All right, welcome everybody to the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs. It's Tuesday, April 25th and we're here this afternoon picking up our work on S-17 and some legislative council here. So, Tim, would you take us through some of the changes? I believe we're looking at draft 2.2. I'd be happy to. Thank you very much for having me, Chairman McCarthy. Again for the record, my name is Tim Dublin, legislative council.  The differences between the last iteration of this strike all amendment that the committee reviewed and this one have been highlighted just for ease of reference. The first update proposed is on page 2 and this is under section 2, the developer part pertain to audits and the highlighted text here is substantively the same as what was last proposed, but this now breaks up the previously proposed language for the sake of readability and clarity for the most part. The substance of it should look for the most part very much the same. Happy to read through this as it now presents, Chairman McCarthy, if you'd like. Or would you like me to just kind of continue on? Yes, why don't we just take a quick look through here? So we're basically separating the signing, co-signing requirements from the having a written transition plan for clarity, right? Yes, it was one kind of continuous sentence before and we're just going to broken it up. So and perhaps I'll just read it. Okay. Subsection D, new subdivision one will be upon the election of a sheriff elect who is not the incumbent sheriff, an announcement that the sheriff will not seek direct reelection or an announcement that the incumbent sheriff intends to resign, whichever occurs first, all financial disbursements from the accounts of the department, including the transfer of real or personal property or other assets of the department, shall be co-signed by the sheriff and the assistant judge. The sheriff shall provide a written transition plan to the assistant judge detailing all anticipated disbursements or transfers of departmental assets. The assistant judges shall consult with the department's staff, the sheriff's executive committee, private co-signing and disbursements or transfer of sheriff's department assets. Subdivision two, the assistant judge shall forward the sheriff's written transition plan and a report of all financial disbursements and transfers made pursuant to the subsection to the auditor of accounts within 15 days following the sheriff's living office. Representative Hickley. Thank you. The only question I got I guess is there was a concern around a sheriff that was elected and from period of time that they were elected to the period of time that they took office. This section really doesn't include any of that concern around what the existing elected sheriff can do in that in from time. I'm wondering if where that might be addressed or if it should be addressed. I think you know Senator Norris talked about it in particular as far as from the time that he was elected to become the auditor of office. There's a pretty time there that is. So this may not we may not have totally addressed it but it's trying to do is at least provide the so from the time that even before there's the new the the so starting from the time when the sitting sheriff says I'm not right that the earliest time so we bring that time way up that there's more transparency so they have to have a transition plan there's this co-signing with the side judges the Sheriff's Association had asked us to do to have this in consultation with the Sheriff's Executive Committee in the department so that a side judge you may not be able to really evaluate those things would would have that that check. So I guess that I throw it back and say is there an additional layer of accountability or clarity that that you want to have beyond what's envisioned here with the kind of co-signing once we know sheriff's going to be transitioning out. Well again I don't want to complicate but I guess what we could do here from you know the sheriff's in particular. Yeah because this is an attempt to kind of massage the language that the senate had so and then that the department of the city's terms and shares have recommended building on that a little bit and so now I'm wondering if we've gone too far with the frankensteining by trying to satisfy everyone's concerns for it's not not clear enough representative Morgan. Yeah just real quick so it's sort of on that vein of thought um his number two I'll just be blunt is that sort of an addressing of what occurred at the end of the tenure the the last tenure of the caledonia sheriff's department on this reading into this in other words if they were going to do an exit disbursement like was done we found it was all completely legal and above board obviously but is that an attempt to address some of that is that what we're trying to do here because we're using under number two we say of all financial disbursements and transfers of backing was that the intent. Yeah I think what we're just trying to do is whether it's that situation or the kind of situation that sheriff former sheriff senator Norris talked about he'll always be sure it marks me because when I was growing up I was his title what he was saying was you know he showed up at an office that all the assets had been spent down and ours had been sold and you know we're trying to basically be like okay when when we know that a sheriff is exiting there needs to be this increased layer of checks and balances loader yeah okay that's a disaster I just want to see if that was part of that intent okay thank you and represent what is there anything there to protect the other side of the equation where the judge basically says I'm not going to do anything until the new sheriff comes so yeah so what we were trying to do here by having the consultation with the sheriff's executive committee in the department is that is to add that a little bit more so there's sort of the like the watcher of the watcher problem here that we have where we're expanding out the checks and balances but I'm wondering I don't want to hold Tim too long and I do want to get to this point I believe potentially Sheriff Eric Anderson may be able to help us out here. I'm Robert Mark Anderson, I'm the County Sheriff, Professor of Watcher Association. Leave our testimony and we might not have I might not have communicated it clearly but was to say the executive committee could be like an appeal authority so let's say that we run into the situation that represent who we're saying the assistant judge says I'm just not going to sign it it can be an appeal saying this is an authorized explosion of other expenses you don't need snowmobiles to operate your sheriff's department you do need cars so if the assistant judge says they don't feel comfortable responding to a sheriff's request to sell the snowmobiles the association or the executive committee would be able to reflect that like this is an appropriate expense and they're generally the ones who are going to be remaining and dealing with any issues if they were to happen again if this legislation failed to satisfy all the possibilities. Okay I hear that but I don't read that. That's we did not capture if we did not go as far as the Sheriff's Association recommended so let's put a pain in that for now and we'll come back to this section because I don't I'm hearing from the committee we haven't quite nailed it yet no I agree. The next part of this that has changed can be found let's see on page six and we'll transition now to the part of the Strickled Amendment pertaining to sheriff's department compensation and benefits this is in section five. The subsection C you see the last highlighted two sentences there really this pertains again to that kind of five percent we've been talking about that length. This has been rewritten to clarify that funds derived from charges for administration of the contract that may be used for any purpose for compensation related items then they must follow a the model policy that's to be drafted by DSAS. Also just want to quickly note that second sentence was moved up but what did exist in the prior proposed reference to that's the category B conduct right there that will will failure to comply with this policy shall constitute category B conduct pursuant to 20 VSA 24-1 subsection 2. The next part of the bill that is changed will see and top of page eight this is under section B five department of state's attorneys and sheriffs and this removes the provision for the deputy that proposed new position here deputy to create a model policy instead the deputy director of sheriff's shall instead assist each sheriff's department in maintaining compliance with the sheriff's department's compensation benefits model policy. The next change will appear at the bottom of page nine breaking into page 10 and this pertains to sheriff's duties. In particular the sorry this will essentially add back the affirmative duty for sheriffs to provide assistance for domestic violence survivors to retrieve their personal belongings from that individual's residence and also will prohibit a sheriff's department from seeking a fee for compensation providing that service. So Tim what what I had asked after getting some feedback from the network and others was that what we don't want to do is say that sheriffs are the exclusive providers of this standby service because then we're basically saying that all the law enforcement agencies across the state that aren't sheriffs who do this work well they're done you call the sheriff if you need standby service and that just isn't practical unless we're going to you know have completely different way that we're approaching this so what we're trying to get at here is that we shouldn't be charging the survivors for this service but that we don't want to put all of the provision of this service exclusively on the sheriffs and so trying to thread that needle here and I should go ahead yeah so I should just add the nuance that this shout kind of duty here is really triggered by a request for such service that's an important piece that wasn't there before I just want to mention that and we will take some testimony on this piece again trying to satisfy multiple different stakeholders feedback over the weekend and we may not have landed in a perfect spot yet and the last update will find page 10 as well section 7a sheriff's deputy provision of courthouse security semi-conform report and essentially what this does is now we'll have the judiciary to be reporting the provision of law enforcement and security services to county and state courthouses before it was the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs and that is some that is all the updates from the last version Tim I'm sure after our testimony this afternoon we will probably have some more work for you but I will relinquish you to Seneca of ops for now thank you very much so I would like to invite Terry to come up if you want to come up as I think if that's okay Terry croissant state court administrator and Greg most of his chief of finance and administration definitely has much much better grasp on budget details so we thought it'd be efficient to have him join us well welcome to both of you and I specifically asked for your office's feedback on how to approach the request that we had heard around how do we provide consistent courthouse security and so we've looked at this issue a couple times in the context of reviewing the budget requests and now this the idea that potentially we can move toward having all of the courthouse security provided by deputies who are similarly state employees as is done with the transport deputies has been put on the table by several folks and so I wanted to get feedback on that particular issue from the courts well we really appreciate the opportunity and also all the time and effort that you dedicated to court security considerations were so appreciative and I guess in terms of the most recent version of s-17 which we have had a chance to look at today there are three sections that pertain to the judiciary in particular in courthouse security the first in section five talks about the single contractual rate of pay which we support and we appreciate that being inserted the second has to do with providing a minimum of one sheriff deputy per courthouse there are 23 state and county courthouses throughout the state with an effective date in July 1 2024 and recognition of the workforce challenges that the sheriff's offices have in terms of meeting that a minimum by July 1 of this year and then the new provision in section 7a that has to do with this report that we think is as a phenomenal opportunity to be able to really study and analyze what would be the best approach in terms of I think I'd explain last time historically it was always sheriff's deputies that provided all the courthouse security now it's a combination of different factors and in light of those workforce challenges figuring out what's the best to ensure that we can meet our and fulfill our responsibility to maintain our security in Vermont so we really appreciate the report and being able to do it in consultation with the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs and certainly also with other relevant stakeholders such as court staff personnel and others to make sure we have as full a picture as possible we would ask there's been one other change with it that talks about at the end creation of classified positions responsible for courthouse security services similar to the classified position transport deputy and that it well may be that state paid deputies would be the model that would work the best and should be fit it should fit into whatever the reports recommendations are but we thought with the language it almost asked is concluding that that's the case so we didn't know instead of saying similar to you might say such as the classified position transport deputy and we've also talked about with sheriff Anderson and also with vince illusi and steve Howard just before coming in here how a model of state paid deputies may well work but Greg has based on his experience with the budget I guess a recommendation in terms of how that possibly might work so that we can maintain proper control over the budget over the actual security and scheduling et cetera so right now we have about 73 fdp's that provide court security that's a mix of sheriff deputies about 40 of them one with 10 security private security guards that we have about 23 employees there's 23 different courthouses they're all very very different so it's a little bit of a patch together idea and we clearly understand them and want law enforcement under the courthouse for all time that is that is something that's important to us we have a few situations where that's not the case and there are issues of ships so it is definitely ideal for us to have an on-forcing officer in courthouse in terms of the study and models there are a lot of different models that can be used we we have access to national side of the state courts that has best practices for court security and we also have relationships with our other two-year partners in the 50 states that all have some sort of model put together we can certainly do a lot of research and put together the pros and cons of some of those different models the one thing that we would have referring about is as Terry mentioned is allowing to kind of suggest a solution before the study actually is going on like position of some kind or that particular model is the way that would be so we're we're open to changing up the structure because it has been an effort for many years so we see it heading in the right direction and we look forward to working with a number of partners to put our best thoughts on one idea would be if there were state paid W model though that