Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon. Today is Wednesday, April 1. We are, as far as I know, not doing any foolish things. Trying not to. So this afternoon we're looking at H559, an act relating to the parole board. We're continuing gathering testimony on that. And today we have Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Department of Corrections. And I believe you know all of us. So thank you for being here. And we did have a walk through and we heard from the rural board staff and so we know generally what's in the bill, but if you could let us know DOC's positions and Sure. Especially if there's any concerns.

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: Absolutely, thank you, Madam Chair. Again, Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Department of Corrections. I think it's prudent to explain that despite my position in the Department of Corrections in the last six months, I was formerly an Assistant Attorney General that was Director of the Litigation Team at Defendant Department among four other AHS teams. Part of that job also included being counsel to the parole board in a kind of secular manner. And so I spent the last four and half years working with Doctor. Ainsworth and the rest of the board insofar as the other side of the table in relation to applications for parole, appeals from those decisions, and violations of parole that the department would bring forth. So my knowledge on this kind of spans both sides of the coin. So I just wanna make that clear. The department has no position adverse to the bill. We support the bill, primarily the advocacy that Director Ainsworth has done in relation to the education requirement for the board. As you all know, the statistics from justice reinvestment indicate that the number of individuals that are on furlough versus the number that are on parole has kind of switched. That it used to be more on furlough and less on parole. Now post Just Street Investment that it's flipped course and there's 700 folks approximately on parole and then the low 100s on furlough that the department manages. So you can see that the caseload shift over to the parole board then logically would also require that the board members get educated and studied in criminogenics, the rehabilitative work, the release plan components and the like. So the department certainly supports the suggestion that they need that support to do their work effectively for this population. And I think, certainly have nothing to add or speak to in relation to the appropriations piece on that. And I think everything else that in here that we've been talking about the last few months is supported by the department. I think the department's role as part of the training and development in working with the director and group and the chair of the board is also another welcome. It's already happening to some extent. I think we'd prefer that it happen more and that would be a positive influence on that relationship as well.

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

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: Another question? Yeah, you said that there was a split between furlough and furlough.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yes, sir.

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: Has there been any adverse effects or it's just, I mean,

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: with people

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: going back into the general population or anything or just kind of the status quo?

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: You know, we can certainly accumulate specific data for you to answer that question. I would say closer to the status quo than not, the individuals tend to, the criminogenicists, they're going to follow the rules whether the department engages in that rule setting or the approval board does. There is a, I will acknowledge there's I call it a wives tale, you get tighter supervision and closer watch if you're on furlough versus parole. That's not accurate. Oh, okay. That's not accurate. Our probation

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Well at least I know I'm not

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: an old wife.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Step one.

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: That's it, I'm doing anything crazy. Need to walk you through that. So, I would say no, and I think the probation and parole officers are cross trained in so far as what, and I think the direction from the parole board has definitely been more specific on what they're looking for by way of violation or conditions. So there's more use of like graduated sanctions and the like to help people before they would be brought back before the board for a

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: violation hearing. But that's consistent in both federal and local law. Can you explain your history and your experience is really relevant to this bill actually. Can you explain or give us samples of the types of legal matters that the parole board had that you helped with? Sure, And just maybe talk about how having a dedicated attorney would be helpful. Sure, it seems to be

