Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Good

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: afternoon, and welcome to the Senate Government Operations Committee meeting of Thursday, 01/08/2026. A few witnesses to speak with today, and up first is Chittenden Dumont, who's the Executive Director of the Vermont Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs, and then our state treasurer will be joining us a little bit later in the afternoon. And we're still kind of on that well, I guess it's been overly used, but what'd you do all summer? Had your nice summer? I know. Good to see you. Sort of thing. I like to call it priorities for the year. So that's where we are. And I know we did some work last year to help you with your with your job. And hopefully I know it wasn't enough. It never seems to be enough, but hopefully it began a process, and I'm feeling there might be more of that.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: So welcome. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Why don't we just go

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: around the room because I I well, you know the other four pretty well, but we have a brand new senator from the Orleans District. Yeah. Just senator John Morley from Orleans. Believe last time he was down here, it was Jane Woodruff. Yes. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: That is a long time ago. I'm waiting in my age. Because Campbell, John Campbell's was

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: He had to

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: for a long time.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Graham Kreindefelt for a a year, and they were on Baldwin Street.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: So Yes.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yep. So yeah. Wild? Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: But John took over in '16.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yep. Well, Tim, welcome in. With you is Kim McManus, and welcome to you as well, Kim. So you have five and ten listeners waiting to hear what you have to tell us.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Thank you so much for having us in, and welcome back. Tim Meters Duwont, former state attorneys and sheriffs, and Kim McManus, our legislative and policy attorney and catchall, just wonderful addition to the department that last year she didn't spend a whole lot of time in here. She was busy in house and senate judiciary, but I think you'll see more of her when they don't have her occupied. She just came down. I've always said they need a fire pole between those two committees, house and senate judiciary, but it's great to be back. And what I'll do is just go over some contextual pieces that I wanted to and then Kim's gonna go over some legislative priorities. But I wanted to first thank you for the the support that this community provided during the appropriations process last year. One of the major things we're able to do was was avoid layoffs. Yep. You know, vacancy savings are usually something that is more of a target. It's not true savings. It's not true vacancies. And so you were able to help us with the advocacy of achieving restoring vacancy savings so we didn't need to lay anybody off. And then a really important piece, we had already budgeted nine positions which were limited service, but there were people in the jobs doing the work, and we were able to convert those from limited service to permanent, which was enormously helpful to the department, again, avoiding people leaving our department at a time when caseloads and and crime is is generally on the rise in the in the state. And I add, if I may Thank you so much.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Keep good people when they know they're limited service. We keep good people when it's a job that has a future.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Correct. And I just wanted to thank you because it's also an economic generator. The state of Vermont is an economic generator. And when our department is in 14 counties, Orleans to to to down to Rutland and and there, Fort, with a 175 employees, it's really important to know that they live and work in their communities, they pay taxes. Their kids go to the schools, and and they are doing difficult jobs in the courts. And our jobs are 98% in the courthouses. So we are we are working in person, and we are on call twenty four seven, three hundred sixty five days a year working with law enforcement, nights and weekends, and we are the first call of all law law enforcement. And, you know, we had a really fascinating few years that we've we've experienced in the department, the 24% increase in homicide violence over the last three years. We've done a great job of actually 2022, 2021. We've actually almost completed most of those cases

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Wow.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: From 2022 and 2021. So we're still dealing with '23, '24, about 10 left in 2022 and 2025. And there's been 34 homicide filings this year, which is a lot. You know?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Eight days?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: No. This sorry. Last year. The end of last year. Thank you. Thank you, Senator. No. Not this year. Thank you. I'm still stuck in December. Thank you

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: so much.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. So and I'm sort of steeped in data right now because we're in the process of doing our annual snapshot report, which is December 10 is the date we chose every year for the last three years. So we will send that to you. It's almost ready, and we'll be available for your for your use whenever and however you'd like. So that'll be ready soon.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Will that snapshot include breakdowns of types of homicides? I know historically, more than 50% of homicides in Vermont are domestic violence homicides. So Will that all be broken out in that report?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: I I might look to do a drill down. Part of what we've done actually, Kim went through all the filings from last year by affidavit, which is an annual test. Because sometimes something is charged, like, on the face of a charge. You can't always see what it what whether it's domestic or, you know, if if a domestic violence incidents results in a homicide, might just be charged as a murder case. Sometimes they get amended down to aggravated assault, etcetera. So we could drill down a little bit, and it might be the addendum that we eventually could send over. But I think it's a smart thing for us to look at. Kim actually did look, and there's been an increase in what we call drug nexus, a firearm piece. It's sort of the unfortunate that domestic violence matters have plateaued not in a good or a bad way. They're just sort of constant. The increase that we've seen has mostly been drug adjacent, drug nexus, and firearm related, which Kim will dive into on our legislative priorities because there's some existing bills on the wall ready to go, some of them authored by Rutland County folks about theft of firearm, things like that, which are nonpartisan, great ways to go.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: They didn't have some of those fireworks in the first place. Wouldn't have to be solved with that.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: With my follow-up still But we can circle back

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: on that. That would be great. And when you are sort of looking at the increase in violent crime, you're gonna break that down by homicide assault. Because I'm looking at DOJ data that actually shows that violent crime has gone down. Mhmm. I'm imagining there's peaks in some areas and dips in other areas, and so I don't wanna broad brush paint.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. And these are filings. So these are ones that the courts so there's a difference between reported, like, NIMBER's FBI data, and then these are filings that have occurred. And it includes and and and, actually, I say this always in judiciary, but I don't always say it in other rooms, but it includes attempt and conspiracy. And, you know, often, there's some violent cases recently where the persons who were charged are charged across the full spectrum. So this person who fires the gun, person who sometimes the person who drives away, disposal of the body, that sort of thing, it's all under the umbrella, they're often charged together in that conspiracy aiding and abetting accessory. But we count those in the homicide category because they're all related to a person's death. But we can we could break down we could give you some more granular data on the filings. On the reported piece, what's interesting is, like, for example, in Castleton, we have an unsolved murder in Cassatton that won't be reflected in homicide filings, but it was reported homicide. So it's that mismatch of reported and there's historical reports. We settled a nineteen eighty six homicide from Bennington County this year, very recently, and but it counted as a twenty twenty five filing. That's our last year. So that just shows the date of the incident doesn't always match up with the date of fire. Mhmm. And so what I use is filing data. So there is a little bit of that mismatch of reported incidents and filing data and investigations sometimes take quite a while. And then you will have the data, in part, part of the reason, selfish reason we do it is to have an understanding of our work,

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: our

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: workflow, caseload, and we also try to look at victim advocate and administrative staff caseloads. Sort of jumping to that directly, we have seen progress in the backlog over the last three years. We've driven it down by about 15%, which is fantastic. A little bit slower last year. Increase in trials has been a huge help. And then the caseloads have been around 300. Three years ago, was about three seventy five, three fifty. So we've driven down some of the caseloads for the attorneys.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: On an average around all counties.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And we'll break it down by county once we send it out because it is

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: an average, tells partly part of the story.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Victim advocates, about 600 cases per victim advocate. That's just because we have less victim advocates than we have attorneys. Administrative professionals, about 800 cases that they're putting their hands on. So those are some areas, right, where we're seeing a lot of pressure. Absolutely. Yeah. Senator Foggs?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: So is that gonna be, I hope, one of your asks because I know our victim advocates are overwhelmed.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And it's a twofold ask, and know Senator Chair and I have talked about efficiency and system changes in addition to position requests. We need to move more cases through the system, and we need the courts to give us more time to move more cases. And that means not just new positions, but it means the ability to move more cases more quickly, which is positions plus. Because if you just do positions and you don't do think about things like operating costs, computers, laptops, office space, you're only ballooning one side, but if you don't have the space to move those cases. So, yes, we do need more positions, and we have the requests that you included in your letter last year for admins and VAs. And those are still a part of Six our

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: 100 cases for anybody is overwhelming.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Oh, and

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And these are brutal cases.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And so what is the best average number? What's the ideal average number for a victim advocate?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: So we there actually is some studies on on this. It's hard because Vermont has a unified court system, so our misdemeanors and our felonies are all matched in together, and one docket could have felonies and misdemeanors in it. But there's a number that's closer to one fifty to 200, I believe, is kind of what a normal type

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: of case Well, they're like caseworkers. I mean, they're like caseworkers.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And you work with multiple victims in a single case if multiple family members are affected, that sort

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: of thing.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: So it could include many people, right, because those are just cases. So yeah, and what I will say upfront is that our appropriations ask we're still in the midst of working through that. We're still seeing what we're getting from the governor's office in terms of what their recommend will be. We're going through DAA next next week in part. So we're still triangulating what our What

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: you're asking the DAA. Our asking

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: the DAA is fairly particularized to senator Vyhovsky's district in that the accountability docket, which has been a huge success. We moved from 878 cases on October 20. We moved 412 cases. And I know we moved a deputy state's attorney for a brief time up to Chittenden with a joint intersection with the governor's office and sort of special prosecutor and deputy state attorney and moved 50% of the cases that we started with, which is huge, in two months.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: That's great.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: That is great. And really drove down with Agency of Human Services were a key, key component. Yeah. Being right in the room, you know, Defender General's Office, judiciary, everyone has worked together. It's been a wonderful thing to watch, and Sarah George's office has supported the effort, gotten to your VA request, through existing victim advocate administrative staff, staffing up for special prosecutors Zach White, who's from Washington County. And so some of our ask is for essentially overtime and administrative costs for those victim advocates and admins that stepped up. We also have some some asks for the transport program, has bumped up some of our overtime for the transport program, and that's a huge issue, which I'll get into more in the budget. But, you know, if a judge asks you to be at court at 08:30, and, like, Monday that court was closed, state was closed a couple of days ago, well, we had 17 transport deputies on the roads by the time the courts were closed. Oh, good. And they had to get up, some of them at 4AM, to get up to Newport and Springfield. So we that's just one of those pieces, right, where you don't think about how do people get to court, but it's important. We have multiple vacancies in our transport program because we're competing with other law enforcement agencies, and our overtime budget is kind of cannibalizing the rest of our budget right now for transport. So we do have a VAA request for overtime and per per diem, is a separate piece for the transport program. And that's not just about accountability docket. That's a statewide ask, but accountability docket. We were saying yes. Every time we could get someone to court to resolve cases. That's what we're doing. And we spent a lot of time yesterday talking about accountability and corrections in institutions, but it's been a you should never say mission accomplished because it's a terrible thing to say

