All right, everybody, welcome back. We are picking up our work here on S17 and Mr. Devlin is going to walk us through a strike all amendment to the bill that I've been working on representing Byron, been involved in some conversations and ask for feedback on a couple of initial sets of language, some of which came from the department, got some feedback from Vermont Sheriff's Association and other stakeholders and tried to find a path that would invest in a position at the department that would help with training professionalization, development of model policy, so you'll hear a new deputy director at the department referred to here and stuck back from the Senate as past proposal around changes to the 5%. There were a couple issues there that I think you'll see addressed here. I added a finding section in lieu of instruct the section that was in the Senate as past language that would have created a couple of I think kind of catch all category B conducts violations that I think we're already kind of baked into category B from the testimony that we had heard. So I wasn't sure really what was new there and I think the enumerated category B conducts it seems like a lot of folks are heard from preferred the specificity. So I put in some findings here and thought that that would help maybe people understand a little bit of why we're doing these things as opposed to other things that I've heard people ask us to do like come up with a path to suspension or something like that. So I could talk a lot more about this and will but I think the prudent thing to do here would be to have Tim walk us through what's on the page and maybe focus on sort of the differences between this and S-17 as it came over to us. So thanks very much Tim for all your work on this. You're very welcome and thank you very much for the record. My name is Tim Dublin, legislative council. Before you you have draft 1.3 of a strike all amendment from the committee to S-17. And just for reference any of the changes between the Senate Bill and this bill have been highlighted to easily identify them. That doesn't mean everything here's new language necessarily sometimes they're restorative. If there's any questions as to what's new or language just feel free and I can stop and point it out. The first part of the bill is now let's see we have a new reader assistant heading titled findings in section one is also titled findings. This is session law that lays out the intent of the bill really sorry I should say the findings. But quickly I'll just note and reiterate what chair McCarthy just said. This replaces prior section the Senate's bill which was titled unprofessional conduct of law enforcement officers reviewable by the Vermont criminal justice council. In particular the old language would have had two items to category B conduct for LAO's or law enforcement officers. One would have been age gross negligence or willful misconduct in the performance duties and the second one would have been subdivision I abuse of powers granted through law enforcement officer certification pursuant to section 2358 title. Returning now back to the new language here we have section one findings and representative. Thank you. So in terms of that category B behavior, I'm looking at number 2 under the findings. I wonder if we should not enumerate what these these practices or behaviors are and just say incidences of criminal and unprofessional behavior by elected sheriffs and sheriff's deputies. I'm shaking the public's trust in the office of sheriff because this almost limits us to those things that might be but there could be more. We find this accepting edits to some of the findings and just to be clear the findings they're trying to design to provide anyone who's reading the bill or in our colleagues with a sense of sort of how we arrived at these policies. I'm not married to that which I think that might be a great suggestion representative Boyd. Going on for that role then learning about some of the categories under category B. We just say category B conduct under whatever the VSA. See I think here in the in the findings I want to I would prefer that we kind of stay more like up in the any reasonable person could understand what this was as opposed to somebody knew a lot of stuff about the law. But yeah these are all great things what I'd like to do try to do is see what's on here first and then we'll we'll go back through again and maybe write down some suggestions. So I think before we get too far in the weeds of trying to work with this draft if it's okay with everybody get in through a pass through and then we'll go back and and do some notes and have some committee suggestions for an update. This is definitely sort of a new clean start to conversations about what should be in the bill. So appreciate the initial feedback. I want to make sure we give them a chance to get through it at least once. Chairman McCarthy would you like me to do a line by line of the newly added or highlighted text as we go through it or just summarize and continue? I think I think a good level of detail we've got a little bit of time. So if you want to do a line by line on the new stuff I think that's probably good just so everybody can kind of read it through carefully together at the first pass. Absolutely. So online page the updated section one we'll now read title findings again this is session law read. The General Assembly finds that one, sheriffs provide essential public safety services to the state counties and communities of Vermont. Two, incidents of criminal and professional behavior by elected sheriffs and sheriff's deputies including excessive use of force, embezzlement, assault, and questionable financial practices have shaken the public's trust in the office of sheriff. Three, the office of sheriff requires reform to provide more consistent structure, financial practices, accountability, and increased transparency. Four, while criminal charges or misconduct may lead to