Okay, welcome folks. This is Friday afternoon. April 16. And this is house corrections and institutions committee work. And he folks Karen. No, okay. Any concerns Linda, Mary, I don't see your faces. So are there any concerns there between you two? No, not at this point. Okay. Anything Linda. She may not be hearing. Okay. So we have some questions here. Curt and then Michael. Representative Dolan today, what, what happens if the victim really doesn't want to hear it anymore about it? Did you ask him about that? I did. I did because that was one of my original concerns and the piece that came up was that it could change along the way. And so by having it's still there that they reach out that the state's attorney's victim advocate. It could be a simple phone call, a quick email, but it does give them the opportunity. And I guess that they could at the beginning at sentencing, make it very clear. I do not want to be content. I will not change my mind. They could say that at the beginning, but keeping this in there gives the opportunity. To make that decision. And some of the victims of probation, a lot of victims of cases that are settled in probation, do not even register with fans. And that's up to the victim to make that decision. Correct. It's up to the victim to make that decision. Yep. But how this is, is that the state's attorneys, if they, they would still send a letter or reach out to the contact attorney. So I don't know if that answers your question. Fully represents Taylor. I think so. So it says victim of record. Of a motion. File to reduce. So. So there is some. Record that has the victims. Names in it. And at sentencing. See, this is. Okay. So when the, when the. When DOC files the motion for discharge. That's. The state prosecutors would hear about it. And at that point, they would say it. We know the victims of record. So we'll notify them. Even if they're not registered in vans. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Michael. Yes, thanks. I was just.  Just the restitution on the individuals part. And I believe I just wanted to see if everybody recalled if I heard it correctly that. I think it was Matt Valero that said. And I'm still trying to find it in the new language. So I'm looking at the, one of the old drafts is that. If they didn't make. I don't know. The victim hole through restitution. Or. That there was ways of going after them like. Garnishing taxation, you know, any refunds or things like that. Did I. Is that what I heard from them? Do people recall 100% what. Yes, I remember that. And where was that? Was that the, it's at the end of section. I'm just trying to find out a bridge draft, the way it's put together. I don't see. Probation. Oh yeah, it's on section three. So at the end of the new section three. And it's. Oh, okay. At three now. Okay. That's why I wouldn't be deemed in a wood shall not be deemed ineligible for this. Okay. There we go. Yeah. Unpaid restitution fees of search surcharges. And if there are any, then. Then say they all. Say child support. Or possibly they all. Income taxes or whatever it's taken out of that. Okay. So it has nothing to do in this, this, this has nothing to do with the victim being rebate for their loss. No, no. This is to make sure that if there's fees that are. That there's a way to recoup all of that. And I'm not saying that. Um, Charge from the court or surcharges that there's a way to recoup all that. Am I off base on that? Well, it says that we're restitution. I take that as payback. To the victim in my brain, but maybe I'm, Bren would know that better than I, I guess, I don't know. Bren, could you clarify? Yeah. So the orders. For restitution are different. If a person is, if a person is a victim, if a person is a victim, if they haven't completed that restitution, they are not deemed ineligible for this early. Release. But the restitution unit has is the unit that's responsible for collecting restitution from offenders. And they have civil enforcement remedies. Which include wage withholding. Property property leans, attachment and sale of assets. And there may be other, other ways that they can obtain restitution as well.  My house is broken into things were stolen. I never got to die. And, and so it's a little raw with me. When I see this sitting there, I would think you could understand how I could feel a little. I was really shocked about the fact that somebody could be let out when they owe people money for that. And you know, first of all, they violated my home. Second, they took stuff that didn't belong to them. And I never got it back. And then I'm out. You know, I was at a couple of, couple of thousand dollars. Some stuff got returned, found a return, but one item was never returned that's worth in excess of $2,000. And I never got one penny. It's out of my hide. So hopefully that is, so it is simply, I guess, Brenna, I guess I would ask you then. So it simply just says that doesn't deem them ineligible, but it could still be a variable for saying, well, which is still low. 5,000 bucks.  Possibly. That's right. It's up. The judge has the discretion. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah. That, that, that's fine. All right. Thank you. Sarah. Yeah, I just, I wanted to follow up because I remember this coming up. And I don't know if it was with this, the attorney general's office, but for those restitution, just so I'm clear, are those, are those set like when somebody gets a sentence, like what that restitution is, friend, is that part of, that's my recollection that that was also part of the. The same thing. Yes. Okay. So if somebody is, if some, if somebody is, is owed restitution or somebody has to pay restitution, that would be really clear. Yes. Yeah. I hear, I hear, I hear, there is a restitution order that's issued by the court. Okay. Thank you. That's. Okay. I'm here. I just had to check something. I'm here. Okay. Linda. Thank you. So, Bryn, just on the restitution issue, can you just read clarify for me? The judge has the discretion provided the state attorney brings an action. Otherwise it's automatically administrative. So there is no discretion anymore. Correct. Well, the judge has the discretion in terms of the criteria that are in B one a and B. So the judge, the judge, so the commissioner first has the discretion when they're reviewing the eligibility criteria. And then the judge later, once the, what's the motion is filed has to make those determinations about the, the danger that the probationary poses. And also whether they're substantially in compliance with their conditions. So doesn't that only happen if the state attorney brings an action. The state attorney doesn't bring in action the way I understood it, the way the judge said it, it shall be administratively dissolved. So with it, nothing happens within those 21 days. It doesn't matter. It's going away. Right. I understand what you're saying. So the, so the prosecutor has to seek that continuance in order for the criteria to be reviewed by the judge. Is that what you mean? Right. So it. Exactly. So it, it, once it, the probation, you know, request is filed. If the state attorney doesn't do anything, nobody cares about the rest of the stuff because it's administratively. Going to happen. It's going to be a stamp by the judge because it shall declare it. Right. So. Yes, that's correct. So the, so the. The question is that the, the prosecutor follows the prosecutor gets notice of the petition that's filed and it's up to the prosecutor to, to oppose that motion. If they, if they see fit. Right. And that's where I was get, that's where I was saying, so as far as the restitution issue, that doesn't even really come into play unless. There's a motion. File by the state attorney. The criteria. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I still have that. Okay. Thank you. Kurt. Yeah, I'm, I'm still confused. Because. Okay. I'm on a duration of probation. A B and C. Page two. So B says the commissioner, that's all about the discharge and whether the commissioner is going to request a discharge. But C is not part of that and she just says, you shall not be deemed ineligible. Because of restitution fees or surcharge that doesn't give any discretion to the judge. I don't know. I don't understand your question. I'm sorry. Well, I think that I think the point, the point is that. Failure to pay. I think the idea that was discussed in Senate last year, the judge has been very wary of that. They have been discussing in a variety of bills about how. Failure to pay shouldn't mean that you continue to be supervised. Because it doesn't necessarily impact your risk of reoffense. If you can't pay. So they wanted to make it clear that the midpoint review doesn't. Isn't, isn't, you're not ineligible for this midpoint discharge. If you can't pay. And when you say ineligible, there's two places where eligibility is kind of determined, one by the DOC and the other when it comes to the judge, I guess the, so when the judge gets it after the prosecution, the state's attorneys have decided to contest it, this to me is saying the judge can't say you still owe restitution fees or discharge, so therefore I will not put you on probation. This says you can't use those criteria to keep a person from probation, right? Right, it's making it clear because the criteria are there for the judge. It's automatic unless there's a, unless the prosecutor files a motion and then the judge goes through the criteria. So this is there to make it clear that it's not the court couldn't use that as a rationale for keeping a person on probation if they meet the other criteria. Okay, okay, so the judge has discretion with regard to other criteria, but as far as restitution fees and surcharges, the judge can't say you can't, okay. That's right, that doesn't make a person ineligible, right? Okay, good, thank you. If not all the other criteria, that shouldn't hold them back from being discharged. Okay, I'm sorry, I just keep thinking, you know this last episode on the floor where people are picking through things and asking, I keep thinking, boy, we really should understand this stuff before it comes to the floor. So somebody says, well, what's the story with the restitution? Then somebody's gonna, would be nice to be able to explain it. Thank you, I think I got it. Okay, Michael. Yeah, I'm sorry to keep being the dead horse here, but make sure I'm hearing this right. So they, in essence, yes, it's not gonna be used as a criteria, but should it be a criteria? Or if not, does it just have a potential, is there even potential for it just go, like I guess in my case, just go buh-bye, nothing. And nothing ever, the person never becomes made a whole or I'm using the right terminology or, I mean, so maybe do we think about, should it be a criteria? I mean, because I guess in my mind, they sort of haven't met conditions in, but I mean, I know the way this is written, it's not a condition, but should it be? I mean, because, and again, maybe I get it again, and maybe I'm the lone ranger that's raw about it, because I've been a victim of a crime where I didn't get made a whole, but it seems to me, I