Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Trailer rates aren't quite oh, screw that. Do you pay the minimum tax? If you pay the minimum tax

[Senator Richard Westman (Member)]: We are live.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. We are live. This is senate appropriations. It's February 26. We're doing f y '27 budget proposal request. We have the criminal justice council here today. Sorry for the delay that we had. Move on the floor for much longer than that. We'll let the executive director and others introduce yourselves and give us your presentation.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Afternoon committee, and thank you for the invitation. For the record, Christopher Berkel, the executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. I have with me today the director of training, Lindsey Tiverge, and I believe Jason Bernard will be joining us, but I don't see him online yet. Yeah. There. Okay. Is he in person? Amazing. Okay. I'm not seeing him on my screen. However, we do have a shortened version for our budget proposal. It's really a lackluster budget for you to even have to be reviewing, but nonetheless, I'm going to start right on page four, just the overview of our budget. As you can see just from our budget asks, we are actually $71,443 or a point 68% increase in the general fund budget. And we are also a 43,527 or 11.11% increase in the interdepartmental transfer budget. Our IDT funds are what go towards highway safety programs and the training around SFSTs, a ride, DUI, and the DRE program. While putting this budget together this year, we ended up actually being $40,000.472 over, the governor's recommend of 3%. And so we balance that out using vacancy savings so that we could stay at the governor's recommend of 3%. And then as well, just so that for the committee's information, that budget also includes the financial piece for two exempt employees and for 14 classified employees. Moving on to page five of that $4,330,000 budget, really what that is designed to do is just to keep us fully operational and meet the core training costs of our mission. We have, as I mentioned, a $347,000 in IDT funds that, does all the highway safety programs. It covers the total of 16 staff. We serve 82, state, local, municipal, and county employee agencies, And it's also got us at the point of 96%, agency compliance right now with the, title twenty twenty three sixty six, which is around the FIP policy. We still have three agencies that we are currently working with to get them compliant with that policy, but nonetheless, they're all working with us to get to that compliance. Moving on to page six, again, of that budget, you'll notice that 51, is going to our salaries and benefits, only 5% to contracts and other personnel services, 2% to IT, 26% of our budget is for fee fee for space, 6% supplies and operationals, 9% for both, food and IDT transfers. So if you're looking to the left of that page, the cost of the tuition for a student to go through the academy is roughly $6,700 per recruit. Of that, this past year, we served 27,544 meals. That number, part of our budget just fluctuates as does the recruit number, depending upon, how agencies do in their recruitment and retention efforts and how many people they select and pass the qualifications to come here to the academy for their employment purposes. We're currently training, at a level of seven hundred and five hours for level three or full time certification training. And we currently have statewide 1,070 level three certified officers and 456 level two certified or what used to be formerly be be referred to as part time officers. The level two officers are the officers that have a scope of practice that they can't move beyond. We've also, worked through 74 cases of unprofessional conduct. As you know, the council's responsible for, misconduct of officers in the overseeing process of certification of officers, And that this past year has ended in, stipulated and stipulated agreements and hearings. We've actually only had one hearing so far this year. The rest were stipulated agreements. And amongst that time, in the last year, we've had over 101 total meetings. So between council meetings, council is the council is mandated to meet quarterly. However, they actually meet bimonthly due to the amount and level of work that we're responsible for. And that other number also includes subcommittees of the council that do a lot of the behind the scenes work that the council relies on. It also included 39 online and off-site service training offerings that we