it'd be under the purview of the judiciary and our ability to budget to control the budget and the supervision and the scheduling so that would mean having it versus under the purview of the department of sheriffs and state's attorneys that it be uh basically within the judiciary state paid deputies for example could be the model certainly but but with that ability to control so as to best ensure that we meet our able to meet our constitutional statutory responsibilities in terms of ensuring courthouse security the other thing that just came out was the possibility with section seven which talks about one minimum deputy by july 1 2024 whether or not that again kind of suggest suggest a solution whether or not the report should instead state what would be the deadline and what would be the minimum so we didn't know if it was maybe a good idea to mold the two for that reason it just seemed that it might make sense rather than saying we shall by this day when it may be that the report suggests a different date or a different minimum that that was something that just came up that we wanted to mention so I have a couple of hands that have come up with questions if you know if we can dive into that now so represent Morgan and then I'm going to you represent forget thank you so in this case I believe I can read into this to say that you're this report when we get December 1st would have the one off of the citizen senators like you remember with grand out county Terry severe staffing shortages so we would have an an off ramp I assume am I making a correct assumption off ramp for a situation like that because they may just point not have a man power that would I hope that would be a component of it yes that would be right now and certainly the judiciary making efforts to ensure that there's courthouse security in whatever form is feasible that's okay like in this case I believe unless something changed right now it's still the moment as less sure about that so that's the voting and they still has a contracted individual there so we've evolved since that crisis for a while we had our own who is a level two certified yeah who's in that courthouse for a number of months before we were able to arrange for private security and now it's supplemented by avcounty state bill deputies sometimes okay so it's a great example of the flexibility that we have today to try and address the needs of each court so that we can get unions and try this move and you would envision that continuing further or forward because again you can have the crystal ball of what every county is going to look like forever more we don't I okay just want to make sure that I guess relative insurance was there that that is an option because in a moment's time you could lose half your staff for whatever reason you don't know okay thank you okay good afternoon when you were going to run down a position as you said you had 40 that were deputies yes 10 that were private yes 23 that were something else is that where are the court officers did they fall into that or what did 10 um they're 23 state full-time employees and so they have uh the area the court officers or court screens so they could be at the front of a screening most often they're court officers in the court and they are not sworn in anyway no level they're not trained to do the work that's provided um but like I said we need a law enforcement officer under that move because when there's an incident when the judge says take this person in custody or when somebody comes in to surrender because of the restaurant we'll struggle if we don't have the law enforcement officer and Terry were you sort of advocating for a sheriff's department within your judiciary another sheriff's department well but the state somebody that supervises actual deputies yeah right advocating is not the right word it's a number of our federal states have judicial martial services law enforcement that are under the direction of the judiciary in this state the state paid deputy transport model is kind of that same model so it's one of the many options that are out there we're certainly open to exploring and understanding the need uh you know yeah that's it's just that seemed to be another post Thanks. Sorry I'm just getting noise from the door I appreciate Tom jumping up there so just to follow on to what Rep Rupert asked to you folks so that the court officer you're going to bend the grand out you keep using that's the one I this is my example um then so does each court have as he said about the 23 and there's 23 courthouse as you said that court officer in there or do in some cases they rely on that person also could double as the door guard they would have to run upstairs potentially like a case of grand house courthouse if there was a problem and go I got it I'm you know I'm the guy in charge or got in charge of taking care of that situation is that that what I'm hearing because they're like I know great I believe there's a gentleman sits in the court when they're there every courthouse does have a screener and that's the first line of defense sure they check for weapons the front doors right yes and then otherwise if there are hearings yes courthouse certainly criminal and family hearings yes would be a court officer in court whether it's a sheriff deputy whether it's I guess you would know yeah well for instance an example of grand aisle oftentimes it's a state gate from potting town right that's the gentleman there with the court officer may or may not be a law enforcement there I mean so grand aisle I would imagine they generally have hearings on Thursdays there are times when there are hearings and there might be one officer there or there might be two beneath a lot of them are law enforcement certainly in other counties in our smaller courthouses there are hearing days where there's one person at the front door and if there's a problem in the court they would have to run up they have to run up to the left okay national best practices have recommended two offices that's why I'm kind of getting at this is there any inherent danger with that not being we had a study done we had an issue yeah we had a national and their recommendation was to add 35 positions to court security across the state which we've never done we've added one yeah the question is do we really need what they're recommending so for example they're recommending three officers at the screen in the front door one to manage the crowd one to manage the equipment one to keep you there in case of emergency in Vermont especially in our small courthouses that does seem to be a bit of offer yeah I can understand that it's just the final item that you had a problem you want that to make sure that there's a timely response I guess what I would be concerned about exactly yeah so as long as we're balancing that and I and I get it it's one of those things you we don't have a gazillion people for these positions to do this stuff and so I okay thank you so 23 courthouses 23 possible court officers small courthouse example I spent most of my time Castello where it would be the dorm to have three or more people at the door plus three active court rooms probably the minimum with court officers needs one and that seems to indicate somebody's coming up short on that we have nine court rooms in Castello yeah well and on certain days sometimes the problem is yeah okay yeah and that model we have one law enforcement office in the building it's a rover so I spent most of his time at the front door you can walk around the building wherever so there should be two other screeners at that front door that's one of the more challenging but there's other tenants in that building as well and they have security needs that honestly are not addressed by court security security that we contract with chairs is designed for courthouse so when we close it for 30 sheriff's deputies go away that's the end of the day it's a probation for all has a six o'clock group meeting in a courthouse there's no security well bgs would be responsible for bgs would be responsible for executive branch security it's and every building is a little bit different and unique and so it creates a lot of different unique projects everything from the evening or weekend you know state's attorney wants a weekend um you know traffic day they've done and traffic holidays whatever um that can create problems we've also had situations where dcf case managers will try and have meetings that they know are going to be uh volatile down the other the security in a courtroom space and if those run past 4 30 we've paid the overtime bill for the sheriff because the dcf needs so all sorts of weird things happen um and it's just something that we've managed to record you folks to be good jugglers yeah and and another another example of oddities with executive branch sharing is we have court security cameras and something happens the dcf hallway and they want access to the video they actually have to subpoena us passport we don't share the management of that or the maintenance and the cost of replacing the parties it's a judicial system in asin county sheriff had a camera at the front door the judiciary has cameras throughout the court area the dc had a camera there for a little while there were two different cameras in the lobby of an Madison again the just that's a little bit of government bureaucracy but it has so my question is kind of similarly related to that and i think you you got at some point in the memo that you had provided us that talked about the the different so i just wanted to be really clear of the committee so right now as it stands today before the sling of MS 17 there's kind of a spectrum of people providing security at the courthouses and if i'm understanding your testimony correctly the court officers who are judiciary employees most of them are not law enforcement officers or the Madison um then the there are per diem and sheriff's deputies who are assigned contracted and then there's private security so there's this whole spectrum i'm wondering how much control you all have through your contracts uh in terms of the schedule of the deputies who are assigned to you from the sheriff's offices and if they when there are those contracts in place with the current labor market being what it is are are those folks satisfying the the hours the schedule that the judiciary really needs right now or is there still a pretty big gap i would say there's a bit of a gap because our staffing 73 ft needs in total um are minimally necessary so when you get a couple people calling out or somebody on the medical leave it creates a problem and so the contracted deputies 40 ft instead of sheriff deputies generally are full-time positions we need them at the screening door the court courtroom all the time um where it gets a little more flexible with private security we have called them on short notice and said can you meet your trained guy from this court to that court and sometimes they can help us where it really gets to be flexible with our employees keeping out of seven employees who are hired to be a statewide resource and we will call in six and forty today got a call out up here at this court they have a trial going on you know you're scheduled in court a you're going to go to court b is depicted by able to pay for time traveling for them to get there so you know because we have those different groups of employees or our security we're able to use them differently we need the four deputies in the court house all the time and then when there's a trial we might not slide a couple of employees from Addison and Dennington over to Rutland to make sure that child goes away that kind of flexibility happens on daily basis we are moving and matching different simple things other questions so cherry quick that was very helpful thank you both for being with us today i imagine you might like to stick around and hear some of the subsequent testimony on this issue i see that judge sonny is is on zoom i don't know if he would like to testify or just hear and listen in i didn't think we would have you with us today judge sonny is going to ignore no no it's my pleasure for the record tom sonny chief superior judge i don't have anything to add in addition to what terry and greg have presented but certainly if there's any questions i'd be happy to address them right well thank you for being here and listening in and i really appreciate the dialogue here i'm trying to sort of get this right at least so head in that direction for the future with this report so thank you great um so our next person scheduled to testify on this is uh sheriff anson so you guys want to switch seats here thanks for being with us again well thank you for the opportunity for the record mark anderson sheriff windham county and president of the vermont sheriff's association i'm here in the capacity as president of the sheriff's association so i think um i was hoping that you could land on both of the language that's in draft 2.2 in regard to the courthouses and more generally looking forward where you see the sheriff's fitting into the provision of courthouse security and i think we will have time once we get through these sections to have you back if you want to talk about other parts of the bill as well today great thank you uh so bottom line up front uh we're good with the study so let's not report it's not a study i consider all the same so thank you for you're all the same in here so we we support the report um we didn't come to the table uh at the beginning of the session uh with any expectation or anticipation that this was going to be part of the discussion this wasn't our ask we're not opposed to the ask it's just it wasn't our ask uh and so uh in working with the the judiciary who's been great partners uh we recognize the desire uh the need uh and so i'd like to speak at least briefly about what is court security to the sheriffs uh as well as um our law enforcement capacity because i don't think that's necessarily been covered too much court security uh or really security in general we're talking about um access control we're talking about staff protection whether it's the court staff or it's the judge themselves uh and historically sheriffs and have provided that that service the you heard uh mr uh mostly say uh that they were off the judiciary's been underfunded the 35 positions from the recommendation and we've seen that uh in windham county we have the new fame courthouse which has the one person at the door and there are also the court officer and chief ninja uh everything else uh whereas at the courthouse we have i think it's four to five positions that have to deal with two courtrooms running and well if someone calls them sick then where do you pull uh so the um with court security uh dealing with uh that physical access controls one piece they're a screener they're monitoring uh equipment property coming in uh they're making sure that uh staff are secure they're making sure doors are secure uh and that broad context there's cameras that are monitored in most courthouses if not all and that's security deputy sheriffs currently provide that function but security is different than law enforcement and so i believe it was about seven years ago it was a chitin in courthouse there was a sexual assault reported uh at the courthouse law enforcement investigates that and as to whether that would be the court's uh law enforcement deputies or that is say in in that case propelling to police department certainly there's resources to bring in for major crimes but there are also crimes that our deputies would investigate within the courthouse and to a degree there's a the concept where the judiciary is going to want to be impartial to the investigation because they're going to be the same court that is going to be having the hearing when it comes before them so in