know?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: That is not, not

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: one of your problems.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: That is not.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, what, so it's a replacement of vision and what?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: And VTHR and Vantage, and so

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: we went It's all becomes a new.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: A single central cloud based system that's about user

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: data People still talk about Vision, but that's just because they're

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: They have to use it today.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But they still might say Vision, but they don't. It's not really Vision.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: It is still vision now, we won't go live on the new system until, I think today it projected 2028 for the final go live, but

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But even though you haven't spent any money, pretty

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: consistent.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: No, this was a snapshot. So Oh, you've done this before. So

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: many of these projects received a direct appropriation to each of the agencies and departments where the project originated. ERP is one of those. In the first phase, there was general fund that's appropriated for the ERP project that would cover the replacement of the former Vantage system, and now we have Adaptive, which you all probably have seen in the news in this session for the first time. That was 12,100,000 that was appropriated directly to AOA. So we've seen the project spend down, and we're about we're on the cusp of transitioning over to this progression for the government projects now.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: You would use this 11,000,000 to finish it? Yep. And

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: these are all one times.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Okay. Thank you. Questions? Yes, senator. Yeah. Grand Is there any way of knowing how

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: many of these projects are, like, very close to being in? Like, in other words, I'm looking at the unemployment insurance modernization is there's 5,000,000 remaining. Mhmm. Do we need that 5,000,000? I mean, does that mean there's

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Those are all Mhmm. The funds have been Yes, and covered. Thank you.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Yeah, these dollars have been obligated for the project in various ways, it be a contract, obviating the entire amount or a variety of contracts and more internal staffing costs. But yes, there's actually the Aetna dashboard, which gives a lot more insight into where projects reside, it covers these and a

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: number of other projects we're involved in. Are

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: there any of them that are on here that we suspect we might not have available getting enough going forward?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: ERP.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: ERP.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: We knew that we had not requested the total amount, because we're also now looking at operational costs under MOA, which we've never done that in a project before. And so, what we didn't have was, at which fiscal year are we going to require those funds, and so it make sense to ask for funds now if we've not fully extended the funds that have already been appropriated.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is that part of the $9,000,000 in general fund, this

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: part of ERB? Yeah. That's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: But we're not gonna FY twenty seven's not the year. Do you?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: We're not asking for additional funds for the year, for

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: this year. Senator Watson, do you?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: I do. So, the unemployment insurance, I think I heard you say that it would be done somewhere between the end of the fiscal year and fall. So, and by done, is that like rolled

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: out, public Right. Facing Okay, that's fabulous. Yeah, it is. The project team has done an incredible job, and so far, so good.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: we talked a little bit about foreign price services. In this year's budget,

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: we are

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: approaching our appropriation a little bit differently than we have in passing one appropriation to cover all of the IT services in state government. Government. Now we're looking at we're seeking appropriations, one to define foreign price services so we can really track to what is that, how are we delivering it, what are the true costs, And the other is the demand side of our business. So this would be anything that formally we refer to as the service level agreement SLA or timesheet or bespoke. Those are really the services that comes to us and says, Hey, I need this. And maybe that thing that they need is something that we offer at an enterprise level, or maybe it's a new strategy specifically. So what we're looking at is the establishment of Procreation one, which is core enterprise services, and that's the foundational IT services that we provide to all of state government. Things like cybersecurity and network, the foundational cost for the private cloud. Those type of services which are really necessary for modern IT agencies to exist. And then appropriation two is for all of those other needs that come in somewhat ad hoc from agency departments. This not only establishes two appropriations, but it establishes three new internal service funds. So our former internal service funds, the CIT, Communication and Information Technology Fund, will represent the core enterprise services costs. Then moving over to the demand side of the house, we've established a new internal service fund that's specific for what we formally refer to as SLA. So things that are enterprise offering that's available to anyone in state government, they might have specific needs and specific volumes of consumption. So they'll pay for what their duties face. Then we have the professional services, which is our time

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: I'm sorry. I'm just wondering if you could clarify a little bit. So core enterprise services, you're paying for the essential IT functions for your department. But then the consumption of those, so all the So if consumption goes up, then you make then you pay more.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So consumption across so core enterprise services is really, what are the costs as a whole that are needed to support an IT agency? It's not based on consumption necessarily. It's what needs to exist. It's a foundational service. When we start talking about consumption, then we're moving into the demand side. So if you for example, if you need help desk support that goes beyond the standardized help desk support, like you need after hours support, that would be considered moving into the demand side. We would have a mechanism for your independent department to get that service, but also pay for it, and not have that cost allocated to every user across

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: the street. So core enterprise services includes a certain amount of consumption, but if you go beyond that level, you enter Right. Into Okay. So core enterprise services includes some level of consumption.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: It does. It does. Right. But it's uniform across everybody. Understood. Yeah.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Okay. Joint fiscal office presented to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure last week, I believe, and James Duffy summarized this really good well, because you're not looking at apples to apples, and that's why we want to make sure that we provide as much clarity as possible in these best learning opportunities, because ADS's budget was sitting under one of the Now we've split out the appropriations. So, just ADS, but other organizations, legislature, right fiscal office, finance management, we now actually report on some of this spend under a meaningful separation. We've also seen we've had four funds last year that we would draw under CIT with. We now have eight. We can start reporting at the individual fund level, as opposed to waiting for us to reconcile on the many, many spreadsheets that get generated in the current environments. And so, it just creates a little bit more of a predictable reporting, but accuracy and data that you can access without having to ask us all the time. Not that we don't want to be asked. We love being asked all the time. It's just a matter of, it's hard to understand the data when you're looking at it through our lens versus now as two separate appropriations. So that allows us to create and report back on measures that are around performance, quality, and capacity in each one of these areas. How well is core services doing? We don't want to see an increase this year on core enterprise services, so now you can just look at that on appropriation versus you wanted to look at demand and say, why does everybody need more than the foundational you know, baseline? And who are those that need more, and why do they need more? So, it gives us an evaluation to see whether or not we should be putting more resources to something, whether or not we're actually doing well on a service, or whether or not we're offering a service that nobody's consuming or not. We didn't have that in the prior structure to be able to provide you with any of that data, was a little bit unwieldy. The foundations are not on the next slide, but one of the things that I know he wanted to make sure that it was committee had questions on, you'll notice in the yellow, that was the $15,000,000 that was written into the bill last year that EDS was to use as a way to not charge back agency because SLA was the credit card model. Was the consumed now fee waiver, so it was one of the deficit spend areas. We still have a couple of those, so we can't fix everything in one fiscal year, but poor enterprise services is what we thought was most important to fix this year. It's equitable across everybody. The $2,000,000 you see represented there, but you'll also notice that our original appropriation and contingency for allocation was very, very low as compared to the overall IT cost. It was under 10%. And so that $15,000,000 you now see in '27 reflected as a much smaller demand number because we're not gonna charge one department for something another agency is consuming, or we're not creating a scenario where we can't recover for what was expended, and we're very strategic and specific about what those things are as to not boil the ocean on core enterprise services, but really focus on excellence in service delivery, and making sure that we can actually do what folks need us to do. The light blue in '27 now reflects the general fund request, which will reduce the per user cost of allocation when agencies are now charged back for air workers. We've switched the cost model too. Prior to this fiscal year, the cost was based on per FTE that was determined by the agency. This equitable reassessment looks at cost per domain user. Domain would be our technology language, but if you are an active user in the digital environment, you're going to be considered to be a user. Now people are paying for what they're actually using and who they have using it in the system.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, I'm looking forward to not hearing all the agencies complaining about their ADS.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: So you'll see SLAs drop dramatically. Yeah. But now we can actually associate SLA with your individual department or agency's choice to consume more then.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right, and they would have their

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: own control over their own

