Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: All right, welcome. Today is Thursday, 03/19/2026, and this is Senate Institutions, and we have two items on the schedule for today. One is H-six 35, which is a bill we have received from the House and we'll hear from the House. And then we're also going to be finalizing our conversation about an amendment to S-one 193. So, thank you, Sweeney

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: and Thanks for

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: having for having Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I think you know everybody. Yes.

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: Sean Sweeney, Windham 7, Saint George Shelburne. So page six thirty five is about taking a supervisory fee out of existence. Since it started in February, the it it has not done what it was intended to do. And I think it was a I think what I wasn't here then, obviously, like a lot of you were. And I think that they the Department of Corrections and the legislation the legislators thought it was a good idea to put a supervisory fee on the people coming out of prison. And it was some form of accountability, which I kinda get, but what happened and what has happened as of last year is DOC came to us and said, here's an estimate for what it takes to manage and assess and watch over and make this fee happen, which comes to about $550,000. Right? Which is, you know, it's and it and they broke it out for us, like, how much time each person takes over the course of a week or a month or a year managing this fee. It brought in $250,000. So if it was a business, it would have been out of business in 02/2010. And in the sense of accountability, which I'm fairly proud of, we have determined that it's really a a poor use of people's time in corrections who are really struggling, like, you know, like, one of the top reasons that people leave DOC is excessive work hours. Right? And and and here they are, you know, chasing after money that that that we get a little of, but not enough to make it worth our while. So I thought it was great legislation. We if you you know, we went through it and it struck out all the supervisory fee language. You know, DOC helped us out with it. I and, you know, it got through our Ways and Means Committee. Yes. You know, the the I think the little bit of a the thing I wanna really try to make clear is that we're not gonna see this money, so to speak. We're not gonna make 500,000 or save $250,000, but it's gonna help us retain Department of Corrections people who we have a hard time retaining. And they can then focus on the more important things that they're working on, like administrating the eleven fifteen Medicaid waiver, which actually keeps our people leaving our incarcerated facilities healthier and happier and feeling more connected instead of trying to come up with anywhere between 15 to $30 of money every month that they don't have.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, thank you. I was not even aware that this was an issue, but I appreciate your work on this. So, the committee It came out of committee eleven-zero-zero, it came

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: out of ways that means eleven-zero-zero.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Wonderful. Okay.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Well, good luck here. I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: knew that was coming.

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: I knew that was coming. Do you have any questions? Yeah. And I think that and and actually Scott and John are here because I think there are they are pretty aware of it and they've been riding it with me. So if I can't answer it, they can.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. Do y'all have questions?

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I have a couple. Just in

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: terms of who did you hear from

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: in terms of testing other So it was you know, who came in with us was the director of communications, Department of Corrections, and and and the and the deputy commissioner, and she's the one who ran the numbers. Yep. And, and and and explained

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: that

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: to us, led the council also, you know, also shared their thoughts on it, but, that's where we got this from, and it was very complicated in our, you know, in our view.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: So you didn't hear from any field TOs? And I assume you didn't hear from any probationers or No. Police or

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And those are the folks who are actually collecting the money for the probation?

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: Or not. Or Yeah. Or trying. Right. And they've tried for years to try different ways to get the money, And one of the one of the things that they really don't wanna do is put these people through collection, like collection agencies, because that's the last thing we need

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: to do to people coming out of prison. And so you had mentioned this, one of the things that I had heard, and this is just from my experience as a prosecutor, that there's some degree of, if you're offering something to somebody, supervision or any sort of service, if there isn't some buy in from them, and that was part of what had been said to me about, you know, why there are supervision fees. And it never made all that much sense to me, I never heard even anecdotally that that makes sense. But did you all talk about the other fees that probationers might have to pay for some of their programming? So for instance, there's a The restitution. Well, there's restitution, which is a separate issue. But so there might be a probation condition that that's imposed. You have to have substance abuse screening and counseling at probation as expense? Did you have any discussions on We did lightly.