sanctions on Vermont sheriffs, including decertification by the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, removal from office can only be achieved through expiration of term, resignation, or impeachment by the General Assembly. The next part of the bill it regards audits and section two has been updated specifically the amendment to title 24 via say section 290 titled county sheriffs department subsection D and just briefly this rewrites the section so that one when a sheriff signals and tend to leave office they will provide a written transition plan and to the county's assistant judges will consult with the department of sheriffs with the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs and the sheriff's executive committee when it comes to the transfer of any assets during that transitional period. The new language as modified will read subsection D on the election of a sheriff elect who is not the incumbent sheriff an announcement that the comma an announcement that the incumbent sheriff will not seek a reelection or an announcement that the incumbent sheriff intends to resign whichever occurs earliest the outgoing sheriff shall provide a written transition plan detailing all financial disbursement from the accounts of the department including the transfer of real or personal property or other assets of the department to the county's assistant judges who in consultation with the department of sheriffs executive committee shall provide written approval prior to any sale or transfer the items identified in the plan. A copy of the approved plan shall be filed with the auditor of accounts and the assistant judges within 15 days after completing the outgoing sheriff's deputies after the sheriff leaves office. And just a quick question about the word audit. I think we heard that in one of the testimonies that it doesn't necessarily have to be a full audit every time we need to specify that because there is an associated cost with full audit versus a partial audit. So I believe and we should follow on this that in this section we're talking about the already required audits that that happen but what we're really doing is expanding not so much in in this piece what we're doing is basically saying that the existing audit structure is going to cover and have this additional period or or sort of additional trigger of having the announcement that somebody's going to retire then go to okay we need to have a plan and there's going to be on any you know major financial transactions this sign off from the county officials the side judges so we should take a little bit more testimony this was language that came from the department actually and then had a further modification in the initial draft we were talking about yesterday. So Rory you know touched on this yesterday and I think we want to hear from them a little bit about those mechanics. I do remember Representative Marwicky in the comments yesterday talking about maybe we need to specify which level of audit that was a suggestion from yesterday that didn't make it in here so it's something we I think should flag as a note that we want continue to think about I was hesitant to try to like go down that rabbit hole with Tim yesterday at last night when I was trying to do a lot of other things but I think it's a valid suggestion. My understanding Tim is that the section that you just read that alone isn't going to trigger a new set of audits. No I don't believe it would. Okay. I think you'll recall that in the testimony we've heard a few times that right now there's the requirement that there be an audit every other year of the sheriff's offices and then when there's a transition. Okay okay it says it transition okay. So when they know that someone announces that they're not running again etc this is specific to that transition period. Okay yep that as long as that transition is in the original intact. Yeah so the existing current practice is that that audit happens now the auditor did ask us and I haven't addressed it in this draft did ask us to look at the idea of if there's a you know audit with that if we just did the biennial audit and then there's going to be a transition to resignation do we really need to do another full audit I think that specifically is a really good area where we could probably get all the transparency we want out of this without having to do a complete second audit and the way it's set up right now especially if a sheriff resigned unexpectedly or there was a transition unexpectedly there could be in theory the idea of having to do another full audit within you know a couple of months of had just done a biennial audit so that might be significant. I think let's put a big sticky note on audits. I think there may be a little bit more language that refers back to this in the next section but we probably have some more work to do on this area. And one other note I just like to make briefly on my 18 was a reference to the department which is probably specific reference to the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs. Yeah if you want to make that update in subsequent drafts and that's gonna be great. The next section section three is actually the particular statute regarding audits made by the other counsel to the sheriff's departments and is a slight modification from what the senate had proposed. This will modify further amend title 24 vsa section 290 b title audits. You'll see a highlight on line 19 which adds the words or participant to a lesson. So section nine for context will read sorry let me back up a little bit. The uniform system of audits shall include procedures to notify the auditor of accounts in the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs and the establishment of activities of any non-public organization of which the employee of the sheriff is the director or participant and that has a mission or purpose of supplementing the efforts of the sheriff's department. And that's the only