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: out loud when you're in

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: the pub. It's mission, like, in We

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: learned that with

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: pressing reports. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: All of us learned

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: that. It's been a wonderful thing to see when you just have more time with cases because you can act like a like really view it in a more contemplated way. And the dispositions, like the sentences, we have charts on that which we can send you. It isn't just sentence, it's probation, parole, treatment court. Some of them we dismissed because they've engaged with treatment to the point where we're or but it's it's an interesting chart, and we can get you that as recent as last week, where we're at, with that. 400 cases is not 400 convictions. It's yes. And he's been a wonderful

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: part of

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: the program.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Really wonderful. Excuse me.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I appreciate that, but my question was going to be if you had breakdowns

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: on the dispositions of those cases in

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Accountability Court. It sounds like they do, and I'd love to see them.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. Actually, I will send it from the corrections website yesterday. I'll send it over to your committee assistant for for testimony today. It's I think it's recent as of last week. So Wow. Yeah. Great. But I wanna say every Tuesday, governor's office, Sarah George, Zachway, and myself meet about how it's going, where we need to work on things. So it's been a collaborative effort. Every Monday, the court meets with the sheriff about transport needs for the week. It's kinda how court should be everywhere, but we just did it in one place for a few months. Sarah George is working on a transition plan with the existing court staff and the cons and not a concern. Well, our hope is that the human services umbrella stays engaged in Chittenden, and that the judges up there continue to schedule things flexibly, because the thirty, sixty, ninety day status conferences, they just don't work for people with five or more cases. And people with three or more cases make up about forty five percent of all cases in the state. People with five or more make up one fourth of all the cases in the state. If you think about those two Individual categories with five cases. Yes, that's correct.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Treatment with fire.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: So those five cases could have all happened on the same day.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Same day. Yes. Exactly. Same day, same same a lot of time though, you would if something happened on the same day, it'd be as often be a single information in a single case. Those would be individual counts. So when I say 400 cases or dockets, it does not represent the number of counts someone may have been charged with. Just a single case may have three counts. Violation of Peterson's police, I'm gonna use this as a hypothetical. A simple assault from senator White. Yep. Simple assault. Exactly. Something like attempted simple assault.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Attempted. But then

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: I crossed the border maybe with a hostage or something. That's a different yeah.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: So but all this to say, we've been working hard since since since we left here. We've been moving more cases and a 100 6% clearance rate over the last year. I hope we can get up to 150 or 200% to really make progress. We still have 22,000 pending cases. We have 26,000 pending cases a few years ago. We've moved cases. It's just And then I'll hand it off on priorities. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Next to Chittenden County, which had such a backlog, sort of a paralyzing backlog, what counties are sort of next in terms of need?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: I'm looking at your quill.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. Look at

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Made by May, Windsor District.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Oh, of course. The yeah. So in in my view of some of the data which we'll produce for you in terms of the hotspots in the state, places that we're seeing increases are Washington County, Franklin County, Wyndham County, has has a lot going on, and it's a lot of there's a lot many pending violent cases in Wyndham and many in the categories we were just talking about. And then the Northeast Kingdom has a has a group of counties, about 16 pending homicides plus a lot of folks. They have both sides of the pressure system up there as I'm sure you you you know well, senator, and not a huge amount of service access in the same way that other parts of the state have unless you're in one of the smaller, you know, few downtowns there, and even there, it's not as accessible as other parts of the state. But the kingdom, as as of the ninety one quarter, Orleans and Caledonia has a lot of pressures right now. Franklin, Wyndham, Washington, and I will say Rutland as well because there's a volume piece, but they're also staying kind of on top of it. So it's interesting. They have a need for accountability, space, and time, because they have a lot of violence, 16 pending homicides in Rutland. So there's a lot of pressure on the space and time. Here, someone picking up four or five cases at the Walmart and or somewhere other downtown establishment, and you you need treatment, you need a you need a conversation with the judge, and there's a pending homicide coming in, you're not gonna get your time in court. And so opening up space, and I know the state's attorney down there and law enforcement is very engaged with trying to get it down there as well, but it's different. And I wanna say that Chittenden County's experience will be not duplicative of every county. There's replication isn't duplication with this program. I think it's gotta you gotta see what the local assets are. But Rutland is a place I think would be a great second location in part because of what we know about the defense bar, the judge, the state's attorney, law enforcement, and a local facility for transportation to and from Marble Valley very quickly. We're not talking about two or three hours in the car for the male detainees, and we're talking about an hour plus for the for the women's facility. But that's doable as opposed to, you know, Washington doesn't have a facility. So it is a longer exchange here, and we're down to one transport deputy in Washington County. We're trying to But, anyway, I I it's been been a busy year. We've done a lot of, I think, really excellent work that we're we're proud of, and we have a unified state's attorneys and sheriffs legislative priorities list for this year for in my opinion, the first time it's been a truly unified agenda. So I'll hand it off to you, Kim McMahon. It's all Kim's work.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Oh, wow. Yeah. I came along. It suddenly

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: That's correct. Well,

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: just a transition note to mention with the accountability docket, You may hear it referred to in different phrases because there's sort of a rebrand of the name. We in no way want to offend all the other courts that are running and operating. Everybody is looking everyone's looking for accountability, and it's not like accountability is what's happening in other places. So just a note because you'll hear it probably being referred to, I think, differently in the future as far as the names. We're the persons with multiple dockets who we are realizing we're just not reaching them in our traditional timeline. Just Yep. Not until we need to change how we are setting up for it for those individuals. So just a little transition note there. So yes, we submitted to your committee so that you can review at your leisure. We have 10 legislative priorities this year that we have

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: those copies. They are in your inbox. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: But I don't you sucking me

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: break this all in here.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Oh, that's okay. I'm gonna

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: add I have an extra copy for you, madam.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: That's okay. I'm great. I think

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: love a copy being delivered to you right now.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Oh, have a

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: chicken scratch

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: on the front.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Don't you mean that?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: I never asked. Never asked.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Thank you. Much appreciated.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: No worries.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And we're not going to go through all 10 today. Gonna highlight we're gonna highlight a few that we think you would be interested in particular We're in this happy

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: to talk about all of

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: them, but we also want to be very cognizant of your time.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I imagine I will get to hear about the others later in the week.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yes, that's right. Especially. Yeah. Thanks, Friday. So as Tim stated, this is coming from both sides of our house. Attorneys and sheriffs support these 10 objectives. A number of them are left over from last year that we did not have time, in our various, rooms to to get to, that we have been told will be priorities this year for, house judiciary or senate judiciary, particularly house judiciary on the first one, which is firearms. There are two bills that are on the wall right now, each 200, which is relating to persons prohibited from possessing firearms. We have a statute, which many of you are probably familiar with, that if you've been convicted of certain offenses, you are prohibited from possessing a firearm, or if you have certain cases pending, you're prohibited from a firearm. The corollary federal statute also includes individuals who have been found by the court to be a person in need of treatment, or who have been subject to a hospitalization order, or a non hospitalization order. If you would like the state statute to also prohibit firearms from persons who, again, from the court have been found in need of a hospitalization or non hospitalization order, That is our first firearm bill. The second one is increasing the penalty for theft of a firearm. Currently, the theft of a firearm would be connected to the value of the firearm. If the firearm is valued under 900 or 500, I believe it's 900, it would be considered a misdemeanor. This bill, just the theft of a firearm, regardless of the value of the firearm, would increase the penalty to a felony offense. I have not read the entire bill yet, but the House just released six zero six, which is a they're stating it as an omnibus firearms bill. So I believe there's some other firearm legislation in there, I just haven't had a chance to read it yet. You all have been quite busy introducing the bill this week. Our department supports both of those bills, and we'll be interested to see what other firearm legislation may come up this year. Another priority connected in some ways to firearms is we have been looking for our state to have an organized crime act. You'll hear it referred to as RICO, the racketeering act that we have federally. A number of states have their own state racketeering bill, and this would be allow us or give us another tool to go after those who are organizing the criminal behavior that we're seeing in the state. So an easy example would be retail theft. We have reports of individuals who are organizing other individuals to go in and steal certain items from stores. They then sell those items back to the organizer 30¢ on the dollar, say, and then that organizer goes and resells those objects. Cool.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Maybe like a modern day Pagan who organized all these little opinions all the post.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. I was like, oh,

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: A fan of ways

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: for Richard and Rutland.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yes. So, you know, that's one example and then you can imagine, of course, this would apply to not only theft, but drug sales, firearm sales, any any type of organized crime. The list is quite long of what one could be organizing, but this allows us to not just be trying to get the individuals on the ground who are doing small retail theft and who, in our opinion, are being taken advantage of by these organizers, but we can go after the organizers and be able to coordinate with our sister states as well. Hopefully, the aim would be to hold those individuals accountable and make Vermont a less friendly state for this activity.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Senator Klux?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: We seen an increase in this kind of organized crime?