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: something that predated even my tenure in that role, struggle to provide representation. Let me back up. Historically what we saw happen was that, as we do now currently, we kind of align things with the superior court process that we do with a violation of predation. What would happen is that the, and this is a violation specifically, the parole officer would notify the board that they believe there's a violation, present the evidence and information, and then be available to articulate what they saw or what they are suggesting happened, and allow the accrual board to then inquire and talk to the victims and the witnesses and whomever relevant to the matter. As the complexities of the law and the complexities of the crimes have increased, so has the defense bar and the prisoners' rights attorneys' arguments and mignation to the defense of their clients in those matters, which put the probation and parole officers in a position of being prosecutors and lawyers, which they are not trained to do. And the complexities of the issues just gained momentum over time. So that required the Attorney General's Office to provide more assistance to the parole board. Specific to your question, the types of matters could be general inquiry on statutory interpretation of something, or Director Ainsworth would reach out and just have a general question about something in that way. They would never be counsel in relation to what the board's gonna do for the individual. Just wanna make that clear. There was some earlier confusion about that perhaps in the infancy of this bill. The Attorney General's office doesn't give counsel on what do you do in this situation. It was more, again, interpretation, training, understanding of the department and what their policy and procedure was. It might require me to reach out at that point in time to the department and get a subject matter expert to go and explain to the board, well this is what risk containment means. This is how we handle the population. So it could be something general like that. And the other thing that I did handle were any appeals that came from the parole board decisions by the individual. Those were, we had a separation on that team of the DOC faction and then the person, it's usually the director of the team that would counsel the Promo Board. But as you can probably ascertain, that's a fine line when you have the team that I was managing would be assisting the POs in the prosecution of the violations. At the same time, an appeal comes out of it and I can't speak to them, I can't look at their materials, I have to do it completely from their record and for the parole board. And so, are often, and there's part of the statute in relation to the training that requires, if it is specific to a violation and the Attorney General's Office is doing the training, the Defender General's team, the prisoner's rights team, is allowed to participate in that training. And that's about as detailed as it is. So as you might imagine, putting a bunch of lawyers in a room to have a training turns into a legal debate in front of the board, and whether the training is effective at that point is questionable. So in general, those were the kind of matters that they would reach out. The frequency of that, I think there was a question on the amount of money allocated and the frequency. They have a very strong director, and I'm not saying that because she's sitting here, I would say that if she wasn't here. So that's helpful. If they didn't have a strong director who had a grasp on the legal nuances, it'd probably more of a need for legal counsel. And the appeals for variety of quantity, you can't appeal a borough board decision, absent there being an underlying constitutional due process issue. In general, their decisions typically stand. So we would see those due process style arguments maybe three to four times a year. Maybe So once a quarter we happen to peel out of that. So that's about the quantity of it that they needed. I think the biggest piece is definitely the ongoing training and as the department changes its process and procedure, I think that's completely relevant to them, understanding what conditions they employ with these individuals and what the impact will be if we, what the understanding will be if there's a violation. So, but I think in general, that's a combination of appeals and general inquiries on statutory interpretation. They would sometimes ask me to be at their meetings to, if they had questions questions that came up in general, we're seeing this pattern, what does this mean, how does this apply? But that was pretty much the nature of it. But again, I just wanted to be crystal clear, Never was a time that we were asked to or gave any legal advice in relation to the adjudication of the merits of who was in front of them.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. Right. Because you're the board's attorney. That's I think that's I find that very helpful. Thank you. Sure. Sure. You know, they

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: they got the sheets on this. Ben, why are you here?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So Mary Jane, is there anything you want us, you think you should know at this point that is irrelevant? Is there anything you'd like to add or It's it's just it's helpful to have Laurie here, and I wanna get all of the appropriate information and recommendations that she might have.

[Mary Jane Ainsworth, Director, Vermont Parole Board]: Sure. For the record, Mary Jane, director of the pool board. I spoke to a lot of the pieces of the bill yesterday when I was giving the overview of the board. I echo a lot of what General Counsel Fisher stated. We this is an initiative we've been working on for a few years, especially around the legal counsel. I'm in full support of this bill. I actually helped write a lot of the portions. It's really looking at modernizing the board, modernizing a lot of this language is from many years ago, and the population of Vermont has changed. Population of the incarcerated and supervised individuals has changed. And also, really giving more, having the pro board, having the option to speak more towards our budget, having our own attorney so we can get that legal advice when we don't feel like we're in a silo, as I said yesterday.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Okay. Thank you. Question, yeah. Just a clarification.

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: So when you talk about having your own attorney, are you talking about having an attorney actually working for corrections full time or are you looking for some kind of contract with a private entity that could then come in and serve when needed?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth, Director, Vermont Parole Board]: It would be a contracted attorney. We're looking at the contracted attorney to serve as needed. And I believe that's how that's how it's written in the bill. And so we would have a contract attorney that would come in and serve as needed. And then I believe that the assistant attorney generals would still be there on top of that to do our appeals in the civil court if they arose.

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: Yeah, I'll supplement that That may sound confusing considering the wall that we have on that team. What change that the department has made in the last few months is to ask the Attorney Generals to not represent the parole officers at the hearing. That creates an adversarial addition to the process that I think is not helpful to the litigants, to the victims, to the board itself. And it also pulls the parole officers out of the business of being lawyers as well. So we've aligned that process with what we do with the judiciary insofar as submitting our affidavit of what we think has transpired, the evidence that supports it, and being there available to make a positive parole recommendation or not, and explain and answer any questions that the board would have as to that violation. So it dialed back, but what that did was, shifted the burden back to the parole board to decide what witnesses they wanted, what questions they would have, and which dovetails with the training. I think that would be required to get them back in the saddle on being able to prosecute their own cases.

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

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: very helpful.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you. All right. So I have some questions generally. Think that's why Scott Morris here.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Morris joined fiscal is here to talk about capital bill, but I did send you an email earlier about the parole board numbers, which I might be able to help you answer.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right, just noticed that the parole board chair was, the compensation was set in, when was this?