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Absolutely. What they do for you.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So this next slide is just another way to look at the FY twenty seven budget request, showing it in the two different appropriations. We've got corner price services totaling $49,200,000 That does include those special funds that support the BCGI team, but also includes the Vision Fund appropriation that we received that supports the continuing funds that is behind the scenes of the current ERP solutions, and will be behind the scenes of the future ERP solutions. And then the second appropriation is what we're referring to as demand at $47,300,000 and that shows you the breakdown for the service level agreement, the time sheet, and the slope, with the total governor recommended $96,500,000

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I assume this is the first year you're doing it this way, so We'll it's an see how it goes.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: The corn freight services costs, we're confident about The SLA demand side is not as confident.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: I mean, that is all based off of

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: The request from the agency's departments. That's just what we we can see as

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: projection. Yeah.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Maybe we can skip this one because we are now logging up to that plan unless if you'd like to go over that. And then this slide here are the specific categories that I mentioned around what what is inclusive of core enterprise services. So we broke out each one of the categories. This gives us a chance to actually port individually on each one. We've looked at it as service costs, so it includes staff and the technology, and it gives that total number. Where general fund is being applied versus the core enterprise services, the CIT fund for that allocation one.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The CIT's been granted?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: That would be original. It's the communication and information technology internal service fund. It was the original fund that ADS, the single fund that ADS used for everything. Now it's isolated only to core enterprise services. CIT equals, that's our allocation charge back, but not command. General funds, you can see that 9,000,000 is covering foundational level data governance and administration, so that's something that is really important, especially if you look at what we did, not this past summer, this summer before, with Summer EBT. Half the data sits in Agency of Human Services, half the data sits in Agency of Education. Who's gonna pay for it? Who's gonna pay for being able to collaborate between the two agencies? Well, if AHS is using federal dollars, and AOE is using a different set of federal dollars, we're at an impasse. This gives us a chance to use general funds to remove that locker and allow working together in that data space. EPOSentials is another area too where we can't charge agencies back to run our legislative reporting or to run the frontline project management if there's no project that's being funded, but we're looking to do discovery on it. We wanna bring capable, skilled resources to the table to help do that. Operating in this model for the last six months has actually allowed us to see the opportunity that's getting things much closer to ready so that we're not playing catch up in the end, or we're not over solutioning the technology and we actually found areas of cost savings. The fingerprint background check process right now is one that we are engaged in with those same central resources, pulling together seven different agencies, same with the permitting process. That gives some operational flexibility to support state government as a whole without waiting for the opportunity to charge somebody. Network access as well, this allows us to create quality and necessary network connectivity for all 300 plus locations across state office buildings. No So, matter who you are and what department that you've worked for, if you need to go to an office, you can access the network there. If we limited it in the legacy world, we would not be able to have folks go to any office and be able to do their work. They would have to be restricted to just being part of that agency or department. I have a perspective that we're too small of a state not to get that right, and this is a very simple measure, but the only way to look at distributing the cost impact equitably is to split it between CIT and general function. I think the rest is self explanatory, but these categories are ones that you should expect to see us reporting on now year over year around what those services are, what the quality is, what capacity is, how many staff do we have doing it, are we actually delivering what we say we're delivering, and that's something that I'm very much looking forward to tracking and sharing.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Then the last two slides are thoughts on, and really, what this is telling you is the change. You'll see a lot of reductions and increases, and a lot of moving from numbers. That's really because we're splitting into two different reparations from last year. So you have to see that activity, staffing costs moving from one reparation to the other, because that's where the staffing is now.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is there anything else in your budget that's been changed around on how you're operating in these funds?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Nothing extra, no.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It would be within the governor's 3% otherwise?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Everything within 3% or under, this was a very conservative number that we actually cut back things off. Over the last couple of years, we've worked with our security team to reduce overspend to minimize duplication on technology and contracts. We're doing the same thing with the rest of the agency too. We're hoping to see a 10% reduction across the board on all IT spend in some of these key categories that we need to start reducing costs. So, if we were to look at that 3%, would say realistically it's below. The challenge is that in the prior years, the deficit spend model wouldn't have allowed you to see that. So, This looks like a big number, but it actually reduces the deficit spend dramatically. We'll still see it on the demand side until we clean it up next year.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: Great question. What is over?

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: When you buy something bigger than what you really need.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: I see.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Yeah. Or you keep on buying the same thing that exists in all of these other places, and you and you're recreating it all over again. We're going to

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: start reducing that. It could have been simple. Yes.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Process change. Permitting is a really good use case example, as is grants management. Trying. It's a little better. Alright.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Any other questions? Alright. Well, good luck with you all.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Thank you. You If there were areas where I could recommend, this is where we cut, I would have put that on the very first slide. I think right now, this is very much about what's being consumed across state government. We don't have systems that are EDS systems. We actually cut that out of our budget, and we potentially may lose chappy tea as well if we can't normalize

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: some of some

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: of this as or if

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: we see any change in what was recommended. Yeah. Thank

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: you very much.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thanks for figuring out this. Yeah. Go ahead, anybody else you have with you. Yes.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Here's our fellow commissioner, Will Stevens, and here's Brenda Berry, who's our wonderful Budget First Center.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Hello. The floor will. Certainly will when he was in that. I did. Oh, senator Brennan. Good to see you. How many?

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: There are seven seats. Right now, only five are filled. Shine it up.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, go ahead.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: All right. And hello, my name's Paul Burrowbaum. I live in East Montpelier, and I serve as chair of the Vermont Ethics Commission. And unless you really want to share it, I'll skip my autobiography with just thanks for inviting me to adjust the Ethics Commission budget and the current status of I've the Ethics submitted a budget book and a written statement detailing our budget numbers and our request for additional funds. There's actually a third document that I submitted, which is a chart comparing the ethics commission, the Vermont Ethics Commission, with other ethics commissions and their staffing. And I urge you to look at the charts developed by our consultant, TJ Jones. Thank you. So the budget for the Ethics Commission in the state budget is relatively tiny, and so is our staff. We have a half ton executive director and a half ton administrative assistant. Much more work than they can handle. So two years ago, in 2024, the legislature passed a bill that was largely authored by us, the Ethics Commission. The bill became Act 171, and Act 171 included a statewide municipal ethics code, and the Act assigned the Ethics Commission the task of training and advising towns and cities on this new municipal code. When Act 171 became effective early last year, the Ethics Commission was swamped with requests for advice from towns and cities. Our tiny staff tried, but starting on May 7, our Commission homepage announced and still announces that because we have inadequate staff, we can no longer accept requests given for municipal advisory or complaint services. Act 171 also included Ethics Commission investigatory powers and hearing powers regarding all three branches of state government, but due to our land booth, adequate staffing, last year, the legislature pushed that authority to September 2027. Just like with our municipal responsibilities, our investigative and hearing authority won't exist in name only if we don't have staff to implement. Acts and act one seventy one contained the commission's wish wish list, with one exception, funding to hire two attorneys to implement the new mandates. In 2024, legislators who enacted Act 171 told us the budget was just in sight to provide the ethics commission with additional staff. But surely, they said, next year. And by the way, in 2024, as Act 171 came onto the Governor's desk, he allowed Act 171 to become law without signature, and in his signing statement, he said he liked the substance of the law, but he did not like those unfunded mandates. Anyway, the following year, 2025, last year, we dutifully came back before the legislature. And once again, we were told the budget is just too tight to provide the Ethics Commission with staffing necessary to fulfill the mandates the legislature placed on us the year before. We were told again, surely next year. Well, it's next year, folks, and we're back, and the state budget is even tighter. And once again, we ask the legislature whether it wishes to fund the mandates it has placed on the ethics commissions. An unfortunate turn of events in my mind is that now that the ethics commission is not providing advice about the new municipal ethics code, word on the street has municipalities are turning to the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, a wonderful organization. I've I've turned to the league for advice. But the league has at least an appearance of a conflict of interest giving ethics advice. The League of Cities and Towns provides insurance to towns and cities. At least hypothetically, it creates a conflict of interest. But by statute, the Ethics Commission is, in statute, quote, an independent commission, and we can give impartial advice and guidance with no conflict of interest. You know, just speaking to people, speaking to Vermonters generally, I think most every Vermonter would like a robust independent state ethics commission. And I hope this committee and the legislature agrees with Vermonters. So we urge this committee and the legislature to appropriate funds for two attorney positions for the Ethics Commission. You know, frankly, the Ethics Commission is traveling. We don't have additional staffing, I'm not sure we'll last much longer. That's pretty much it for me. I'll be glad to answer any questions,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: or I might refer to, well, wherever they went, Will and Brenda, who might know more than I do. And do you need them to be attorneys? Could they staff positions, you're looking for attorneys. We are. We are. Because they'll