our minds there's a bifurcation in the two systems uh court security law enforcement we generally can fit both bills but because of underfunding over uh chronic underfunding over generations we have seen struggles on sheriff's offices to be able to satisfy the services needed and that's where the system of private security officers state employees who are not related to law enforcement and then sheriff's deputies have now filled it uh we um what we asked for uh if we were compelled to provide court security in each courthouse with one deputy in each courthouse really what we're asking for is the resources to do it uh we have a system which we've demonstrated works that we can obtain people this is the state transport deputy program and so that's where we went to say this is a system that we can deliver that the um there are issues or I shouldn't say issues hurdles uh that I think with time uh and with the correct stakeholders uh that we can work through those issues uh we can talk about uh the judiciary's need for uh its control of security uh in the context of the statutes but also from a constitutional perspective that they are a separate branch of government uh we are concerned uh if we don't have control of the resources but we have the responsibility we are left in a similarly awkward position that we have found ourselves in where we currently work across multiple segments and we say we're neither fish nor foul we don't really belong to the state we don't really belong to the county and we're not really sure who the third thing that we work with is but that's the contracts so it's just I think my association's position aside from supporting the report is that we want to be active partners for the judiciary we want the resources to do the job for the judiciary and at the end of the day we are supportive of finding solutions to the problem uh that are simpler not more complex just the president could you learn on the uh when you say the resources do you mean physical bodies or are you talking about the money and position so fundamentally it's both uh we I would articulate that it is the money that brings the bodies because if I'm not competitive in wage and retirement and health care and whatnot then I can't get the bodies and that's one of the struggles that some of the the departments have identified uh if we have um if we look to the state transport deputy model those are consistent positions they we have oversight and management of those positions through the department states to transit shares but it's the individual sheriff who's supervising and directing so we maintain that local relationship with our local courthouses I've been to my courthouse several times my deputies are there we find a lot of benefit I'm going to use the corporate words synergy when we have state transport deputies who interact with court security deputies because we're able to operate within the the constructs of our own policies and procedures so we can say hey deputy needs to go get paperwork from the clerk's office the person watching the monitor can monitor the the person in a holding cell so that they don't say hang themselves I'm not going to trust that to a private security company who I have no relationship with and so now I need to come up with a new resource to get the paperwork from the clerk's office so I see a big picture I see deputy sheriff's doing this we talked about you heard that there's resources for best practices across the country sheriff's deputies do serve this function there's other states where it's the state police who serve this function there's other states who have judicial marshals which would be like an analog would be the us marshals service who is the law enforcement arm of the the federal judicial branch we're currently serving this role but I don't think we creating a separation from uh or maybe even a marriage between the executive and the judicial branches that's problematic to us just because it adds more complication to how we function thank you represent Cooper with your association hat on yes you want this job or would it be it seems to me like we're kind of town square pegging around whole a little bit and it might make sense to be considering something it's free standing so I think the answer would be yes I don't think that is a unanimous agreement of the sheriff's association we don't have a position on that per se and I'd be happy to identify what which I think we could bring with the report the sheriff's are already serving this role and one of the other things when we talk about the personnel filling these positions the judiciary has been a great partner in teaching our deputies how to operate the the very screening machines metal detectors x-ray machines and they have that function I can teach just about any cop that court officers is its own separate skill set and so whether that is a law enforcement officer or not is a different conversation executive protection of a judge is an entirely different set and so we can really quickly branch out and then we say where do we train these resources so um back to your question I think there would be a broad support and a majority support to do this um often the sheriffs were saying they don't support doing this is because they don't have the resources to do it because they can't hire well and you brought up the issue of the sexual assault that happened at Stella I think I was there uh it it it makes clear to me that we have door security and we have courtroom security but the courthouse is pretty much wild west and that's where we have a position we call a rover and so the rover is basically a roving patrol of the building staffed areas public areas lobbies bathrooms that's generally the idea but if you take the the full-time equivalence of the judiciary currently has that's an average of three people per courthouse we already know because Stella has more than that so it's I mean that's a report is going to be enlightening I think and I would assume the argument that these should be permanent classified state employees sort of that go to work every day has weight in that discussion I that would make the most sense to me uh is to capture it that way yes the question is for sherifings so I guess we'll just I'll just return to where we were at the beginning is that uh you are in support uh in concert with the judiciary of having one report back in the context of this bill we are in support of that we are in support of the judiciary conducting the study as opposed to the department states and sheriffs not to say speak for the department but it makes sense to the association that that happens as well uh and uh there we are well thanks and we'll uh I'll invite you to stick around to the rest of this discussion did you other I was going to make a comment Mr. Chair it was interesting it's kind of a little bit of a funny but sherif Anderson also woven the other component of his life in the military it's like our piece of the block the bottom line out front that makes it interesting that you have every government that we use that military loss this is the bottom line this is what we're driving through that was great thank you yeah a lot of the other web great so uh senior are you uh can you testify that's totally found uh yes yeah representatives I want to pass life I had a great experience of having worked in the costel of courthouse so I have some experience in this um in addition to being our lobbyist is a is currently a state attorney in ss county and spends a great deal of his time in the courthouse so we have some hands-on experience with how the how the court security actually works um and I think we'd like to just start by saying that we do support the report that's in section 7a but we have some suggestions which we think will make it stronger if you're willing to consider them first I would just say that if the importance of the report is really based on who is involved in the conversation and so our recommendation is that we not just have the judiciary consult with folks but that they work in conjunction with the folks who actually provide the security and in conjunction with the employees who actually need the security um and so our first suggestion is on line 14 that we that rather than saying in consultation with that the judiciary would work in conjunction with um the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs the vsea and the sheriffs association and that we think would produce a recommendation to you that would be more represent representative of all of the folks who um have actual experience with security from both the perspective of the management but also the folks who are the consumers of the security um and uh and also those who would be providing it um and I think it is really important to state that you heard from the sheriffs association you're hearing from the vsea we represent the employees in the courthouses and you heard from the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs when dandy newton testified that the model of the state paid deputies is the model that really is favored by um by at least those three entities and that really I think is important important to state we make some a couple of other suggestions based on that testimony that we think would make this section stronger and that is to insert in the language where it says the number of state deputies that it be state paid deputies so on line 17 where it says the the committee shall report on the number of currently says sheriff's deputies we think it should say state paid sheriff's deputies in the same on on um on uh on line 21 we would not support weakening the the end of that by removing the word similar to we think the intent of this section that makes it clear that the model that we are looking at is one of the state paid deputies similar to the existing model that we use for transport we don't as we said earlier in our earlier testimony we don't need to reinvent the wheel here and we don't need to overly complicate the situation we already have an overly complicated security apparatus as you heard in the courthouses we have a current bargaining unit it's chaired by representative tom oliver of state transport deputies we can build on that model fairly easily um and one thing that i think i would really stress is right now the judiciary contracts for security from another branch of government the the sheriffs are another branch of government so we are not asking them to do anything different that would any in any way change the level of control they would have over the contract that would be in place the contract would just be streamlined it would be with the department of states attorneys and sheriffs rather than individual sheriffs um it's it's still contracting with a different form of government it doesn't dissipate their power or control at all and in fact that is how the model is set up in the statute for the transport deputies the sheriffs have designated the department to negotiate and to and to enter into an account into a contract with the various agencies that use the transport deputies so this is this is not asking them to do anything different than what they do now with the current the current deputies and doesn't dissipate their power in any way from our standpoint so i don't know if this if you had anything else you'd like well sure thank you members of the committee for allowing me to appear today to answer the chair's question i think you asked a question about the contract and who controls if i understood the question correctly at the present time as i was told in the house version of the budget there's about six million dollars appropriated for security and that's done by contract between judiciary and 13 sheriffs departments and so the contract specifies what services will be provided in exchange for x amount of dollars and that is a contract with the executive with another department you know sheriffs and law enforcement capacity are certainly considered executive branching in what law enforcement security so the judiciary also contracts with the department of buildings and general services for the maintenance in the courthouses i presume the contracts for it services and so there's a lot of precedent for the judiciary entering into contracts with other departments or agencies but ultimately the judiciary controls because the contract specifies the obligations of the contract e and i think that's important to know and support of our position that we would like to transition to 25 state paid deputies to be assigned to the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs and then that department the contract as the judiciary does with other agencies departments of state government to provide services for security purposes now since the pandemic in an addison county a state transport deputy has been providing courthouse security there has been no issue there has been no problem there has been no failure to provide that security and and i just want to acknowledge that the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs has assisted the judiciary by assigning a state paid deputy to provide those services it's been done flawlessly seamlessly and and i want to acknowledge that i also want to acknowledge by the way i meant to say this when i was going to begin my brief remarks that any newman did come in she's the person that oversees that department and she has made those services available to the judiciary because there was a need there there was a resource available and it was accomplished no no fights no issues or anything along those lines and i also want to know i saw the judge joe is only is on the line or at least was he is absolutely loved by the judicial assistance and the staff in the northeast kingdom and it's a working relationship already in projects courthouse security the judicial assistance all work together so this is not unprecedented so that's that's our point the contract governs the services to be provided the judiciary always will be in control because it helps to write and enter into that contract and so to ensure that that positive working relationship that's already in place with the chief administrative judge with the court administrative with the department states attorneys and with our members reflected in that study and so we would urge that you ensure that the rematchers association the Vermont state employees association and the department states attorneys and sheriffs being being part of that you call it a task force or working i don't know what you're calling them just ask in this language for judiciary to give us a report back right so i'm happy to add folks for them to consult with us or a conjunction i think there's an acknowledgement from the testimony we've heard to answer that question that we're not we're not in a position right now to say in this next fiscal year we're gonna we're gonna do this whole new way um is like but that we're we're looking for more information from the state holders but the next session they are the stakeholders in place now seamlessly providing courthouse security and we think that it's built on and not some new enterprise created that's it represent hangouts question thank you 25 statewide deputies are they sworn law enforcement opera officers i think we talked today um the exercise law enforcement third power of arrest and that's why they're clearly an executive branch for questions for steve events thank you don't be very nice to share um so committee uh what year we have about 15 minutes here before a schedule break so i wanted to have a little bit of discussion we take a break uh we have a schedule a testimony and a walkthrough of the vermin says bill s 135 and then we're going to come back to the sheriff's bill um and talk about some of the ethics sections so before we move on from the court security sections i just wanted