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: did. Moving on

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: to page seven, the most important piece and limited piece, our funding request this year surrounded, around largely this request of 30,001 time funding for language access, that was based on so when we redid the fair and impartial policing policy last year, we felt the need, to make sure that the communities that it impacts have the ability to read that policy and understand that policy and what's expected of Vermont law enforcement. That one policy alone was a cost of $18,000 to translate that into 13 languages in an ASL video. And so we've been looking for future requests. We have an updated in 2023, and it's somewhat the topic of discussion in the legislature now, but our current use of force policy, that is another policy that we see that would likely need to be translated. So that was originally the request for $30,000, for one time funding. I just, in all disclosure, wanna be, upfront with the committee that we are aware that there is a fund, and resource through the Office of Racial Equity. We've been in conversation with them several times about this topic, and, the information that we received was really that we should be asking for our own budgetary funds for this because the fund that exists within the ORE is supposed to, be responsible for all state agencies and the and the, language access for all critical documents. Now having said that, I have had several conversations with the office of racial equity and been directed by appropriations to go back, to them. And we have had those conversations, and it looks like we will be able to manage that, at least our use of force policy that we're coming up for next year. But even that $30,000 that I did initially request, I'm finding out as of today is gonna be closer to $50,000 just for that one document, that one policy to be translated. So while we did ask for that, it looks like that issue is going to be resolved. And then the other funding request was really addressed through the Budget Adjustment Act, and we believe that that $300,000 that we needed to complete our curriculum review has been, included in that budget adjustment act. So those were really the the funding requests that we were looking at this year. Any questions at this point?

[Senator Richard Westman (Member)]: I have a question.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yes. Senator Lamoille.

[Senator Richard Westman (Member)]: So how many I might have missed it. You might have said it. How many languages are you translating that policy into what so the 30,000 or more covers how many different translations for that one policy?

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: That was 13 different languages and an ASL video.

[Senator Richard Westman (Member)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yes, Okay. I'm sorry. Can you go over that again like you you are asking for the $30,000 or you're not asking?