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: be interpreting and advising on both the state ethics code and the municipal ethics code. I can give you the numbers orally, but I'm supposed to send it in my written statements.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you. That's what other states do, they use attorneys, not people that would be experts in the ethics code. Know, we

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: don't have TJ Jones as our national governmental ethics person.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: I think that's I

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: heard from him. But my yeah, I've heard from him before. Yeah. My understanding, for example, I know a little bit about Rhode Island and the Hawaii Ethics Commissions, which have several attorneys on staff, as well as non attorney investigators and clerical staff, etcetera.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That was helpful to have the charts comparing against other statements.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: I'm sorry?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That was helpful, your tables of us.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Oh, boy, yes. T. J. Jones writes, prepared that for us. You know, just as one example, Rhode Island, I know, has had its ethical problems in the past, but still, the population is a little less than double R's, but they have, I believe, 12 staff members on their ethics commission, and we have one full time equivalent. One of those is a half time administrative assistant, wonderful person, but One more question. Has TJ or other of you guys looked at all what

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the states that don't have? Guess it was like when we didn't have one before, these kind of ethical complaints either go to the league, or if it's a legislative thing, go to our ethics panel, they're just, people lobbied to these complaints, and they're just out there in the world.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: In a way, we, Vermont currently does not have an ethics commission because we have, you know, really, we're not only toothless, but we're kind of useless. The ethics commission is empowered to take in complaints and then refer them to the agencies that would otherwise get them anyway, could get them directly, the Attorney General's Office, Department of Human Resources. So we're really just an extra step clogging up the works as far

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: as I'm concerned. Yeah.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: So, I know New Hampshire does not have an ethics commission and very few other states, so I have not inquired how they vote.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Senator Baruth?

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: Well, I had a question, but before we move on from your last statement, it sounds like you're arguing that maybe we don't need the ethics committee.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Oh, I'm not arguing that at all.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: I think that we really should have a robust ethics committee, but I am saying that I've been banging my head against this wall for seven years now. I've been on the commission since March 2019. Frankly, I'm ready to give up, and I hear from other commissioners that we're ready to. I don't think that we do well.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: I think it's more like we give up. Been trying, we've trying. So am I understanding you then to be saying, unless you're given more enforcement authority and money, you're just clogging up the loose? And you were saying that right now you're just routing complaints to other agencies.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: We're routing complaints to other agencies, or we're saying there's no agency to refer the complaint to. Just got a complaint about a sheriff, county sheriff. There's nothing you want to deal with that. I can give you other examples, but there are plenty of examples where there's simply nobody. So, you know, ostensibly, have we're empowered to give advice on municipal ethics code because of the staff to

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: be able to develop.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: And and then my my original question was, I don't know if I'm missing it. Did is there a request for a certain number of positions and description of those? There is. And it's in the

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: the written statement I sent. I could tell you to be aware of it, but it's for two attorney positions, for one general counsel and one staff attorney. And we would hope to retain the two half time positions that we have already for a total of three full time equivalents. Our halftime executive director is a wonder, Christina Sifford. She's on leave of absence, otherwise she'd visit me in this chair. I'm doing my best to fill up her big shoes, and I'm getting paid. She's a wonder. I really don't want to lose her. And I suspect if we don't get to her staff, we're going to lose her. But I really hope that she could stay on this at halftime. Executive director as the boss, really, for the two new attorneys.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So just for the committees, the governor proposed $250,500,000 which is an increase because of healthcare That's insurance the commission is asking to raise the up to 600 plus.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Yes. And so it's another 351,000 as I recall to hire two attorneys, salary and benefits, plus I think we've it was $49,000 for some office space, computers, office equipment, you know, all the stuffs in

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the hiring. Yeah. Are you where is

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: your office space now? We've got office space. It's about a quarter of the size of this. And it's

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: over a six ball of

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: the street right next door.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Oh yes, Senator Lamoille.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: Yeah, so looking at the comparison with other states, and I noticed that Maine includes election practices. Yes. So how broad are the requests that you're getting? So what is your charge exactly? How does it compare with some of the other states?

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: It's true that each state is different. So the Vermont Secretary of State's Office, of course, handles elections. It's not our bailiwick. Excuse me. Our bailiwick is primarily application of the relatively new state ethics codes. It's COVID-nineteen. But also, we're empowered to make rich pearls when people have a complaint thrown to the state personnel policy.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: I was just telling you that's a separate document.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, there's three documents that are called in. One of those is the table of the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: So as you're hearing from folks, do you see, I mean, the attorney position that you're hiring and the staff person that you're hiring would only elaborate on those complaints that pertain to the code. So it's not that you need to have someone help you with FER.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Oh goodness, no. I think that's the easy part. Yeah, that's the easy part.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Member, Lamoille)]: And we figured that was The code is the easy part. We figured that one

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: of those two attorneys could be covering the state ethics code and the other the municipal ethics code. And the state of, you know, in my understanding, but the attorney who handles the state ethics code, who will be getting, would also be in charge of the investigative and hearing function.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And to follow-up on Senator Bruce's question, you're not looking for more authority. Like you have the authority you need, it's really just the people that do the work.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: That's it for me, absolutely. We agree to at

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: least some teeth. Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Mean, what other teeth would you have? What other states?

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: I don't have ambitions for this, but I know that, for example, the Oregon Ethics Commission, I know it's a moneymaker because it has the capacity to impose a financial penalty. The legislation wanted that. Right now, as of 09/01/2027, if we have staff to implement it, the Vermont Ethics Commission would have the authority to scold, basically, to do the public

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: referendum. Right. Which you do now, but you just don't have the staff that kind of got the evidence.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: And actually, we don't have that authority until September 2027.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because we're delighted because you didn't have the staff.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Because we didn't have the staff, exactly.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. So if somebody continued an ethical complaint related to election, would send it to the Secretary of State's office? Yes. For it was a legislative or you sent it to the House or Senate's ethics. Exactly.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: There's a little wrinkle in that, which I can explain if you'd like. Under Act 171, if the complaint came through the ethics commission to the House or Senate ethics panels, there was a requirement that the panel do a non binding consultation with the ethics commission. With, in my mind, the theory that the state ethics commission could be the state's authority on these two codes. Mhmm. Last year, that got changed, however. Something that I think was a bad idea, but was changed so that there was no requirement for that initial nonviolent consultation. But instead, when a complaint comes through the ethics commission and sent to the House of Student Ethics Panel, that we are, if without doing any investigation, supposed to apply on that and gives the panel our take on what might have been a violation, what might be going on here. We don't like that because it's without any investigation with just based on the allegations. It would do so much better if the panel had done at least a preliminary investigation and consulted with us. But that was what the legislature decided. Last year, were limited with it, and we just recently sent a one of those opinion pieces to one of the panels.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Any

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: other questions?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thanks for your testimony and information on this situation that we should find that and get that explanation done. Okay? Alright, sir. Thank you so much.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: You know, we find you have any follow-up questions. We will.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: We can I think we're out of the hallway, so we

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: could just go on the new term? We're continuing with our FY '27. Thank you for requesting it. It's not the agency yet. It's probably the department's about.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: Yeah. Mighty should have.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And I'd like to introduce yourself in the Adhesion Room.