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: We are seeing an increase in it. We had a very interesting presentation by Deputy Sheriff of Chittenden County, who happens to share my name, but no relation, Deputy Paul McManus. He would be wonderful if you are interested to hear more on this. Just looking at Chittenden County, he has been mapping this activity, it was illuminating what he's been able to track. He's been able to have the time, then chair of Gambling has been able to give him the time to do this, to track it across Chittenden County. We know it's happening elsewhere, but we haven't necessarily had the coordination to be able to track it as well. But he would give a great presentation if you're interested.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Soda White.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Thank you, chair

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Collamore. I'm wondering, did that relate in part to border parts of the state? Is that you know, we hear a lot in White River Junction that because we're it's not that the crime is necessarily happening here, but, like, the junction and trade off is where they're ultimately being caught, is that the best way to put that? Or that's where they know the crime occurred.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And believe there is a connection, and I wouldn't wanna go too deeply right now, but we do see it with along our I-ninety 1 corridor and Route 7, just where the traffic flows and where things are being handed off and organized.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: And are you finding that it's connected more like, I know for a long and this is judiciary, so I apologize. This is, like, not necessarily our wheelhouse. But for a long time, it seemed like fentanyl was a mistake, and now it seems like fentanyl is a purposefully purchased substance in a way that it had previously been I don't know if that's the right way to put it, but, like, folks had purchased an item and a drug and then fentanyl had been added to it, maybe unwittingly, and then now it seems like fentanyl is actually a a drug being purchased.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. In oh. That helped.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Go ahead, senator Jane Wilson.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: From the judiciary, fentanyl is really the the only drug available on the market. Not that someone's making a choice to go out and seek fentanyl, it is that is now what the market is flooded with, and now that fentanyl is being cut with other things that are more harmful, like siloxane and certain benzodiazepines, which is part of why we

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: One one thing that's because

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: that's what happens.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: That Senator Vyhovsky and I

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: both went through three or

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: four years ago was there was a shift. People used to be seeking uppers or downers, and now fentanyl is in uppers. And it's in It's in cocaine, but it's really fentanyl is is just ubiquitous with every drug that you can buy on the the legal drug marketplace. Oh, exactly. And so but previously, what was fascinating having prosecuted right down the road in 2021 and 2022 was people were seeking heroin

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yeah.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Knowing that fentanyl was in it. And some folks who were newer to that market were surprised by it then. There are people who are engaged in that market now are not surprised. As you were sort of alluding to, it's it's it is what you are buying now.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: There is no There's no heroin. It's fentanyl.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Fentanyl is the drug that you are buying.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Heroin is seated on our roadways as well, and we do have a major piece of our DUI world is no longer alcohol. There was three deaths related to pure alcohol last year. The rest, and we had over fifty, was either combined or just a drug impact to the system. So that is a pretty major shift. I don't know, a lot of it is what I would call upper. So people that have cocaine, but there's a fentanyl

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Like they're running on.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yep, but basically what they're getting from the blood test is a cocaine metabolite exchange. That's what they're finding, a lot of it, and it's But fentanyl is embedded there in and all of that. But, yes, our roadways are another sort of piece, and we did have almost sixty roadway deaths last year.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Wow. Due to alcohol and drugs or just period?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: It's we have the breakdown by type from AOT.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Yeah. We actually just heard this Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: For the general where those Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: I I can forward over the presentation.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: There's a weekly

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: email from Mayo. Very detailed. It's the difference between, like, delta nine Yeah. THC, other drugs combo with delta nine THC, certain ABV above or below point 6.8. It's really straight down, but we've seen Some

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: are pure speeding or pure NAGOS.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Been a sixty deaths per 60 deaths total, not sixty related to alcohol and drugs.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Right.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: No. There was like eleven.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: In that mix.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Okay.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: In that mix, there was. And I think last year, the breakdown was sorry. In the year prior, it was like 23 were mixed and nine were alcohol. And this past year, it was something more like 30 were mixed. And I and and you'll Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: We have impaired fatal crashes from last year. You're very good at your numbers. Impaired fatal crashes were 30, but total fatal crashes were 53. So as you can and this is fatal crashes. This is a. So that makes me believe there's twenty three non Oh, no. To Yeah. And then thirty seven total impaired fatal crashes this year for a total of fifty eight total fatal crashes for twenty twenty five.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yep.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Thank you.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: So, yeah, slight increase, but, like, overall increase in general.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: So

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: So you'd love to know what this person was on yesterday or the day before when they were going the wrong way up the interstate.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Yeah. It takes about they have some incredibly long period of time between when system. Yeah. Between when you can act yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: That's Yeah.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Well, I also remember, there are some things that you can take that may impair you that are actually out of your system so quickly that only you own

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Mhmm.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: That you wouldn't that by the time you went through the process of getting a warrant, like, there are certain things that can impair you that that have, like, this four to six hours.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. And we

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: will we do have some DUI changes as we kind of have a miscellaneous DUI bill every year that our two TSRPs, traffic safety resource prosecutors, two of our federal funded positions in our department, we only have two prosecutors funded with federal dollars, and we have three other individuals who are investigators for domestic violence. So we have a total of five impacted federal positions in our department. I should have mentioned that because I know it's an area that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And is that going away? Are those programs

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Right now?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Going? Uh-huh.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Please, everyone knock on wood, but all of the funding for that seems to be okay right now. And it's about prosecution, and so that hasn't been an area that, it's been an area where we're working hard. It's a public safety nexus, we're actively involved in cases there, and we hope that that continues across the country,

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: but obviously in Vermont too.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Because of the change that we're seeing in impaired drivers, we're seeing either that mix of alcohol and drug, or just drug only, Our TSRPs suggested, I think it's I believe it's five various changes to our DUI law, but essentially just to keep up, to make sure that our law laws are keeping up with what law enforcement and prosecutors need to be able to collect the evidence and bring these cases to court and to try them and to prosecute them. That is a full separate document. Happy to share it. It's about 10 pages long. It's very technical. It's very interesting. Tanya Vyhovsky, you'll definitely be ready.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: And Hawaii and transportation.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yes. Happy to share it with everyone if you would like. That is one of our 10 priorities, is that DUI update. Our TSRPs have done something similar last year, and it's very helpful. They're really picking through our statutes and just improving the GRSPs. Traffic safety resource prosecutor. That's the federal position. So we have two who can just focus on driving DUIs, but driving that lead to fatalities. It's wearing most of their focus is, which I say, yes.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: But their just general their general knowledge is helpful to the entire department.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And the dual mission of training and prosecution. So they they prosecuted a case today and recently resolved a major case in Rutland County where a woman was killed in 2022. Yes. Very full. That's the type of case that they work on to test cases.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: And Yes, sir. Any

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: progress on the ability to better test if drug related DUIs are occurring? Are you doing any better testing for drugs intoxication on the road

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: versus, I mean, because that's what we've

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: been missing. You know, one of our TSRPs, Dennis Whitman, former state attorney from Addison, could come in and spend a good long time with you all about that area of practice. What we have seen is DREs, so drug recognition experts. Vermont has the highest number of DRE examinations in the country, more than California, I might add.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: We really rely on them to determine.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Because it's They also have to get to the scene. Correct. Adding to the scene takes time. Correct. Correct. And to go to Tanya's point

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yep.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Maybe out of their system, but it's not

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: a lot of drugs with that sort

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: of a half. It do exist. The

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: DREs, if they were to do a roadside stop and determine that they thought someone was intoxicated, is there a confirmatory blood test to Yeah. Because it's Yep. Very subjective.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. There's the training, which is a national training, which we and we help do the training here in Vermont, but then there's a national academy that they go to as well. But then there is if there's blood drawn, then that is it's you have to match up both And to really have a successful prosecution, now there is other types of cases where if someone makes an admission or that sort of thing as well, it'd be less reliant on a blood test or a blood warrant, but but yes.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yes. But the officer needs a baseline of evidence to ask for a warrant. That's actually one of the fixes that currently it's only to draw for blood. Really, we can test with blood or saliva. So adding the more saliva is an important add. It's one of the adds this year. There's also been an interesting study to look at how long contention are for these roadside stops and how long it takes from being pulled over to if you need to do the blood draw, if you back to the station, the length of time, and whether or not that can be shortened. But what's interesting, what came out of that was whether Vermont wants to explore the ability for officers to be able to draw blood, which some states allow, so that you don't have to That's go to the another thing that's in the suggestions of do we want to explore that? Goes to collecting the evidence earlier and shortening the detention time. So there's a few really interesting

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: things.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And then also not taking up a hospital environment that is also inundated with other activity with a blood warrant.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Oh, yeah. No. No. I think getting officers to be able to do that would be great.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: It's interesting, and there would be a variety of opinions on it. But some states do do that. I mean, of course, you're trained. Well, officers aren't supposed

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: to be Swedish. They're supposed to be.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Theresa Metz. Metz. Please, Senator Zios.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I'm just curious. So I recall, and this was before I was in the building, but as we were having the cannabis conversation, there was a lot of conversation about the science not being adequate behind saliva testing. Has that changed? Has that come along? But I clearly remember that that was not put in place because the science was inadequate. I

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: don't know specifically for cannabis, but I believe for other drugs, there's been some level of being able to depend on it. I would absolutely wanna get a dentist and or somebody from the forensic lab to come in to speak to that, but it is something that is relied

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Full call off.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Sorry. Why

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: are you we I I just have to say this is kind of incredible just how similar the conversations this committee is asking to what we had in Senate Transportation because senator Pat Brennan, one of his key we we talked a lot about the saliva test this morning, essentially. And it seems to not be used to actually determine if it is at least for AOT's reporting, they only use blood tests. Because we don't allow them

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: to use saliva test because the science was

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Exactly. Not So What they're asking for is to be able to use the saliva test. Are asking to

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: do that. To be able to have the option of either a test. Now, again, I do not want Attorney Wigmans and or the lab to come in, but they were presenting that this was

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: And part of

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: it is

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: peak. So I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: don't know Yeah.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Not just about cannabis conversation, but on the full spectrum. And, you know, the other thing is because we do have still have combined, and there's still both the cultural and public perception that a lot of bad driving is due to just alcohol. And so just ensuring that there's there's options for whatever that looks like is I think the piece but you're right. The lab could come in, and there's a wonderful person that comes to our annual training who's incredibly engaging and is one of my favorite trainings is going to well, it's just nuts. I forget. So you should get him in here from the lab. He's incredibly engaging and talks about where things have evolved even in

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: the last five years. But I think on

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: the cannabis piece, we we wanna get some real experts in here. We should get mister Pepper in here to talk

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I'm to you about not sure. No. Senator Wright, you're right. Yeah. We definitely We don't allow it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: But we basically said earlier in this in transportation that the reason was because they were more clear, at least for the for their reporting because they have to report to the federal government

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: As well. So it seems like for the crash data piece. But you're not requesting it for crash data. You're requesting it for your own. So that might be one discrepancy. Another piece of that. And

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: maybe it's yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And we can get the right people in here to really jump in on that.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: That is definitely a few steps out from where I'm comfortable talking. Another priority we have and that you will more than likely hear in a few different rooms is to discuss the ability for Vermont to have a forensic facility. For us to look at No.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: What you're talking about?