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: You know, they they they spoke about that, and the one thing they made really crystal clear was that none of those fees were going to get changed. It was just this supervisory fee. And did they make it Was there discussion on who those other fees go to? Well, restitution on obviously, yeah.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: Restitution, I'm just gonna say.

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: I'm gonna go to I'm gonna go to Scott on this, because we, we didn't get into the weeds on that. The other fees and where they went.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: I think it's to not VOC, I think it's to, to other agencies, but

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: because this was going to, this was going to DOC. It's DOC.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: K. Any other questions? Yeah. Well, I mean,

[Unknown Committee Member (Sen. Russ Ingalls or Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major)]: Rob asked, I mean, just the genesis of this to to begin with is was it for for buy in and also to some, you know, some other fees that that

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: well, we and we looked at it. I think the committee looked at

[Unknown Committee Member (Sen. Russ Ingalls or Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major)]: it as, like, it was

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: more punishment in a way and An additional punishment. Punishment. As they're coming out, after they've done their time, actually, you know, they're coming out into society. They're trying to keep it together. Yep. And, you know, you're asking them to pay to be supervised. You know, it just doesn't, it didn't make a lot of sense to us. Yeah.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: And just to be clear, this includes folks that haven't been in jail at all. Correct. They might just be people on probation. Correct.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right from

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: the get

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: go. Okay, that's good to know. Alright, so you've kept the private collection agencies option in there?

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: I'm not sure. Did we? I

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: can talk about this one.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. I'll talk. I'll ask you. No. I it's very straightforward and I'm I appreciate what you did and we will seriously consider it.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Any other comments or questions? Great, thanks. Okay, so, George, you want go? Yeah. Let me get into the

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you. Afternoon, everyone. John Brady, pledge counsel.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Here we are. Okay.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: This is a pretty simple bill, and in a second I will pull up I'll pull up the screen share to show you the text itself. I would say the bill is longer than would technically be required to accomplish its purposes, but it's trying to be double, maybe even triply clear that the supervisory feeds could not be in the close, so I'll explain how Could that I get a screen share, please? Okay, page six thirty five, an accolating to eliminating the Department of Corrections supervisory fees. Section one is removal of the actual authority, so just for orientation, we're talking about the section here, Title 28, that enumerates the powers and responsibilities that the Commissioner of Corrections has, so that's a long list of items. But among those items are two things that you see here. I'm actually gonna come back to the first page because it will make more sense after

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I talk about what's on

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: the second page. So subdivision B14 or C14, which is responsibilities, I'm on two. In existing law, so if you've read this without the strike through, the commissioner is authorized to collect a fee of up to the amount of $30 per month as a supervisory fee from each person on the supervision supervision of the department who's on probation, furlough, preapproved, furlough, supervised community sentence, or parole. I can speak to the other pieces, but they're ancillary to that point. They don't mean anything unless you are collecting that fee. There's authority for the commissioner to collect that up to $30 fee. The testimony that the house heard is that it's only a $15 supervisory fee that is collected. So they could impose more, but they don't. So there's the authority to collect that fee. As you see in lines four through six, they would be credited to a special supervision and victim restitution fund established and managed under our special funds chapter. The understanding that we have is that none of this went to restitution, that it was exclusively for purposes of operating the supervision itself. So this isn't striking any restitution. This should have zero effect on restitution. And the last lines of this subdivision are that

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: the commissioner

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: adopt rules governing collection of those supervisory fees. So the language that you see on the top of this page too is repealing that authority to collect the supervisory fee. I'm gonna scroll back up to the first page.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Can I introduce Yes? For a So many of us are attorneys, but many of us are not. So can, restitution, just, I think I know what it means, but can you just say it?