[Bradley Hughes, Secretary & State Chief Information Officer (Agency of Digital Services)]: I will.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Introduce you to the other afternoon.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Jennifer Morrison. I'm the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety. And here with me today are all of our directors, and our deputy commissioner, which I will go through briefly. Deputy commissioner Dan Faitze.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Good afternoon.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Director Mike Deresher from the Division of Fire Safety. Director Corey Chase from the Video Technology Services Division. Jack Wallin from the Vermont Prime Information Center. Director Richard Hallenbeck, Reg Hallenbeck, who is our Finance and Admin Director, and he will be your Director today. Director Eric Florin from Vermont Emergency Management, Director Colonel Matt Birmingham from the Vermont State Police, Director Lisa Miloille from the Division of Animal Welfare, and Doctor. Tricia Glovey who's the Director of the Vermont Forensic Lab.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So just on that, is this the first year we've

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: had an Animal Welfare Director? Is the first year that we've had Animal Welfare Director. That appropriation is tucked up into admin finance currently. There are just a couple of things like that that you'll see in our budget. We are working on that. I'm working with Commissioner Gresham and I finish word that in next year's budget, there will be an appropriation for each of the eight divisions. Currently, you'll find the Vermont Crime Information Center and the Radio Technology Shop are squished together under something called criminal justice services. That's a holdover from fifteen years ago when we had our own in house IT support and a variety of other things back when Patrick Brennan was the deputy commissioner, So I we we are going to be having a little bit clearer all eight divisions played out in next year's budget. But this year, there's a couple of moves.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Should I ask how long the roachers have been working for State Government? Thirty six years. Thirty six years. Are you, like, a top state employee as far as far as six years? I'm not sure.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: I suspect he's not the top. AOT has some Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Folks who've been there,

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: but certainly in the Department of Public Safety, he is a tremendous chunk of the brain trust

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: At public safety. And we also are are aware, acutely aware, that the colonel is the longest serving colonel in the entire country that we know.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Oh, I know.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: And he would be this will be his last budget cycle. Right.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I heard you.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: So, yes. We we assume that our budget we are not here to talk about every bit of the budget. What we thought we'd do is start by saying, what would you like us to talk about? Or do you have questions? And then let Rick guide you through that, and if you have particulars for any of the directors, they can chime in as well.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, think we're glad you got through your presentation and some general questions, but if you have your I mean, we're not going go through 127 slides, but if there's things you want to highlight, know, the issues with the budget, but I've got questions about my favorite topic, the communication

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: funds. Yeah. I have a lot of answers for that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Good. And I am interested in in, you know, the vacancies that we have in state troopers, is a continuing issue, but just updates on on what we're doing and what how we can help on those cases.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: You wanna start there?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Sure. I mean, it's

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: up it's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: up to you. I don't wanna I don't wanna get in front of your presentation and things you wanna make sure you let go.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: We we weren't intending to give you a presentation unless you wanted one, because it's pretty straightforward. But we can, so we can do it either way. Relative to state police and vacancies, this past year is the first year that we have brought on more new hires that, in terms of sworn personnel, than we have lost through retirement or electrician.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The first year in the last, like, six years or not? Not at least six.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: Yeah. Matt Birmingham, for the record, state police since 2019. Yeah. That was the last time that we had we netted more than and so this is the first year that we now are retaining more troopers than we are losing every year. And are

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you feeling that it's like we with just a fluke here, or

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: we turn them down? We're just turning a corner slowly. So I I just wanna be careful how I say that, but the last two classes the last three classes have been above. We we generally attract 30 foreign members a year through attrition, and so we need we have two classes every year in the state, and so we need about 15 in each class to just maintain our our staffing. The last few classes have been about 14. This one's at twelve, but they're better than the fives and six that we've had for the last post COVID, post George Floyd. They we were we were at six per class, and that was just unsustainable.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And you you you are you have a mandatory retirement?

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: Our mandatory retirement is 57 now, and it was changed a few years ago by the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: legislature. Senator Johnson?

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: I don't have in my mind a good picture of what the overall numbers are and, you know,

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: it would be nice to have a chart and say, here's where we are, here's what the what where we would hope to be, so we have a better picture of them.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: We have that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. We have that.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: I can read that right. It's got grab Every these

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: couple of months, we do a new staffing analysis for the state police and look at trends, not just in the number of bodies employed, but in the number of applications we receive, etcetera.

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: So we can certainly It's hard when you sit here and people talk about it, and we hear of, actually, in our warning committee, the three of us, we hear a lot about the staffing shortages Mhmm. And and how it permits the ability of public safety and what you have to do. Mhmm. But I don't Mhmm. You know, I hear you talk about 15 and

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Right. 30 and How many

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: 123 sworn physicians right now. We've we've converted a bunch to civilians. So we we in our world, we talk sworn and civilian. And and that's basically sworn is that it's sworn in an oath and have a badge and a gun and have an arrest powers. We have a tremendous civilian staff as well that works in our fleet, that works in our dispatch centers, in our PSAPs, and they do a lot of different functions. We've converted 12 of the sworn positions to civilian for jobs that don't require sworn law enforcement powers, gold based unit, technology investigation unit, recruiting, things that you don't need a badge and a gun for. So we have 323 sworn positions. We have right now and it does fluctuate literally week to week based on people leaving the academy, people retiring, people leaving. We have about 44 vacancies right now. And so it's about, what's that, fourteen percent? Fourteen ish percent vacancy rate. But we were as high as almost 70 vacancies at one point. So we were we were into the 20% vacancy rate. So we've come down from that. We've reorganized few things to to maximize our sworn resources. But so that's where we're at right now today. It's 44 vacancies out of 323. And that includes the 12 that are in the academy. So this is where it gets a little confusing for some people to understand is there's a there's at least a year long to almost a year maybe. It's like it's eight to twelve months away from the time you hire somebody to the time they actually become quote unquote useful. Meaning that we have to hire them. They go through almost a six month training process at the police academy, then they're certified week post basic course, and then there's FTO. All of that combined is about eight months. It takes eight months and then finally they can be put into a schedule and cover a shift.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That's the same whether even if they have prior law enforcement? No, it's shorter than that.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: If they have certification, it's much shorter. We can we it's probably two months. Mhmm. But we're not seeing a lot of that anymore in terms of prior law enforcement certification. Most people we hire have to go through the whole academy. So you see these significant delays that of you know, and and most jobs, we hire someone, they start the next day. Yeah. We hire, and it takes a while for them to be able to cover shifts. And that delay, we're in that process. We're losing people during that training. So we have 12 people in the academy training now. They won't be available to us until August July, August. And the 14 that have just become available to us now, we hired in June. So that's the delay that that it's hard to kinda once you're talking vacancies, hard to so when I say 44 vacancies, yes, we have 44 actual vacancies that don't have people assigned to them, but 12 of those people aren't available to us to assign.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: So we really have 56 vacancies.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We really have 56.

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: It would be nice to see

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: I have it all

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: parted out. And be able to see trend lines of the eagles because it's hard to, you know, and I know you talk about, but I hear the same thing from my local sheriff's office, and my local sheriff's office has got people trained, got them in, and then at least a couple physicians to stay the least. So it would be helpful to have a picture of Absolutely. I have a friend

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: How many years back do have, John?