difference in that section. The next question is just kind of that's kind of a big difference isn't it? It is so this suggestion as the department touched on yesterday in a testimony was from them in a zoom out to the context. We heard way back and I think the senate's more testimony on this that some of the sheriff's organizations have a nonprofit or a booster as it's kind of called attached. And so this would just expand to say that if there's a sheriff or an employee of the sheriff's department and they're running that nonprofit or participating in that nonprofit and its mission is supplementing the efforts of the sheriff's department that the auditor's scope that there would be procedures for the audit to say where is that money coming from and how is it being used because if you're sort of taking the public office of sheriff and you also have this other entity that's collecting revenue that's going in that it should those audits should sort of capture that activity. Does the department itself give up with that? Yeah the department says the chair suggests that we add the word to that line because the other language here that's new came from this ad pass to the board participant was a suggestion from the department. And just for the live situation with this the Addison County Sheriff's Department had by what we'll see three that they started as sort of a secondary way of revenue donation money for the department that was kind of it created this sort of like bifurcation for like oversight of the money and flow. So this is also often clarity that it was like not just about directors but the participants within needs. So if they weren't a main director but they were a participant you know it's just this is a closing post to an interesting practice. Thanks. Yeah the next part of the bill which varies from the amendment which was very problem the senate proposal is on page four and this adds a new reader assistant heading conflict of interest that actually wasn't in there before but this will modify parts of section four which will add a new section to title 24 to the 315th title conflict of interest of conflict of interest. We'll see that there's three sections that are highlighted just want to quickly mention that D is actually not the language we just updated the it was E before but it was that highlight should will be removed in future content versions. The new language will more so bootstrap existing state code of ethics the state code of ethics rather than really creating a fully parallel conflict of interest code more or less. Reading the language new subsection A will read the state code of ethics and associated definitions set forth under title three VSA sections 12-1 through 12-05 shall be applicable to sheriffs and deputy sheriffs. Conflict of interest may exist when a sheriffs or deputy sheriffs immediate family or the sheriffs or deputy sheriffs business associate or an organization of which the sheriff or deputy sheriff is affiliated interferes with the proper discharge of lawful duty. Subsection B has not been altered from the census. Yeah, I don't know if you're going to do this. I don't understand that that piece at all as far as what does it what does it mean that these affiliates interfere with the proper discharge. I'll give me an example how I could have it. I just I don't understand I don't understand that section. Sure. The state code of ethics is largely cash the types of conflicts describes are pecuniary or financial for the most part and so hypothetically I suppose a sheriff or deputy sheriff could be affiliated with an organization which has some sort of financial stake in the outcomes of a duty that's allowed that the sheriff could be blowing at the time maybe in contracting classic example nepotism contract goes is RFP request for proposals received a proposal from a friend family member something like that might be marked as inappropriate and would provide suboptimal results based on choosing something for financial interest for or familial perhaps there. That's one example. The request we heard from the sheriff to testify and was supported by the department was this question around the conflict of interest language that was in S 17 was entirely novel like it was just a new conflict of interest policy for specifically for sheriffs. They were saying we could accomplish the same thing and have it would be comparable to the other elected officials that are covered by the state code of ethics. It's something like this. I think before we moved anything like this I want to hear from director slavery and other folks about how does this actually work in practice. It's a really good question that you're asking representative because I mean we haven't done in this year much work around ethics and there are lots of you know conversations coming up because of stuff that's happening in the press about what is the ethics commission's role and what do they do and sort of how much power do they have. One of the questions that I had that was if we go to the state code of ethics and there's really a serious you know complaining about ethics you know could that also be a complaint from the justice council. So I think having director Siegret and either chair Sorrell or director Simon to hear too to talk about how all these things were leaked would be important to take advantage of things. Subsection B has now been altered. Subsection C does have any language and reads the Department of State's attorneys and shall establish procedures for forwarding ethics constraints to the state ethics commission based on the procedures set forth in level 3 BSA section 1223 and then D again this is actually not the language the languages were obviously highlighted but was just kind of moved up. That's there. The next part of the bill gains the sheriff's department's compensations and benefits. This was a reading assistant hang that was updated. It was called contracts before. The purposes of being more factually