to get a feel uh given the testimony that we've heard both today and previously on on these want to throw out a couple questions for folks to consider and have a little committee discussion time so um if you probably have noticed a theme that as we've gone through these a couple of the mandates that came over um i want to just make sure that we're being thoughtful about sort of how those will work in reality um and so this section seven piece about saying we're going to have one deputy sheriff be at the court so i think everybody wants to head in that direction the question is how do we provide that given that there are various levels of resources throughout the state um and that that works that may be working that may work and be an easy thing to satisfy but it isn't everywhere else um and then you know sort of if there are specific thoughts about exactly what wording we need to see in this report back language so open it up does anyone have like questions or or strong feelings about updates to the section seven and seven eight represent hango thanks seven eight i think should address something about that um funding is provided for this um this ask i mean we i don't know where the funding would come from it does say any corresponding budget request for these positions so similar to so i think we need to be clear that work should also report back on where would the money come from to fund these positions yeah i think the the general idea of why there's a report here and not an explicit we're doing this is uh that the memo that we got back from terry and greg was that there's patchwork and the the money that we budgeted for the security that's being spent a bunch of different ways and so we don't want to break the thing that isn't giving us all the courthouse security that we want by mandating and doing things or asking them to give us some more information and be thoughtful over the next few months about how to provide that i think we could be more explicit about um the funding but i think that's the core issue uh here is sort of how do we how would we move from the patchwork that we have today that we are spending you know six million dollars a year on is that the you know what would be the right number how many of those people that are providing courthouse security need to be these more deputies versus you know a new officer might be more useful for them in certain instances we don't really know that but this idea of being laid on the table of using the state transport deputies as a model that we've heard a bunch of times it seems like before we can make any kind of decision about that you would need some more information from the water's evidence can you just tell me like super simply just to help me hear what problem are we trying to solve so i would say there's a couple of things some courts from what we've heard from our representatives from the judicial branch uh can't operate at certain times or have to do it in a limited or awkward way like having somebody lock the doors and run up into a courtroom in order to staff it um because we we have limited staffing and budgeted for pretty limited staffing to provide courthouse security so what originally came over to us was in this language in section seven a sheriff shall provide and then one deputy sheriff certifies law enforcement officer right so we've got that sort of like mandate but then we've also heard from the sheriffs that some places that would be fine but in other places there isn't any sheriff's deputy right now providing courthouse security and that would be great if we could find that person but we would need to figure that out so the senate in s17 pushed the the date the start date for that mandate out a year to july of 2024 well no to actually just have the mandate but they still didn't address the things that the reports asking which is who should these people be should they be the sheriff's deputies and if we went to a model of having them be state employees like the transport deputies how could that work and how many deputies would work in that model and fill the gaps because what we all want to get to is to have safe courtrooms that are open when they need to be open so that's the bigger problem that we're trying to solve okay i mean that's that's what i thought was the problem but it seems to me this might be overly simplistic the way i'm thinking but i think if you're just asking somebody to do something you have to give them the money correct so doesn't it seem like a budget issue more like a money thing rather than whatever else all this is which makes sense but it's it's the money but it's also from the testimony we've heard from both the sheriffs and from the court administrator it's about who who do those deputies work for and are they contracted or are they state employees and that is a question i don't think this committee has enough information to answer just that that was my next question which is if it's mandated by the legislature that they hire them then they would be state employees because it's not it's not enough we just tell the sheriffs hey you have to provide a deputy that's that's what came over from the senate you're starting july of 2024 you have to provide a deputy for every courthouse sounds great on paper but we so what i'm trying to take some responsibility for here is to say actually let's work with the courts and the department and the sheriffs and see employees association and other stakeholders if they want to weigh in here and try to figure this out so the first step of that was asking the judiciary to work with some of those stakeholders because they volunteered thank you very much terry um to work uh this year on a report back to us to help us because i think we're we have a direction to point in but we're just not we don't have that all the information we need to get there representative hang up thank you so building on representative water zevins question which was similar to mine like what about the funding for this doesn't this report ask them to do what you're asking us our opinions on right now i'm not sure what you're asking us for i'm asking you if based on everything you've heard if this structure the first question is is this structure of saying we're going to delay any implementation of this mandate and ask for a report back if the committee feels like that's a sensible way to proceed and then if there are specific questions or other things like can we be a little more explicit about funding sure about that being an ask um it's like what would it cost to to do this so with any recommendations you have trying to get get at that in this language any corresponding budget request for youth positions was high and mr. devlin uh tried to capture that but i just want to make sure that the the structure is sort of immutable to me and nobody's got any heartburn about sort of doing a thing in this direction but saying hey we need some more information so we can act act on this and help support the judiciary security hopefully in next year's session because i'm working in the representative on this uh so i can see we're gonna work on this afternoon and then looking to try to mark up a final mark of a potential vote tomorrow morning did um i don't sure if there's any test on part of it do we want to give them one the last crack at it somewhere just i think this is new language to him and his fear is correct just to go because i mean they're a major they're the major stakeholder in this obviously and i just want to make sure we don't have some unintended consequences i guess and being a little probably over whatever on that but you know what i mean just one last here's your final here's your last word what do you think yeah um happy to do that um i think what what i was hearing loud and clear from sheriff anderson not to put words in his mouth but to try to summarize is that the there's a sense of relief from the association that we're uh being thoughtful about this mandate that was included uh and that there's the very strong implication that by the time we get to next year we're going to be looking at this issue in more depth than you're saying you got to put a sheriff in every courthouse every courthouse yeah i just said and then in general the whole the whole smear before we go yeah it sounds good vote yep yep we're all oh yes one last one last cut out of we go uh but these guys got to live with it yeah and there's there there are a couple of other sections that i'd love to hear more from sheriff anderson i think i mentioned that earlier that uh that we haven't gotten into so i'm gonna stay focused yeah uh and possible markup and vote tomorrow and we may have we may have more work uh we've represented thank you go ahead thank you i'm still trying to um compare the notes that i had had questions on with this new draft because i just saw the new draft when we sat down and i don't know if all the things that i brought up as questions on friday were actually addressed in this new draft so when would we address those if i find some that have not been addressed i would say that um i am working and have been all weekend on the notes that i had from our testimony last week that's what it resulted in this draft i've already received some feedback both from sheriff anderson uh and from others and we heard some testimony today that i think uh might have some tweets to this section so um it really is you know this afternoon and tomorrow morning um i would say if you've got any big burning thing that you want to get into the conversation that you look at um sooner is better because this bill is we're gonna try to get it uh in the shape where we can take a vote in the next day or two and uh you know it'll be the bulk of our work this afternoon obviously and tomorrow so later this afternoon if i find that there are things that haven't been addressed in the new draft bring them up then oh yeah absolutely and well tomorrow we're going to spend some significant work on this bill so i hope is that we can address any major issues in the next 24 hours and have something we can vote on in the next day or two great well and let's um take a little break and uh we will be back here if everybody here would be ready to go at 245 that would be fantastic so this is a little bit longer than a 15 minute break welcome back everybody after a break here um we are picking up with an introduction of s-135 act relating to the establishment of vermont cities center brach thanks for joining us thank you very much for having me for the record it's randy brach uh from the senate uh i i will just tell you same thing that i told the senate when i presented this bill on the floor and i rarely say anything like this i love this bill it's a great bill and i love it for a variety of reasons one it solves a problem or at least begins to solve a problem that we as a state have it doesn't cost a lot of money to actually start up at doom and nor does it have a lot of continuing expense it doesn't cost the taxpayers any future money and it doesn't raise taxes it actually gives something back to an individual vermonters and it gives something back to the state because it ultimately has the potential of saving us money and last but not least we're not the first of the nation to do it and that's pretty important because so often what happens is we pass things we're the first of the nation to do it and then we pay the price because we don't know how to do it here we have a number of other states have done this already so we can measure what they've done and the kind of success that they achieve essentially what the bill does it is it takes a look at a problem the problem is that only five percent of americans without workplace retirement savings are saving for retirement and more than half of small employers don't offer retirement saving plans two-thirds of individuals without a workplace plan have less than ten thousand dollars saved for retirement and most vermonters don't have adequate emergency savings when an employer does not offer a retirement savings plan on average the statistics tell us that fewer than five percent of its employees are saving for retirement but when an employer does offer such a plan over 70 percent of employees participate in that plan monitors who aren't covered by retirement plans are lower earning younger less educated more likely to be by pock more likely to be female and as a result historically vermonters and americans in disadvantaged groups are less prepared for financially secure retirement than others 60 63 percent of savers without an employer plan at less than ten thousand dollars and that's significant our plan that's contained in this particular bill is a Roth IRA and there are two kinds of IRAs there's a Roth IRA there's a traditional IRA the Roth IRA is distinguished because it's contributed with after tax money from its savers regular IRAs are pre-tax money the advantage of the Roth IRA particularly for the groups that we're talking about is it's always their money they don't have to wait until they're retired or they don't have to suffer a penalty to take their own money out of the plan and this plan as proposed is both a retirement savings plan which is principal purpose and that's how it's used in other states more than anything else but also is an emergency savings plan you know the people who have some sort of a medical emergency right now in vermont more than half if not more of vermonters who are employed who don't have retirement plans have less than a thousand dollars available to meet an emergency that's pretty significant what this plan does is it puts money aside the earnings from that money yes you can't take out without some sort of a penalty early because that's tax advantage money if the money that you put in is your money it's after tax money you can take it out whenever you want to the plan offers a lot of flexibility because every employer by employee by default is put into the plan if they don't have a a retirement plan already but they can immediately opt out the plan talks about using a five percent rate which is consistent with others other states have done but an employee can decide it's anything less than that including zero at any point in time it's payroll deduction and payroll deduction again the emphasis is it's their money one of the advantages of programs like this is people who don't have plans depend on social security for retirement and usually not an awful lot of and we all know that as one who gets social security it's not a lot of money it's not enough money for many people to be able to live on in retirement by supplementing the amount of money that is available that people in fact save we make people stronger so that they are better able to achieve retirement but we also help the state because it potentially saves us money because when people don't have the money to be able to support themselves state winds up supporting them or contributing to their support so this is a plan is designed to make people more self-sufficient it also is designed to make the individuals wealthier both in terms of what they are able to save themselves but just as important by setting that money aside it means that they are better prepared for emergencies and they're better prepared for retirement every year that you can defer retirement from your first available date at age 62 up to the normal retirement date of age 67 every year you can delay taking social security money out will increase the earnings that you can take out or the money that you can take out from social security up to seven to eight percent for every year thereafter for the rest of your life that's significant particularly as we're all learning to live longer by and large we we heard from a lot of people about this particular bill among the things of course that we heard is what's happened in other states that have