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: You know, what you think is appropriate to tell the story. Okay. I

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I believe back to '19. I I believe

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: it was back to '19 or 2018, I think, as far back as we've gone.

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: Well, I I'll be completely honest and tell you, when the Transportation Committee said around the committee the first week of the session, I made the committee go around and say, What's your priorities? To a person around the room in the transportation committee, they said traffic safety, of course, and as we dug into that, there, you know, I'll just give you for an example, I don't mean to, but, you know, traffic speeding violations, they were over 42,000 in 'nineteen, and in 'twenty five, there were 20. In total, citations handed out, in 'nineteen, there were over, there was about 80,000. It's 48,000. And it always comes up, the staffing issues at public safety teams. And it's just hard to sow some way to isolate that, and you will get a call from my staff, the staff people in our committee talk about that. And, but always it comes up that, particularly the state police are on their staff. So to understand that better, when people ask, it's hard to articulate unless it's in a form that we can understand. And I hear your training issues, and you're not alone in it, but

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We'll definitely get you back. Thank you. And I know one of your budget things, overtime, because you have all these vacancies. Right? You're but you're not yet to, like, corrections where you have mandatory overtime or do you have any or if it's the LTs?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Digital.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: Yeah. Until recently, we did. Yes. We dialed back the mandatory overtime from its from a top down statewide mandate. Now there are possibilities that exist in each fair. It's now manages their own overturn. Mhmm. We used to do it centralized at a headquarters. And, yes, you had to work an overtime shift once every two months. That has gone away since our staffing has improved, there are still shifts that troopers have to work to cover. There's still overtime shifts troopers have to

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: work to cover barracks. Right.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: And they may be mandatory locally, and I would know.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do you think that the corner that we're turning is because of the reclassification and pay or just the change of culture sin? I would say, obviously,

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: COVID impacted all sectors of the economy for staffing. Post George Floyd police reform, there was definitely a lot of people who got out of the profession as a result of that, and not a lot

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of people wanted to get in. Right.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: That's and and there was sort of a general yeah. A general you know, it it wasn't a profession people were running to jump into because of the criticism around it. That has swung around quite a bit lately. And so and we're seeing a stronger natural workforce, younger people wanting to get back into the profession. It's just slow. It's not fast. It's the the problem for us is we have not changed our qualifications, nor will we. It's a very it's about 6% of the people who apply get hired based on all the stringent standards that we set, and and we wanna hold the line on that because we do not want people in these uniforms.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: We're not holding the line at 6%. We're holding the line at a standard.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No. No. No. No. Yeah. I'm

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: the generation that might be coming into this And post COVID, it's only gotten worse. And it is it's very hard for people to meet the PT standard even though it is handed to you on a piece of paper, posted publicly on a website, and there's no surprises. Right. So

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: It's it's mostly the backgrounds. The background investigations into people are the the big big hurdles and the things that we find out that are just untenable to be in this job. So those are those are also major issues.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So do you think that that the reclassification, that's the pay is where it needs to be to to to recruit, who we need to recruit? It's more about the qualities we're core just the the society's perception towards

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: I mean, the the challenges that we face is it's twenty four seven. A lot of people don't wanna work job. They don't wanna work night shifts. They don't wanna work weekends. They don't wanna work holidays. So we see that. But the schedule is huge barrier to hiring because it's not it's a it's a hard job at all hours of day and night. And then the the workload is hard. It is a it's a very demanding job. There's a lot of bad things that we deal with every day, and that takes us to a lot of people. But the schedule is a huge challenge for us because we have to cover a twenty four hour block. And a lot of people don't wanna do that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: When I talked to a trooper, and he thought he thought his interpretation was the pay and benefits were where they need to be, but it was this kind of criticism of of

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: the public. We were at

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: a public hearing where people were manually just complaining Unfortunate the whole time. He was like, this is why people don't want to do it, because you just get people in here complaining.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: It's too hard a job to do under the best of conditions.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: And I used to tell young cops that all the time, that this is too hard a job to do if you don't love it. It's not your calling. The pay for troopers is very good. It's very competitive. So, I think that that feedback that you received is I'm happy to hear that they feel that it is too. The truth is that the hyper scrutiny of the last six or seven years of every decision that is made in a split second under tense and rapidly evolving circumstances is exhausting. It is exhausting. It's like having a playback camera on the football field for every word that comes out of your mouth, now that you're wearing body word cameras all the time. For everything you do. The nature of the job, of course, is legitimately difficult and stressful. So it's everything altogether. Nights, weekends, holiday, a steady diet of misery and difficult circumstances. Working in the rain and snow, everything. Yeah. Plus the hyper scrutiny. When you can get a job being paid the same, working Monday through Friday in a different sector, and that's the choice that people are making. They're making a choice for work life balance that we cannot offer. They're making a choice to work in a controlled environment that we cannot offer.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And that's what we're seeing in transportation where people, well we want to see the safety, we want to see the people being held accountable for operating unsafe vehicles or operating in unsafe way, but I know law enforcement has been criticized for, you know, pulling people over the where they might not need to occur. So

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: When you talk about traffic enforcement, there's a whole lot of layers of appeal of that. I need to do it in presentation. But it's not simply a staffing issue.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Right. I get that and there's numerous things, but staffing is one

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: of the things that people come up with and just as the committee next door has dug into this more, it raises more and more issues.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Well, I'll look forward to you.

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: Yeah, it's sometimes. And we know it's not an easy thing, I think our committee has been surprised about what they've done.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Fair enough. You And wanted to talk about funding for public safety communications. Are you talking about the work of public safety communications task force?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, task force did a report, maybe you could just remind us where we are with that money. Is that money being suspended in your proposed budget, or is it

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: So I wanna make sure that anyone who's watching is is very clear that the work of the Public Safety Communications Task Force is not conflated with the Department of Public Safety. E nine seventy eight, I was designated as co chair with director Neil from the E nine eleven board. About a year ago, stepped away from that and my deputy commissioner has been filling in as co chair because we knew that the day would come that recommendations are made that public safety might not agree with. So, we needed to be able to have public safety, have a stakeholder voice, and still have the very good work and hard work, very difficult work the task force continue on. So the task force did submit its work with recommendations. I'll back up to go to the money part. In Act 78, dollars 11,000,000 general fees appropriated it was put into two different accounts or line items. 4 and a half million dollars was sort of the envisioned as the short term use, which included being able to hire consultants to do the work that the task force was tasked with doing. But also in that was 2,000,000 up to $2,000,000 for potential pilot projects. The bill was written in a way that only gave us that option to do pilot projects in 2024. So that has never actually that that money is even spent. Of the 4 and a half million dollars, we spent the first million over the first eighteen months or so. We went back to j JFC, and they released the second million dollars for continuing to do the work of the task force to be able to present these recommendations. So the other 6 and a half million of the original 11,000,000 has never been touched. It's been sitting in a reserve account that we get asked by every year if they can scoop it. So that's sort of a TBD based on what the level of interest is in the different recommendations of the task force. But that's that $11,000,000 into child visits.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And the second truck is 4,500,000.0 or 4,000,000 that was originally for the pilots?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: It was for the operating expenses of the task force and the consultants we had to hire to do the work and the pilot projects. So essentially $2,500,000 to do the work of the task force and up to $2,000,000 for pilot projects, which they were never recommended. They've never started at this point. So the total expenditure of the task force is under 2,000,000 at this point.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And if we wanted to fund a pilot project, we'd have to change that.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: You can probably have to change that language from 2023.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The task force made its recommendations, it's kind of the governor of public safety didn't say, okay, the recommendations, we're asking for an appropriation for x, y, z. Those are just out there