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Pay back victims or

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. Next. So,

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: this does not affect anything about restitution. Can think of this as just a program that's about supervision of folks with these particular sentences, probation, furlough, supervised community sentence, parole, and the like. So one of the things that was authorized in that section that is now struck is rule making authority for collection of those supervisory fees. The only rule making, as we understand it, that has been undertaken by the department on this front is for private collections agencies collecting the experience. You had asked that question earlier about the private collections agencies. This is existing law. Under existing law, the commissioner had the authority to enter into contracts with private collections agencies to collect a number of things, supervisory fees, fines, penalties, and restitution, and then it goes on to speak about the other visas. This is a narrowly focused bill. It strikes the authority to collect supervisory fees, and then as you might imagine, incident to that, you no longer have the authority to call on a private collection agency to collect those supervisory fees. You can think of this as cleaning up. It does not otherwise touch the commissioner's authority to contract the private collections agencies. So for purposes of fines, penalties, restitutions, I. Things beyond the spill, the commissioner still has that authority, but this is just striking the reference to supervisory fees because they would no longer be the authority to collect those in the first instance. So that's why you see the language on page one. Okay. So it's cleaning up the reference there. If we scroll down to section two on page two, begins on line 11, I talked about the bill being double, maybe even triply clear. If we've removed the underlying authority for the commissioner to impose these supervisory fees, then efforts to collect them should stop. But someone might ask the question, what do you do about ongoing supervisory fees that exist that are maybe on the books, in the process of collection, maybe someone's doing path right off to collect those. Like, what do you do about that sort of existing supervisory fee that's been imposed? That's what section two addresses, and it just tries to be extremely impatient. So section A contains the flip of the removal of authority, says now by prohibition, it says the Department of Corrections shall assess, bill, or collect any supervisory fee, or employ any collection agency or other entity to assess, bill, or collect any supervisory fee. You can think of this simply as saying, DOC, you shall not directly or indirectly collect supervisory fees, which to point out, they can't after Section one because their authority to do so has been removed. Subsection speaks to more of the potential ambiguity someone might have as to what to do with existing supervisory fees out there. Subb says that DOC shall forgive all outstanding supervisory fees and eliminate all references to those outstanding fees in its records, and as we heard, it has a web based portal for collecting these, so it would eliminate all references in its web based portal for supervisory fee payments, which if that portal is exclusively dedicated to those purposes, it's supposed to register a portal. Subsection C is DOC shall cease all efforts to collect any of those outstanding fees, including through wage garnishment or tax self debt collection, coordinate with any agency that's made party into that collection to cease collection. And then subsection D, we heard from the department this is not a concern, but this is ensuring that it can't be a problem. Notwithstanding any loss to the contrary, failure to pay a supervisory fee shall not constitute a violation of probation, parole, furlough, or any other sentence. The department testified that in any case, failure to pay as they currently treat it is not a violation of any of these sentences, but this is saying you can't use this as a violation of the NAICS census. Sections one and two, one is removing the authority, and then two is prohibiting use of the thing for which the underlying authority has now been removed. Section three is cleanup of law and rules, and some of this is automatic under the law, so again, this is why I say triply clear, But section three is a rules review. Subsection eight says that DOC shall identify each rule that is adopted by the department under the statutory authority. The call out that you see here is to section one that's been amended because you've now repealed that 102 c 14, the Senate DOC identified each rule that you adopted under the now repealed statutory authority, and for each of the commissioners to notify the Secretary of State of its repeal by operations law pursuant to the ADA, the administrative procedure chapter of our title. The reason that I said automatic is that we do have, under these sections, the Administrative Procedures Act automatic repeal by operation of law. If the underlying statutory authority for rule making has been removed, it is repealed by operation of law. However, the process by which that happens is that the commissioner or head of whatever the agency is, is meant to notify the Secretary of State, which manages the database of the rules, then the underlying authority has been removed so that they can delete it from their system. So that's what says, it's, you're gonna reveal these by operation of law, but just notify the Secretary of State as they are meant to. And then subsection B is saying that internally, DOC shall review its rules, policies, procedures to identify and remove any references to supervisory fees or supervision fees opposed pursuant to the now appealed section. So this is take a scan of your other rules, just see if they're referenced in there, and they need to be either moved or moved. Again, if the testimony of the department is accurate as to what school rule said, the only piece that we heard called out was that collections agency rule that was adopted around 2008, which is, I think, the time that Brett Sweeney was referencing. The last piece here, the effective date, as introduced, it was going to be 07/01/2026. The sole amendment that the committee made was to push this back to 07/01/2027, I think to allow the department some time to have implants business. That is the pool of the bill.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, that's great.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Go