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And at last count, there are four bills right now that have been introduced this year that speak to this in different ways, and also speak to crime victim notification when a crime victim is involved in a case where the defendant is found either incompetent or insane, and it's in the care of Department of Mental Health, what notifications the crime victim should have or does have, That's another separate bill. This is something our department feels very strongly about, and we're looking forward to the conversations on it. We've heard that on January 21, there will be a presentation of victims who have been involved in these types of cases, where the defendant has either been found incompetent or insane, it's not being securely held for a variety of reasons. Gonna talk about their experience, and that's on the twenty first. I believe governor is hosting that meeting, and we would encourage everyone to attend. Other than that, so we have another a few other victim centered pieces of legislation that we would like folks to look at. One is midpoint review, which typically won't follow this committee down too far on that. It's for folks put on probation, that if they've done all of their criteria, the Department of Corrections automatically will ask for them to be released from probation at their midpoint of their probation census. We do have a number of issues with that, but at the very least, we have a number of offenses that we think should be not included. It's actually particularly a violation of abuse prevention order. If somebody who's been found guilty of that offense should not have the benefit of the midpoint over there. There's been a lot of conversation around the victim notification system. There was a task force that Tim was intimately involved in. They had incredibly robust meetings between the Department of Corrections and the

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Senator

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Crime Victim I apologize, gentlemen. That will be presented to the judiciary committees, the work that the committee did around improving our automatic notifications to victims, but just our communication with victims in general. And that would be a big piece that I'm keeping

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: an eye Just gonna give a quick shout out to Kim as well who organized an MOU for the first time between our department, Department of Corrections, Center for Advocacy and Services, and a number of other entities where we we put down on paper rather than scattered across statute who is responsible for which parts of the victims' rights of statutes and our agreement to work together rather than being siloed with respect to putting those rights into play. And it's been it's been a great conversation. We've had a number of meetings separate from the task force on getting that MOU done, and it's in draft form right now, but we will absolutely send that to you because it's actually a helpful document for your constituents to have. And what we will post on our website will be a part of the trainings that we do. But it also puts into the MOU which statutes direct which departments. Because if you're a victim of crime, you do not care who is doing it. You just want to know and have the information. And to them, particularly, a victim of crime for the first time, state government is state government. They just wanna know what when the next hearing is, when the person is gonna be on the parole board schedule, when the probation is coming up, when their midpoint's coming up. And it's very confusing even for practitioners. So I'm very proud of the work that we've done collaborating on that. Has been some strife in the process the last few years, but I think the conflict have created some pretty good outcomes with better working relationships. So I'm I'm we'll send that to you when it's completed as well, which I think it's in the process.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yes. Very much in draft form right now. I will celebrate when it's finalized, and then I will happily take any credits until it's finalized. No credit needed. You quickly blast through a few items and then happy to answer any questions, but already in this first week, a few things have been taken up of my house judiciary within our priorities, so that's exciting. I just walked down from a conversation about the definition of recidivism, which connects with just data collection across our state. We do not have the best system for collecting data and analyzing data. We know this has been a conversation going on for years, but one point that we advocated for last year is let's start fixing some definitions, because that'll help our data collection.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yes, Senator Clarkson. So, there's programs being made up

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: of data collection and a data trust, a trust, a data trust bank within ADC. We called for it when we did our special oversight committee on workforce development and it was one of the models we looked at was creating data trust. And they're making inroads on it. And Josiah, it's on our website, on our agenda on the set of economic development, but I think his name, and they and Drake. Oh. Mhmm. Drake at the at the office of workforce strategy and development is working on this with Josiah. And Josiah's last name, I think, is Raish, r a I s c h, maybe. He's in charge of this the the beginnings of this data trust. And all what we're trying to do is break down silos of data so that we can all access or have the appropriate authority who could access the data that is collected nationally and all over state government so that we can have it all in one place and access it. It's well protected. And Josiah is your man. The last name, not sure. Oh, well, that's fine. Although

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Thank you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: We could pull it up. I think it's I think it's right. And we might be, like, pulling up from our agenda today. But he'd be a person for you to be in touch with that so that you don't have to readmit the bill on it because we're already moving in that direction.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And there's a I don't know whether it's connected with that, but we have been working with Laura Carter and I forgot her name from the Records Center.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: From the archives.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yes, from archives, and they're doing a survey of all the departments to understand all the records and data that folks have. They think somehow that might be connected. You can.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: You Yeah.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yep. So there's a few Raiche.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: R a I c h e. R a I c h e. Josh Josiah. Josiah Raiche. Hi. I got it. It was close. Anyway, he's terrific and a font of information and very clear on what this this project's about. That's exactly what we're trying to do. It's finally it's just so frustrating to that we if we're trying to measure everything that we do and go to Brian's good work on government accountability, we are Mhmm.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Very much wanting to measure our work and collect the data. That's good news.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And then, exactly, if we're gonna measure, we need data. Well, need the data and we need common We need to agree on what those definitions are. Currently, the definition of recidivism simply doesn't match how we actually use the term. Yes, the current definition in statute, and it's actually under the Department of Corrections statute, is that someone who's been incarcerated for a year, so that's the Oh,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: have to serve for incarceration.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: You have to serve for a year and then commit an offense after release. It doesn't capture anyone who has less than a year of incarceration. So, anyone who has a probationary sentence is not counted in that And so it's really about who's being re incarcerated. Again, you still need a minimum of a year sentence before you're even being counted. And so that's just not

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: when It's a very lengthy sentence in in Vermont.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: In Vermont.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. So repeat offender may be a better term.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Well, the Well, even again,

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: repeat offenders often are not getting a minimum year of incarceration. So This

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: is s 96. Is it S 96, right? It's a bill that you want us to look at?

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: There are two. S 96 is on the senate side and then H four ten, which is being discussed in the house.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Okay, so we you don't need

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: to worry about it until Well,

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I'm also probably gonna go to judiciary, not gov ops. We're pretty far off the gov ops agenda.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Exactly. And so and then, again, I don't wanna pour into too many details outside, but this is what we're looking at and interested in. The last one I'll just mention, then again, any questions you might have. There is a bill in the house for hearsay exception expansion, raising the age from 12 and under to 16 for children who have been putative victims for certain crimes, abuse of the child, sexual abuse or serious bodily injury. There's hearsay exceptions that are allowed right now children 12 and under, and this would allow children 13, 14, and 15 to have those same exceptions. And we were just talking about that in judiciary this morning. We're delighted that a number of our priorities are already discussed, and we're looking forward to working with you all in whatever way it might cross in this room.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And I might just the the tenth one for the for the record, circling back to GovOps, real jurisdiction in my opinion, is is reducing the pressure on our courts in general. The accountability docket, as she said, call whatever you want, but it's about ensuring that people have speedier and quicker access to justice, defendants, victims, the public, and practitioners. And I think if we do that, we'll be doing a better job with taxpayer money and with our government buildings. And when people often are like, why do you keep talking about space and time with this? It's really the most important thing. We have 14 criminal spaces. We have 22,000 cases. The math is incredibly difficult. And so if we can solve for that and move cases in a way that actually produces outcomes where we're not having to worry about recidivism as much, that's great too. So, you know, it's when I think about what you all doing here, you're you're thinking about sometimes those big what is the government doing to have our taxpayer money go the distance? And it isn't just about sentencing. It isn't just about it's about how do people and this is something that I wanna do and chit it in. How how do the how does the community feel things are going right now? And has it improved? Has has the outcomes improved? But it's big picture. Our court system.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. Yes. So So wait. We would then need to be reviewing the data and the success of all the programs that have diverted people from the court So I would think to that end, we would also need to be able get all the data on the diversion programs, on the, social

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: justice. The community justice centers.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Community justice centers. All of that is also a piece of reducing the

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: pressure on your offices. And to the numbers of 22% of all misdemeanors go to diversion. It's between twenty and twenty two, very consistent in the last five years, and so we know that one And of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: veterans veterans were successful, right?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Well, here's the thing about That's what

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: we also

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: I will say this with respect to data. And so Oh, that's not If you are successful, that's great for the person involved. If they come back into the system even though prosecutor biopsy knows the person's name, you must pretend that as if you don't. And so that's a struggle as a practitioner and as a court system. Mhmm. We're getting, it's that, but it's that deal though, right, of like diversion. If you do diversion, you're gonna get your case, but in terms of success long term, it's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: hard to measure that That doesn't help us on measuring success.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: It's a data gap. It's a data gap that we No, we can improve it.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yeah. So I just wanted to say, if

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: you diversion, there's a protocol.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Wanna be clear that part of completing diversion is that you don't get in trouble again for two years. So it's not like it just immediately disappears because you might cancel the point. But I also am wondering in terms of the sort of I know you said we're not calling it accountability course. What are

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: we calling it instead? Well, there's been there's been a number of comments, and so I just wanted to note that there might sort of a rebrand.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Okay. So right now that is

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: still is being still calling it accountability docket, not accountability court, but the accountability docket.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: We're gonna call it regular court in future. That's a big

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: I'm working. It's a condo. But

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I guess my seeing how well that's working in County is one of the asks that I mean, currently, have a criminal division and a civil division. Do we need a short like, what is the ask here in terms of this is working in Chittenden County? Cool. What are you asking us for?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah, I mean, for me, we need separate we need dedicated time, and it's not gonna be the same in each county. In Chittenden, we know we Chittenden. We need the 3 D courtroom, or something like it on the 3rd Floor, to be available for flexible scheduling that is much quicker than thirty, sixty, and ninety days. In Windsor County, it might be that you only need that courtroom three days a month or one day a week. It's a different volume and a different environment. And it also depends when can the AHS umbrella or other service organization umbrella be available in that program. So for me, it's it's not just on the court time, but it's on the access to services in each community. But I do put for each county, we know each county could benefit from dedicated space where violent offenses are not finding their way into the courtroom, because those are what kick out the and then they beat votes.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: So court space that is dedicated to nonviolent defenses.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: I I was saying this in your court, although there are some felonies which are nonviolent, which are in accountability Right. Right now, unfortunately.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: That would be accountable.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: If I broke that window Right. In accountability.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: That that is correct.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Because that's an expensive piece of glass.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: That's correct. Yeah.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: And is there something coming from the state house that can help make that happen?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: One thing we've done is we're trying to survey underutilized corp spaces. Think about gov ops for a second. Underutilized court spaces to have that time. Something that only the judiciary can speak to is the court staff that would be required to use those spaces and whether or not they need retired judges to come back once a month for something on a rotating basis. Right now, have a single treatment court judge, judge Griffin, who I had the privilege of practicing in front of, who is traveling around the state.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Happily is the