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: I would say as of now that we are not. I think the communication that we've had with the Office of Racial Equity will likely resolve in us being able to manage what that funding request will be for next year.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So there's also the Vermont Language Justice Project, which we've talked about yesterday in the bill. And I wonder if agencies that need these language services are talking to them. They're not part of state government, but they are doing videos and translation services for, I think would would be somebody that would do it for for you guys if you reached out to them. And I don't know if the price is different, but I think they either the Office of Racial Equity or the Vermont Language Justice Project or both might be somebody you want to contact.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: I appreciate that. We'll certainly check out that as well. Moving on to page eight, just pages actually eight and nine, just going over some of the things that the council had been working on. If you are not aware of them, and I'll be brief with them, we've updated our, professional regulation procedures. That's the body that oversees the unprofessional conduct complaints. We've implemented a new written entrance test. So for a few years, we were going without a written entrance test because we found that there were, disparate outcomes for some of the test takers. So we have, found a new company that has gotten us a new written entrance test that reduces those, disparities, and we are offering the same as we used to. Folks can come here and take the written entrance test, but they can also do it online. So it's a an assistance to agencies looking to recruit from out of state folks before they even go much further. They can actually test them to see if there's somebody that can pass the entrance test. We've implemented, a Cadence, which is our RMS system, which has greatly enhanced our ability to track the things that we need to track here, as well as develop training and have people sign up for training and give agencies the access that they can get their training records from us automatically without having to do a lot of, making phone calls and paper requests. So, that was one of the, big things that we were, mentioning in our audit from the state auditor's office that we could do better on. So that's certainly helping us move that forward. We're also still moving on the continuation of our curriculum review and rewrite. We hosted last fall ICP Women's Leadership Institute up in Chittenden County. It was an effort to support women's leadership and bring more women leaders into the law enforcement profession. We hosted our first naturalization ceremony here at the Academy. We felt it was good with the appointment of a new federal judge and the fact that we want to make sure that new citizens are aware that law enforcement are partners and they can come to a place like the academy and actually have their naturalization ceremony. That went really well. We've staffed booths at the Fair Haven High School Career Fair National Night Out and Pride Festival in Rotman. We've managed to hire a fair and impartial policing instructor who is now doing our full time basic and doing outreach. We've also provided mandatory fair and partial policing to all law enforcement and also included a neurodivergence training in service training. So in case anybody asks, when we talk about neurodivergence, we're just talking about interacting with people whose brains actually develop or work differently than what is considered the normal standard. And in some cases that does mean working with some folks that have disabilities. But in other cases, if people that just think differently can sometimes solve complex problems that others can't. So that's been received rather well. We've hired an attorney full time. We've completed a k nine patrol and detection school. We have one that's beginning in another couple of weeks, a patrol school. We've completed an through contract and identity based policing job task analysis, which is going to be incorporated into our fair and impartial policing training. We have, as I mentioned earlier, translated the fifth policy into. I think I said thirteen, fourteen languages, excuse me, as well as the ASL statement to communities. And we've continued our contract with O2X. O2X is a human performance company. They are here on-site 24 a day working with our full time and level two folks in the recruit classes, and what that's really allowed us to do is take away the PT that is being done by recruits while they're here and managed by training coordinators with somebody who's actually a licensed athletic trainer who understands injuries, overuse work, can oversee problems that somebody might be having when they're doing PT here so that we're actually reducing the workman's comp claims costs. We're reducing trips to the hospital, trips to the doctor's offices, and we're actually being able to program different types of continuance with somebody that might experience, say, for instance, a shoulder injury and use of force, but still keep them involved in the PT program, whereas before they would have just been out. So that's working really well for us, although that's not a budgeted item. That was a $200,000 contract two years ago. We did with vacancy savings. This past year, we didn't have that funding to do that, and we were only able to manage, half of that cost, but the company itself, managed to find a grant for us through Habitat for Humanity, and they cover the other half of that. So we've continued that progress with them. You might hear from us next year with some of the pressures that we're having to try to keep that program with us. On page nine, going to 74 level three officers and 54 level two that have gone through our wellness program for new recruits in the residential program. We hosted last fall legislators. Senator Norris was among one that was able to attend, part of that day with us here. We, conducted six in house training and agency compliance audits with other outside agencies to make sure that their record keeping is as it's supposed to be with us and compliant. We also had a NHTSA, National Highway Traffic Safety assessment that reviewed all of our highway safety programs, which was looked at very favorably and offered us some suggestions that we could look forward to in our DRE program. We've increased the FTO time for level one and two offers as and added an additional week to level two training so that they are now going to get use of force and driving in addition to the training that they were already receiving. Conducted a fair and impartial policing policy review. Conducted death investigation school, background investigation school, internal affairs and instructor training schools all within the past year. We've had staff attend de escalation training for a train the trainer program that will be part of an escalation de escalation initiative. We created a sub working group of the council for an alternate pathways discussion to try to get to the goal of what the legislature asked us to do several years ago of having an off-site alternate path aside from the residential program at the academy. And oddly enough, even incorporating all the folks from academia and educational institutions in Vermont into that work group, the suggestion from that work group was to continue with the residential model as it's the best model that we have going thus far, but then to look towards creating either a pre basic or a supplemental program that folks can start out in the educational institution and then come in here so that they're not spending a full seventeen weeks in, but that's still under progress. Then we also voted on all the annual training requirements that were required to do each year, updated canning canine standards twice. We've done that in the last two years. We've drafted a procedure for the approval of title twenty twenty three fifty nine, which is the statute that regulates the council services are contingent upon agency compliance with statewide policies. That was something that was in statute, but wasn't developed that was brought to our attention. But after legal review, we found that we couldn't develop a procedure that we had to have a rule. So that is currently in the ongoing works of the council rules committee, and there is a draft procedure