[Unknown Committee Member (Sen. Russ Ingalls or Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major)]: ahead. Ideally, you will be continuing to take money in through this time. Excuse me. A a couple of things. One, if in a sense someone just says, I'm, you know, I'm not gonna pay, what what happens for them? And then the other thing is you'll have some money after this time.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: What do you do with that money? Sure, sure. So I think you're pointing out a few things from the pushback of the effective date. If folks continue to pay their supervisory fees as imposed, and that assumes that DOC would continue Or do that Or not. Because if you Or Yeah. So for folks who do pay, that money will be used, right, for purposes of supervision. If you choose not to pay, it is true that you would know it will be forgiven 07/01/2027. I think that that's the money that you're likely to hear, because I imagine you're gonna talk to correctors about this, who will be best positioned to speak to this, that there's quite a backlog of uncollected supervisory fees, and the testimony was, it's not expected that it will ever be collected, right? That it's essentially just bad debt. So it is true, if you didn't, in this past, at any point, you would be forgiven for that, that you're saying this is such a good, it will not affect

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: credit.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: I suppose I don't know the answer to that question. Don't know if in the, that might be something to ask the Department of Corrections. Don't know if in the first instance these impact your credit. I suppose if you had tasked collecting it, maybe that has some flow through effect. I don't know the answer to the question. Okay. No worries here.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I have similar questions, but, representative Sweeney, did you wanna

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: No. Think it was just like it was 3 and a half million bucks that that's that's bad debt.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: 3 and a half million?

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: And it dates back to a long, long time, and it's it's over twenty years of

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And that's that's fund

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: What they

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: have not state that has, not that collection companies have. Right?

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: It it could be the state. It's outstanding supervisory fees that have not been collected. Whoever the entity is that would be collecting it, which could be the state. It could be contracted through a private debt collection.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, I was kinda wondering why it wasn't effective on passage, or at least some of the portions effective on passage because it seems like we're just creating a model where we get someone a bill and say, oh, you don't have to pay it. And that seems just not good practice. Then do we have a contract with a collection company? And we can find that out.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, was gonna say, I think for both of these questions, the pushing back to 07/01/2027, I would ask DOC because the House agreed to push it back at DOC's request, and if a proposal was, let's make it immediate.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: All right, so we'll ask then.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: That's basically my question, because it seems like we're spending more money to chase after that money, the sooner we stop doing that, better off we should be.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: What I vaguely recall was the acceptance of just updating processing and seizing it. I think the department was concerned that they not accidentally violate the rule, essentially. So I don't know what it takes to implement cessation of efforts, but presumably it is more complicated than is intuitive.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: It always is, but I'm just thinking a two step thing might work. Right, well, goodness, a lot to work on.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I can speak to that a little bit when Yes. Do you want me to switch places with John?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That probably makes sense. Are you good? Are we

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: all good?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Do we have any other legal things? We will, in turn. It'll just get more and more complicated no matter what we do.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Do you guys want me to stay or should I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Maybe just a couple minutes if you have that time. Good