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: only He's the only treatment court judge, and he travels around the state. His honor travels around the state. I won't know by his first name in here.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: That's actually an improvement, because we used to drag other judges out of their court docket to play treatment court judge, and then we established a

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: There are some pros and cons to it, but what I would say is that an accountability type of SWAT approach, okay, we're seeing an uptick in Wyndham County. We need to dedicate some more time there. Having a team be able to do that might be something to think about.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Given the percent of our cases that involve mental health, shocking. They're telling you this

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: is an improvement over what we used to do. It may be. Jeffrey Crawford. Maybe we hit two of the first year's pup. 14 of us.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Well, thank you Tim and Kim. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Well, there

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: should be an ask right there. Great, great. Second. Mental health traffic. Josh, think we need more. We're advocates. If you don't ask, you don't have.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And you need one in the kingdom.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: The tape.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: You do.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Just the treasure.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Okay. John John is follower.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Good. Got it. What did

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: it come here? It's

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: actually good to see you there. How's that? The treasury is

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: all yours. I'm sure I

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: have to say.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. That's just a good.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: The Yeah. I'm

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: question is how is how is my paycheck managing without Ashland?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. The best. Are the department?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: That's what we're catching up on.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: My god. I don't know how you're managing that, Ashland. Ashlyn. Yeah. Well,

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: well, come in. Yeah.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Thank you very much, mister chair. And I'm here with deputy treasurer David Sheer and Peter Trombley. He's actually gonna be filling Ashlyn's shoes. So now that will be his.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: You gotta shake your feet.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: What is that?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Feet? God. It's a small feet.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: It's a small feet. Anyway,

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I don't care. We know.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: But but she wasn't your deputy. No.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: She was director policy. Policy. So that is a that position, they'll be reclassified a bit. But that'll be those responsibilities, Peter, will be responsible for here in the legislature. David will also be in the legislature and running the point on our legislative work as well. So holding them.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: It'll be lovely to see more.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Excited to be here.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: So before we start, we have one new face at the table and let him introduce himself and we can proceed. I had the honor of our meeting here in the Orleans District Senate. Yeah.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Well, welcome you to senate DevOps. Congratulations on being here. Thank you. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: They have facilities to the village manager, you know, our events.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Great Yeah. For other violations that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: you worked on. And in addition to Peter, who's your owner?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Is our new committee assistant as well. And this gentleman is not Yvonne works for Bridget Morris and her team. Team. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: I mean, been my number.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Oh, I just found your entourage.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. I was a

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: little bit too close to being in the state of Michigan.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Yeah. I definitely wanna run you over.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: That's

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: You're welcome to scoot your chair over if

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: you don't want. That's definitely a shift.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. Well, I wanted to run through a preview of our omnibus bill that I know we'll, I think start in the house. I have my understanding that we'll we have a full, committee hearing on that tomorrow, wanted to give a preview to the senate gov ops committee, and we have sort of a section by section review that we provided to you and happy to answer any questions that you have.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: When we get those, would you be kind enough to print them out at least for me because I don't have them. No, I do now. Anticipate it, because we just went through what we didn't have it, so now we got it.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: That is my mistake, I just said to Danbury. Thank

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: you all as well. Thank you.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: I think we're ready,

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: yeah, yeah. Sorry. So it's a section

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: by section sort of summary of the proposal that I had brought here and give an overview of the items that are ahead. Again, feel free to stop and ask any questions. But sections one through five largely deal with our unclaimed property division. You know, our unclaimed property division is responsible for returning money that's been lost or forgotten that comes to the state of Vermont, back to the Vermonters. We've we'll get into it a little bit, but we've had a really big uptick in the amount of money that's coming in here. We've had a really big uptick in the amount of claims we're paying and the amount of money that we're returning as well. They're they're it's a good thing. We're getting more money back to people, but they are processing way more claims than they've ever processed before. It's putting a little bit of pressure on them. The unclaimed property division is funded by monies that they collect by the unclaimed property proceeds, so there's not a general fund amount of money that pays for that division. And then sections six through 23 are largely relating to retirement, retirement division. Similarly with retirement, they are self funded as well. They get paid by the proceeds of the pension funds and OPEB funds that we manage. And then section 24 relates to two positions, or actually three positions, position for retirement and two positions for unclaimed property that we wanted to talk about. But starting at section one with the unclaimed property items, the first one is focused on monies that we get back from medical insurance companies. Oftentimes, let's call it a Cigna, will send us a really large, like $25,000 claim for, let's call it UVM Medical Center, and that's all the information that we have. So as far as we know, this is a $25,000 payment that needs to go to UVM Medical Center for something that they need to be reimbursed for. But as we've been finding, more likely than not, oftentimes that 25,000 probably represents a reimbursement that should be going to patients instead of to the hospital. But we don't have the capacity, we don't have the information from them. They're not turning any information over to us to get that money back to the rightful owner. So this would be a requirement that medical insurance companies are gonna payments that come into us, have an EOB, an explanation of benefits, a number so that we can track, okay, this is for a patient, not for the hospital, and we can track which patient it is and then put that on our websites that they get their money back directly. Should we get it to the right person?

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: So wait.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Did you have it reviewed if that's like a HIPAA violation by any chance? Like if someone has is does the EOB, would you be able to delineate what the, like, what the procedure was? And is that at all information that would be confidential?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: So because it's just like the the number, it's not sort of the whole explanation benefits about the sort of the coverage and the procedures and whatnot. It's

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Yeah. What is an EOB number then? Is it just

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: It's like a patient ID number, basically.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Oh, okay. So it's not like procedure Right. Duh duh duh. Okay.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: But we wouldn't you we wouldn't add a new data point to our website. It would be information that we would use to identify the person as And so I wouldn't have concern about that. And it's insurance company sending that to us and that we're not gonna be providing it publicly. I don't I don't wouldn't be worried about the HIPAA data. That's the issue. Yeah.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: So anything else? Two things.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I still make sure it's HIPAA compliant. It sounds like it will be, but just because it's not public doesn't mean it's not a HIPAA violation. But my question is, does that mean currently the medical center is getting money that they shouldn't be, that should actually be going to patients?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. We can't prove that one way or the other because we don't have the information. But when we look at these claims that come in for, you know, hospitals or medical facilities, oftentimes you would think that you're trying to understand the scenario where the insurance company would be reimbursed in the hospital to make more sense that probably is something that's worth consumer. So that's why with this change, we'll know for certain, but that's an assumption.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Okay.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yeah.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: And if that is what we find out has been happening, what then? Would that be an issue for the auditor to deal with?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Well- Would

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: it claw back the money that has gone to the hospital that should have gone to patients?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Because, you know, what we get from the older, you know, people that turn the money over to us, like they're required to provide certain information to us. And if they provide that information, all we can do is put it up on the website. So we can't we would have to go back and get that information from the past from them, which may or may not be something that we could do, not that we couldn't do it, but that the legal authority we don't even have the legal authority to require them to provide it to us real So that's really the challenge that we're dealing with. They don't have to turn it over to us. They wouldn't turn it over to us unless we have the legal authority to request it and require it.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Mhmm. Yeah. I guess I I guess my concern is is I'm not opposed to this. I just wanna make sure it's done in a way that's HIPAA compliant. But I guess my concern is if we do this and then we see over the course of the next year that actually lots of these payments should have gone to patients. That means historically lots of those patients should have gone to patients and how do we put that money back in their pocket?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: I would say if we pass this and then we see in a year that in fact our theory is correct, then it's something we'd be happy about a plan for addressing some of that mitigation.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Okay. Thank you. Senator Vyhovsky?

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Thank you, mister chair.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Before we get too deep into this, just so I understand, this is a bill that has not been introduced yet.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: I think that's

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Or who's your what's your

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Has been introduced on the house side and senator Collamore, you have the text as well, I believe.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Oh, we're cut. I mean, it would be a committee bill, I don't think I asked you.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Well, I think we might wait for it to come across.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Oh, okay. So this is this is as drafted.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Sounds like

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: There's a house bill. We'll find out about that, but you're this is not an ask for us to take this up as one of our committee priorities for a committee bill then.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: This sounds like it's

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: coming to us. Okay.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Thank you.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Is that right? That's alright then. Yeah. Yeah. So section two and three does deal with unflanked property, but it also works with our Vermont SAES program. So you remember Vermont SAES is something that we passed a couple of years ago. It's up running. Up and running. It's been up for a year. It's about now that we passed into the new year. And it's gone really well in the early days. This is a program that is a publicly administered retirement program that we run out of our office. So if you're a small business or a nonprofit that does not provide retirement to your employees, you're required to sign up for Vermont saves. There's no cost to you as a nonprofit or as a business. And then your employees are automatically opted into a Roth IRA. They can opt out

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: of it, but if

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: they don't take any action, they're in it. And then within thirty days, a payroll deduction will occur. And then after another thirty days, we'll be invested in a target date fund that aligns with their retirement date. So the reason we did it is because the data shows that if you don't have access to retirement through your workplace, you just don't save for retirement for the vast majority of people. So those folks are on a trajectory to have much less dignified retirement, to be really financially insecure in retirement, and Vermont saves is looking to address that problem. So we have about 1,300 employers that are participating right now, 5,300 individual savers that are saving. And collectively, 5,300 savers have put aside about $5,000,000 in that first year. And all of the numbers really in that first year are growing and they're continuing to expand. So we think within five years, we'll have about 20,000 savers and then tens and tens of millions of dollars collectively saved as well. So once we get to that point, actually just one more data point about people saving, About, 55% of those that are of the 5,300, they're 40. And about 30% are under the 30. So a lot of young people saving, which is really great. Time is on their side. Senator Cloyce.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Perhaps we could enter into discussion with the Vermont legislature who provides no retirement benefits. Maybe we can give as well. Then we salary first. Don't Yeah. This is something we can plan, actually. I'm I'm actually absurd. I think the legislature actually should enter into a discussion about this with you because as you know, we provide no benefit Yeah. Retirement benefits. And so I I actually think this is something that some of our legislators might take advantage of through the legislature.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. And and even though she had it set up for business as nonprofits, individuals We are nonprofit. Well, an individual can also sign up for it on their own.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Yeah. So you can go check.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. But I understand your point. Well, I'll ask you back because we looked at that when we passed it, and there was some reason that legislature was exempt.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: That's because we're not actually