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: for the legislature to respond first.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: So the legislature has received the report. It is testimony is expected to be taken back up next week. In the start? In house? In house of believe that's what I understood as house kebabs. Ops. There are several excellent recommendations in that report that will improve the overall consistency and delivery of dispatching services, sort of the yang to the yin of 09:11 call taken, the actual dispatching apparatus of people out There the are several excellent recommendations. They all seem to hinge on an agreement around governance. How this work would be regulated, how people pay for it, do we have certification standards for dispatchers as opposed to just nine one one call takers, etcetera. On the issue of governance, the Department of Public Safety does not agree with the recommendations of the task force. I think that that All of them? No, just the one on governance. All this is the sort of the nugget that we're trying to work through is that the governance is foundational to all the other excellent recommendations, but we have to get to a place where everyone can live with governance. The current recommendation is that a parallel board of virtually the same stakeholders be created parallel to the e nine one one board, that it be a new board that has the ability to enter contracts and have an Safety don't agree with that approach. We see that it is a duplication of the already existing board and their expertise, And we think that it should either the responsibility should go to either the E nine one one board or to the Department of Public Safety created a division of emergency communications because you have to have somebody who is accountable for outcomes, not a volunteer board that is being empowered for a finite period of time. We're going to take on the rest of the recommendations. Again, the governance appears to be foundational, and that's where we have to get past this place so that we can do the work.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Did you write like a majority recommendation, like a

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: I counter wrote a letter to the Senate and House of Ops, saying that the Department of Public Safety disagreed with that recommendation, which is, honestly, a little bit sad because the amount of work that is got into tremendous, and we have to get, you have to get the who and the how before we can get to the what.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So none of that is in your budget?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: None of that is in our budget. That's money that's in the two reserve accounts from Act 78, '20 23.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. And then otherwise, budget, are you within the governor's 3%?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: We are not. Approximately 5.6%.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: One of the things you want to highlight, I know there was some, in the past we had questions about radios and firearms. Think last year we of, we set up a, we asked, I can't remember if we set up

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: a You asked us for a plan. Basically a half plan, which isn't a thing. So, we have a plan for both firearms and the handheld and portable radios. The firearms are relatively easy. That's one big purchase. It's in the process of being done, and then the amount will accrue each year. We have asked for an accrual account to be established through finance and administration, And then every five years, according to the manufacturer's recommendation, would do a full refresh of the amnesty. Sorry, I had

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: that completed with the review which you put some in the hand, but we don't have an approval.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Oh, we don't have an approval?

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: That one's in my budget.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Oh, and we're just gonna carry it forward, and nobody's gonna sweep it. Ask her. So then every five years

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it'll be, like, a set appropriation every year, and then every five years, you'll be able to buy a fifth of the firearms you need to buy. That's for the record.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: I'm Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance and Administration of Health and Safety. We had the 400,000 added to our budget last year, which was a significant help to not only fund firearm replacement, but to sort of shore up our equipment line items. And the state police has to buy a lot of different equipment every year on cycles, and this will just be part of the cycle every five years. In fact, your recommendation will buy the firearm. You

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: will buy that one fifth every year?

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: No, no. We'll replace them all once. And as long as we don't experience any significant operating cuts, or don't manage to grow with the rate of inflation, we'll be able to fit this into our existing replacement equipment budget. The same with ratings.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Right. Radios

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: But let me finish on

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the That's how I service service, one time money for communications. I don't know if that was radios or just something they got on.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Let me finish on the firearms, and we'll come to communications equipment. We don't buy a fifth, a fifth, a fifth, a fifth. We want every single Exactly. Make and model without any changes to, the way the gun works and the way we train on it. So, that's why you do them all at once. Likewise, with radios, the handheld radios and the car mounted or mobile radios, it is most desirable to buy this generation of stuff and replace it all at once over a two year period so that you don't have your technicians working on different generations of equipment that require different components or key codes or anything like that. That's why it's a big thing every ten years for handheld and portable radios. And you can explain how we're handling that.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: The radio replenishment plan has 500,000 annually, and that was in our base budget last year. In this budget, you'll see it come out. It's going into a special fund. And so that 500,000 will be added annually to the special fund, we'll be able to execute our next replacement ten years after we get our first full request this time. We're not there yet, but we've received or we've been that there's a grant for $2,000,000 in the federal budget for f y twenty six. That's for state police radios. So we're hoping that that will give us sufficient funding to have the full refresh executed late fiscal twenty seven, possibly early fiscal twenty eight.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Which is later than we want it to be. But the CDS money reappeared on our radar that we were unaware of, and it's still upcoming. Did you want to add something, Corey?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Senator Watson?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: On a slightly different topic, I'm recalling from my time as mayor of Montpelier that one of the things that we looked into was electric vehicles for our troopers, for our for our police, and that there were only at the time, there were only a couple of models that might have been suitable because of the all the needs that the kind of equipment that you have to have in a police vehicle. And but they're but but they did exist. And, know, in terms of motorcycles as well, like that was an an option. And so I'm wondering if you all have done any analysis of the possibility of I I know they're very expensive, but if there is savings to be had, your maintenance and cost of fuel, etcetera. Wondering if that is on your your radar, if you have done any analysis to that effect or where you all stand I

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: can answer that.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: The potential for EVs for Shooters. Shooters.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: The problem is our shooters have take home cars, so we can't install the charging systems in their houses and have them pay for it. So all of our troopers bring their car somewhere. In mean, it's not the the the cruisers are at a a central police station.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Mhmm.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: There's also not the infrastructure necessary in remote rural areas of Vermont for for that sort

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of Mhmm.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: Response and having those vehicles ready twenty four seven as troopers respond from their house for everything. So if it doesn't we we have looked at hybrids and we have purchased hybrids Yeah. For command vehicles, but we can't get over the charging infrastructure hurdle for state police. Thank you. That's helpful.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: And if I'm I'm thinking now about, you know, Green Man Powers programs for charging infrastructure and, you know, that not everybody not not all of the utilities have that as a as a program, you know, where they will give you the the equipment, you just have to have it it installed. But it's it's interesting that that is a barrier, but I'm also hearing you about, you know, if you're if you're out of your home, if you're out in the field and

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: you need to retract it quickly with that. It's

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: a It, you know, doesn't quite exist to the level that we would need it for. Mhmm. And and so the accessibility of the infrastructure is not like you're in, but, you know, Essex County and Sure. Ginny, and we're out there for hours and hours and hours. We need to be able to keep those cars.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Well, if one of one of the interests that we had as a city, particularly for switching over our police fleet, was because there's so much idol involved. Right. And that there's significant gains to be had there if you're not idling a gasoline. Right. I guess I'm also wondering too, just thinking about the geography, it might make sense in some parts of the state, if

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: less in other parts of

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: the state, But is is it fair to say that sort of similar to the guns where, you know, you want them all to be the same make and model, is that also true? No. Or No. Police vehicles?

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: No. We actually have diversified our fleet over the last two years because we were a Ford. We we were purchasing all Fords and after COVID, Ford had a chip issue. Oh. And we lost we lost delivery on many two years of of cruisers, which put us which, to your point, the reverse side, our maintenance costs started skyrocketing because their cars were getting too many miles. So we've had to diversify between Ford and GM over the last couple of years to avoid that scenario from happening again.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: So do you suppose that it's possible that there's been there's a part there's parts of the state where it may make some sense to to look into it, or

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: As a municipal police chief in the Vermont communities, I see the value in a diverse state involving fully electrical vehicles, hybrids. It makes sense in a geographically constrained area. It does not, at this point, make sense at all for troopers because they, in addition to their patrol shifts and their calls for service, almost all of them are involved in some level of special team. So they could be in Canaan, to the Colonel's Point, six hours into a shift on a very cold winter day that drains battery, and they can immediately be called to the central or southern part of the state for a TSU activation, a bomb squad activation, drone team, crash construction team, dive team, what you name it. They they we can't have any possibility of dead. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not a good look if we're responding to emergencies. So, again, as police chief, we did have them way back before I left Burlington the first time, we already were beginning to diversify our fleet. So, it makes sense in a geographically tight period, but right now, even the technology and the charging infrastructure, it doesn't make sense statewide. Sure.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: No, that makes sense. And I'm also appreciating that your, that hybrids are on the, folks

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: who don't respond to that policy.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Or non, right.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: For command vehicles, so.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Okay. And thinking about that, so is it that is not necessarily the folks that would be, you know, sitting on the highways idling?