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: afternoon, Timothy. For the record, Scott Moore, Drums Fiscal Office. I'm your senior management program. So if we turn to the fiscal note, I think Ken said he printed it out for you guys.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yes.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I'll put out a couple of different things. The first part of this note does speak to the fact that although the fee allows the Department of Corrections to charge up to $30 a month, their practice is only $15 a month. And there are some people who are exempt from this. But page two of the fiscal note does talk about how this money is being collected. So they currently have three different methodologies for collection of the money. First is an electronic payment portal where someone can sign up for the credit card, debit card, whatever happens to be. That does come with a fee and that fee is not paid by the parolee. It'll be picked up by the Department of Corrections. Just wanna clear on that. Then they have this other method called lockbox, which essentially they have post office box. That post office box has a monthly fee associated with some transaction or per transaction fees. And then finally, there is the potential for a tax setup program wherein once a year, the Department of Correction submits a list accounts that are ninety days old or older for the potential to collect those days through wage garnering. And one thing I would like to point out is on this chart here, we can see this was provided by Department of Corrections. The fee revenue and operating costs for the past five or six years. So we consider revenue has been about $300,000 the past two fiscal years. And I think that's what the Department of Corrections is concerned about, that if we implement it on passage, then they've already built into their budget a line up for fee income to come in to help cover their budget. So we say, okay, great, we passed it today. It's March 19. It goes to the Senate, sign it, great. March looks good. Then there's still three months of the fiscal year where they're no longer getting any revenue and their budget is set up based upon in part getting some of this fees in. So even as part of the Department of Corrections concerns, so pushing it through end of the fiscal year alleviates that concern so they wouldn't have to worry about it in this fiscal year. Okay,

[Unknown Committee Member (Sen. Russ Ingalls or Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major)]: sir. My understanding though, me if I'm wrong, it costs more to

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: implement the So programs it although you're generating revenue, you're also generating expenses as well, so if you eliminate both of those things,

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: I'm not a mathematician. The

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: one thing that the Swissman does look at is the fiscal impact to the state. What it doesn't look at is this other next layer, this, like an onion layer to it. In order to collect the fees and that amount of work that needs to be done by the parole officers and Department of Corrections, it's a cost to the officers' time. On February 4, Department of Corrections Deputy Commission had given some testimony, which the House Corrections Institutions does have on their webpage, and I'll have to send Kim the link to you and see if, and what that does is it suggests that here is the amount of money we're spending on our officers for their times to go collect this. What they said was in FY '25, they spent about $560,000 to collect $303,000 So therefore, their net loss of about a quarter million dollars. And if you were to go look at that testimony, I'm happy to send it all linked to you as well. You'll see that over the past five, six years, there's a lot of rent, if you will. They are essence spending more money to collect the revenue than they're getting from the revenue.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, let me follow-up on that question. Do you

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: have more? No.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So the 560,000, that's part of their salaries, So Base budget, yeah. Are you able to put that into the fiscal note?

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I can update it just to show that additional chart if you're interested. I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: think it's meaningful.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: What this chart just shows is what the impact to the revenues would be. But I'm happy to add that other chart and update it.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, I thought maybe you hadn't put it in because it's harder to look at numbers that are part of someone's salary versus numbers that are

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: something You like are complaining with too, you gotta be careful to make sure you're not mixing and operating on those The personal chart that they used on February 4, it very quickly lays it all out.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, I think that would be helpful to have with this.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Another thing is here in section two of the bill does forgive outstanding debt. That outstanding debt is $3,500,000 If you look at the bottom of our fiscal note, you'll see zero to thirty days is 60,000. Ninety days plus is 3,000,000. It's a big jump in just sixty days. But the Department of Corrections assures me that one hundred and twenty days plus being $3,000,000 it's not just like, oh, six months ago, we had $3,000,000 worth of debt. A lot of this debt is years and years and years old. So their category happens to one hundred and twenty days plus, but realistically it's like twelve hundred days plus. So this debt is really essentially bad debt that they're probably never gonna collect.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, so the 3.5, that does include some late fees but it's not total late fees or even, actually it'd be good to know what proportion of that