put these together in Oregon and California savers are setting aside an average of about two thousand dollars per year total assets under management in the six active states that have this plan right now 735 million as of january 31st of this year and the average account balances are growing rapidly in 12 states at this point who have passed this legislation six of which are active and the others are in the process and what we're seeing is that these numbers are growing both in terms of states minimum costs to establish such a plan no cost to employers at all involved in the plan and the fact that employees have full control over their money this has a phase roll out employers with 25 uh employees of more by july 1 of 2025 15 to 24 by july 1 2026 five to 14 employers by july 1 of 2026 also looking at under five uh employers uh the treasurer's office i know is looking at that argan is currently in the process of rolling out and under five and again we'll have an example to look at with sufficient time to do so to see if that makes sense to say that it works that basically is the bill at a nutshell we heard from representatives of the treasurer's office we've heard from arp and we heard from the department of aging and independent living and we haven't heard anything opposed to it everything has been in favor and this is something that we i strongly recommend for your committee to take a serious look at thank you for giving us the the initial sales pitch on the bill exposes on the committee have questions for the senate reporter here's in the back of represent pigley how good it was to be a representative senator thank you and i know my own personal history has gotten out in service at age 22 i didn't have an idea at all as far as you know how to be saving for it fortunately i had a friend of some whom life insurance policies convinced me to invest in that so that's basically what i had for a long time i guess my question is that i haven't really looked things over yet or talked to the treasurer but what about getting young people interested is is our campaign around this to make sure that they have some sort of an understanding as to how important this is because i think for me at 22 it would help me to have somebody explain to me a little bit closer as to hey you know this you're going to need this in the future it's absolutely correct that i know that the treasurer's office has things in mind that they perhaps can describe to you but i've heard talk around the building from time to time that gee would it be great to have financial literacy be something that is a thing that almost every kid in school ought to be learning something about and that's the first step thank you yeah thank you uh so senator it's just if i read it clearly and just i believe the answer is yes but there's it's a hundred percent employee funded no contract no matching contributions of any sort no matching contributions that can't be matching contributions some have asked well gee can an employer decide to put in some money to help the employee and the answer is unfortunately no because otherwise if you have an employer's employee employer-sponsored plan like a 401k or similar you are entangled in orisa the employee retirement income security act which is a nightmare extremely complex and also extremely costly and long run so by having it belonging entirely to the employer it makes it simpler it makes it cleaner it makes it easier to administer makes it less costly for for the state and it also i think makes it a lot clearer to the employee it's his money or her money and you can go one two three four five percent of your choice up to that five up to that five and there is the provisions in the bill to actually increase the top limit that one can deduct in future years great thank you four percent over thank you sir um give me some background on why the implementation is over three years one particularly a shocking number of employers in vermont or under 10 employees 115 employees and they seem to be most in need maybe and i i think it's principally and i'll let the treasurer explain his motive for setting that that limit up but i think the principal reason is prudence that uh by starting out more slowly uh with larger employers we get more experience and how folks in vermont are reacting to the deductions and how employers are administering it and making sure that we don't create administrative burdens that would require additional state employees state staff state it resources this is entirely one and again it's one of the things i love about it doesn't require us to set up a new employee system to to be able to deduct this from uh from employers this isn't going to be administered entirely by a third-party administrator which is frequently the case with with with retirement savings plans that large corporations do and again it's it's to minimize the overhead uh and by going more slowly i think you're getting more prudent i would expect though that if this is spectacularly successful in the beginning and spectacularly easy to administer that uh we would we would think again about perhaps accelerating thank you senator brach for i do here's the first look at the bill but uh invite treasurer p chev to take chair next thanks for being here yeah thank you very much thanks to the committee and thank you to senator brock who did a great job overviewing the merits of the bill and i think some of the details uh as well so maybe i'll just start with some of the questions that were asked that could provide a little bit more detail on so to represent higley's question um you know there are two positions that will be funded out of the vermont saves not as the senator said from tax revenue but from fees that will be charged to individual members fees that are low and much lower than what they'd charge in a 401k so that is the good news um but one of those positions would be an outreach coordinator whose focus would be both to work with businesses to make sure they're prepared for um the program implementation but also to work with employees and work with employers to work with their employees to understand the benefits of such a program and as you point out i mean there's a tremendous number of younger workers that are in this category of not being covered by a workplace retirement plan so a tremendous number of younger vermonters that would be covered under vermont saves and the ability to save in your 20s and in your 30s really would be quite significant over the rest of your lifetime so that certainly will be a message that we'll be working on getting across to everybody um and to represent hoopers question you know the so the bill passes this this session then we'll have two years basically until the first employers are uh participating in the program so we will have to hire the director of the program uh we'll have to secure the vendors uh there's two vendors primarily one that would work with the businesses to set up payroll deductions to set up the Roth IRAs then there's a vendor that would provide the actual investments that will be in and available to those with the Roth IRAs that could take a little bit of time uh they'll have to get their website specific to vermont we'll want to test that with some employers we'll want to do outreach to those employers to make sure they're familiar with the program that's coming down the pike and then once that starts in july 2025 you know basically six months another group will come on six months the last group will come on and that's just to make sure we can pivot if anything you know turns out to be an issue during the implementation um i will say as the senator pointed out that could be accelerated vermont's a smaller state the state of colorado just went through their first phase and had over 120 000 employees sign up on a single day so you know even if we're successful we'll have maybe 65 000 employees in total for the whole program so it's something that i think a vendor could handle if we ended up implementing it on one day instead of over multiple periods those are current vc administrator duties uh they're not one of the vendors yeah right down cost yeah well one thing that could drive down costs even more um is working with a vendor that certainly has worked with other states just because they have experience with this program but then potentially partnering with another state uh that you know the couple of likely candidates would be our neighbor connecticut that has passed this rent island isn't the process of passing it this session so that both of those states stood up a very similar program connecticut's already stood it up but if red island follows suit then we'll have a couple of new england neighbors that we could potentially partner with the drive to the fees down even more and how large a range of funds would individuals have or it's simply a safe so the you know generally in these other states connecticut has a wide variety relative to some but if you think of it as like six or seven target date funds so there's a like a secure holdings fund which is you know pretty risk adverse and then maybe there's a target fund 10 years out you know 15 20 25 30 and so on so an employee no action you know they're defaulted into the plan the money's defaulted into a Roth IRA for them their money would go into a target date that most closely aligns with their likely retirement age and likely retirement date so they would have that choice made for them they could go in and put it into the secure you know investment they could put it into something more aggressive so there'll be a limited range which sort of helps with making sure people don't you know folks that might not be as experienced with investing really can't go too far you know thank you thank you for a brief interview conversation on this I know it's been going on for quite a few years so the states that have implemented already what kind of participation rate are they saying yeah so the early states like Oregon Illinois California have reported 70 to 75 of the employees stay in the program the specific number that gets thrown around is 73 but between 70 75 percent are remaining opted into the program and then and that's in the first year of the of the operation so I think a natural question would be well what about the second year and they're reporting back that like over north of 95 percent of folks are staying in the program like year over year so it makes sense like like this inertia that's preventing people from for a plan like this is something that's also working in their favor once it's provided to them that inertia of continuing to save year over year over year once it's done for you automatically and taken care of from a payroll deduction okay and those are stronger numbers than I thought you were going to the site so that's certainly encouraging yeah I know it's what it really encouraged us to look at this program that these other states have implemented they're just their success rate has been quite you know quite surprising in a good way is it the state set of for a greater greater time do you have any you got that maybe shifts the breakdown ages like see what the so there's a slide that we presented in our presentation that slide three it just breaks down the Vermont expectation in terms of age you know there's a there's an estimate of 88,000 from honors that don't have a workplace retirement plan and then right below that there's sort of the age breakdown and we don't have any data that suggests it would be different than how the 73 percent would fall based on each of these categories so I think it would be disproportionately younger you know you can see that almost 50 percent of the folks that don't have workplace retirement are under the age of 34 with you know the other cohorts having about 15,000 or so in them beyond that so that's great to be able to offer something to someone that that's that that young to be able to start saving we're now they're basically saving nothing yeah that's all I have is that a good embarrassing question yeah sir Kaplan I'm out you can put in Roth yes there is I think and for this year is 6500 it's contemplated potentially go up it usually goes up every number of years the average savings that the other states are seeing are $2,000 a year so it doesn't seem like generally people are running into that cap these are gent like we were talking about lower wage earners you know $2,000 aside is a significant portion of their overall income and it's post tax as well so there is but we have found these other states have found that that cap has worked for them for this program one thing that senator didn't mention which I do want to make sure I get across is that the federal government has enacted a revamp savers credit so the savers is coming into play in 2027 and if you are a lower wage earner so that seems to be someone making $70,000 or lower sort of teared out at about 70,000 and you're saving money into a qualified retirement plan on your own and the federal government will make a direct deposit annually basically a federal match of up to $2,000 into your qualified retirement account so you can imagine a scenario where somebody has qualified by income they're saving $2,000 on their own and the federal government then puts $2,000 also into their account and that would be every year that they're saving themselves into that qualified retirement account so we you know another reason to to move on this now and to get working on it is to make sure as many Vermonters as possible are in a position to get that federal match starting in 2027 representative is that program guaranteed to continue starting in 2027 but is it guaranteed to continue or is that there's no sunset you know anything congress can always you know change its mind but there's no it's not a pilot program or a program of the sunset you know it's intended to go on definitely as far as I know so as people age so it looks like from the demographics in your slides like roughly half the people who initially enrolled or people who are kind of 35 or younger employees and we assume based on what you said it's under a bracket you know they're gonna get the biggest benefit of having savings over time this is a longer time for retirement when as they age in their careers and get into jobs that have retirement savings will these plans kind of exist alongside as a separate savings uh from employee employer plans or do you envision people kind of rolling their their IRA from into other plans as they get older would kind of be up to each individuals yes and so I think uh chair the most likely scenario with that the Roth IRA would just remain sort of parallel to whatever other retirement plan is offered to them for a 1k or pension system or something else they can continue to contribute to their Roth IRA separate you know I just they would have to be their money into an automatic payroll deduction and same thing if an employer you know if an employee goes from employer one to employer two and they're both in this program their one Roth IRA account would follow from employer one to employer two it's portable in that way if they left the state if they you know worked for another employer in Vermont that offer another retirement plan like we talked about all of those provide that portability that either it it ports up with another employer participating in this plan or just exists as a you know independent vehicle that they can continue to put money into in the future for present case would the cap on a Roth like if they move to a job where they get a 401k with those two caps interfere with each other so they're separate would be separate caps so you have the IRA cap it's a little bit higher like more it used to be 17,500 it might still be there going up to 22,000 I believe so that would be one cap and then you'd have your Roth IRA cap yeah thank