or descriptively accurate and so what's called the sheriff's contracts. Section 5 amends title 24 BSA. Sorry I don't want to jump the gun but what you're just going to start to say is a town, city, village or county and I wonder if this section refers to contracts with anyone else on the municipality. Like wouldn't a sheriff have a contract with for instance a school or a hospital? That's a great question and this whole section does refer to all contracts. The amendments to subsection B, let's see B and it's subdivision 4, inserting city, village and county that was just there. Okay, so there's more to this 291A contracts that we're not seeing. That's my frustration with reading bills that are condensed like this. Thank you so much. Yeah, the board legislative council always has to make a decision about how much existing underline law they want to spread out. So thank you Tim. So you'll see new highlighted text on page 6 in subsection C. Essentially the changes here will restore or really preserve current statutory language so it's not highlighted that's on the books right now and we'll add constraints for the use of that 5% figure and funds from those and how they'll be expended really tying them to following a model policy to be created and maintained by the Department of the State's attorneys insurance. So Tim I just before you go through the I just want to make sure I'm orienting the committee to what happened here because it can be a little confusing. So after the extensive testimony we've heard about the 5% and the concern that the language that the Senate has passed us created this new idea that the 5% was an administrative overhead fee that it was like a separate fee and wanted to put in a separate account from other funds that were received by the sheriff and there were questions about the way that that fee language would be interpreted by the auditors frankly and how the maintenance of those separate accounts could be challenging. And I asked witnesses and we repeatedly kind of kept coming back to this and what problem are we trying to solve and I think the real concern was as we heard from you know the conversation about the $400,000 bonuses and the sort of discrepancies in what sheriffs are being paid that there isn't a consistent policy about how sheriffs are compensated and benefits are paid for. And so I asked legislative counsel to restore the 5% language and underline a law so that's what most of this section C does right so you'll see that there's no highlights or there's no underlining of the most of that highlighted but then out on this new sentence which is a reference to a model policy which you're going to see in the upcoming section. So just wanted to orient the committee to what I asked legislative counsel to do so what we're doing is restoring the policy that exists today with the 5% so sheriffs still have that flexibility to include overhead in their contracts but then putting some limits on how these kinds of funds can be used in regard to benefits of compensation so I'll turn it back over to you Tim thanks for sidebar of course and I'll just pick it up from line 16 with the to be new statutory language. Funds derived from changes for the contract administration of a contract shall only be used for sheriff deputy or other departmental employee compensation bonuses salary supplements retirement contributions or employee benefits according to the model policy created and maintained by the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs and the one second thank you quick question what that means is that the administrative charges for the contract can only be used for personnel and their benefits but the contract payments are can be used for equipment vehicles maintenance of the facility those types of things so as written a contract between a party and a sheriff's department can have a certain allowance built into it to cover the administrative costs or costs associated with administration of that contract the remaining I guess intake of funds received from the contract I don't believe there's anything in statute in here anyways that really limits how those funds once received would be expensive term so it's just the administrative costs derived from that contract a small piece up to 5% that can be used only for personnel and their benefits if the rest of the revenue they're getting from say a contract with the school was needed to supplement like employee salaries or whatever which I'm sure it would be that's okay for them to use but that 5% can't be used for the other department costs like equipment facilities and cruisers and that type of thing yes I agree with that yeah and I think the thing I think your question is getting at represented the hangar that I wanted to ask clarity for Tim is that we're not limiting the ability for the sheriff to use or any sheriff to use funds derived from that administrative 5% for any of the other things that would reasonably consider administration here there were just silent on that but what we're saying is if you're going to use funds that are derived from this overhead for benefits and compensation it just needs to be in accordance with the model policy so if you're using for this you have to follow the model policy though it's I think that were silent here unless I'm misunderstanding the construction on the ability to use that administrative fee for you know buying a vehicle or you know some other expense that could be not think that's I dig all point I think if that is the intent I think this may need to be redrafted to better reflect that okay as written and this is something perhaps was an error on our part was so funds derived from changes charges for the contract administration that 5% fee really of a contract shall only be used and it's this shall only I think it wasn't made before and so we changed that internally yeah so I love the shell modify I was trying to have it modify you know to connect the if you know if you're