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: technically employed. Yeah. That's probably right. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Well, I mean, that we're individually selected, and, you we're not.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: But now that it's up and running, it's an established program and it's working I think if we could come

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: or might have market it to legislators, it's something for us to talk about.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: No doubt. So all of that's going well. To run this program, we got a one time appropriation three Yeah. Years About seventy about $750,000. So we have a director and then we have a communications and outreach person for the program. And at the end of this current fiscal year, we're in the one time approach creation will run out. So in terms of the revenues reflecting from Vermont saves, I think this year, it's gonna be about $36,000, but it requires about $300,000 to run it. What's gonna happen over these next five years as the accounts grow and the assets under management grows, that the fees that we're collecting are gonna continue to rise and rise and rise. And we expect sometime in the next five to six years, we'll be 100% fully sustainable and then off and running. And that gap, that much we need is gonna close every year because the revenues are gonna rise every year. So when we were thinking about how can we present a suggestion for funding Vermont Sage between here and what is fully sustainable and not have an impact on the general fund, we turned to something else that we do in our office, which is a transfer from our unclaimed property fund into the Vermont Higher Education Trust Right. So it's about $200,000 give or take a year that goes into that trust fund from unclaimed property. Our suggestion is that we divert it temporarily to the Vermont Savings Program. We put a cap on how much we can get so as we don't need that money in the future, it'll actually go on to the Higher Education Trust Fund. And the reason we suggest the Higher Trust Fund is because it just had a really significant windfall from the estate tax revenue of about $26,000,000 of one side of deposit. So basically doubled the size of the trust fund from about $30,000,000 to $60,000,000. So this is a relatively small amount that gets deposited into that trust fund, but it would have a really significant impact in keeping this program, you know, operating until it gets to the point of sustainability.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: And would you pay it back?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: The plan is not to

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: pay it back, but, you know, we are suggesting that we raise the threshold of the monies that go from unclaimed property from 110 years old to one hundred and fifty and ten years old. So in time, the higher education trust would end up getting more money than it would make up for it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. On the other hand, doesn't sound because I need it. Well, that's whole another

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: question. Alright.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Yay. Windfall. That's not a word you hear very often.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: No. It went from the estate tax. Right? Which, you know, so they make an estimate about how much estate tax we're gonna collect and then the amounts that are over that windfalls into this higher education trust fund. And I think, you know, there's been speculation about whether the estate tax will continue to have larger years because of the demographics of Vermont.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Given the number of old people that are about to start dying.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah. Say that we're gonna do better, better. That's exact.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: The trust demographic.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: So moving on just to section four and sections five, they both deal with claims that we file for promoters and a process that we do call an accelerated review. So right now, claims are under $250 for unclaimed property office. We can make a reasonable determination about who the owner is and then send them the money without getting a lot of documentation, without getting a notarization, without getting original documents, and and that sort of thing. It's just a way of getting us people's money more quickly because these claims are low risk, and we have a lie a high degree of confidence that we're sending it to the right person. We'd like to move that threshold from $250 to a thousand dollars to help us basically just get money back to people that we have, again, reasonable reasonably determined it's their money. It's less bureaucratic. It's more efficient. It's easier for our staff because they don't have to go through all of the mechanics and all of the bureaucracy and all the operations of getting all those original documents when they know with great certainty that it's the right person. And again, the risk for the claim is relatively low because we're still dealing with a relatively small amount of money with thousand dollars. So that's the recommendation for section four. And there's a similar recommendation in section five when it pertains to estates. So right now, if we require any estate that is larger for a claim in an estate that's larger than $5,000 to have an estate open, to be able to pay that claim. So if it's in the estate of John Doe, you know, we require the family to open up the estate so that they can get their $10,000 property amount. We wanna raise that threshold from 5,000 to 10,000, again, to reduce the bureaucracy, reduce the cost of families that have, you know, all the relatively smaller estate claims that are in our office. So it's really a consumer focused, you know, policy to make it a little bit less burdensome to get people's money. And then similarly with this other part in section five, it's the same concept only here. This is payments that go to joint property owners. So this would be like if you had a brother and a sister, they're just making that threshold to go from $2.50 to 1,000 as well. We have the reasonable determination that we found the right people and we're gonna return that property. That's sort of everything on the unclaimed property side. On the retirement side, it starts in section six. The first one is giving us authority at the treasurer's office under the state retirement system to levy penalties for late for later inaccurate employer payments. So giving us the authority in this case would align with the teachers and the municipal systems. So the state of Vermont is obviously one of the major payers into the state system, but there are also some municipalities and sheriff's offices as well. And we have the authority when a school district doesn't give us the money that they're supposed to for their retirement and teachers money that they're supposed to contribute as an employer. You know, we can levy an interest rate or a penalty if they're late or if the monies are inaccurate, they underpay. But when it comes to these municipalities and these sheriff's offices, we don't have that authority. So what ends up happening is the sheriff could not turn the money over to us, and then that money's not being invested and growing in the system for their employees. Their employees' benefit continues to accrue, but the overall system is being harmed because the money that's supposed to be in there at the right time is not in there and it's not having the same investment earning power. So it really would be aligning that authority with the other authorities that we have in the other systems. And we have had instances where this has happened in the not too recent past, and we've kind of been left without any remedies. Senator Juleshovsky.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: This I'm gonna ask you this question, recognizing that I may have to re ask it, I think, tomorrow, and we have a pension fund again. But that is why under what circumstances and why municipality not be in the VMRS system and instead be in the VISTA system?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. So they're they're for the sheriffs, they're they're actually potentially in a couple of different systems that they they now have the opportunity in which is the state system. Some of have historically been in the state system as well. It's like an election that happened a number of years ago. And then there's like two municipalities that are in the state system as well instead of the immersion. So it's a very small subset, but I think it has to do with sort of historical choice and election that was made a long time ago. But Tim Wen who will be here tomorrow can Yeah.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Like I said, I have a feeling of that, and I might get a a more complete answer Yeah. Yeah. Tomorrow, but it was all memorized by that.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. Nice.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yes. So that's kind of interesting because five years ago, we were the state was underfunding the retirement system.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Right. Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: We didn't penalize them. So out of these groups, who who's really driving the problem here?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Is it the towns? Is it the sheriffs? Is it

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. It's really a small number of towns, so the problem we've had has been with sheriff's offices.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: That's what I was wondering. I was thinking that because they get sometimes underfunded too, they're trying to do Yeah. Less. Okay. That's what I was referring to. Yeah. Thanks. Not The Orleans. So

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: section seven is focused on the OPEB. So the OPEB is the other post employment benefits. Have your pension and then you have your health care, which is basically the OPEB. Right? And and when we did the health when we did the pension reforms a number of years ago, we were focusing on the pension system, but a lot of the focus was on the OPEB because both were underfunded. The teachers and the state employees both have a pension system and they both have an OPEB fund. So there's basically four funds and each of them had over $1,000,000,000 of underfunding. The vow teachers was even more underfunded. But one of the things that was done was prepaying OPEB to get that in a much stronger position and like, you know, billion plus dollars was taken off of the liability. Both the pension systems and the OPEB's, their funded ratios have continued to climb now for five years. So things are in a better spot for sure. But one of the things about being in a better spot and getting closer to the payoff date, which is 2038, which in my opinion is much more realistic for us to get there or to make significant progress to get there because the amount that the pension is increasing every year, that contribution that we have to make, the ADEC, it's slowing down. It's not jumping up as dramatically. And it's actually expected to maybe the absolute number will not go down, but from an inflationary adjusted basis, it should be less impact on the budget over time as we get closer to '23. So things can change. Markets can change, but right now, we're on a really good trajectory. But one of the issues is as you get closer to that 2038 timeline, there's more risk and volatility that you have a bad year that it's gonna have a significant budgetary impact. Because if you don't get the returns that you need to get and you're only five years out from having to fully fund the system, it's only has about forty years to spread that new unfunded liability over. Doesn't twenty years. It doesn't have fifteen years. So everything gets a lot tighter the closer you get to the twenty thirty eight timeline or for for OPEB, the 2048 timeline is just a little bit further out before we fund OPEB. So our proposal here is to create a task force similar, but certainly much, much more narrow in scope to the pension reform task force that happened four or five years ago to focus on this issue of basically how do we sufficiently and without risk land at this plane as we get closer to 2038. And there are different approaches that you can take to what's called amortization. Do you deal with that unfunded liability? And I think there are consent I think there is a consensus that we can get to from all the stakeholders, but I think the vehicle for doing that is a task force and bringing everybody together and coming up with that consensus in a formal process. So that's our recommendation to create that whole dev task force that will do that work and come back in point point seven with a recommendation. We are requesting $75,000 for actuarial and technical support for that task force because we'll need to run some scenarios to make sure we're coming with the right proposal.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Yes. I'm a little curious how this is different than the required years. Okay. The EXPERIENCE study.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. So the EXPERIENCE study sort of looks and and we did and the EXPERIENCE study is a good example because we used to do it every five years, and there was more risk, right, that you're gonna have some underlying assumption change, but you weren't gonna reevaluate that underlying assumption until year five. It would have changed in year one, and then you actually were underfunding year two, three, four, and five until you fixed it in year six. So by moving it to three, we're sort of catching those things more quickly. And it's the same concept in terms of risk mitigation here, only it's not about our assumptions we're making for, you know, health of the of individuals or longevity of individuals or costs or things like that. It's really about market conditions. Will something dramatically happened in the market, or will some really bad, I guess, assumption, and we'll be off will we be off by some really bad assumption? Will it be a pandemic? Will it be something that happens that's very different than what we're expecting that causes there to be a significant unfunded liability beyond what's being predicted. So it is about mitigating that sort of unexpected chunk, because then we just have this really large budgetary impact the next year. And our concern is, and I think the unions all share our concern, is you get to a position where you have a really shockingly large budgetary impact. It very well could be a conversation that gets brought up again about, oh, we can't afford this. How do we amend it? How do we change it? How do we, you know, reduce the benefit? And that's not where any of us wanna be. So we view this as a sort of mitigating that. Having this conversation and then eventually coming up with a proposal and implementing it is hopefully gonna mitigate that risk, that sort of dramatic budgetary impact that we're asking. But what it means, senator, is that in 2038, we may not be 100% fully funded. It might be 95% funded. It might be 92% funded. It might be a 100% funded because everything might work exactly as we want it to work. But but to take that, you know, to get over 90% funded would be great. The system would be in really strong position. So to to get that to sort of take away that, like, 100% funded, but to take away that risk is huge because it could mean in some of the scenarios that we ran, like, hundreds of millions of dollars of additional budgetary need in a particular year as you're getting closer to 2038.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I guess I'm oh, did this come before the Pension Oversight Committee? Because I don't recall having this conversation with the Joint Pension Oversight Committee. And I feel like we can take a deeper dive into some of this space. Yeah.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: I want us you know, so Tim you can ask Tim this question tomorrow as well, but I wasn't at the Oversight Committee hearing that was on in November. But I remember Tim was gonna present this concept at that hearing, but maybe he did not.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Yeah. I don't remember hearing it because I'm on that