you thank you very much maybe just one thing just to mention to the representative mortgage question but the 5% you can an employee can decide to go higher than the 5% on their own as well so they wanted it to be 10% on their own they could go in and do that as well as making it lower so it's flexible pathways okay and and then I think the senator mentioned under five is not you know required to participate in this but an individual or a small employer can on their own participate in it if they'd like to choose yeah but then just the percentage would they would be halted when they had the cap though yeah obviously you like it at 10% I was making 70,000 I can't hit 10% because it's going to exceed that right exactly right yeah exactly right yeah okay thank you thank you treasures for being with us yeah thank you very much I asked legislative council to give us kind of a brief jog through so we can orient ourselves to the bill and then I'll pull the committee but it seems like there's a lot of support for this one so I wanted to make sure we had the chance to take it up in the waiting days of the session but I really appreciate that move it yeah I really appreciate that thank you so much so Becky if you're ready now please join us thanks for being this afternoon thank you last friend legislative council so I can let me know if you want more details but I will give you more of an overview um so this is uh S-135 which establishes the Vermont Saves program so this is creating a new chapter in title three that is adding on the language to administer this program so there are a number of sections in section one that's adding that new chapter of law that sort of detail all the logistics to creating a new program so I can generally explain what the the sections are so section um the new section 531 and section one on page one is the definitions that would relate to um this new chapter of law um and uh I would just point you to page two um this is where uh there's a definition in subdivision two on line seven for a covered employee as well as a covered employer on line 20 so I think there were some questions over who would be captured by this program and so this is outlined there so an employee is someone who is 18 years or older and is employed by a covered employer it can include a part-time seasonal or temporary employee if that's permitted by the treasurer's office and then there's some restrictions on what a covered employee does not include and then with respect to a covered employer um it is you know any person or entity in the state that can be a for-profit or a non-profit that has not offered to its employee in any time within the current calendar year or two preceding calendar years a specified tax favored retirement plan so I just wanted to highlight that um this is capturing employee employers who have not in the last two years offered this plan to their employees uh so um any questions on that so we're talking about employees who don't have a retirement plan that's provided by their employer or 18 or over right in the last two years and I can I'm having to go through more definitions but if this is the level of each I'll you want I can skip to um page five section 532 which is establishing a program so that is on uh line 18 of page five so the program is um administered by the treasurer's office and the purpose is stated as increasing financial security for Vermonters by providing access uh to an IRA for Vermonter employees and companies that do not currently offer a retirement savings program um and then there's some language about how the program should be designed so it's it's meant to facilitate portability of benefits through withdrawals withdrawals rollovers and direct transfers from an IRA achieve economies of scale and other efficiencies to minimize costs so as you've heard the program requires that a covered employee offer the choice to the covered employee to contribute to the program so they're it's a mandatory enrollment but then the employee can decide to opt out once they've been enrolled in the program and then in subsection b it specifies that the type of IRA that is used will be a Roth IRA but there is language that allows the treasurer to um authorize an option for a traditional IRA to be used instead of a Roth IRA and then in subsection c it talks about the contributions so I'm on the bottom of page six so I think you just just heard this but there will be an automatic initial contribution of five percent of the covered employee salary or wages but then of course the employee can opt out or can choose to contribute at a higher or lower rate and then on page seven in subdivision two under contributions the treasurer will also provide for an annual increase of the contribution rate by not less than one percent but not more than eight percent of salary wages each year and then of course the employee still has the opportunity to opt out of that increase do more or do less than that so it starts with a five percent contribution and then phases in up to eight one percent per year there is that automatic like the first month would be at the increased rate and then they could change it back or like can they say no don't make any changes um so it says it applies to active participants um including participants by default with an option to opt out so uh I actually I don't know if the way that the rules would be set up for a program would allow them sort of give notification that allow them to opt out ahead of time um but perhaps the treasurer's office can answer that question for the record identity treasure down in coils I it would be set up so that the person could opt out before the the new elevated contribution rate would take into the message thank you thank you um and just other things um to note on page seven subdivision four says that covered employees are not permitted or required to make contributions under the program so I just wanted to highlight that um and uh page eight under the administration of the program um the treasurer can administer uh in the program um through the treasurer's office or contract or the vendor to administer the program and manage the investments and I think you just turn a little about that as well right it's a question back to four yes please limit the contributions to only those made through their employer or can they um as being a Roth make individual contributions into this this is limiting the employer for making contributions yeah yeah but say an employer does a Christmas bonus and says if you'd like this too um so my understanding is that if the employer contributes into this plan then it um it sort of triggers irisa yeah it does laws so I think that it's a company's going to try to get around the back door it's different I don't know that I can I can answer how that would be handled but I think the idea is that the employer should not be uh making contributions into this account for the example representative were mentioned where an employer gives a bonus it's totally up to the employee as long as this employee is money they can put money from a bonus right okay yeah sorry I thought you were saying the employer did like yeah no so I don't think the employer could sorry I thought your question was whether an employer could deposit a bonus into the account and I think the answer is no but you're saying if somebody receives a bonus they can decide how they close what yeah why do you use that money as long as it's the employee's direction of that with those ones in the MFC the cat yeah well well um there's a language under the administration of the program so that the treasurer has to design and implement the program in a matter manner that's consistent with federal law and here's in this language in subdivision one on page eight it says that the program cannot be preempted by in the payroll deduction IRAs and covered employers not be subject to irisa so that goes to that issue that was just raised um the treasurer is uh tasked with setting up a number of processes and requirements in order to administer the program in subdivision three um so have to do with um enrollment and contributions um automatic enrollment by by payroll deduction uh processes for participants make non payroll contributions to accounts under the program so that might go to that question that was just raised so there are a number of and then also the the issue I raised before about determining whether a part-time seasonal or temporary employee is a covered employee that's eligible to participate so the treasurer will be making sort of a number of processes and and rules related to setting up this program under subsection e the treasurer has to maintain separate records and accounting for each account under the program and the participants get to maintain their accounts regardless of the place of employment and rollover funds into other IRAs or other retirement accounts so it's meant to allow for portability of these retirement funds page 10 um there's a reporting requirement that the treasurer signs a report to each participant detailing the status of their account subsection g there's some um outreach requirements on the treasurer's office they the treasurer will conduct outreach to individuals employers and other stakeholders and the public regarding um the uh contents frequency timing and means of required disclosures from the program to employees participants and and those who are eligible to participate in the program and subsection h deals with um the monies and the participant accounts so interest investment earnings and investment losses are allocated to each individual participant's account um and the participant's benefit under the program is equal to the balance in their account in their um account see the program assets in subsection i on page 10 um the treasurer is authorized to establish a trust account um to hold these assets and none of the assets in the program on page 11 can be transferred to the general fund or any other fund of the state um subsection j there is a fee that the treasurer is allowed to charge to defray program costs the treasurer is authorized to set the amount and method of collection of the fee um however the fee cannot exceed $30 per participant in each calendar year and the employer is um no employer is required to fund that um fee from the participants section 532 on page 11 um just sets out the duties of the treasurer for setting up the program this includes a number of um rules that would be adopted to govern the program uh the treasurer is also able to enter into um different contracts and agreements to administer the program and um establish different criterion guidelines for the program i feel like i'm i'm rushing through so i can yes so i guess what i would say given that um today it was kind of our get a flavor for what this bill does i think you've done a great job filling in some of the details and answering some of our questions i know there will be more maybe was that we've gotten a little bit of testimony on this and a job through some of the section so you've got a little bit of an understanding of what we're talking about here um should we try to take some testimony and work on this uh over the next few days because it's got to go to money committees if we're going to get out of here this year um i also wanted to get a sense of um what the i assume the senate included this in the budget this might be a question for the deputy treasurer um what the costs are for staffing for the personnel you need there's a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollar appropriation in the budget seven hundred and fifty thousand for the first year for this calling this one yeah it's just one time for staffing in their college it's a perfect pace for it's all it's exactly right right now is it paper two over time they're actually three three it's contemplated we're not sure we need all three yeah uh so the part of the reason i squeezed this in today uh was that i could sense the excitement about this bill from a few members of the committee and other people and the treasurer of course um so i just wanted to make sure we were all kind of we got a chance to take a quick look this week and then if we can get it uh start our work uh and have Becky back for a real walk through with all the gory details and looking at every line um and get some testimony we i think we can accommodate that if we're a nimble over the next few days represented by around yeah i just wanted to add to the conversation just a little bit like so this is kind of a continuation of uh for newer members uh green non-secure retirement with which the legislature passed and i believe it was at 16 so 17 and something like that yeah and um that was a piece before i got in i worked with some of the business organizations i was very enthused about it but it just it was some hiccups and so i was really encouraged to see this get taken back up so i just want to put an enthusiastic enthusiasm to work on this on the table and i would know just on the last page of the the bill in section three um there's a repeal section so what that is doing is repealing that program because this um the program may be taking it echo what we're going to reply to honestly we worked for a long time on that green mount and so it turned first it was delayed by the feds then it was delayed by consultants then it was delayed by the light it's time for something like this to happen so it sounds like we will be doing a little bit more work on this getting turned on and off seems like all right sweet well thank you we'll be seeing you again have more of this week and next i imagine thank you so much for getting on and kind of give us a quick version i really appreciate that we have just a ton on our plate right now with that we are going to switch gears back to a different section of s17 so sorry about the policy whiplash a totally different area of our jurisdiction here so thank you uh for everybody from the trigger's office for joining us for that we'll be uh having all back thank you thank you thank you i would like to invite for separate uh and christine thank you very much for being with us today thank you and i think um so you had sent us a really great email and i want to just make sure the committee um that was that testimony posted um thanks so i think it was i just hadn't had a chance to get us there ahead three documents over the place on the screen today to create well thank you uh executive director severate if you want to introduce yourself and and the ethics commission work that you do to us that would be really fantastic and then we could talk about as our the bill as it relates to your office yes i'm christine severate i'm the executive director of the state ethics commission and i've been in that position for about a year and a half um ethics commission has been in existence for about five years um the big change for us is that last year um a state code of ethics was passed by the panel assembly signed by the governor i went into effect on july 1st 2022 so it's relatively new um and so we're in the process of raising awareness about the state code of ethics um and we at this point most of provide services and so my advice and guidance on for state of vermont employees and public service so i think an important point to note here is that state of vermont public servants does not include just state of vermont employees but also that includes other categories of public servants such as board and commission members and volunteers and so i believe my colleague tj jones is also going to be joining us a little later so i might as well give a brief introduction so he's a consultant he works for the commission for for longer than i've been here he's here before the house and senate government operations committee on numerous occasions and he's the former state ethics prosecutor for