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: Those vehicles for for and and I'm sure there's a very different, application of how we police and municipalities police because we're covering the entire state. And a trooper assigned to Derby could work an overtime shift in Berlin. Mhmm. But also to the special teams calls, are vast and numerous around the state, our tactical unit, our bomb squad, or the we have to have a 100% reliability. Mhmm. And there's just not that reliability yet with the infrastructure for charging vehicles. That's even if we could get over for electric vehicles. That's even if we can get over the the charging aspect because I would argue, I don't think we have the authority to to tell troopers that they have to install equipment in their house Sure. To be and use their grid and their power meter Mhmm. And and to to be employed by a class. Mhmm. So they could just say, well, that's not. And then we'd have to reimburse that. It would be a It'd be a it'd be

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: I can see Rick's agile. Yeah.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: It would be a challenge.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Sure. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Well, it's Well,

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: we have We stay on top of it.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Yeah. And

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: win tips in the favor of of making sense. Yeah.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: Well, I won't talk about it with my colleagues around the country who run state police agents in terms of the unique challenges that we face on a statewide, and it is being discussed. We're just haven't come up with a great solution yet.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Fair enough. Thank you so much.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Is that it? Yeah. I I know

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I have another Norris question, but I think senator Norris can ask.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: So that's silly,

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Norris can answer the question.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: So Rick, I did find the line item for the communications. I did find it sort of fire around.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Can we have that explanation again? So, it's within our base budget. If you just click down the safety stuff. So, yeah. All of those line items surrounding the 500,000 down for communications equipment, that's us shifting around our line items to where we actually spend them. The 400,000, it's just, it's within those line items. We spend, probably a lot of them is in the same line item where it's appropriated for the firearms. It's just part of our equipment replacement budget now. So there's no separate line item for your firearms? Correct. We will budget for that exact amount that we needed in the five year cycle or something. We'll put that in the budget again.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: What was the reason for for doing it like that, Rich? Putting it all into one how do you track what was going against for your firearms?

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Sorry. Not sure I understand that. You said you

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: get everything below $500,000 in communication equipment, safety supplies, equipment, vehicle, whatever else. How do you differentiate what's what's going into it? What is 20? Before your firearm.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: The well, the firearms are all in one line item. I think it's safety supplies and equipment. So we can see we didn't we did move some of that to other line items. There's there's a lot of shipping going on. There's nothing really new in that except that we're Mhmm. I don't know. It's fine. The number, I think, is something. Across all line line items and operating, we're up 198,000, which is roughly one and a half percent of the entire budget, not counting the $500,000 down and fee for space increase.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: The other question that I had was, I can't seem to find the line item for her search

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: and rescue. Of course. I see a little right there down to even fire safely. So you'll see two large downs in this Switch page 14. Sorry. I'm trying to frame this so you can see the whole thing, but it did not be

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Let's see if I can

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We also have we can also see them.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Yeah. Get they have their

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: own patients. Okay. So these these here's one of the two large downs in five zero six two hundred other personal services. There's also one just any ease of line items for other operating, and that was.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Was such a.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: Yeah.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: I think that was a 198,000. Again, see how my gauge is. Where are you? There it Page 16, which is 16. Okay. B two twelve is

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the budget section.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: It's fire safety. The urban center has

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: to say fire safety. It's it's slide 16, but if you're going by the page number, it'll actually be just jump. I think it's 14. Oh, right. On the PDF, it's 16 on there. Correct. So what are you saying? Where where is it listed? So the 252,000 down in other personal services, and then there's a 198,000 down other operating. That's where it was budgeted last year. Now it is in these other line items that you see an increase for, in personal services, temporary employees, up 142,000, overtime up 50,000. That's representative of the USAR increase, and then you have all of these various operating line items in the USAR, 50,000 for repair and moving vehicles, 4,000 for teleconferencing. So you don't have any use or budget?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No. You don't broken out?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: No, it's a unit within the division of fire safety. So the 450,000, I think, is

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: what you're talking about?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: $500,000 think. Was 500,000

[Mike Norris, Director, Division of Fire Safety]: Yeah, no, was 450,000

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: 400,004

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Okay, 100

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: so the base is over the for research and research

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Right, it's divided out the way it's actually going be spent. For the temporary employees, that's how we each staff those teams, except for the couple people who are our full time employees. Then we've things, line items that Rick was pointing to. The $450,000 is allocated as to how we intend to actually spend it.

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: Yeah, I see it sounds like lot.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: So the $2.52 is for employees? And operating expenses of 198? That's the

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: way it was budgeted last year. I do believe the shift was a little bit heavier and it's operating.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is it possible to see a new start? I didn't even know if such Just like, these are all the line items. Here's what used to be this one thing, and now it's these. Yeah. Is that too much work?

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Nope. We've seen you have.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I bet you have.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Did she want the asthma unit broken out too or just urban search and rescue? Because that's another special team that did in the division of fire safety.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right. I was just thinking of urban search university, but I don't know if it's centered on ours. No, was just

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: trying to locate it. I was trying to look at some point, but $400,000 of funds. Let's see now, with

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: the worst explanation you've broken into the two line items, which is fine.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do have any other questions, Senanoris?

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: Just one more. Is there anything I've been looking through in the language or whatever. Is this the communications and the firearms, is that just something that you just put into your budget, Or is

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: there language into it that I can look at it so

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: that your clients do that you could just you're

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: not trying to micromanage I

[Sen. Robert Norris (Member)]: just wanna know if you got Yeah.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: I still know the language off the top of my head for creating a special fund, but We keep talking about that one now.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Are you are you talking about as a pledging construct or as a practical yes. It's not A project construct. Yes. You've asked financial management to make it so. Okay. I think we're gonna get there.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Only question I thought to and Norris was gonna ask is what are you doing with the firearms that you're retiring? Oh, yeah. I thought the manufacturer is going through. But there was it's a great some manufacturers don't do that anymore. Correct. And let

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: me let me make sure that I'm because you're right.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: I think there was no buyback this year.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: I I think they changed their minds.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Oh, they changed their minds. Great.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: Yeah. Let me I can get some answer right now.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Alright. And senator Watson?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Thank you. So so

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: question about the animal welfare division.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: I realize it's a one person operation right now. So grateful. Have you met her? I have not. She's amazing.