that we have outlined and voted through in the council so that in the meantime, until it gets through rule, we do have a voted and approved draft procedure that we're following to make sure that agencies are compliant with that. And again, our updated work that we're working on now. Very briefly, just to mention to the committee on what our future pressures are going to look like. Our wellness program that I just mentioned recently with o two x and the program that we've been doing for the last two years, that's a cost of about $200,000 to us that gives us some great flexibility. It really mitigates injury prevention here, stress management. It's all about mental wellness, dietary sleep needs. There's apps that the recruits actually sign on to that they can track their progress through the time that they're here. It's really a well worthwhile investment. It seems every time I go into my budget and ask for certain things that I think are really well worthwhile programs, we don't get very far. So that's a future pressure that you may be seeing from us in a in another year. We're also going to be looking at a de escalation curriculum. As I'm sure you're aware, there are some bills out there now that are looking for additional hourly times to add to our de escalation training. That is something that is crucial to the work that law enforcement does and is being done already, but we feel the outside pressures for very specific types of de escalation training. So to create a special curriculum for that, we've actually applied for a grant and have been tentatively approved for that. We're just waiting for a state approval for that grant. And then we will be able to actually have some funding that will work towards, the equipment and training expertise to develop what that curriculum would look like. But moving forward, a future curriculum for us to deliver would be about $250,000. IVR curriculum, which is identity based responsive curriculum, is a project that we actually are of the way already through completed. There was another job task analysis done on that. What that what that actually does, it's a curriculum that kind of works parallel to the fair and impartial policing curriculum, but what we've found through the job task analysis and what we've heard from outside stakeholders sometimes is that our fair and impartial policing policy weighs very heavily on, immigration and doesn't take into account other populations, other other races, religions, cultures, and it doesn't encompass all of those things. That's what the IVR curriculum does. We have the curriculum that is in the works now. We would need to have instructor training for that to deliver that, to both deliver an online training version and a regional version that we would be looking to deliver. And then last but not least, for pressures for us will really be, legal services for hearings. As you're aware, the unprofessional conduct statute changed in January '25, which gave the council the opportunity to weigh in on unprofessional conduct of law enforcement officers both on and off duty, and also for the council to be able to take sanctions for a first offense of a violation of unprofessional conduct. Now that doesn't come with a blanket wide, ability for the council to sanction. The law enforcement agency has to do their internal affairs investigation, and the council will abide by that agency's sanction when they find that there is, unprofessional conduct. However, in the case where that sanction is inappropriate or an agency doesn't do a valid investigation, it does give the counsel that ability to take on that role. That being said, there are no more letters of b one violations that are going out. Everything is transparent. It's all public information, and consequently, it will be costing us much more to have hearings that we will have more of and more stipulated agreements. So we're looking to put some money into the budget to cover those costs. Those hearings are fairly labor intensive. Most of them are at least a full day, if not multi day hearings, which doesn't account for any witness fees or testimony, doesn't account for a cost of a hearing officer that the council needs to hire. It also doesn't account for any per diem cost for council members. And keep in mind, that's a 24 person council of volunteers that is giving up two days a month, from their other full time job to serve as a council member. So, to be able to have some per diem cost to cover those expenses would certainly be helpful. But that is the extent of our future pressures, and I thought I would leave it to Jason if he had any, or there were any questions for Jason's on the ups and downs of our budget. That's really my presentation for the committee.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you, Mr. Perchlik. I do have a couple of questions. One was on your vacancy savings. Yes. It was, you had that one slide on page 35, where it was 10% in FY '25, and 12% in FY '26. I wasn't sure what you didn't give a percentage for FY '27, but I think I saw the dollar on the ups and downs of $66,000 additional vacancy savings. I can answer that. Jason Pinard from AOA Financial Services Division. The actual vacancy savings for '27 budget is zero. That up is actually the reverse. It's a it's a down.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Oh, good.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Few savings. Yeah. And and Is it really gonna be zero? There are all the positions that are anticipated to be filled, so that's the that's the anticipation right now.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: To have no vacancies.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, that's good to hear. And I guess since you had a budget under the 3% goal, could do that where other departments had to maybe lean on vacancy savings a little harder to get underneath that amount. Yeah, that's good for you. And I have a question on the carry forward at 16%. It seems like high number, but I don't we haven't really looked at carry forwards much in the past, so I don't know if that's a high number. I just didn't why did you have that 60% of that almost $700,000 carry forward that you didn't have to Yeah.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: So I can I can and and I'll also let Lindsay speak a little bit to that, but we ended up with a fairly substantial amount of carry forward through what I would call a transition of prior administration and a lot of personnel change? And then the state hiring process, takes some time, and the creation of positions, which we waited for positions to be identified and actually doing those hires. So as you're well aware, you know, the the hiring process takes some time to go through, and one of the additional factors that we struggle with here, because we are a very unique type of institution, is that a lot of the folks who would want to or would have the skill set to come and work at the academy come from a law enforcement background or law enforcement field. One of the real distinct challenges that we have here is, trying to hire people that are looking to change the the trajectory that they're in, but are in, a position where they have a fairly decent retirement. That's something that we have struggled with for years here. And in fact, I believe there's a member up there testifying this afternoon to to that effect. It's one of the things that that we find continually is the major drawback for us to try to hire somebody. We have people that might actually wanna come to work here, but then when they find the retirement and benefits, they simply can't do it. Well, that's no excuse for that type of carry forward. It's it's what it is. It was the structural changes and the folks that had left their employment, some that had gone back into the profession and us just having trouble filling those vacancies.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right. Because I guess we had a 12 and a half vacancy saving last year. We got to zero, but that explains the chunk of that. Okay. Yeah. The in the VA, we I think we gave some money for your criminal background check fund, the deficit in there. And then before you or after you testified, we got the VA from the house, which had created some language that we didn't check-in with you on, but since you're here, where they see you need to issue a report to look at what you're charging for criminal background checks. Do you know what I'm talking about?