kinetic it for 10 years um he's currently a professor um but he um in his role as the state ethics prosecutor went through issues related to sheriff reform and state of kinetic it um many years ago and so he has um also the ability to kind of give comparative examples if anyone has any questions about how things went in kinetic so apparently they're very similar issues and similar um solutions so hopefully he'll be joining us soon so i will admit that um i have not been following this bill um very closely uh so i've tried to get myself up to speed in the last couple of days um i don't know if anybody has any questions about the ethics commission if i if i went too fast there if i missed anything so a couple of us were uh on go ups last year and we're here for the adoption of the state code ethics and um but many of the members of our new move to legislature were new to go up so um there might be questions i also just did want to um preface your testimony with a little bit of an apology that the suggestion of having instead of a separate conflict of interest bringing sheriffs the office of sheriff under the state code of ethics explicitly kind of came from uh a bit of testimony and you referenced senator white uh i think it kind of started there and that other folks said yeah that sounds like a great idea so that it's all one thing we're not reinventing the wheel thought maybe we should have you in and ask for your feedback on that so sorry to bring you in uh to this bill that you weren't in part of the discussion of but i think um it may be a great opportunity so interested to see how you feel about that no no and i'm glad you did and i guess i should go back a little bit more to um what the what the ethics commission does so we provide icing advice and guidance and we can provide confidential advice you know over the phone over email and we also provide formal advisory opinions so those are for more complicated questions or questions that we think are going to come up repeatedly and so those are posted in our website and that full commission you know reads through those and approves those before those happen we solve the ability to receive but not investigate complaints so um we can receive complaints from any source not just state of remote public servants but also members of the public review those complaints for sufficiency and then the statute lays out um different ways that we can refer the complaint on for example if it relates to criminal behavior we refer to the attorney general's office um if it relates to violation of um thr policy and procedures manual we refer it to um the commissioner for human resources so or that's an example of what we do and so yes i'm glad you had me in because i do think that the idea that the state code of ethics which was a long time in the making it was very partly debated and researched and we think it is a good code of ethics we do think that it should apply to pretty much all categories of public service in months we're looking for consistency we're looking for parity we're looking for like a clear understanding of the expectations around ethics and so when this issue came up it did raise a question in my mind as to whether the state code of ethics already covers some categories of sheriffs and deputy sheriffs and i do believe that former senator white also raised this issue and so we did not have time to fully research the question and come up with an answer but we do think that there is a pretty persuasive argument that at least in some situations it does already cover um some categories of sheriffs and some categories of deputy sheriffs depending on who's paying them and what services they're providing and what the relationship is to the state and so i think that's an important flag here because i did notice that there is previously a definition of conflict of interest that did not line up with the state code of ethics and so i do that do you think if you're going to move forward with an alternative definition of conflicts of interest that was specific to sheriffs you might inadvertently be setting up a parallel system um where you have two standards that are in place that apply to not only you know public you know the same category of public official but you know somebody in the same position in the same profession and that's something that i think everyone could agree should be avoided and especially because i think the the alternative definition of conflict of interest that was proposed was a weaker definition of conflict of interest and so the statute does allow the ability for um agencies and different branches of government to institute higher standards but not lower standards and of course this would be two different statutes so we're not in the exact same situation you know you're not adopting this by policy but at the same time i think the intent in passing the state code of ethics was clear that you can create higher standards the state code of ethics is supposed to have baseline so you shouldn't be going below that just to be clear the the sort of novel conflict of interest that was in as 17 as a past senate is a weaker conflict of interest definition than the one that is in the state code we believe so yeah yeah and i don't think the intent there was to look for a weaker definition of conflict of interest because you are looking for accountability so um yeah so our recommendation would be actually to to look at a state of code of ethics and have it applied to all sheriffs and deputies and i think this was also um agreed upon by the department of the department of attorneys his attorneys and sheriffs and so i did look through some of their prior testimony and they brought up some issues that they felt should be should be looked at or reconciled here so one of those was you know outside employment moonlighting so the state code of ethics does cover that situation there are rules in place and they proposed or don cambell at one point proposed that if a sheriff or deputy sheriff was interested in engaging in outside employment then they would provide a detailed written statement to the state auditor and the state ethics commission for consideration for any potential complex of interest so bringing deputy sheriffs and sheriffs under the state code of ethics you know dispositively um saying that they are covered by that would give them the ability to request advice from the commission whereas i think right now would be unclear and not every sheriff and not every deputy sheriff would have that ability if they aren't considered to be covered by the state code of ethics and that would give us the ability to give them an opinion if they requested one and also i think director cambell raised with sublore protections which is also included in the state code of ethics so that would bring you know that would by covering sheriffs and deputy sheriffs and state code of ethics would cover a lot of other issues not just conflict of interest so i think there there's two there's two ways you can report here i think one would be to do research whether state code of ethics already covers some categories of sheriffs and deputy sheriffs or you could say the preferred path forward is just to say that yes it does and include that in your language here and so when we're talking about conflict of interest i think one thing that we had flagged was that um there's nothing in the the bill as it is regarded that relates to financial disclosure requirements that are closely related to conflict of interest and so right now candidates for legislature statewide office um and also executive officers have you know financial disclosure reforms that either have to follow in the running for office or in the case of executive officer financial disclosures um they have to file those annually and so we do think that we strongly feel that something worth considering and there is language in the senate at the moment related to implementing penalties for candidates who fail to file their financial disclosures as well as executive officers so there is language related to financial disclosures being considered um at this moment and due to its close tie in with conflicts of interest we do think that would be something to consider when it comes to sheriffs and deputy sheriffs if you want to give the public the ability to identify financial conflicts for themselves so um and i did submit i think it's a 50 state chart along with the testimony that we developed for different purposes um however it does give you an overview and gives you um a sense that there is precedent for having uh county elected officials file disclosures so this wouldn't be a novel idea i think there are two ways that you could have someone file a financial disclosure so one will be as a candidate and then also you can consider if you are looking for an annual financial disclosure requirement they could always file them with the ethics commission along with executive officers i think there's a pretty small number of sheriffs 14 if i am correct and so we could handle filing at our end in the posting of that information if that's something you plan to consider and that the annual disclosure is for executive officers um approximately 80 something and i think that would be if you're interested in an annual financial disclosure which i think is the preferred but then also as a candidate um i think they're related the executive officer annual filing disclosure requirements are related to the candidate filing disclosure requirements in the sense that you are identifying conflicts of interest but the public can use them for different purposes right so you're looking at the entire candidate when you're looking at a candidate financial disclosure saying like who's this person where do their allegiances lie and so they're used in similar ways but also slightly different ways in the sense of like what is the person who's reading the form trying to evaluate here and they're also useful for the person who's filing the form because often if you're new to government service that is your first um i guess experience with ethics and it helps the person identify conflicts of interest for themselves as they're like as they're um breaking down their own financial interests so and i will say that the financial disclosure form that candidates and um candidates and executive officers have to file is the same form i included a copy of it in my testimony it is very modest compared to other states and so you may want to consider um changing the form if you wanted to go with that as a model to address you know the specific issues you're looking at when it comes to sheriffs all right uh so i guess i should move on to the specific comments about the language unless you have any questions so i wanted to invite the committee especially since there are folks who didn't uh worn around here for the last couple years while we were doing the state code of ethics and talking about some of these issues in detail and how they have applied to various officers there's um we can we can and should do a much deeper dive into that work to bring this committee up to speed um and i think that there's a lot of interest uh in the public and i'll acknowledge that there have been some stories about how accessible our and how thorough our legislative and executive financial disclosures are um and so i think that this is a topic that we're going to be returning to in a broader sense in the future uh but are there any kind of general questions um one thing that i thought might be useful for some folks uh is that he mentioned uh that there are certain types of complex questions that people ask you for advice i thought a couple of examples of where people kind of go to the ethics commission to go am i okay here or is this around my violating policy if you might share a couple of those like give folks who are new to this a sense of sort of what are the questions that people have that are thorny in this area sure and so we do have one advisory opinion that's been posted um so we're working on a couple of others but it's related to um questions that have come up here and related to outside employment so if i were to engage in outside employment i'm a state employee um you know this is my proposal this is what i plan on doing is this incompatible with my state of ramon you know position and so then going into detailed analysis of you know could you because when you're looking at outside employment it just it brings in misuse of position misuse of resources potential treatment conflict of interest as you kind of go through an analysis under the state code of ethics any issues that might arise in your outside employment and then we would say you know you're clear here you're not clear here if you take this course of action be clear if you take this course another course of action you could be opening yourself up to a complaint and that's the type of advice that we provide so questions about outside employment misuse of position um preferential treatment and conflicts of interest are generally the questions that we get within our office and general questions for directors separate before we dive into recommendations it's going to be a big week here so if you think of anything all right i'm going to peace out i apologize i know that i speak quickly so i try and put my thoughts down yes yes so um i won't read through i think the entire the statutory language i'll just give you my comments on the language um so we did make the suggestion that when you are talking you include in the definition of conflict of interest that the ethics commission suggests the underlined language which you can you know find here that looks like the other lining didn't come out but we suggest you add a sentence that says sheriffs and deputy sheriffs are considered public servants for the purposes of three bsa section 12021 which just makes it clear that sheriffs do fall under the code of ethics and so that everything in the code of ethics applies to sheriffs and deputy sheriffs we also noted that there is kind of an addition to the definition of conflict of interest even though you're falling back on the state code of ethics as your baseline there's an addition in the sense that you're bringing in i think outside organizations into the mix and so we just suggest changing some of the wording here just to make it in line with what is already in the state code of ethics so those are pretty minor changes adding the word also just to highlight that this is you know a slightly different but higher requirement and we also would suggest that since you're bringing in you know organizations of which the sheriff or deputy sheriff is affiliated just be further defined for clarity and so we do think that this would relate to a financial disclosure requirement in the sense that you could require the sheriff or deputy sheriff to disclose those organizations of which they're affiliated on their financial disclosure form and then that's going to be very clear when you're going to when your discussion conflicts of interest exactly what those organizations are and so moving on it does look like a higher standard is being created in this bill when it comes to recusal for conflict of interest so if you look at the state code of ethics we do have scenarios because it is a is a broader definition of conflict of interest that brings in you know more situations so we look at scenarios where somebody might be able to move forward even though they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest and that can be when an action is purely administrative it's a diminished action where there's no one else who could literally do it and so we have a procedure that's set out in the code of ethics where if that is the case then you file a disclosure form that says I recognize that there's an appearance of a conflict of interest or parents or