using it for these things then you have to follow the model policy and I think if the if the only is modifying it just yeah it's unfair we just need to clarify that now so we can certainly probably my fault in suggesting language that wasn't clear in the first place representing you thank you so if you're not intent if the intent isn't just for personnel and their benefits then I would say get rid of that whole section and just say in accordance with the model policy created shall be used only in accordance with the model policy created and maintained by yeah so we're going to get into what model policy we're referring to here in the future this section coming up so let's just say that noted that this isn't as clear as I suppose it would be and well that's why we do this when we're here we'll stop we'll come back we'll we'll try to clear this up and not try to wordsmith it online but duly noted that that is didn't quite nail it on the first first pass and I think it can be easily adjusted to address that concern thanks then come back to that um f sorry new section will be added to this bill particular section 5a page 7 and this actually replaces the prior 5a put in by the senate which replaces the use of administrative overhead funds in section sorry in the years 2023 and 2024 and that had been added by has appropriate or senate appropriations it will replace it with shares departments compensation and benefits model policy sorry represent so I had that flagged earlier um 5a mine 11 after receiving approval from the Vermont criminal justice council um and they are already providing input which they are on mine nine why do they need to be the overarching approval body when back in the section we just discussed lines 19 and 20 and 21 says in accordance with the model policy created and maintained by the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs that to me is a little bit of just I don't know if it's overkill or it's um one body giving approval over what they've already created which just doesn't make a lot of sense to me so I had flight back before we had the previous discussion yeah so we'll we'll probably have some policy debate about this when we really dig in the committee discussion and I feel pretty strongly that I want the criminal justice council which has the broader view on what's appropriate for law enforcement model policies and and various levels of expertise and input from people who aren't so closely associated and focused with the particular departments that the policy covers to bring in ideas about you know international best practices on on the management of law enforcement I want them to approve the policy but I think that's something that this committee can have a debate about it's important um thank you I think what you just said makes a lot of sense but I also agree possibly flagging section five in c of that was the bottom lines of 18 that maybe it should be created and maintained by the Vermont criminal justice council to go off at the point that you've just said because they really emphasize best practices yeah I think um we're one of the things that I was really worried about and that I try to address throughout this and I think we'll we'll need to clean up that language in that c-section on that point to Representative Boyden um we have a body that does model policy creation that says what the standards and practices are that certifies law enforcement that hears complaints and that's criminal justice council but then we also have the um sort of administration and support and uh and so there's this thing I I think it's really good to not muddy the waters and if I've done that here and incorrectly um then I think that's part of our work over the next few years is to clean that up but I want to make sure that you know model policy input and creation and approval happens with criminal justice council but that the administrative support here we're investing in the department and where those things sort of touch uh we'll have to clear up the language okay next in the language of 5a again titled uh sheriff's department's compensation and benefits model policy subsection aim reads on or before january 1st 2024 department of state's attorneys the sheriffs after receiving input from the sheriffs the vermont criminal justice council the auditor of accounts and the department of human resources and after receiving approval from the vermont criminal justice council shall issue a sheriffs department compensation benefits model policy subsection b the sheriffs department's compensation and benefits model policy shall address the structure and use of funds for compensation bonuses salary supplements retirement contributions and employment benefits for sheriffs sheriffs deputies and other departmental employees the next section is a new section to be added 5b and in essence this will create a new position of deputy director of sheriffs which will provide financial support to sheriffs it will amend title 24 vsa section 367 which is titled department of states attorneys and sheriffs adding a new subsection e and subdivision one reads the executive director of the department of states attorneys and sheriffs in consultation with the sheriffs executive committee shall appoint a deputy director of sheriffs who shall serve at the pleasure of the executive director subdivision two the deputy director of sheriffs shall minister sheriffs department's benefits and payroll provides centralized support services for the sheriffs with respect to budgetary planning training and office management and perform such other duties as directed by the executive director subdivision three the deputy director of sheriffs shall create and maintain policies addressing the structure and use of funds for compensation bonuses salary supplements the retirement contributions and employee benefits for sheriffs sheriffs deputies and other departmental employees sheriffs sheriffs deputies and other departmental employees