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: are paid. The 120 plus is just the inferior parolee who would have paid $30 a month, which the parolee did $15 a month. If you take that $3,500,000 divided by 15, that's how many months parolees haven't been paying.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, you know what, I'm sorry. I was looking at the days as penalties. No. So, this is just the, okay, so the grand total is 3.5.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: 3.5, yeah. That's just

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: dollars 3 without penalties.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, so you're looking at One thing we did look at was, and Russ, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe they said there was 4,000 some odd individuals who would be potentially the pool program. And so when we look at the amount of cost it is, it is like multiple dollars of instances to collect this money. And if every parole officer has to spend five minutes per parolee on it, that's fine if you've got one or two parolees, but when you have thousands and thousands of parolees, they're spending a lot of their resources and time trying to administer this program. One concern being that if they're not doing this, does that mean they can lose an FTE? And the answer was no, they're just spending enough time on this that if they didn't spend time on this program, they can do other things with parole needs, like helping them set up services or whatever else.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I think they have plenty to do. Right. But it's good that you checked that.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, it wouldn't free up a whole position or anything like that.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Yeah, I just want to go back. I want to make sure I was clear. Did you say that the parole officers, the money that's collected goes towards their salaries?

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No, if you look at it mathematically or accounting principles, money in, money out, sure, everything has to balance. But that money does not go to their side. Because if I'm

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: a parole officer, this bill passes, I'm not going to spend any time going after getting any of this money because there's no penalty if they don't pay and in a year's time the program disappears. I got other things better to do with time.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: But I think a lot of this is their work to set up these poorly, make sure they understand how a lockbox option works, helping them with the Right. On a portal. I'm

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: still having trouble understanding, and I guess we need to hear from them, why the a year delay because everything I'm hearing

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's been delayed until It's all about the f y it's all about

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: the budget. Yeah. I understand that. But if the parole officer is not gonna chase after the money, you know, guess is that 300,000, there will be people who will pay just because that's what they're, in their mind, the right thing to do, but I'm guessing that that 300,000 is going to drop to half of, what they're expecting just because parole officers aren't going go after it and the individuals themselves know this program's disappearing and there's no penalty if I don't pay, so why am I going to keep paying $15 a month? I mean that's just where I think reality is.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I can't speak for the Department of Corrections, of course, but that's a good question to ask, Deputy Commissioner next week. Think she said she was going need to help, like what kind of impact would that have on that program.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Good. Well, plenty to talk about. Any other I

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: have as

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: many as you want.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: Which you may or may not be able

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to answer, but Sweeney might be able to answer. First one is, in

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: terms of the operating costs for the, I assume it's for collecting supervision fees, it goes up. Correct. It's market fee.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Do you know why that? I do. If you look at where is it, 2023, it's about 8,000, jumps to 1,200, jumps to 20,000, that's when they instituted the electronic payment for the payments. So now the employees are allowed to pay $50 a month online, 15 a month times 3%. That 3% is being paid for by the government Corrections.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: So I don't remember what the investment was. Presumably the easier way for for supervisees to pay led to less money.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I'm surprised they didn't make the parolees pay for it. Usually they would have the fee. They missed it.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We used the news that I have a concern about passing on, charging them for supervision, and then charging them on the fee on top of the fee. Yeah. The Department of Corrections would say that that is something that they pay for, which is why you see that market increase from 8 to 20,000 in the couple of years. And the second question was, was there any discussion about reimbursing supervisees that have made Not that I heard of, but I was in the room for all our discussion for that screening light.