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: That committee, which maybe I missed it. But, yeah, I'm happy to talk to Tim more about it.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: You have questions? Yeah. Was just curious. Because you guys have fixed a lot of things last time I was here.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: So We did want pensions. It was one of

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: the things. We really That's hard. Really, really good. It's, used to bug me, you know, appropriations. The, so you form an actuarial every year. This is probably a discussion from prior. I'll deal with it. Yep. And then what they were doing is they were overestimating their discount rate Right. Right. And then underestimating the expenses. Right. And it just kept every So somehow, you you folks, to your credit, figuring out who I am and, yeah, Jane Kitchell, I think, right, you know, gotta go in another race. Yeah.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Jane and Janette.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: One of the

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: big Janette and Jane are really Fantastic.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: So Yeah.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: One of the big things but I mean, you do want you have to get your assumptions into a reasonable place. Right? And the assumed rate of return is now at 7%, and we continue to think that's a reasonable place, but it was as high as, I think, 8.5% at one point, and then eight at the 7.5. And so when you're when you're missing your mark on that Oh, yeah. You are you're sort of undercounting your your unfunded liability is there. It's just that you're not accounting for it, and you have this opportunity for it to grow and grow and grow every year.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: And what's really scary, it's not just this group, and it's had it across The United States Mhmm. As far as I'm concerned. Some of the the large cities are really struggling.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. Some cities have some challenges. Maybe you look at the states, there's an analysis that Tim can mention tomorrow, but so many states have not redemption reform in the last, let's call it five to seven years. So it's good that Vermont got on that track because a lot of them have started to move in the right direction and now we've been in the right direction.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Of course, the economy takes for a little while Well,

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: yeah. When you look

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: at the unfunded when you look at

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: the unfunded liability, biggest, most dramatic thing that happened in the last thirty years is the great financial crisis in 2007, 2008, that we went from basically 100% funded then to, like, really, you know, at the lowest point we can try to get started. Right? So it took a long time to get back with that. So certainly the markets could impede our progress, but we do have reasonable assumptions. We are putting a lot more money into the system than we actually really need to. Like, we have $30,000,000.15 in both systems that are going on top of the actual required amount. So it's trying to buy it down. I should agree with that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Oh, John. He served on our patients. Yeah. We were

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: in the house together. Yeah. You

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: guys are doing it, right? Yeah. So

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: we're feeling good about that, but yeah.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: You know, always talk about it.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Sections twenty eighteen to 20 is focused on the OPEB that we talked about, but not the operation of it, not the administration of it, which our office will continue to handle, but on the investment part of it. So actually making the investments. Right now, our office is responsible for making those investments even though there is the Vermont Pension Investment Commission that handles the investments for the pension. So they are managing the billions of dollars in the pension. I think this was left behind because they're trying to figure out, well, how would this separate fund be sort of implemented and brought in? But back then when the pension reform happened, this fund only had about $60,000,000 in it, these two funds for the OPEB, the teachers in the state. Now it's closer to 400,000,000 because we're putting a lot of money and we're prefunding it. And that 400,000,000 soon to be a billion, you know, over the next number of years. So it's getting to the point where we would need to hire somebody to manage this money, like in our office. We couldn't just sort of do it with our resources that we have, which is how we've seen handling it for vague. So we recommend transferring the investment responsibility of this fund from our office over to VPIC so that they can manage these funds as well. Sorry to be asking that.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Am sort of circling back and just wondering how the volatility the current volatility of the bulk of the air market is being considered in some of this thought on health care costs and the OPEB just before we're looking at like collapse of the healthcare system. How how do you factor that in?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Well, it's well, they from natural standpoint, they look at the trend and they look at the, you know, the increase of and that's definitely factored in. I mean, in the where the pensions that I was talking about earlier and those ADEC increases, how they're small single digits this year, which we're happy about. The ADEC is going up significantly. It's a huge jump because the underlying cost of healthcare is going up in the OPEB side of them. And on the OPEB side for teachers, you know, our office was presented with a 50%, 50% rate increase from Blue Cross Blue Shield on July 1. And we thought we had no other options. I mean, it was pretty late in the game, but we worked really hard to develop some other alternatives and eventually found one in HealthSpring that we were really happy about and was a much larger, sustainable company. And their rate increase was more like 16 to 17%. So that meant even with the OPEB actuarial required amount going up by tens of millions of dollars, that reduced it by over $20,000,000 would have went up by even more had we not done that. So it's great that we were able to find another partner. It's great that we were able to reduce those costs, but the underlying costs are still dramatic for healthcare and it has a direct impact on the OPEB and on the budget of the state.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Senator White.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Thank you, mister chair.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: So this discussion really brings up for me my desire for us to divest our pension funds from fossil fuels. Oh, that was one of our priorities and we would love to continue. And I'm just worried because it felt like in the past when we had had these with the treasurer's office about divestment, that then the argument we've heard was that BPIC was unable to manage divestment because it was so analytically, fiscally like, it it seemed like the expertise to do it was not there, and also the time that it would take wouldn't be there. So I'm very nervous to hear based on them being unable to pursue divestment, which major institutions have been able to accomplish, that they would be prepared to take this on. Yeah. That's my first thing. And then it also makes me feel that we will never get divested of any sort if we make this transition.

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: So I'm wondering if

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: you could speak Yeah.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. To that. Well, one thing on the like, how we invest the OPEB funds, that Morley, there's sort of a direction that we do it, so consistent with the BPIC's portfolio. So we're all we're doing now is independently sort of trying to reiterate BPIC portfolio. So there there are situations, though, where we don't because we're a much smaller fund at a couple 100,000,000 and there are billions. There are situations we don't have access to certain investments that they that they do, and we have to sort of enter those investments through the BPIC. So it's really sort of this meat and potatoes reason why we're supposed to do the transfer. You know, I think the bill was, I guess, 42, the investment bill last session.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Two sessions. We worked on it three years ago.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And we got it through, and Mike worked on it very closely. And Tom really did kind of

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: He said he wasn't gonna do it and he weren't gonna do

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: it. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: So And and but then we also found out that we have actually divested significant amount Right. Out of the portfolio and then the amount that's left

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: I think it was, like, on or 2%. Right?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Pretty modest. Under 5%, I think it was. And then it's just stall. And I introduced that. We introduced again last year. You did or somebody gave me. Yeah. All of us would all of us in Avanish would do this. And, yeah, it's a good question. Don't.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: But I guess my main question would be, do you see divestment something to me. Yeah. Do you see divestment happening at all with this move?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: I don't I see. At least, Senator, I don't think it I think whether it happens or not well, this won't It's separate. Will impact it. Right? Because, like, when we were talking about the investment before, we're both talking about the pension funds, which really didn't

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: But, have

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: you know, you could but if the pension funds are divested, then these funds would likely need to follow the same kind of structure later.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Okay.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: So, I mean, we did work really hard to try to find a workable solution there, and I thought we did find one. But yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Okay. But that helps me understand that I'm just On

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: the same subject, if I could before Tanya asked.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: I also on the same subject. Oh. Are the OPEB investments currently invested in fossil fuels? Because my concern would be if they're not and they are moved to the BPEG, they will be.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yes. Because our system has because we're sort of required to have a portfolio as we think. The place where it would likely be invested in fossil fuels is free index funds, just like where BPHIC is largely having the the fossil fuel investments. So those, like, large S and P 500 funds that are mutual funds that, you know, you're not, dictating which specific investment is in there. It be those indirect ways that would be invested if they are. But I would suspect you would have a similar percentage as the VPIC funds since it has to

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: have a similar portfolio structure.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Just go to another major effort in your office that Sue Minter is heading out to make big oil pay. Big Oil, as we all know, is gonna be very vulnerable in the next ten, fifteen years in terms of paying for the damages that have

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: been done for the portal.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: I mean, whether it's damages or whether

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: And that exposes that exposes anybody.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yeah.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: I mean, that was when we were working on this three years ago, my position was broadly when you look at the last twenty years of of market returns for fossil fuel companies, and then you think about the next twenty years, the last twenty years are no doubt gonna be better than the next twenty years. Absolutely. So how do you manage that risk?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Yep. Yes. So I have an additional investment concern. It may be that we need to have a larger conversation with the BPIC, and that is that in September 2025, it looks like about $826,000 was invested into Israeli government bonds. Oh, jeez. And we actually have a policy on the books, the terrorism and genocide linked countries policy. And I'm a little concerned that the BPIC doesn't appear to be following that, and that if we're moving more into that portfolio, that it just gives me concern. Would moving the OPEB funds there give us more or less oversight of how those are invested?

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: The for the OPEB funds?