shall comply with these policies will fulfill failure to comply with these policy shall constitute gross professional misconduct and be category b conduct pursuant to 20 vsa section 24 01 subsection two representative hangman sir thank you so again this section subsection three um deputy director of sheriffs shall create and maintain policies is in contradiction to what your intent is in section five that the cjc is going to create these policies so i don't want to get into the weeds of that if we're going to have a further conversation i would like to flag that i'd like to hear from the department of the and sheriffs about this new position and why it would be necessary when they have a structure that governs sheriffs and state's attorneys already because i don't know enough about their office to really comment on whether this is a necessary decision or not and i know we're going to go into that further so i'll let him go on with that i'll say at a high level the state's attorney the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs as we heard from any new man from john cambell repeatedly really just right now all they do is pay the sheriff's salaries and maintain the state employees who are the transport deputies they there is no administrative structure there's no press professional support they do not train sheriffs they do not tell the sheriffs how to run their offices and i think that the the piece about who creates and maintain policies and cleaning up that language would be really important and i i take that as a really valid clean up that we need to do in this language but the general idea here is that we would establish a person who like the state's attorneys have some support would now provide some consistent support and you know what we heard from sheriffs association was like hey we know we have some people that come into this office and they don't really have a financial knowledge to do some of the things we might want them to do we know that there's inconsistency in the way some of these offices are doing things like reporting ticket data because there's you know limited computer skills wanted to have a person in a position where they could look at the policies around these issues across the sheriff's departments and provide some consistent professional support and also be in a position to potentially prevent some of the conduct that we've seen right because they can be out there saying hey sheriff why you it seems to be that you know the auditor made this recommendation from your predecessor why don't we clean up some of those practices and make sure you're doing it consistently with what everybody else does there's all of the work that they do or in those areas from what we've heard is kind of informal through the sheriff's association and so this would be a person who would support the sheriff's in a way that there really isn't any kind of structure right now that's understandable thank you i just want to hear from them okay what their current situation is and and how this adding another person would affect their operation you know if you'd like i can speak to represent those first concern about the conflicting reason but this section's five and five be presumed that the new deputy director wouldn't be hired immediately and so it would provide that an interim body that states a desass and after receiving input from those other entities to create something by january first and then perhaps afterwards the deputy would be installed and then they could create or modify policies going forward after that point that still doesn't address where the cjc comes in in terms of creating creating and maintaining those policies but thank you too yeah i think i think we can clear this up i mean it's because there's the initial piece of there isn't going to be a director for this period of time we do want a mild policy to be developed and then once it's in place we want that director to help sort of make sure people are hearing to it but i don't i don't know if we necessarily need that deputy director to be creating new policy so i think their points well taken represent hangarable well i actually would prefer that they did a policy creation in main maintenance but you've already made it very clear that you want the cjc to be in that role so i'm just trying to build this bill in a way that's consistent so everybody knows what's happening yeah and i'm very cognizant that this isn't a perfect first draft but i'm trying to get something on the table that i think is much closer from what i'm hearing from all of the chairs in the department to what they could support because they were really not in support of s17 as a game over on the senate so i'm uh i think we have some more work to do on this for sure and i'm not i'm not wedded to this exact construct so we should definitely keep talking the next section is a new section five c this is at the bottom of page eight and this is session law which will have the effect of really creating a position it's titled department of states attorneys and sheriffs semicolon position subsection a the following position is created in the department of states attorneys and sheriffs one full-time exempt deputy director of sheriffs subsection b the deputy director of sheriffs shall be funded by a charge assessed on each sheriff's department so um do we have any idea how that assessment will be prorated or for each department it is not yet defined here i would say uh this is a work in progress and um the the general gist of what i'm going for here is uh i think that generally the sheriffs would prefer to have the physician and professional support than lose all the flexibility uh around how they use their overhead funds and so part of the sort of balance that i'm creating here is having this extra layer of support and potentially accountability um be paid for by them so there's a little bit of a balancing act that needs to happen there and we'll have to flush that out