mean, if I wrong somebody, if I get in a car accident with somebody, I make them whole by my insurance covering them. I pay my deductible and they get their car fixed. I don't know if that's a great analogy, but I'm kind of, you know what I mean? I guess I'm not satisfied. I'm not here, it sticks in my craw, I guess, that that wouldn't be a criteria. And if I'm alone, maybe it'd have to be the outlier and I say I can't support it. I don't know, but it just kind of, I need to hear something that tells me more that that's, and again, maybe I, maybe mine fell through the cracks, maybe I'm the outlier that didn't get made a whole. So I'm hanging on to that, but I don't know what else can be told to make me feel better about it. I don't know any other way to put it. That's just kind of telling how I raw feel about the whole scenario. So these decisions, initial decisions and determination of a person's probation or sentences all done in the courts, correct, Bryn? So any restitution or fees or surcharges would be set at the time of sentencing, correct? Yeah, primarily, I'm not sure about surcharges if that is associated with a non-payment, but yes, essentially those are court ordered associated fines and stuff, yes. So, and the other thing that I heard Bryn saying as well that sending institutions is really looking at the risk of a person's behavior, particularly to reoffend. And they, in the Senate judiciary, feel that restitution or fees or surcharges are not indicative of that risk. And they didn't, if someone is showing a low risk and they're abiding, they didn't feel that fees or surcharges should hold them back from going forward in their life in terms of working through the sentence that was given them. Is that fair to say? Yeah, and just a reminder that this, if you remember this came from, this was a part of the Justice Reinvestment to research that was done. I know it's getting back there in time now, but this was a part of the original recommendation from the Justice Center to amend the way that the state dealt with probationers. So this bill is really a reflection of the stakeholder agreement after you pushed it off last year, after Justice Reinvestment too, you couldn't really quite figure out, stakeholders couldn't quite agree on how to deal with the probation issue. So this is really kind of a holdover from the Justice Reinvestment work that was done last year. I mean, that's all fine and dandy that that's how they feel, but they're one stakeholder, in my opinion. So we're going to move on here because we have more questions. Karen and then Lynn. Well, I just, I just have to say I've got, I have an objection with that not being a criteria. I guess at this point, I don't feel like I've gotten a good, and I'm not saying people are evading it or not answering. I just don't know how to be convinced otherwise that I don't know. I got to think on it. Sometimes things, you can't get convinced. Karen, Lynn, Michelle, and Kirk, I knew there was more came in. So Karen. Yes. So I was going to share some of my experiences with the restitution and restitution unit. It's something that I work a lot on and my work with the Community Justice Center. And so I will say the restitution unit, it is a separate piece of it. And they really work on making sure restitution is collected. And so restitution is issued at the time of sentencing. So that's where it is important to make sure victims have a voice to be able to advocate and say like, I want restitution to be a part of this sentence. And as long as it's a part of the sentence, the restitution unit is doing everything they can to collect that. And so I just want to put that faith in the restitution unit that as long as restitution is there sentencing, it can be a payment plan. They could, like we said, take it out of checks and stuff like there is a way. It can be paused for a bit. Like if somebody loses their job and then taken back, they are very creative in making sure that it is paid. The other piece of that is I think that there is the risk piece of like say people meet all of their terms, the counseling, the programming, all of that. That there is the data of if you keep somebody on probation, just then making their payments isn't going to do it, isn't going to increase their risk. And so that's the reason to it. For some people, I think we heard from the person who was on probation, like their anxiety of being on there is hard. So if you remove that barrier, it actually makes it so they're more productive and can do better, which might help with making payments. And then the other thing that I'll throw in there, I don't know, I'm not obviously a judge, but I could see how a judge might interpret it as, okay, I can't look at the restitution payments as an indicator, but if somebody is constantly late on their payments or disruptive about making payments, like that could be something that they might be able to consider, not the actual payments themselves. So I just feel like there is a solid program in place with that. And I think the piece is at sentencing, making sure that restitution is included. So you're saying Karen, that they can be considered there. Yeah. Okay. All right, thank you. More questions here. Lynn and then Michelle and Kurt, your hand was up and then went down, so. Yeah, that's taken care of. Okay. Carrie, Representative Dole and did a better job than I would have. So where was I? Lynn, and that was me. I sort of have to agree with Michael. Why have restitutions? And if nobody's gonna enforce them?  If you tell them they're not supposed to do something and this is what's gonna happen, if they do it anyway, you sort of have to follow through. And I don't know. I know it's not up to us. I know the judge and the courts do this, but to me, if you're asked for a restitution, you should have to do it. And Karen also said that people are trying and that's fine, but I sort of have to agree with Mike. Hey, let's make them do what they're supposed to have done. They probably got into this mess from doing something they shouldn't have been doing. So anyhow, I'll be quiet. Thank you. So does it the restitution piece and all of that go through a separate unit of the court? Is that what you mentioned, Bryn? Yeah, the restitution unit is responsible. It's not the court, it's the restitution unit that ensures that the person pays the restitution. And like I mentioned earlier, they have civil remedies. So it ultimately, it may be a court that enforces the payment plan if a person isn't paying, but the criminal court isn't the one that goes after the person. So I hear the concern about not having criminal court supervision over a person is concerning to some, but I think I imagine the restitution unit really looks at themselves as being quite distinct and separate from the criminal court overseeing a probationer. And they are the ones that are enforcing those that have restitution orders. So could a restitution have been made in a different form and the victim not know it? Do you know that answer? If Barnard wages or taxes of some kind? That is how restitution is sometimes paid if the person isn't voluntarily paying it or able to pay it. But I don't know about if the victim knows that or not, that I don't know. Michelle? Yeah, I was just gonna speak somewhat along the lines to what Karen was saying to some of Michael's concerns. I mean, when you look at the time after a crime has been committed, one of the things that happens in my experience in restorative justice is that sometimes people are doing work in response for part of their sentence. It's not just about cash. So for example, I worked with youth for a number of years and I worked with a young man who had committed some vandalism and he was sentenced to doing a very extensive amount of community service, part of it at the business that he had done the vandalism at. It wasn't exactly a calculation of, oh, he damaged $500 worth of things, so he's doing $500 worth of labor. Like you couldn't, it's not as clear as that, but the idea was he was gonna be giving back to the person that he harmed through his actions and healing the harm in that way. So, I mean, I think there are different ways that justice can be done. And it sounds like for you, Michael, you were left really unsatisfied with the way your situation was resolved. But my experience, and I think also for Karen working at a community justice center, there are a lot of creative ways that the justice system can work to help people repair harm. And I think in a lot of cases, from what I gather in my experience recently and from what we've heard from some of our other people giving testimony, the system often does work to hold people accountable and have them follow through with those commitments. So it feels to me, I personally am ready to trust the system, to work in these cases, to come up with something that is fair and that is gonna work in the interests of the individual and in the community. Yeah, hearing those kind of things is good for what you said, Michelle, and what you said, Karen, that's better and I'm just hopes, I'm in hopes that maybe mine fell through the cracks and nothing got done then based on what the two of you were saying. So thank you for that input. So other folks, is this gonna derail the bill for folks, this particular section? Other concerns of the bill before we, Linda, did you have anything you wanted to say? Shh, yes, sorry. Yeah, I mean, the only then has nothing to do with derailing the bill at all. The only concern I have is that word shall by the judge at the first paragraph. I know it was one judge, she said he could live with shall. I know there's a lot of judges who probably couldn't. I would prefer may only because that forcing something into administrative rubber stamp kind of bothers me, but all of these other questions that have arisen would be able to be looked at if it was may up there versus shop, but that's just my position has nothing to do with derailing the bill. I think there will pass to mine. I understand what you're saying, Linda, but I think on the other end of that, people are trying to make sure that there's geographic continuity throughout the legal system in terms of depending on what court you're in, everyone is treated the same. Absolutely, I get that. But when I'm hearing all these other questions down at the lower end, they could be dealt with up there if the judge wanted to say, hey, you know what, restitution's fine. It's good the way it is. As opposed to somebody saying, well, how do I come in as a third party somehow and intervene? So it's just a strong word, but it's okay. So Curt and then Karen. Just a little, I need a little clarity because I'm not familiar with the Center for Crime Victim Services. Is that within the courts? Is it separate from the courts? Where is that in the whole judicial system? Do you know, Bryn, or is that, Karen, I know you work pretty intimately with some of this. So maybe Karen. I know, and I was just looking up the link for it. I just know it as Center for Crime Victim Services. I don't know what department it falls under. So maybe Bryn has a clearer. So it's a standalone agency that works with other agencies. So the restitution unit is a part of the center. And my understanding is that they work with the prosecutor's offices to make sure that notifications are getting to victims and all of that, but they are an independent. They stand on their own. I'm not a total expert on this. So forgive me if that's not a great answer, but that's kind of the extent of my knowledge about Crime Victim Services. Just so, are they similar to like the network? No? No, they're different. And one thing I was going down that road. I'm not going down that road.  