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Yeah, I'll let Lindsay respond to that.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What's that? DPS. Oh, that's DPS. Okay. Yes.

[Lindsey Chittenden (Director of Administration, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: I would say Lindsey Chittenden, director of administration. We can't actually conduct background investigations. I think that's what that confusion was. I believe that goes with DPS.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Alright. Well, that makes that easy. Because the only other question I had was on your pages, you talked about the number of officers that were out of compliance with annual training requirements. It was 24 in 2024 and a 114 in 2025. I didn't just I wondered what code caused such a big jump. Is that because of the staffing issues or or you didn't hold the training? Or

[Lindsey Chittenden (Director of Administration, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: So to answer that question, basically, the compliance for officers, it will vary a lot by the end of the year when they submit their annual training just because some end out on military leave, administrative leave, medical leave. So they end up in this in between period before they actually come back into work. Then when they do, we work with them to come back into compliance for their annual training. So by the end of the year, that number can fluctuate, but then we bring them all into compliance by the time everybody's back in a working state.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that kind of number is in the normal flux of the time. Okay. I didn't have any other questions. Anybody else? Senator Norris, do you want to go work at the training?

[Senator Robert Norris (Member)]: Thank you for your presentation. That was excellent on your budget. Good work. Thank you. I don't want to go work at training, though.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, thank you. It's great. Because I thought I saw that the K nine trainer was one of your favorite positions, but you filled that filled that position.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: We we have not. We we got the appropriation, thankfully, last year. As you can imagine, again, it's a very specific skill set that's needed to hire that. We tried hiring, had two applicants, neither of which actually met the criteria that we needed. We've continued with the contractor that we had last year until such time as we're able to fill that. So we're working with that. We're also working with, this this month actually, in fact, Vermont State Police are bringing their K-nine program back to the academy based on the work that we're doing in that program. All positive things. It's just a matter of, again, being able to hire the right person for the right amount of money.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Right. Well, yeah, I remember talking about it last year, so I'm glad to see that being making Okay. If there's no other questions, thank you for your time and your efforts, work down there.

[Christopher Berkel (Executive Director, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: Thank you.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank

[Lindsey Chittenden (Director of Administration, Vermont Criminal Justice Council)]: you very much. So

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: unless there's any announcements or points of personal