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: '5.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh yeah, 2006. So twenty years ago at twenty thousand five hundred dollars and I thought it may have increased since then but it

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Looking at the inflationary factor, Madam Chair, I believe I sent you an earlier that said accounting for what the current dollar value of $20,000 from '26 would be today, in 2026, it's I think $37,000 is what I think I'm So not quite double with.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: But in actuality, I believe they're still paid the same

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: rate. I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: just want to note that and thank them for their service. And I would prefer that we increase that but I don't think I would get very far.

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: Isn't that how this is set up so the 25 plus the 50 to get the 75 that's what I thought we'd get to earn through. So there's the claw clawback of 25 and then 50 is being asked for out of the capital fund to get to 75.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah that's that's for the legal counsel.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Talked about it.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: No, I'm sorry. Let me I'll be more clear on the on page three,

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: the top of page three

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: and this language was not suggested to be changed. It just says the terror of the World War shall be a compensation of 20,500 annually and that was effective 2006. Twenty years at the same rate is sad or very generous depending on the way

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: you wanna look at it.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So that's that's all it was. And I'm not I'm not suggesting that we increase it, but I I'm just noting it for the record.

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: That's a dirtier for what you were talking about. Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And that was my fault.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: I'm sure if I may, Chris Roop, one of the fiscal analysts in my office did write a fiscal note about this bill and it is posted on our website. I'm happy to send it to you so Ken can post it here if you're interested in looking at it.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That'd be great. And it does include the fact that compensation is not increasing. Yes. Right. So, mean,

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: there's the next year. There's there's there's there's there's. We'll wait first. Are we good? Okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Anybody else have anything? So, thank

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: you very much for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks so much. Okay. Bye. And then, Scott, are here. I'm here because I apologize for being late. I wanted to be here earlier to help support the fiscal notice of this bill, but I've been chasing the capital bill around the house all day. So, but I'm here now. I'm happy to give you an update if you're interested.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Sure, of course, yes. Would you like to sit up

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: and I could sit up. I'm one step closer. Again, to the record, Scott Ward, current fiscal office. This morning, Ways and Means, Matt, discussed the capital dust. They passed it out ten zero one, I think it is, eleven zero zero. I can't remember the top of my head, but there was no issues. And then I just now came from House of Appropriations, which is why I'm late. I'll be here for this first part of this meeting. And they also passed it out 11:01. I think it was eleven zero zero. Good. Nonetheless, you know, when we passed out of both chambers outside both committees, they rescheduled to go to the house floor on Friday. I anticipate to open the end of the day by Wednesday. Same. Thank you. Small quick follow-up. Any major changes from the future? No. No changes at all. We did have a couple of questions they had about some policy bits and pieces in the bill, most notably about the Little River lease arrangement that's being made. Police need some questions about how much income that might derive at this point in time. It's truly in the discussion to have any sort of estimate on that. And the House of Appropriations had questions regarding the DCR unit stabilization facility, what's going on there. So other than that, no changes, just some people have some clarifications. If anybody's curious and bored, you wanna go and visit the house floor and listen to number four, you'll hear all about it on Friday morning. Okay. You might have other things going on too.

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

[Unidentified Committee Member (from: Robert Plunkett, Russ Ingalls, Joseph "Joe" Major, or John Benson)]: Another 1,250,000.00 in the Scott Moore retirement. Okay.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: I can either confirm or deny. No, sir. I hate don't you get me the small pigeons for my son. No semblance of impropriety over here. No. I didn't say

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: it.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: None. None. I'm sure.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yes. So when we get the bill, we're happy to come in and everybody and health of the house chair Emmons come in and sit down and go through and explain

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

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: The changes. I know I have the the numbers have changed, but the level of knowledge that she has as to all of the background for all of the lies, it's good to happen to her.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, and she has indicated that she'll do

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: that, which is great. I think we've had another pass, I think last year.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: We did it last year.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Senator Ingalls, we did it when you were sure too. At least the last three years I've been obviously having an absolute Yeah. I thought I had, but I didn't need to interrupt. No.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: No. It's you're never an interruption, and we look forward to seeing you more. More.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: I'll be. Thank you, Scott. Have a good day, Danielle.

[Laurie Fisher, General Counsel, Vermont Department of Corrections]: Thank you.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Alright. So tomorrow we're gonna look at five 05:05 fifty, which is the vendor equity bill. And so we'll have a few. At this point, at least one confirmed and a couple and three invited from DOC, WellPath and the individual

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: that spoke up.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So if there's any particular person that you'd like to hear from, let us know.

[Scott Ward, Joint Fiscal Office]: Okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And then we have H294 Friday. And then we'll get the staff back because the house will be finished. So we can, we'll have access to our people, which will be good. Alright? Alright. Okay, we are adjourned.