Was it for something else? Yes, I just wanted to follow up to Representative Morgan's piece, because I think that's an important piece that we're learning about was going through some of these bills is the victim voice in this. And so I know we have a full plate this year, but thinking for next year of like ways that we can make sure that victim voice is included along the way, because I think that is where often the justice system, you know, it doesn't serve the victims well. So I think with this bill, how we've added that piece of making sure that victims know upfront about this whole process is key because I think as Representative Morgan shared, like if you're not in the loop of knowing all these different opportunities and pieces that are available, you can really fall through the cracks and it's not okay. And so I just want to put that on our radar screen to keep having that conversation. Thank you. Michael? So can we talk about what Linda said? I like the idea of May. I reread that with May and that makes me feel a whole lot better. Is that going to be any big deal if we put May instead of Shell? I'm a whole lot more on board with May. It will come back as a Shell. This is a Senate bill. It's amending a Senate bill. It will come back with a May. I guarantee it. Oh, you think they're going to insert May? No. You said it will not come back as a Shell. They won't accept a May. How do we know that? Because they passed it over to us with a Shell. That was pretty strong that this is the whole reason. May be they won't notice. Right. Of the report. This is from last year, we had the Justice Center do a report back, work on this. This was the recommendation. Senate Judiciary has vetted this and worked it through. They felt strongly about it. This is for equal justice across the state. So you don't have one judge doing one thing and another judge doing something different. And it comes over in a version. People, they're going to stick by it. Well, but we're changing other things in it, aren't we? We're clarifying to really make sure that victims are notified up front. And that tracks what we did in S18 for that. And that was a request of the victims group. So what if we put it in there and they, so if they do send it back with that change, I mean, they're going to, they're going to go back to us one more time anyway, right? Let's see if we have the votes in the committee first to change it from Shell to May. This committee first, that would be the first process. How many folks would like to turn the Shell to a May for a straw vote at this point? Well, just a second. But good. It's a straw vote. I mean, I'm just trying to get through this. Yeah, but I think it would be good to explain a little more of the process. I don't know whether Representative Morgan knows the whole process. I mean, what you say is true. We could send it back to the Senate. You mean? We could send it back to the Senate. They could change it back to Shell or May. We could go, you can only go back and forth so many times and then there would have to be a committee of conference. And then you'd get into the haggling about whether it should be Shell or whether it should be May or what else could be given up or what should. So it's a question of whether we want to go down that long path of going back and forth and negotiating. But it's, I mean, there's nothing that says we can't. It's just a question of whether it's worth it and whether and how it'll ultimately come out. It sounds like the Senate is pretty adamant that they would like to have Shell in there. And so it would probably, as the chair says, come back as Shell and then we'd have to deal with it again and see whether we want to push it to the point of a conference committee. And then you're, you know, and all this takes time. So it's a question of whether it's worth it and that's up to the committee. I mean, I can see that it's, I see what you're saying, Kerr. But I mean, have they specifically said to us that it's Shell? I mean, I know they put that there but do we know for a fact that that one word is a must do on their part? Yes. That was the original, that was the original request for the, for the bill. Rarely does the Senate use the word Shell. They're usually a little bit more soft soaked and for them to use Shell is usually they're pretty set for having that word used. Okay. All right. So are we okay with Shell, folks? I just want to be really clear about there are many appearances of the word Shell. So I just want to make sure that I'm following the committee. We're talking about in section four. Is that right? No. Section three, I believe. Section two. Well, it was two in the old one. It's now three. I'm sorry. Yes. Now it's great. Yeah. Two point. We're going to talk about section three, page two, line 10. Yes. Yeah, the old one. Yeah. No, the current one. Page two, section three. We are on draft 2.1. Yes. This graph we're working on 2.1. Section three, page two, section three, line 10. The sentencing court shall terminate probation and discharge if the following A, B, and C are in place. So that's some levels of proof there that have to be met before. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was I was thinking substituting May 4, page three, line five, a probationer may not be deemed ineligible. But anyway, I'm probably slicing. We're still on the restitution piece. Yeah. Well, that's not going to come back as a May because of testimony that the Bryn gave that judiciary is looking at a lot of legislation about fees and surcharges that that won't hold people back from some of their sentencing because it's sentencing is based on risk. So they're definitely not going to be changing that one. Yeah, well, it it. Yeah, I can see it when I see what Sarah saying, shallows use in multiple places here, but it could be substituted that were in multiple places. But all right, well, let's press forward. I guess first, it is what it is. I'll have to either live it or not with it. Thank you, Linda. Just so for a representative copy, it was online. And it was just regarding the administration, the administratively dissolution of the judge. That's it. So it's if you changed it to May, it could deal with a lot of these other issues, but it's not. It was just a clarification from me. OK, don't take it beyond that. OK, so whoever our business presents us on the floor, if anybody asks you that and you have a problem, yeah, I just misunderstood which which piece Linda was talking about. So now I see it. I got it. OK, folks, can we start the line by line at the very beginning? And we are on draft two point one. OK, two point one because bring has to go somewhere. So my print to be around if possible. So let's start page one section one is the purpose of probation. Representative Evans, are you wanting something from me right now? Or are you all just reading the bill? We're just reading the bill line by line. But I know you have to be somewhere soon. And I just want to get through it in case we need to to clarify something. But I'm doing the line by line. Thank you, Bryn. So section two, this is the new piece that we worked up at the request of the victims. Services that at the sentencing, the prosecution would notify the victims that midpoint review is available might be available. Anything from folks section three? This is the duration of probation. And this sets up the motion to discharge. In B one. So one of the conditions you have to the state's attorney has to prove the person's not a risk to the victim or the community or they have has to also has to prove by a higher standard or proof that the person is not in compliance with their conditions of probation that are related. To the rehab of the person, the victim or the community. Anything else in section three? Section four goes over to page four. The new piece is the conditions of probation and midpoint review. And at the top of page four, you've got the review and the recommendations for discharge of the program. And it says the DOC would file a motion if the person has not been found to violate conditions of probation in the six months prior. Hasn't been sentenced to certain crimes that are listed here and has completed those rehabilitated and risk services, risk reduction services that were a condition of their probation. And we had the new language there. Question, Madam Chair. And those those crimes specified in subsection B. Are those remind me what those are? Are those just the listed crimes, the big 12 or something? Or what are what are those? Oh, I have a document that has them. If some if you want me to send them around, because I I did look into those. Why don't you do that? That would help the reporter, the bill. Yeah, they're both there. The first one, subsection six is like domestic assault. Sub chapter seven is stalking. Chapter seventy two.   That would be great if you could send that around, Kurt. Thank you. It would be a help. The reporter. Anything else on that section? So then you go to number two and three on top of page five. The probationer doesn't meet that criteria or if the court denies the motion. Second bite at the apple, so to speak. And then number three is where the prosecution, the state prosecutor would attempt to notify the victim at the time of the motion to discharge. And then number five is a report. The DOC is going to collect the data regarding these midpoint review, the number of folks of motions filed, the number of folks that have been reduced, are terminated and that report would be done by August of next year. In the previous year. So it gives a good year of data collection. And then there might be some further recommendations of legislation. And then section six deals with the Sentencing Commission. I just sent that list out. OK, thank you, Kurt. Yeah. And that report will come back in October of this year. Adam, chair. Yes, I have a question on that. And I apologize if we did hear, but did we hear anybody from the Sentencing Commission or I asked? I remember I asked that question and I think. We didn't. We said Judge Zona with a head of the commission. And I asked that question and I asked that of the judge, I believe. It's out of somebody of the judge. We didn't hear from them, did we? Did they hear this in the Senate? Yes. Yeah. This is a report. I mean, the question would be whether they were OK with doing the report. I'm assuming is what Rep. Dolan is behind that question. I do have a note here that October 1st is doable. And that came from Judge Greerson, because I remember I did ask. About that. I've got that in my notes. Yeah, it is doable. And I know from last year, if there were issues happening in the Sentencing Commission with their workload, that would have come to the surface when they were doing this bill because there were some issues in 1.33 last year when we were working. And there was a lot of requests of the Sentencing Commission. And they said, wait a minute. So so then this bill becomes effective July 1st this year. So any outstanding questions before we move on to a vote? I would entertain a motion to vote out as 45 favorably. As amended, there'd be draft 2.1. So moved. Is there a second? I'll second it. OK, it's been moved and seconded that we pass out as 45 favorably. And it would be draft number 2.1. Is there any further discussion? If not, Karen, please call the roll. Yes, Representative Taylor. The muted. Yeah, that takes me a little while to unmute. I'm slow. I'll remember that, Kirk. Thank you. OK, yes, Representative Taylor, Representative Sullivan. Yes. Representative Morgan. Yes. Representative Martel. Yes. Representative Dolan. Yes. Representative Campbell. Yes. Representative Boslin. Yes. Representative Batchelor. Yes. Representative Morrissey. Yeah. Representative Coffey. Yes. And Representative Emmons. Yes. OK. So I would like to have Karen be the reporter of this bill with Karen, you feel up to it. And then you've worked in some of the probation world and some understanding of it. We will give you backup.  