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: You know, right now your oversight is through me and through our office for the LTIP funds. You know, the I am I do sit on the VPIC board. Like, I have a a a delegate that's on the board. So the board, commissioners, you know, and then you have Tom, if it's the chair, then you have Eric Henry, the chief investment officer. So that would be your sort of oversight there on the side. So it's different. It's similar, but it's different with whether it's myself or it's Tom. It's just, you know, those are the those are the folks that are responsible to you. In terms of the Israeli bonds, happy to look into it. It's the first time hearing about it.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Yeah. I'm happy to send you the information that I have about it. I I know that a couple of teachers, it was the table appears to be the teachers fund, have asked for that information and have not received it.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: And that's

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: part of where the oversight comes in.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Right. Right.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: But that would be great.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: If we could get some more answers about that, then I can send you by.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. To you soon. Yes.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: We'll have Tom commend when we if this can go up in the house, which I assume, we'll be in the procedure. I'll just remind folks too, not everybody on this committee was on board with that. I think that was said, and I just wanted to correct it. I'm a big believer in allowing the people that we charge with investing to invest because if I'm not mistaken, one of the primary fiduciary responsibilities is to make money with the investment. Yeah. And I think

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: I mean, the investment

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: I think Tom and his crew have done a great job.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: The investment, you know, because you think about how are the way so when you're getting your say your pension payment is, you know, a thousand dollars when you retire, right? How did you get that thousand dollars? You put money into the system over time, and then the system invested that money over time. And the breakdown is about, it's like 35% of that thousand dollars came from your own money or your employees contribution. Mhmm. And then about 65% of it, 64% of it came from investment earnings over time. So for an average retiree, the investment earnings are critical to account for you to more than half. It's what actually is. Just to

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: your point.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: And I could remember a predecessor of yours, when she was treasurer, walked

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: the governor. Oh yeah, great.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah, no doubt.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: And said that we should not be doing, we should not be getting ourselves involved in.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Well, her argument was that if you're that means we're at the table. But I think we're such a tiny amount at the table, and it doesn't really matter. No one's gonna listen to us. I disagree. I I I really think it's very important that we not be investing things that are destroying our world. And if it is if if there are plenty of other things that are making a lot of money right now that are doing and it has for the last twenty years. It just you know, I think you you anyway, it's a Well,

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: we'll let Tom come in. I think he can start doing the big honest.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Stand stands

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: on his own. And, again, the when I was thinking about this issue, like, we were working on it three years ago and since, like, always try to bring it back to risk. Right? Because I because I the point that's being discussed about is appropriate to legislate how do you invest, but it is appropriate to think about risk. And the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: risk I had identified, which I identified again, is that I think oil companies are gonna be under huge pressure and are gonna be paying out billions to try and begin to fix what's almost unfixable at this point.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yeah. Okay. So unless there's other substantial

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Well, I'm just wondering who the right person would be because I think a lot of times we have very siloed conversations and I don't know who maybe it's JFO. Because, yes, we can look at what the pension fund is making from, say, fossil fuels, but then are we also looking at how much more of paying out spending puts it in $3,000,000,000 in the last three years due to climate Okay. Related flooding. So, like, I'd I'd like someone who can sort of look at the bigger picture and cost benefit analysis. Yep. Maybe it's your fault. I don't know who it is.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: I don't know either. They'd be certainly welcome to come in.

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: Well, mister chairman, we did have Tim Tom Tom is the Tom. Exactly. He came in, but he had also brought in a woman who is was Who was in charge of that portfolio and doing because his other point was that they were doing some of this work Right. Through their targeted investment work trying to. So maybe we invite Katie back in at the very least. Sure. She might not She it was pretty supportive. Yeah. But she was definitely isn't it?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Think we often miss looking at the whole picture. Like, sure. Maybe we raised $200,000 on fossil fuels and pension fund, but then we spent 3,000,000,000 cleaning up floods from climate disasters. Like,

[Kim McManus, Legislative & Policy Attorney, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: it seems like a net loss to me.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Okay. More to come.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: You're saying me.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: I see.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: So just go. There's just three more sections. I'll go through quickly. Section twenty two and twenty twenty one and twenty two rather. They've authorized members of service, the teachers union, or the municipal system for the teacher system to purchase service credits and time spent serving as president of an employee organization such as the NDA while fully being released from active employment. So this is something that is similar for military or peace war or other school service that occurs. These purchases that occur are actuarially neutral. So they fully cover the cost of service. It really just provides the NDA the opportunity to have folks that are younger serve as president because now you really have sort of, if you're leaving the system, you kind of already have to have your service credit to be really thinking that that's something that you can do from a financial standpoint. So, it would put it sort of in line with some of these other opportunities where people are able to, purchase that service credit for time, that they've spent serving elsewhere. Yeah. We're happy to support it. So NEA is really, really really is looking forward to get the provisions. Okay. And it's actually really natural, which is the key. Section 23, we did these changes last year, but somewhere in the proposal and somewhere to the passing, there were some technical language issues that didn't get fully incorporated. So this was relating to the CBAC, the capital Debt Affordability Advisory Committee. So this is a committee that the treasurer chairs that makes a recommendation about how much bonding we should do every year. So we made some changes about what we should consider when making that recommendation. Here in the last couple of sentences, it talks about what's the remaining useful life of state infrastructure, meaning, like, how much bonding are we gonna have to do in the future so we don't have to do a lot of bonding. Maybe that's reason to have a lower recommendation versus us knowing we have a lot coming up. Potential future capital maintenance and replacement costs and other metrics used to recognize bond that are recognized by the bond rating agencies, including long term liabilities that's not captured elsewhere. That really means pension liabilities. So even though we have debt that's outstanding as a state, and we think, well, that's really important and that's what the rating agencies care about. It's about $600,000,000 in outstanding bonded debt, but we have still billions of dollars on unfunded pension liabilities. That's some of the other states. Rating agencies are now starting to look at both of those since the unfunded pension liability is actually a much larger component. So it's really kind of incorporating the reality of what's happening in the state with our infrastructure and the reality of what the rating agencies are looking at when they look at the state. So it's putting that language in that was, you know, again proposed last year in past, but there's some cleanup language. And this is something that the Department of Finance and Management and the Agency of Administration specifically requested that we put in,

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: and we're happy to happy to do it.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: So section 24 just talks about those two positions or two positions in retirement and in unclaimed property that I mentioned. We're asking for two in unclaimed property. I mentioned that the number of claims has gone up quite dramatically. Here's the data on it. Fiscal year twenty three, we had about 18,000 claims for about $3,800,000 back to Vermonters. And then in fiscal year twenty five, it's now closer to 32,000 claims. So 18,000 claims, 32,000 claims, totally $9,450,000 to promoters. So during that same period of time, we also have gotten more money into the system. So we do make a general fund transfer every year when we do a calculation to determine how much we need to pay ourselves, how much we need to pay the claims, how much we need to have in reserve, and then the extra comes to the general fund. With these two positions, because the amount of money continues to grow, we don't see it as having any impact on that transfer. The amount that we are transferring continues to grow and we expect it to grow, But it will continue to allow us to provide high customer service to Vermonters to get them their money back. It'll help us do better job managing fraud risk, which has really grown a lot in the last five years. And it also has the potential for us to get more money back to Vermont as well because with additional capacity, our office will be able to look at the businesses, the nonprofits, the holders of money that aren't turning it over to us and be more intentional about getting that money back to us. So we're requesting these two positions. Again, no general fund impacts, but really impactful in terms of the work that they'll do. And then a policy and research position in the retirement division. So one position in retirement. If you look at the data here, we're one of the leanest retirement divisions in the country, most efficient retirement divisions in the country. We have 200 we have 2,860 members per staff person in the province. That's amazing. In the national median is about $1,313.64. And then a comparable size system in a state that's of our similar size, about 1,200 members per staff person. So we're really are efficient, but there are times where our team gets sort of maxed and they have a hard time getting all of their work done and also any sort of important project that might pop up. An example of that that did work out was the HealthSpring example I mentioned earlier. You know, our team had to work on overdrive, unexpected, unexpected, find an alternative that was

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: Health share.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah, for health care. Instead of the 50% rate increase, it was 60% increase. But it only happened because they did so much work developing that opportunity, doing the due diligence with them, doing the contractual work, the authority to our board, into our office and into the contract. That really sort of ended up, you know, maxing them out. And the systems do get more complicated. We have a lot of changes that have happened to our systems over the years. There are complicated set of systems to run. We also manage the fine contribution plans and the deferred compensation plan as well as the OPEB. So this, again, would be paid for by the retirement funds. It wouldn't have a general fund impact.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: So we just increase the amount we keep for administration? Yeah. With

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Yes. Every year we to retire. If they

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: earn, you know, a million dollars in investment returns or, you know, whatever's in the system, you know, a 100,000 goes to it's more all these numbers are not right numbers, but a 100,000 goes to us to pay for administrative expenses. Now it would be like a $110,000. Yeah. Modest. Yeah. Those aren't the actual numbers. Michael, thank you. Yeah. No. Thank you all for your time. And if you have any follow-up questions, I know we had some we'll talk to him about some of the questions that I have in today, and I know there's some follow-up questions for us that we'll look into.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Thanks. Yeah. We'll see him tomorrow at one third.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Yeah. Exactly. Right. I look forward to

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: seeing you on crossover, hopefully. Yeah. We'll have you back.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. Well, and, you know, we we we have such a small short amount of time to accomplish things, in the legislature. And so it is funny that it was three years ago that we really had that The toughest thing. Active on on the worst. Yeah. But you were very you were very supportive for that run, and it was frustrating to have it derailed at the

[Sen. Rebecca 'Becca' White]: end. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: We've got almost got it there. I didn't

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Got there opportunities to find common ground about all different Yeah. Perspectives.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: I've I've always been grateful too for that. So Well, you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Okay, Rick. Thank you for Sue.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Oh, yeah. No, Sue's doing a great

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: job. Yeah. Committee, anything else today?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: No? Everybody's happy? Well, I'm not sure if you got any better. I sent you a text about next week.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Okay. I'll get back. Alright.

[Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer]: Sounds good.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: And Peter? Yes.

[Timothy Lueders-Dumont, Executive Director, VT Dept. of State's Attorneys & Sheriffs]: Are we all gone? No.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Peter, can you stay for one second?

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Okay. Mean, until we adjourn, we're

[Sen. Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. No. No. I just I didn't see the red thing, but now Oh, it's there.

[Sen. Brian Collamore, Chair]: Yeah. Okay. If there are no more issues for the committee today, we

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Vice Chair]: will