national conflict of interest but I believe that can be impartial and move forward and that's something that's going to be available to members of the public to see that's not explicit in the state code of ethics you're supposed to write the disclosure in a way that a member of the public can understand it so that is implied and so it looks like here you're taking away that option which is you know perfectly acceptable but I would just make clarifying language here that says you know once you identified a conflict of interest you must refuse yourself that's how I read this so I clarify that that is a departure from the state court of ethics that's creating a higher standard and you know of course that can be reconsidered in light of the state code of ethics having you know a broader definition of conflict of interest that might bring in more scenarios that you're not you're not thinking about here so then your reference specifically to um section four which is uh 314c the sheriff W. Sheriff's will avoid any conflict of interest of appearance and then it's directing them they have to recuse themselves from the matter take no further action so it's yes so this is a stricter standard so generally speaking um I don't state code of ethics you have the option of moving forward but you need to file a disclosure forms and you've identified a conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest but you think there's good cause why as to why you can move forward so say for example um you're in charge of you know assigning cases to someone and it is solely based on you know alphabetical order somebody you know close friend of yours comes in and you are only like going back by alphabetical order as to who you assign that case to you're not choosing somebody who think will give your friend a more favorable result there's no possible way that you can deviate from what is in front of you and you're the only person in your office that could actually do this you can say okay I recognize that someone could say that I'm assigning you know this case to you know investigator or someone um who's going to act more favorably for my friend people know this is my friend however you know I'm only there's policy this procedure is in place I cannot deviate from it there's no one else to do this so therefore I recognize this could be perceived as a conflict of interest I'm going to file a conflict of interest form and then if I'm with somebody who wants to see it then they'll know that I have acknowledged this and that you know there's we've set a court of course of action in place to make sure that you know a conflict of interest the perception of conflict of interest exists however in reality and engaging in these duties I am not giving someone the referential treatment so that would be an example of where you would do that and so this does appear to take away that option which is you know perfectly acceptable it just is a deviation from the state court of ethics so okay next section would be related to filing complaints with the state code with the state ethics commission and so currently our feeling is that you can bring shares and deputy shares in under the state code of ethics and that is what the above comments related to and that would give them the ability to ask for advice and guidance from us however we still would not have the ability to accept complaints from any source so this state code of ethics or sorry 3bsa section 1223 would need to be amended because at this point in time it says the state code of ethics can accept can accept complaints related to through branches of government so you do think that you need clarifying language that says would include sheriffs in that mix and then that would give you know make the ethics commission you know fully encompass simply have jurisdiction over sheriffs and deputy sheriffs and to the same extent that it already does with other state public servants so let me see yes and I think that the big the big question in the room is that we do have the ability to receive complaints but we do not have independent investigatory or enforcement powers and so we would need a place to for complaints too and so as I mentioned for example if it alleged criminal behavior or we would be referring to the attorney general's office or a state's attorney's office if it's more you know routine like a policy violation somebody is alleging this use of funds we would need we would need to specify where we'd be referring those complaints to I will say as a preview for next year we will be asking for investigatory and enforcement powers for the ethics commission so it is conceivable that the ethics commission put in the near future become the right place to handle certain types of investigations certainly because we do feel that we should take it for much to take a holistic approach to ethics and not a piecemeal approach like just you know looking at sheriffs through this process looking through you know somebody who works for you know agency of transportation another process we do think there should be one independent agency that's looking into all of these and it should be done independently so but at this moment in time we do not have a path for that so that would also need to be addressed and I think the last comment was the definition of confidential information and we just suggested you know changing that to be in line with the code of ethics I think there's just a couple of language language changes just changes there that over minor great this memo I just want to say it is really really useful with clear and specific suggestions for how we could improve the language so I very much appreciate that do you folks have any questions for directors to read about what we've heard so far just for us generally as it relates to this epic I'm just wondering why are we in line with the state's definition so the bill that came over to backing up to the general context of how we got involved with the ethics commission in this bill so you'll recall it when S17 came over to us from the senate it developed a whole new conflict of interest policy and we heard several folks in testimony week or two ago basically say why don't you just pull sheriff's in under the state effects commission and everybody kind of went okay and I kind of got the notch from the committee so in the subsequent draft here I went ahead and dropped language with the support from legislative council to try to get at that and it's pretty clear that we in our our attempt to make the senate bill and this bill be not reinvent the wheel that we actually did deviate a little bit so we were heading in that direction with the subsequent drafts but the original senate has passed it's like a completely novel different conflict of interest policy and and it seemed like most of our witnesses were like that really might not make the most sense we might want to just use the ones we're all agreed on and I think the the other benefit of that and the and director separate can feel free to disagree with me because you're the expert but then as we update the code sheriffs get pulled along as being covered by that code as opposed to having completely separate things stuck that we even have to change the law again in order to sort of capture any new you know authority or application of the state code so correct and I'll also flag that there's language the senate now regarding municipal ethics and the possibility that ethics commission will be coming forward with the proposal next year and how to address municipal ethics um on the state level and presumably so the proposal there would be a complete process our proposal for a complete process because that is for you not here because it could be you know quite possible the next year that you've got one option on how to work with the complete process when it comes to you um but we should split officials which could include county officials in that or in a state level with the state efficient so but yes I agree that's how to stay advantage of you know having everything under and one phrase is I want that gets updated the updates apply to everyone and I do think that senator great thank you um so other than this bill which would spell out sheriffs are there other statutes that spell out particular elected officials for having to follow the state ethics code um in addition to this would be the first case of going outside of state employment and so I think the case for bringing this in is number one just having I think vermont is moving for moving forward in a path that is looking to address ethics holistically within the state but um yeah to bring up the point that you know former senator janette white raised there's a strong argument that some sheriffs and deputy sheriffs could already be considered a state of vermont employees under the state code of ethics definition of public servant so there is already some overlap there I personally feel there's a strong case that there is and so this would kind of be a way to meliorate um what could potentially become a messy situation when you're discussing what standards apply to who the sheriff yes this other sheriff no it could get quite complicated I guess my question was other types of elected positions well anyone who's an elected an elected position within the state so legislate all legislators for example statewide elected officials so yes when you talk about municipal municipal elected officials no we talk about county officials no and so the argument I think for bringing in sheriffs under the code fully would be because there is an argument well number one just for you know parity but the argument that some of them are already covered by it and that is something that would require some research to determine you know where people landed I do think there's a strong argument for it because it does seem like some sheriffs and deputy sheriffs are paid both paid by the state while they are engaged in duties for the state so that would make sense to me but like if other I know we have very few county officials in the state of vermont some but other county officials are not spelled out as having to follow the same code ethics judges yes they are okay I guess and I think the only category left would be high bailiffs okay so they would be the ones that would like be left out yeah I guess the question would be like the assistant judges for instance who are county officials and they're you know set out in the constitution are they covered right now ambiguous probably in the same way that it is with sheriffs I would say last year when the discussion came up that they were they were discussed and my understanding is that they they would as employees the as members of the judicial branch by C. Terry Corsons here so maybe should want to end but yes I would say yes I will note that I believe TJ is here too and so I think he could also like weigh in because he was involved in those conversations as well last year if he maybe he has some additional recollections I'd also weigh in before we go to TJ if Terry willing do you want to weigh in on on that while we're on this particular question because I was involved in those negotiations I guess my different capacity there was a judicial code ethics that does apply to the system justice and I believe that there was a knowledge right that the state kind of the networks would apply to the extent that there wasn't an inconsistency between the judicial code ethics and the state code ethics and if so I think that's my recollection I remember us going around and around trying to make it so that we weren't sort of undermining the existing judicial code of ethics and now that you you bring that up it sparked my memory from when we were talking about this two years ago so yes that sounds like we we tried to square the two codes the state code and that sorry that judicial code applies to assistant judges sounds like all judges right just assistant judges yes yeah that's correct as does the state code of ethics and so therefore that would go back to the you know the original suggestion about creating a higher standard versus dating creating a lower standard so when the lower when there's a lower standard in place and the state code of ethics creates a higher standard the higher standard applies if there's a policy or rule in place that requires a higher standard then that standard is going to apply so you're always looking at what is the higher standard of ethical behavior and so you know it depends on the it's a fact based in this situation but yes clear as mud thank you well so we'll do more work I imagine on ethics as the executive director said but the idea is that the state code of ethics can apply broadly and is essentially it has standards and then there are professional standards like the judicial standards that apply to judges that can oftentimes be more stringent and the law as I'm hearing both Terry and executive director separate explain it is just that in the situation depending on the person's position and the facts the more stringent code applies whatever whichever one in that situation or the piece is covering it okay so I understand that I just don't understand the who is covered by the state code of ethics in the county so the judges uh we think there's an argument that some categories of sheriffs and deputy sheriffs are already covered some of them would not be if they are paid by the county and they're not you know performing work for the state then that would be a separate category so at the moment we would say judges some some sheriffs some deputy sheriffs but not all of them and not high bailiffs so I'd like to welcome TJ who's with us by zoom thanks for being with us you're welcome I thought he was a singer do you get that a lot well thanks for being with us and offering your perspective on S-17 and this application of share the state code of ethics to sheriffs potentially sure sure and I'm happy to provide any information the committee wants I anticipated the committee would want to hear um whether and how much the sheriffs were brought up during the initial discussions on the code of ethics and my best recollection is that really they they were not the focus and I don't recall them or any county employees um coming up in the conversation but I'm I'm also here if the the committee wants Connecticut has a unique trajectory with respect to ethics and sheriffs and I'm also happy to share that in my experience with that that'd be great and if you could I'm sorry I got ahead of myself and should have asked you to introduce yourself in your in your role with ethics commission for the record absolutely my name is Thomas Jones um people usually call me TJ I'm a professor at the University of Connecticut but I also consult on ethics issues with local state and local and state governments and also corporations and I'm here on behalf of the commission I've had an on and off relationship with the commission since they began the pursuit of filling in the office right after the original bill was passed um so I do have somewhat of a off and on history with the commission I guess I'm the institutional knowledge well I am definitely interested in in both of the the two pieces that you brought up and I think the committee would be interested to hear um how the sheriffs can fit in we're I think on many aspects of our exploration of the Office of Sheriff we found that uh that that their role uh hasn't been completely defined in the Constitution and it's sort of just evolved on its own over time as we've asked them to do and perform different functions um and so it would be great to understand it if they were considered at all in the original founding but and how unusual or usual it is to sort of bring them up into the state code of ethics um for our neighboring states sure and and I can speak to that um Vermont's unique in a lot of ways b