Bryn can also help you as well for that. So we need a clean copy of draft 2.1 to get down to the House Clerk's Office. Karen, you're the reporter. I'll give a heads up to Betsy and Melissa. And then I'm not sure in this electronic world how everything works. I think Melissa will contact you, Karen, but you need to relay that you're the reporter and that the vote is 11-0-0. OK. So let's shift gears before we break. Bryn, thank you. Have a nice weekend. Thank you. You too. Just a good weekend. Bryn, you've got nine minutes to call your own. Call it quick. I know. Nine minutes on your own. Bye, guys. Thank you. Madam Chair, may I ask a question? Yes. Is it likely this will be for Tuesday? Is that what I should prepare for Tuesday? I meant to say that. I'll be on notice Tuesday. And maybe one thing we might be able to do is just have a short, maybe folks, short presentation and caucuses to see. But they may have a lot of items as well in both caucuses. So that kind of goes back and forth. For that, let me get an email out to Melissa here real quick. I can. Hopefully her email will show up. Yeah. Oops. Been too many fours here. I'm emailing Karen. I'm emailing Melissa at the clerk's office. And I've indicated Karen that you're the reporter. So she may connect with you. Just notified them. And I think Bryn just sent out a clean copy as well. And that was sent to you, Karen, and to Phil. So that's the copy you're going to want to report on. And it's a strike off. So that will make it easy. And it will be printed in the calendar. So that just makes life easier for folks so that they don't have to go back to the original bill and then look at those particular sections that we amended. Easy sounds wonderful. That's why I wanted to do a strike off. If we weren't in the Zoom world, it might be a little different. But in the Zoom world, it's just easier to do that. And Karen, I'll send you the list of witnesses. Yes, you're going to need that. Thank you. I'm going to be busy this weekend. Great. You'll be fine. So I just want to quickly shift gears to S3 and just give you folks a heads up in terms of what's happening upstairs in house health care. They've really done a lot more work on this than we have, which I sort of appreciate because we've been a little tied up. But if you go to our webpage, we do have the document that Katie McLean has been working on. She's their legal staff. And health care is looking at this this afternoon was my understanding. It's listed under Bill Lippert. And they don't have the bill officially either. They're doing the same drive by we are and we're all trying to coordinate with House Judiciary because they're the ones that have the bill. And House Judiciary asked our committee as well as house health care to look at section five and section six. So section five deals with that assessment of mental health services. And they've done some work on this. You can see it where it's highlighted. We did hear testimony about the date that that should be extended out. They put in January, what test was testified to us was April of 2022 by both the commissioner of corrections and the commissioner of mental health. We sort of suggested March. And I see here they have January. So they're looking at it today, I believe. We may wanna recommend maybe March, January might be too tight, but they may have different information than we do. So I'm not sure. They had talked well in House Judiciary, they had talked about either six months or two a year. Right, right. So- Is this for the work study? This is the assessment of the mental health services. It's not the forensic, it's section five. It's the assessment of mental health services that are being provided to folks who are incarcerated. And this is with Department of Corrections, mental health would do an inventory and evaluate those mental health services that are provided within DOC. And there'd be a report to our respective committees. So the question is, when do we get that report and how long is it gonna take them to do the work? And I think what healthcare committee has done has even extended a little bit in terms of what they look at.  There we go. Okay. I need to be faster on the trigger for that. This doesn't deal with the data, it deals farther down, do you want me to wait? Let's wait, because that's where I'm headed. So they wanted to be a little clearer in what was inventoryed and what was covered. That was the one thing and they did add a few things. The other thing that they've done is they were concerned if you set the basis of comparing what's offered within corrections and comparing that to see if they're different than services available in the community. We went through this with a concern of healthcare committee in the past where they're really concerned about community services for mental health. So they're wondering if that should be the baseline or not. And I think some of their language may have addressed that. I have not had to walk through this language either. Katie's the one who has drafted it. So I just wanted you folks to see it in concept. I'd like to do a little further work on this more on Tuesday when we might be able to have Katie and or Bill Lippert to talk about it because they haven't finalized it upstairs either. They're working on it as a draft. So they do have here recognizing the comparison but does not necessarily establish the standard of care for best practices that is new. And then they want to really see the comparison of the different types and frequencies and timeliness of mental health services among our correctional settings but particularly including the differences with our facilities because there could be different operations at different facilities and particularly between the men and the women's facility. And Woody Page, what I heard, Woody Page up at healthcare committee also asked about the out-of-state beds. So that's why that was added in there too. Mental health services provided to Vermonters and the out-of-state facilities. So that's new. The other thing that they were concerned about our medical and mental health services are provided with an entity we contract, Vital Core. They were concerned upstairs that that should be an item as well that there's an assessment of how to use the for-profit entity that we contract out for healthcare services and how that affects the cost and quality of care for that. So that's an addition. I have a question about that later after. So why don't we go to Kurt? Have we hit your question yet, Kurt? Mine's number three, line 18 or actually line 19. Okay. So why don't you go with Sarah? This is something that's usually spotted. So anyway, the or at the end of that sentence, I'm thinking it should be an and. That's usually something that they would pick up. Yeah, well, it's a draft. Sarah and then Marcia. So this is interesting. I think it's interesting what they've added. And I'm just curious, how does the healthcare get evaluated in corrections in general? Like this is a general. Like it doesn't go through that committee. It doesn't sound like, right? Like the way that, I mean it's. No, they can't. Well, what happens is DOC just contracts out. And I don't know if there's gotta be oversight of that from the secretary of the agency of human services. It's not done in isolation within DOC. DOC goes out for the contract. And, but that's all in conjunction with the secretary of the agency of human services. This will be interesting. I think they'll get some interesting information, but also I'm just, it makes me wonder how we have oversight over that aspect of correction. So it sounds like it's something that we might be looking at next year. I'm Marcia. I was just wondering something we haven't heard anything about this week. And I know we switched from Centaurian to Vital Core, but how the MAT deal was doing the MAT. No one's mentioned it at all this year. I know I've thought about that. And, you know, I think, I think part of it is because we're not in the building, we're doing everything on Zoom. And I think also it's a new committee that we have and it was just trying to get our legs underneath us for the capital budget and then understand some of the nuts and bolts of DOC, of corrections policy before we get into deep dives. Like we didn't deal with community high school of Vermont this year. We haven't really dealt with how someone gets to an out of state bed. We didn't deal with MAT. We haven't really looked at the healthcare contract or mental health contract. We haven't done some of those items that we would do normally. And I think again, because we're such a brand new committee and we're all working on Zoom, that it's really difficult.  And then, so we might be able to use some time between now and the end of the session for MAT. Have Annie in and talk about it.  