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: I believe it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: She's amazing. It. And I know that there's a plan that's in process being developed. I'm just wondering about the timelines for that plan to come out.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Director Miloille would have to answer that. Don't if Dan might actually Just have the answer to

[Dan Batsie, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Public Safety]: for the record, Dan Batesy, Deputy Commissioner, so the plan was submitted. The timeline will largely be up to you, this body, legislature that is, but I think it's going to depend upon the direction you want to go. Are there pieces of it? Director Milo can certainly talk about the several projects we have sort of cooking right now. I know there's at least, some legislation moving through senate judiciary, particularly around seizures and, some of that. Again, she can speak more specifically. And then I know that Senate House gov ops also has a pending bill that's going to talk a little bit about some organizational stuff

[Paul Burrowbaum, Chair, Vermont Ethics Commission]: around the approach to animal welfare. From our perspective, in terms of

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: appropriations, we were gifted the vision of animal welfare. We were lucky enough to get a hot shelf law professor who moved to Vermont to pick up the helm here. That being said, the appropriation that came with it doesn't cover the property, doesn't cover the entire nugget, so that will probably only get worse and worse as time goes on. So you'll be hearing about that at some point. Secondly, we are committed to living within the Governor's Rep of Men, which does not contemplate any expansion of the Division of Animal Law Fair this year. So there's lots of ideas in the report for ways we can do a better, more coordinated job with the resources we have by coordinating rather than by That's we hope to be writing.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Okay. That's good to know. I raise it because just anticipating that there may be a time in the future when we there we may want to add some funding to that. And so wondering about these bills that are moving in their own respective ways that you I I don't know if there is money attached to those bills. I realize those are not something that you all are necessarily proposing, but

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: There's not money attached to them yet.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Not that I'm aware of,

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: but I I'd say that they're both still in relatively decent pace. So Okay. Which is say that senator Star would be very happy about so she had Senator Sears. But if we go back through the four years, there was nothing. This was floating everywhere and has been floating for I

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: think you'll quickly see the value of having somebody with Lisa's expertise at the helm of, again, if we did nothing else, being able to pull together the disparate parts of the current ecosystem to make them more coordinated, even just that is going to make a big difference.

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: I'm complimenting your word

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Thank you.

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: Just to this point. It it this has been a political for.

[Dan Batsie, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Public Safety]: I think you also find that director Mallett is chock full of innovative ideas about system manipulation and how to evolve our system without having to build a lot of governmental and spend a lot of money. I think she's talking right now about some substantive changes that will make a difference that are using existing resources and will do good work. So we'll be glad to pass along the report and make her available to you if

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: you wanna talk to me.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Thank you. Mister chairman, you had an

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: answer on that question. I'm sorry.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Go ahead.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Sorry, colonel.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: They are not being purchased back by the manufacturer. They're being purchased by Paris. So they're buying all of them from us. Right.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: Paris. Shop.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I mean, are they able to sell the public as a registered virus? Yeah.

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: As a registered buyer, you know, they can do whatever they legally can do with that device.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Short question. So looking at your radio technology update and knowing that if everything goes down, ham radio operation is the way we can communicate. Do you have a link in with the ham radio operator machine? Because that's one of my fun things to do. Sure. So, the short answer is yes, we have relationships with the ham radio operators groups, but we also have strong relationships with military and civil air patrol, which both use a variety of different types of radios, including ham type radios. So, yes, it would be one of the fallback methods of communications, and we don't ourselves operate a ham radio network, but we have robust relationships there. I can remember patrolling the Burlington Waterfront during the third of July fireworks, and each team leader had a ham radio operator following them around in case there wasn't an

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: act on our communications. Wow.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: It's amazing, Yeah. It was like, there was some special reason why it might have right after the Boston marathon thing, so I can't remember why we had this skipped up security, but yes, had a ham radio operator follow me around on a very, very sweaty afternoon.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: A question about emergency management. It looks like a lot of federal funds may have decreased. This is affecting staffing?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Well, kind of decreased. So, yeah, it Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: It seemed like there was a lot.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: The aid story is Well, there's actually

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: not a lot of federal funds being decreased here. You see in the top section for salaries and wages, benefits and everything, that is a representative of three positions that work on homeland security grants being transferred from the state police appropriation. Okay. And then if you look at the bottom where there's the 55 accounts for grants, there's three of them together, that's only a slight profit. So, there's really, there's no cuts in federal law. Realize we're down 363,000 above, but most of that's representative of three positions.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay, so the kind of our ability to respond to emergencies have decreased.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: It's not in this budget, but we have, fully half of our staff at Vermont Emergency Management are funded through two different federal grant streams that have been held up. We were, emergency management planning grant and the homeland security grant. And we have been burning through residual funds from FY '22, 2324. It's '24 right now. '24. And that those two grant streams have been the subject of lawsuits and a lot of holdups from Washington. The word that we have received most recently is that the EMPG side is the spigot's open. But that's literally half of the law emergency management relies on those two grant streams, and it has been a rocky road. They're supposed to be we were supposed to be drawing on them as of October 1, we have not drawn penny from them.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And you still don't have the

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: ability to draw down?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: We still don't have

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: You don't have the ability to draw down those but you're it's all we're getting

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: Eric Farm and director of emergency management.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So there's something called a hold,

[Col. Matt Birmingham, Director, Vermont State Police]: we just got elected Friday, but there's a few more hurdles that they've thrown in front of us, changing our work plan. So we're getting closer. We're close to the end

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: of the no. We still don't have the capabilities of drugs.

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: We've had a lot of holds. The hold is lifted. The terms and conditions of acceptance have changed. Then the federal government shut down. This is not a chronological order. And it has been a really wild ride. And it is we're literally at the skin of our teeth to be able to make payroll if these grants funding streams don't turn up.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I scanned it, like, in February. Good luck. You're you're not alone. I don't know if anybody's that close to not making payroll, but but a lot of agencies are like, we were supposed to get this money two months ago. We don't know what's if it's gonna come to tomorrow or two years. That's that's extra work. And then fire safety, can you just remind remind me because there's it's a lot of special funds, and I can't remember why special funds. Like, what what are the special funds? Yeah.

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: So, yeah, we have a a few different special funds in fire safety. The biggest one is the fire prevention and building inspection fund. That's where all the permit fee and the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: rest of the pay into the fund. They pay into the cover

[Rick Hollenbeck, Director of Finance & Administration, Department of Public Safety]: your operations. Yeah. There's also the hazardous chemical fund. That's where anybody that has chemical storage has to pay the amount of time to store those chemicals, and it funds the hazardous materials for the stock scheme. We also have an elevator safety fund that's relatively small, that funds a position.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Are we still having our time finding elevator, specter, and repair people?

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Yes. Because in statute, because in statute, the the fee is capped at $250,

[Jason (Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: and

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: we will propose at some point that that go to a rulemaking process so that that fee can change as the market rate changes. So we rely on in state, but also out of state vendors. They're not gonna come from out of state and need a $250 cap for elevator inspections that could take far more time.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So we've set in statute what somebody charged for an elevator, for an inspection? Yep. Yes, sir. Well, but

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: I would add that the administration has refused to increase fees across the board for many years, so this is only one of the little stop gaps that will show Sure,

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: I mean, I believe that to be true. Yeah. You say it, then I'm sure it's true. It's an interesting conundrum in that we don't have the, we don't have the ability to let the and vendors so we're real hard pressed to get people to want to do that work. Are you

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: saying your later fee should go up and down?

[Rep. Patrick "Pat" Brennan (Clerk)]: That's really

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: good for just an afternoon. Okay,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: so this is why. Are the special funds keeping up? I assume like the elevator, the fees that you charge businesses for inspections, have those been flat? Are they keeping up with the costs have For done

[Mike Norris, Director, Division of Fire Safety]: the record, Mike Norris, Director of Fire Safety. Our special fund is stable now and we are keeping up with the budgetary wise, we're good. Construction seems to be pretty stable and the fee revenue coming in is stable. So I don't see a big issue, a big issue there.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And you get some federal funds. Not for fire safety.

[Mike Norris, Director, Division of Fire Safety]: The only general fund money we get is federal funds. Funds. We have one grant here that we've received, one federal grant for 500,000 to put toward replacing a fire apparatus down at the training facility in Pittsburgh. And we're still internally trying to figure out how to connect the dots here so we can use that grant money before it expires. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thanks. Good to hear. I don't have any other questions. Is there anything else that you wanted to tell us that we didn't get a chance to tell us? No, sir. The things that we should know that you're not telling

[Jennifer Morrison, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Safety]: Go ahead. Answer the question.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. There's no other questions. We're we're we can at Europe, humanities and historical society will be rescheduled for different days. They worked out for the day.