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: There was. Mhmm. There was discussion. It didn't go very far. Yep. But someone did mention that, and it was my understanding that DOC would have to, like, you know, chew on that and figure that out. Yeah. But I have to say, I think that was a great catch, and I I don't think any of us got it that, you know, that what you're saying is that if you kill this, you know, you know, I think you're right on the money, is that they're they're not gonna have any any incentive to so so maybe the date needs to change, and we need you need to work that out with DOC.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: We'll talk with them.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Yeah. And for me,

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I I'd like to talk about the the reimbursement because quite frankly, people that are paying are response difference.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: Right. You know, it's not

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: a small amount of money, but it's, you know, 300,000 a year. Yeah.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: It would probably be the right thing

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to do. And we should

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: think about how far back are we gonna see.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: Well, right. And that would be scope that we'd be looking at. People are still on probation, people are super, but regardless, it's, you know, those are the folks that are doing the right thing. Know, I always feel weird when we're forgiving

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the debt, and then there are people that have been paying that. Right. No. Good point. I think both is appropriate, but it's okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Alright. Yeah. Good.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: If there's nothing else I can answer, I have another meeting scheduled for another bill.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, well we'll have you back on this. And at some point we're gonna get the capital bill, I'm pretty sure. We'll get on

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I just

[Rep. Sean Sweeney]: got a text on how to get up here.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: All right.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: They are going through markup. They started Tuesday, is that true, I believe? Yes, absolutely.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. We've

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: gone through most of the bill. Up the last couple sections of reallocations. House of DuPont, we hear a little bit again from a couple different witnesses to say, look, a particular million here, million there, a million what will that do for your program? But, Alison, you, Russ, who anticipates to bring this out sooner than later.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So, we'll get it soon.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It'll be a couple days.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Depends on how we define soon. Hopefully, next week. Yes?

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Hopefully. Okay. We'll see. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Great. We'll send our regards.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: And thank you all. Thank you.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I'm gonna go into appropriations and I'm gonna go change all progress that we're working on. Okay. But

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: we still expect the quality that we're used to.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. All over.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: All

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: right. So now we will go into the amendment of 193. Senator Benson, if you want to talk about this.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, mean If you don't mind, thank you.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: The item that we changed this morning was there was a the way that the bill read is that there needed to be a physician and a nurse present twenty four hours a day. And, you know, some people may need that, some may not. And so, because it'll change with the individuals that are actually in the facility at the time was to not require the doctor to be there twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, but to be available. So if that patient or that individual's program requires that, then the doctor would be there, but if they don't then they don't need to be sitting in the facility, to wait four hours a day, that was the change we made this morning.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And that's on page two, lines eight to 10.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, of which draft? Not sure if I remember.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: 4.1.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Right. The Torah's.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: It's a new draft. And I believe you received it today. So we're on 4.1.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yep.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And the the new language is on page two.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Line eight through line 10. So hold on.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's what I was just looking at. But that

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: this says that it has to be there.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, this is where we we were talking about this earlier.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: This this one this draft is from 01:59PM yesterday. No. Two days before.

[Unknown Committee Member (Sen. Russ Ingalls or Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major)]: So it's true. That's that's that's over the time.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. That's the one I'm looking for.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: I don't know. Could you just say that this that

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: lines eight, three, three, three, on page two said something different than what's said earlier? Ensure that a registered nurse provides care to transfer persons twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. That sounds to me like they have to be there. Providing care twenty four hours a day.

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Did you say the word available was put in? That was what we talked about was changing the requirement that a nurse is there twenty four hours a day as we understand it. In the facility. But a doctor is not. And so the discussion was changed that so that they would be available twenty four hours a day, but not necessarily on-site twenty four hours a day.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, let's take a brief

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: Was Kate coming in?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: No, that's what I wanted know.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Oh,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: she is coming in, right? But she's coming in at 02:30. Okay, so let's

[Sen. John Benson (Member)]: She'll have because she was

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: If this is not the right draft, she'll have it. But also the date would have been changed yesterday, which is so that's not right either so it could have been that they didn't update so we'll find out in twenty minutes.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So we said was what the discussion was this morning to make that change. Thank you. Alright so

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: we're