I don't know. And maybe this report will bring it out. Yeah, they might, might occur. Maybe in partial answer if representative Coffey was what her question, but within DOC, there is a director of healthcare or something. What was it, Ben? Somebody I think it was last time. Yeah. Yeah. And they may have changed the persons of doctor. Oh, aside. Yeah, but aside from that person, that's kind of a consultant half thing. But within the DOC department, there was a person was, he was going down to Mississippi and making sure things were being done correctly. There's oversight within DOC. They don't just hire and say, okay, you guys go at it. But maybe that's not what representative Coffey was asking, but I remember it seems to me his name was, first name was Ben, but I can't remember much more. They've had so much changes in there. I mean, we can get some folks in and really talk about this when we, it was hard enough bringing all the new folks up to speed in terms of what corrections is in the terminology. And when you're dealing with probation and we've been dealing with furlough and we've been dealing with all of that, you kind of have to bring committee members along to know the different statuses and know the process in order to work on the legislation. So some of this other stuff got put aside because we just didn't have the zoom capacity, zoom room to do all of that, deep dive. We'll do more deep dives next year when we're back in the building. So I just want to clarify, I think for representative Taylor's question, my intent was to find out, I don't think it's exclusive of what you were talking about Kurt, but it's also like, what are the mental health services that we get in this contract? Like what do we get for in this coverage of, this is one of the biggest healthcare systems in the state. And so what I think what's good about this bill is it kind of gets at that, like what's covered in comparison to the quality and the kind of care that you can get outside of corrections, I think is where the healthcare committee is coming from. So I think it's going to yield some interesting reports and lead to some good discussion. And then number four, I believe maybe you, this one assessment of whether the department mental health should provide oversight authority with whom the DOC contracts for healthcare services, that's going to be interesting. And then whether the MOU that's currently in place is adequately addressing the needs of those individuals with severe illness or in need of inpatient now, who was here when we did that work for MOU with them and DMH? Was it Marsha and Mary? And Lynn, were you on the committee then? I think that was three, four years ago we did that, right? We did a lot. Which MOU is this? But is this the one? DOC. Is this the one that I was talking about before? Where the, yeah, I was here. Beds aside. Yeah, Kurt was here. Yeah, well it was one, two, three, four, five of us, right? We're here. Okay. I was here physically, but I don't know why there I was. You're meant to be. I don't know if I was paying attention. That was my first session, right? Kurt, you're always paying attention. Yeah, we had a lot of people sitting in the room at that point. I remember that one. I had a lot of people sitting, all this, a lot of stakeholders and lots of folks. I think we did MAT that year too. We had good work. That was represented as Connor's work. Whose work? Representative Connor. Oh, that's what he wanted. He was on there, wasn't he? Yes, he was. When he was there. And Butch was the lead person on MAT. Butch did a lot of work on MAT. He was one of the lead folks on that one. Well, we know it wasn't supposed to cost millions. It was supposed to cost thousands. We had to go up to appropriations with our tail between our knees. Between our legs on that one. We did it. Okay. So that's what they've done to section five. Now that's their draft. And then section six is the forensic working group. And this is where they've really done some work in it. And we had testimony from commissioner, deputy commissioner Fox and commissioner Baker on this. And this is the direction that they worked up with deputy commissioner Fox. And it would be this working group would have the interested stakeholders that would provide expertise and recommendations on how to carry out section B and C. And the concern was with the language as it was introduced in the bill. See very prescriptive that yes, we're doing a facility. And they wanted to really clarify that that we're not at the point of doing a facility. We're at the point of trying to figure out how to deal with the competency issue and how to restore competency. That was really the focus. So the language is to reflect that. So if they're not doing a facility, then they've taken out BGS because there's no need to look at trying to find a facility space. So BGS has taken out in terms of who is listed. And I think, and they've also changed who is on there as well. Yeah. They got 15 people. Michelle, can you mute yourself? Michelle. Michelle, can you mute yourself, please? And actually it'll be, my husband's going to do the pickup. So let's say we're on. I will do that. Yeah. Is she ordering pizza for all of us? Yeah. Send some of my way. You mute us all so I can unmute. Okay. Great. So they did change the makeup for the group over here. Yes, the 15 people. So you've got DOC, which was on there before. And then you get Dale, Disability Aging and Independent Living. Then you've got States Attorneys and Chairs, which was on there before. The Attorney General was on there before. Defender General was on there before. So then now you've got the Director of Health Care, Director of Health Care Reform was on there before. A representative appointed by Vermont Cares, that was there before. Legal Aid, that was there. Two crime victims represented by the Center, that was there, and the Mental Health Ombudsman. That was- There's a couple of things that are not there that were. Yeah, I'm also trying to figure out. There was BGS, you've got VAS on there. You've got two individuals instead of one with lived experience and mental illness and any other interested party permitted by the Commissioner of Mental Health. So which ones did you pick up at all that we didn't put in? Well, we heard that from the Chief Justice that somebody from Judiciary would be good to include since they're on all the other working groups on related subject matter. There was a judge in the Medical Society. And Vermont Medical Society, it was my other note. And I don't know if that's covered by- VAS. Yeah. Covered by VAS. Yeah. But VAS was on there to begin with, wasn't it? No, it wasn't. No, VAS was not on there. Yes, it were. Yeah. VAS was on there. Yes, thank you. So that I think then I would say that the Vermont Medical Society didn't see themselves as being included in that and they had asked to be part of it. I don't- But that's healthcare committee's world, not mine. All right, so. Well, I can relate that to Bill. You don't want it too big either. So then they have this coming back. Where am I here? They did change the date too. For this note, they didn't. August 1st, it's still August 1st. Okay. Too many pieces of paper. This is where you need your legislative staff to walk you through, not have your chair. So then they said by February 1st of next year that they would submit a preliminary report to our respective committees on any of the gaps that they're starting to see. And that's what deputy Fox mentioned. They could do it kind of sequential phase in the reports because it's going to be very involved and entailed. And this is what the report would need to include. So they've really rewritten this whole section. Review competency restoration models including how cases where competence competency is not restored, how that's addressed. So it really focuses on restoration of competency instead of a facility. Remove models, review models used in other states to determine public safety risks and means used to address the risks. Consider due process for defendants held without adjudication of a crime and recommend processes regarding other mental conditions affecting competency or sanity, which could include an intellectual disabilities, TBI and dementia. And then based on these recommendations in this preliminary report, the department would then submit a secondary report, a second report to legislative oversight committee on it before July 1st of next year on whether a forensic treatment facility is needed in Vermont. So it would be a good year to determine that. And then a year from this next January, which is a new biennium, newly elected representatives and senators would then receive a report, the final report on any recommendations that are made going forward. So that's in a real nutshell, I think. The other thing too that they're really concerned about upstairs is this is gonna take some resources because it's not just looking in state, they're also gonna have to be drawing on professionals from other states. So Representative Lippert gave both myself and Representative Gradd a heads up that we need to really discuss resources, which means the bill then goes up to a probes and talk to the chair of a probes for resources. So that's where we are. I don't think we wanna get it in depth in this this afternoon, it's really, but I think the direction that the healthcare committee is really helping us, do folks feel that way? I think it's really helping us because we were really playing catch up just in understanding forensic because it was a new world to so many folks in the committee where healthcare kind of deals with that because they have mental health and their purview. So they're more aware of some of these moving pieces than we are. We're more aware of the corrections piece to it. So I appreciate the work that they did, but I wanted the committee to make sure that you're in the loop to see what's happening upstairs. So Alice, we will be taking it up Tuesday or no? I'd like to take it up Tuesday. And Phil, I know we don't really have much of a schedule for next week per se, but I think on Tuesday afternoon, if we could find, if we could see if we could get Katie MacLinn or somebody maybe from healthcare to help present this to us or give us an update on where a healthcare committee is. Is it only on sections five and six? Yes, yes, that's all we're looking at. So that's right, because as I said, how judiciary would like to kind of have a, what we're feeling on Wednesday morning. So we need to work on this Tuesday afternoon. And I know that Representative Lippert wanted to bring it up in his committee this afternoon. So we may, there may be a new draft. chances are there probably will be a new draft on this after today. So we'll, we got to figure that out Phil. So you might want to connect, you might want to connect with their committee assistant. Stay in the loop that way. All right. And connect with Katie and see where she is. Or when you connect with your counterpart up in healthcare committee, maybe there'd be a member, person could reach out and see if there could be a member from that committee that could come down to our committee and present it. If Katie can't. Okay. Just kind of coordinate there for Tuesday afternoon. S3 is all they're working on today, according to their agenda. Yeah. Yeah. So any, I got the cell phone, I got the other phone here. And I'm going to mute myself. Okay. Now it's going to voicemail. Anything else before we finish up for the week? Our work is winding down. Yippee. We're doing good. I know we're tired. You're tired. It was a nice having. Are there any thoughts of what the Senate has done with the Capitol Bill? Yes. Well, sort of. Yes. I can only imagine. We're doing two things. Oh dear. It's very equalized. That's all it is at this point. So Senator Benning is going to come in and talk to us. Oh, goodie. He's going to come in and talk to us. He offered, I was going to suggest it. Their real concern is sinking of the Adirondack and they are going to allow the reefing of the Adirondack. Senate Natural Resources Committee did sign off on that because the permit had already been issued by D. That shouldn't have even been a factor. No. Well, he has some legal opinions, legal from Michael O'Grady, legal analysis, and he wants to go over that with us, that you can't undo a permit that's already been issued. Oh, that's a joke. I know that should never have even been done. I know, but. Why do we even talk about it? So that's one piece and the other piece, they're looking for money for walleyes. Aren't they always looking for money for walleyes. Tell them to fish for the salmon. That's all they did, period. That's what I'm picking up at this point. Oh my God. Hey, we did excellent work. Mary, the two of them will be the fairy. That's why. They didn't have bothered to go for the rest of it. They're working on the rest of it. So Kurt, you have your hand up. Yes. Is the Senate worrying about the language that goes with the 1.5 million for corrections? I think they're, I'm not sure. I think they're looking at, I think they're comfortable with the language we put in. That's what I'm seeing. And BGS, I think is gives them enough direction to figure out where to go between now and January and being a little bit more, they've got to do preliminary work and then come back in January and then really dig into knowing the lay of the land going forward. I mean, everybody's in agreement. We replace the women's facility with both a reentry facility and a incarcerated facility. Everybody's in agreement with that. Nobody disagrees with that. So that's a big step forward. That's a big step forward. So they're all in agreement with that. So we're on the same path, we're on the same way. I know Joe Benning is, he says, come on, let's stop talking about it, let's do something. And that was surprising coming from Joe, I thought, but. Yeah, we're two years late. We were ready two years ago. We certainly were. Okay. So they're working on that. So when the bill comes out of Senate institutions, which will probably be next Tuesday, it then goes to Senate approves and it will probably be back to us by the end of the week because they don't hang on to things very much over there. So, and I know that Joe was really working not to have a conference committee. So, that would be great. And I'm assuming we would really know what's in the bill. We'll know on the 20th, but that could change a little bit in the Senate approves depending. So in the next week for sure, if not before, we'll be doing a little bit of work on that. And then go from there, concur maybe, we'll see. Karen. Yeah, a question on that process, just hearing that they passed it by their natural resources committee. Is that something that we would consider or explore? We could, but it's a day late and a dollar short. We were just kind of caught. I think if we were in the building and there would have been more, you could have coordinated better with other committees. That's what happens when you're in the building. There's a lot more coordination that happens because you run into everybody. There's a lot of things to share that have just because you're not coordinating. Yeah, you don't have access. You know, like the chair of natural resources committee sits in the row behind me on the floor. And during a break, it's like, oh, you know, we've got this issue. Do you guys want to look at it? Those kinds of things now take an hour to have a conversation with a colleague where normally you could just lean over during, we're in recess for five minutes. You can just run over and talk to somebody. And now it's just taking so much longer in the bandwidth just isn't there the energy. I mean, people are exhausted just taking care of what's in their committee as it is. But the permitting process for DEC was already going through the process when we started working on this. The time to have really dealt with it ahead of the permit was really last year. And we should tell them that we're not going to give them any money to clean, any more money to clean up Lake Champlain, they can do it themselves. Why don't you send Joe that message? I'm going to, I'm going to call him. Well, you tell him from you and me. Don't they need funding? Don't they need funding to seek this thing or something or something? We just got to buy the buoys. Just got to buy the, well, so. I don't know. Buy the buoys. Did you, anybody see the thing in seven days about trace of PFAS detected in Shelburne water in seven days? Yeah, I read that. And we have it up here in Morgan and one of the schools. Yeah. Well, then they're going to tear down Burlington High School. Well, they got to tear down the one in Morgan. There's no way for Burlington High School that they can rehab that thing. They're going to have to. Well, they tried that Alice, the day that you weren't there when they come in to committee, remember? What? They tried to get into new school that day that you wasn't in committee. You were held up with John down at Dartmouth. Oh.  That one, I miss them. Yeah.  Kurt has his hand up. You know, we still have at least a month left. I've got plenty of things that I'd like to deal with if we have the time. Yeah, we will. I mean, there's my parole bill and I'd still like to go over the DOC budget in detail and figure out what they're doing with transitional housing and the funding of that. And there's plenty that I'd like to get done if we have time. I think I've given a list to various people. I think Sarah may have a list too. I'm sure. Well, it's about balancing it with our time on the floor too I think is what we're gonna be heading into. But I agree with a lot of those thoughts that you have. I do have the list, Kurt, I do. Because we're gonna have Wednesday and Thursday mornings I think for a little bit. And we didn't do anything for next week because we have too much in that play on Wednesday. We knew S45, we had to get that through S3. At that point was, we were under the impression both Bill Lippert and I, that we had to get it out by Friday. That's eased up a little bit. We knew we were gonna be tied up on the floor on Thursday. So we weren't sure how S45 and S3 were gonna work. And now there's more pressure to get the capital bill out earlier in the Senate. Senator Benning said to me, he said, I thought I had all up next week to get the bill out and he doesn't. So once- Thank you for telling me that because I'm gonna ask him what he's sitting on it for, like he does us. Right. Right. So, you know, whenever that comes over, how entailed that's gonna be, could be real easy or it could be really entailed. And then we've got- And are we gonna follow up with the HOK or something? At least as a committee to have some discussion, I would think. So, you know, and you have Kurt's list. So there are some dangling items out there, but I think we just got to get through this week. Last night was brutal on the floor. Yesterday was really brutal. Marsha, Marsha, could we listen in when you talk to Senator Benning? Well, you know, he works Saturdays. I have his work number here. So it won't be the first time I call him. And I can hear him now. Yes, Martell. What do you want? Tell him you got big beans. Yeah, just tell him he's not getting any unless he gives you an answer. I'll tell him that. He can't answer. So we're done for the week.


I'm here for four important assignments. The first is the MSME Clinic, which is a collaboration between the federal government and the state government, in this case, the OEU state government. And what we try to do at our MSME clinics is to bring regulatory authorities with us, the NAFDAQ, the Corporate Affairs Commission, SON, Bank of Industry. These are regulators and facilitators of business who come with us on these clinics to answer the questions of the small businesses and medium-scale businesses and to help in whatever way they can. One of the things we also want to do with these regulatory agencies and business facilitators is to be able to establish a one-stop shop in the various places that we go so that under the same roof, you can have the MSME clinic, you can have the SON, NAFDAQ, DOI, and even the Corporate Affairs Commission, so that whenever you require the assistance, you can simply go there and get that assistance. The second reason why I'm here is for what we describe as the energizing economies project. What we do in this project is to give power, solar power, to our markets. And today we have started in buggy markets. There we have started to provide solar power to replace the use of generators and to replace the use of all other unhealthy ways of powering the markets. We intend to conclude buggy markets and go to other markets in your state. This is a project that is very dear to the heart of our president, President Mohammad Buhari, because he believes that markets and places where small businesses and traders sell and where they do their business must have power. And that is where we are providing clean solar power in all of our markets across the country. The third reason why I'm here is to visit the beneficiaries of our social investment program, the Yen Power, the Jeep, and the school feeding program. In your state at the moment, we have 9,220 volunteers in the first batch of the MPR program. And that program, thank you very much. And we have another 10,392 that have been pre-selected for the second batch, which is scheduled to start next month. We intend to maintain the MPR program here in your state. We want to ensure that every MPR beneficiary is able, not just to do whatever they are doing at the moment, whether they are teaching or and agro or whether it's the public health or end-build, whichever one you are doing, we want to ensure that we are able to support you in whatever it is you are doing. And we want to make sure that you are able to create value and also create employment even for yourself as the years go by. Today, we are feeding 230,000 children across the state under our homegrown school feeding program. I've employed 2,363 cooks. Similarly, we have 14,529 households that are benefiting currently from the conditional cash transfer program, which is that program where we give 5,000 Naira every month to some of the poorest families in our country. Here we have 14,529 families that we give this 5,000 to every month. The President has directed that we expand the conditional cash transfer. The President has directed that we expand the micro-credit loan, the Jeep loan, to be able to give those who are the smallest traders, the list of the traders, the traders who sell goods, very small items, who sell plantain, bread, and other things. We are hoping to start that particular project across the country in the next month or so, so as to enable everybody who is working hard, everybody who is making an effort, who is trying their best in their own different ways to have some credit from the federal government in order to expand whatever businesses they are doing. Let me conclude by congratulating Governor Abiyola Jimobi for his notable achievements and for his determination to leave for your state a much better place than he left it. The evidence is there before us, not only in the infrastructure that Ohio State has seen in his years in government, but also the peace that the state enjoys, the improved road network, and the support that it has given to small businesses and markets across the state. The federal government looks forward to a continued close collaboration between the Ohio State government and ourselves in order to ensure that we are able to give maximum support to the ordinary Nigerian citizens so that all of us can get the full benefits of democracy and development. I want to also say that it is really the hope of Mr. President in particular that we should broaden opportunities for all Nigerians. Every Nigerian who is prepared to work hard ought to have something to do and the President is determined to support that either through the MPAR program or through our credit programs, the micro credit program, whether it is Jeep or the market money, we now have trader money which is even the smaller for the smaller traders. Every one of those opportunities is available to every Nigerian and Mr. President is very determined to ensure that all of us benefit from it.


Come back, we're live here in Las Vegas. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's exclusive coverage of IBM's information on demand. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm Joe McCose, Dave Vellante, and we're talking social business, and our next guest is Renee Ducre. Ducre from IBM, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Dave, you know, I was having trouble with those names, but social business, yesterday we were teasing it up, and we were riffing on that because the topic was big data analytics, which shows the value side of it, the insights, all that greatness, and that's gonna have the impact on business. So the conversation today is social business, so I want you to just take the folks through what's the new orientation towards social business? It's not like it hasn't been around a while, collaboration, connecting with phones and email has been kind of the old way. What's the new direction of social business? Why is it important now? All right, thank you, John. So, great question. So once again, my name is Renee Ducre, and I'm the director of marketing for IBM's social business unit. And as we're looking at social business, and we think about the unprecedented growth and innovation that it's really been driving over the last, you know, really five plus years, right? And some of the trends that we've been seeing with a lot of the smarter planet implementations that we've done. There's really some key trends that have been emerging around how people inform the decisions that they're making, as well as how they're delivering value to clients and really leveraging, you know, one of the big payoffs of social business is really social data, right? And how they're leveraging the social data much better in really to make product and service innovation much more robust in what they're able to deliver to clients. Go ahead. So, even a couple short years ago, business people would say, what's the point of Twitter? Why do you even bother? Do you get any value out of it? And what's changed? You talk about that change and what's changed in your customer base? Yeah, and really, you know, as we look at social business, it's so much more than the typical when you think of social, the typical tools like Twitter and Facebook, and it's really about applying social networking tools to really improve your business, drive better, more productivity across your workforce. Just as an example, one of the implementations that we've done working with Boston Children's Hospital, classic example of how you take social technologies and really apply it to business, right? So, working with Boston Children's Hospital, we've created a social networking hub that allows them to share all kinds of surgical procedures. You think of how physicians were trained, there's such an explosion of data, right? There's medical journals that are creating all kinds of learnings at these exploding rates, doctors having a hard time keeping up with all the information, as well as all the new procedures out there. So now, we've helped them create the social networking hub that houses all that information. So now physicians all over the world are able to share that information with each other, and what we're hearing are very good, when you talk about return on investment, right? We're hearing very good anecdotal stories around doctors in remote locations being able to, through a mobile device, plug into that social networking hub now, and actually see procedures being done real-time instead of, in the world of old, you had to do all of that training person to person, very expensive, not scalable. Now they're able to share that through this networking hub at unprecedented rates, which is really helping physicians save lives, right? So we're hearing anecdotal stories about how they're able to save lives by leveraging this networking hub. Renee, how would you characterize this strategy? Is it really to take the best of social networking concepts, maybe improve upon them, replicate them in certain ways, and as I say, improve upon them, certainly from a security standpoint and collaboration, maybe integration with other technology products, and do that in sort of a wall-to-garden type of safe approach, or is it more of a hybrid between what I just described and sort of the public social networks? And here again, I think it's, so great question, I think it's based on the needs of the client, and really as well, one of the things that we're seeing is definitely a need to have a secure social infrastructure, so working with clients to deliver that based on their needs, whether it needs to be highly secure or not. The other thing that's interesting in your question is leveraging all the social data, providing social analytics around that data to really help here again, people make better decisions, as well as to really inform the value that they're delivering. So you think about crowdsourcing, for example, right? And a lot of the examples that we see out there with various vendors, crowdsourcing product development, so being able to improve upon their products by being able to leverage these social communities, if you will. Okay, so it's really sort of both, and I guess it probably depends on the industry, some highly regulated industries. Exactly. I mean, one of the little bit more private, others like consumer package goods, maybe they're trying to do some testing, and that's an industry that you came out of, right? Exactly. You cut your teeth at Procter & Gamble. Exactly. So I would imagine that there's a lot of momentum in that industry in particular. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit, how that's changed since, I mean, in the 90s there really wasn't any kind of public social network. Yes. Talk about that industry specifically, and maybe we can get into some other ones. So consumers are always very interesting, right? There's so much that you can do, especially around social, right? If you look at Procter & Gamble's always been a leader in using social networks and social communities to really tap into what people like about their products, what makes a product good, why people, what performance people are getting out of the products, and making sure that they also improve upon that. Every kind of turn of the crank, you'll see a new release around Tide or some new innovation. So they're very good at leveraging social networks, and I think as social technologies have improved and advanced, they've been able to leverage that. The other thing that's interesting is just when I look at other consumers, right? Other consumer products companies. One that we point to all the time is really haven't done something spectacular was Oreo at the Super Bowl, right? And when you look at their real-time marketing that they did with Twitter, and even now, they're doing some very innovative things to drive engagement with clients and really kind of improve their relationships with clients online. A lot of things on Twitter that I think are very clever and really getting people almost to innovate and come up with different desserts and that kind of thing, and then take pictures of them, actually leverage in Twitter and Vine that are some very clever implementations that I'm seeing as well. So we had a comment, I just posted on Twitter. What is the value of Twitter, I asked on theCUBE, and just some comments from the crowd cap, and traditional media is about building brands from selling spicy nachos, you name it. You see the ad on TV, you're sure to buy it later, you kind of offline. With mobile and Twitter, you can now do that online. So the dynamic's there. How do you see Twitter, for instance, changing the game for consumers in the spirit of brand advertising or brand marketing? Yeah, so one thing that I've always seen with Twitter and for business, I think it's really a very net way of getting information, right? So in our, you know, attention to deficit, you know, environment that we live in where, you know, attention is definitely a commodity, right, that everyone's trying to win. I think Twitter is a way, you know, in a very succinct number of characters and people tend to like it for, you know, those aspects, because you can really hone in on the news channels that you're interested in, the topics that you're interested in, and get feedback real time, very succinctly, you know, with a very short blurb and a point to, you know, an article. So I see it as like, for companies, a way to, you know, very quickly send out information, send out key messages, links to demos. I also think it's a great way, like Oreo has done with the Super Bowl, you know, to really get things to go viral very quickly. And so, you know, being able to leverage, now, you know, actually I was just on a panel at, it was a real time marketing event in New York. And one of the things that is always a challenge with organizations though, and using Twitter is the real time aspect of it, right? And so, I think for Oreo, I actually read an article for what they did at the Super Bowl, and for those that are not familiar with it, you know, they did a tweet when the lights went out at the Super Bowl this year, where they actually said, you know, you can still dunk an Oreo in the dark, right? So it was perfectly timed. And, but the thing that went into that, like I read this article about, and you know, how did they pull it off?   That would probably be like a very career limiting thing if that was to happen, right? So. It was a flash mob, essentially. They took advantage of a trend. Exactly. A negative trend. And it was amazing, but you know, if you think about that in large organizations, it'd be pretty hard to pull off. So there's always that real time nature of Twitter that's a challenge for large organizations. So we have big data Alex on Twitter, Alex Phillips. So who's a great, great friend of the cube. And he says, the new commodity is a tension. Everyone wants to win it. My comment was to that, which I agree with. The new currency is time. It's the new scarce resource. Because there's so much information we heard from Dr. Tim Buchanan earlier yesterday, talking about all the alarms going off in the hospital. There's so many notifications going on. You could be bombarded with noise out there. So that's the new scarce resource is time. Do you agree with that? And do you agree the attention game is what people are trying to fight for? Definitely. And how do businesses, you know, extract that, say that from the noise, how do people break through that? Yeah, I think, you know, social technologies are a key way to do that because there's so many new sources, right? There's so many things that, you know, you really are trying to achieve that cut through, right? To an audience. So definitely, there's a way to do that. You know, in the instance that I gave you with Boston Children's Hospital, for example, so taking those social technologies and applying it to a business, you know, from a business standpoint, I think one of the things that's great is you're able to, you know, allow people to collaborate across the world, you know, by doing a social technology hub like we did for Boston Children's Hospital, where now people in very remote locations can upload information, you know, download information to share. So I think, you know, when you think about that, attention deficit and attention is a key commodity. One thing that I think social kind of levels the playing field with on that is being able to allow people to cut through to the things that they really care about and want to hear about.  How do I get more followers? If you are tweeting things that are authentic, that are people that are, that's relevant, it's amazing, the followers will come. That brings up a good point I want to drill down. We also have Brenny on Twitter who was making, on CrowdChat, making a comment about, Twitter is also a huge listening funnel. Jake Pourway shared that Twitter data is used to identify flu breakouts. We saw that yesterday here in the keynote. So I asked you two questions on that and that come up. You mentioned people want to try to get more followers. So there's really two concepts. One is the tooling available right now, still early. I want you to talk about kind of the vision and how you guys see that evolving on the tooling and the platforms for customers. What's going to be automated? What in the future will Watson make, you know, social media monitoring obsolete? Is this going to be plug and play? And two, the gamification aspect of it. People are gaming Twitter and social networks to get more followers or click on ads. So you can use big data to solve society problems or get more followers. But gamification sees it. So what are the tooling, kind of where we're at in your mind and also the concept of gamification and user experience? Okay, so all very good questions. So, you know, from a platform perspective, we have a social business platform. There are solutions around smarter workforce, which here is, you know, a lot around talent management. We have an acquisition that we did with Konexa around talent management, workforce management, a lot of robust solutions there. There's also a lot of social analytics solutions that we offer on the platform, as well as, you know, we're trying to expand that. So you'll see, you know, announcements coming from us in the future, really around including smarter workforce or smarter commerce solutions, as well as the overall umbrella underneath the umbrella of social business. Now, from a gamification standpoint, you know, I think like engagement is key and really trying to figure out ways to increase, you know, engagement either with employees or, you know, with our customers. And gamification, I think, is a key way to do that, right? So I was actually out meeting with a client, maybe a week and a half ago, a superior group, and you're actually gonna interview Tom, their CEO, later on today. And one of the things that they talked about was using a gamification element in kind of like the training of their workforce and, you know, kind of making it fun, you know, to learn aspects of the company when people first come in, which I thought was a very clever use of gamification, right? And then there's always the, you know, all the contests that you see, you know, across all the different vendors out there. We were even looking at doing, you know, some gamification elements at some of the conferences going forward. Like anyone that's going to connect, you'll see, you know, some gamification, there's gamification over here in the corner as well. We have voting on crowd chats, there's a little gamification tweak. I mean, people, I mean, this is the gesture economy, right? I mean, where people are clicking on things and making their sentiment known, whether with hashtags or votes. So I gotta ask you about the real-time aspect that you mentioned crowdsourcing earlier. This is a new phenomenon, the notion of actually measuring crowds. I mean, marketing has kind of tried to do sampling and, you know, most of the research analysts we talked to have old-school mental, we sampled 250 people. Well, now you can sample 250,000 people. So you now have instrumentation which creates interesting crowdsourcing opportunities. Yeah, definitely. And real-time. So you gotta do both. You can't talk about those two concepts. Yeah, so the thing that's interesting with crowdsourcing, I was reading an article and there was a statement in the article that said, you know, nowadays, you know, who's the smartest person in the room? You know, yesterday it used to be, you know, they used to point to a person, right? Now it's the wisdom of the crowd. Or a fifth grader. Exactly. So, you know, I just thought that was kind of an interesting way as they opened up the article, but it was speaking to crowdsourcing and how really, you know, when you look at like product development and, you know, a lot of the crowdsourcing models that are out there right now, you know, my boss Scott Hebner has small, you know, children that are like in their teens and he talks about a crowdsourcing model where his son has already bought like an airplane, you know, that's gonna be part of like a game. And, you know, the game's not coming for like another year and a half, but they've already crowdsourced millions of dollars by getting people to buy a component that'll be used as a part of the game. So, you know, I think there's a lot of very interesting crowdsourcing models out there and I think we're just gonna see more and more of it as well. Well, the crowd has always been a very, you know, efficient, and we're in Las Vegas, handicapper, right?  What's the crowd who actually got it right? Because they bet, you know, they make a market and the crowd's determining what that line should be essentially, right? And so, you know, they really make the market. And so, I have to ask you a question about the philosophy of IBM regarding social. Is it, is it my understanding that essentially you wanna make social every part of an application experience? Is that ultimately where your head is? Exactly, so, you know, and you'll start seeing more of that as different offerings come forward. You'll see more social technologies that are being brought forward. So, in a lot of our solutions we're, you know, baking in, same time, for example, where there's the real-time collaboration piece that we're baking into a lot of the solutions. So, definitely, as you think of being a smarter enterprise, being a social enterprise, leveraging all of the social collaboration tools is a must. Yeah, so, that talks to a complete change in the user experience. Yeah, yep.  Yeah, you know what, I think there's no going back. Like, you know, we're at a point where, and actually our latest C-suite study that was just released maybe two weeks ago, it's called the Customer Activated Enterprise.  And I think it's, you know, we're seeing that in the marketplace. We're seeing that in, you know, solutions that people are bringing forward, that different vendors are bringing forward. So, I think, you know, all boats arise. We're at a point where we're never gonna go back, I believe, and, you know, client feedback and insights into your products is here to stay. Well, we got a smart crowd, smarter crowd on crowdchat.net. And one of the questions I'll ask before we end the segment is, and I'll comment, Isabel says crowd sourcing scales. Where are the like-minded people saying with you, connecting with that?  So great comment there. But the question I want to ask you to end the segment is, does IBM plan on crowd sourcing solutions in the smarter cloud? And is the social business portfolio gonna be kind of part of that smarter cloud initiative? Ooh, that's a great question. Crowd sourcing, I think we'll always crowdsource innovation piece of it. So making sure that we listen to clients and factor, you know, all of those key learnings into the next rev of our products. I'm assuming that you're not saying from a funding standpoint. No, no, just from like crowd sourcing technology, like what we're doing here and with theCUBE is that people are engaged, they want to engage. And we're seeing people do tweet chats and as we mentioned earlier, there is an active crowd out there that is activated by other people. Yeah, and I think, you know, now I think crowd sourcing is like the buzzword for it, but we've been doing that for a long time. You know, listening to clients, making sure that we factor that into the next row of offerings that are coming out.  I remember just to reiterate, we said yes to the folks, you know, John Awaita was running comms back in the 2005 timeframe when I first started.  And I remember they were doing crowd sourcing internally, IBM had huge blogging, great internal collaboration going back, seems like a decade ago. It's almost a decade ago. I mean, so you're not, that's not new to you. So final comment I want to ask you for the, before we wrap your ears. What is the new resurgence within IBM around social business? Okay, you've been doing it internally, you've been doing it with customers. That's a long time ago. That was, you know, really before Facebook and Twitter even came about it. What's the new tweak on the model for you guys and how do you guys look at it going forward to build on your expertise? Okay, so I think it's, you know, it's a couple of things.  And as we, you know, go forward with our social business platform, baking in a lot of the social collaboration tools that we have into, you know, other solutions across the corporation, it's, you know, leveraging one of the big payoffs is around social data.   You know, I think those are some of the, you know, key things that we're focused on.  And then- Bernadio Cree here live on theCUBE, Director of Marketing for Social Business here at IBM, great conversation, great engagement online there on the Twitter comment and how you talked about these new channels, these new opportunities. It's exciting times and certainly there's interest and for businesses out there, it's fun to watch and new opportunities. So this is theCUBE, right back with our next guest after this short break.