this is definitely not enough to see completely seal that problem representative thank you so the point i'd like to make on this on letter b that they're funded by that this position is funded by a charge assessed on each sheriff's department i think i heard from several of the sheriffs that we heard from that their departments have very little money um i don't know where they're going to come up with this money to pay this deputy director and we the legislature are creating this position so i'm not sure why they have to pay for it and why it cannot be part of the state budget so um um without maligning any particular sheriff's office or how they run their office and recognizing all of the challenges we've heard here the my preference rather than doing this reform bill would be to completely change the way sheriff's offices work and i don't think we're prepared to do that i don't think they're prepared to do that and i think that would be enormously disruptive i think that the majority of the folks in this building who've been trying to address some of the issues here okay we're holding it yeah nobody's allowed to walk out again the majority of folks in this building who have been trying to find a way through these recent incidents and address some of the public concern around accountability and transparency with sheriff's offices um they would like to just cut off any money that those sheriffs have and i agree that they're that's probably not the best way forward and so as a as a attempt to satisfy the concern about some of that accountability i want to create this position i also think there's a nexus between the fact that sheriffs are you know they're kind of an entrepreneurial you know independent entity they're public but they also have a lot of independence where we tell them go out get contracts run your business um some of them do that really well and have big cash on hand and some of them don't um and i uh believe that the association will come back to us with a proposal about how to do this in a way that doesn't sort of punish the smaller agencies that are strapped but um i feel pretty strongly that this is moving in the direction of the sheriff's position on this and wanting to invest in professionalism as opposed to sort of getting their flexibility around administrative overhead getting squeezed to the point where they don't have the ability to sort of fund themselves in a sustainable way so it's a bouncing act and i don't think we've quite nailed it but i think that the sheriffs will come to us over the next few days with some recommendations about how to flesh this out and say how we pay for this position i think i think that they'll be supportive of the construct but there's some details that just aren't in the signature draft understood and i appreciate that you understand the small departments that may not be able to i mean we're we're giving essentially giving them back the five percent that the senate wanted to take away from them and now we're telling them well you have to take some of that five percent and you've got to pay for this new position that we're creating that's that's the big picture that i'm seeing so hopefully we can come to some kind of compromise with them yeah so i just to put it in a sense of scale though if you have 14 sheriffs covering one new position that let's say it's the whole thing with salary benefits and an office costs $150,000 a year you know we're talking about a little more than $10,000 if it was if that fee was assessed evenly across all the departments so we're not talking about a huge investment in this one i would hope it would be sort of a pro-rated charge for each department as well because certainly little you know little county should not be paying as much as big county percentages pro-rated based on the number of deputies or the district size i would probably go by contract contracts so and i'm just this is right off the top of my head like maybe if a department only brings in $200,000 worth of contracts they pay a percentage whereas a department that brings in a million dollars worth of contracts pays a bigger percentage of their contracts towards this position i just i don't even know that that was brand new thought to me i think we may hear some suggestions that from the the sheriffs in the department themselves over the next couple of days then next week we can we can further have this conversation to figure out which direction we want to go at this point i was like here's an idea of this position the sheriffs will fund it somehow recognizing that i hadn't spelled all the details out in this first draft but i i anticipate some suggestions coming our way soon the next new section is section five g and this is page nine of the top this will add to the list of individuals being transported by transport deputies specifically juveniles being transported to court or to a court order facility you can see the new language on line four and i've just highlighted the entire statutory section just as it appears its entirety it's new from the center version but you can see just that new language is on the added part and i don't know a lot about this language um we're going to have to hear the department of state standards of sheriffs requested this for clarity so have to testify to but represent thank you um is there anything and this may be out of your wheelhouse tim um that says that when a juvenile is being transported or held somewhere that they need to have more than one adult present the reason i ask that is i understand that in some sheriffs offices there are juveniles being held overnight or over the weekend for lack of a better place to put them and there have to be two um correctional officers of some kind or law enforcement officers rather with them and i don't know i don't know if this applies to the transport part but i think maybe we should hear from dcf or somebody on that as well mr chair because i think there are different regulations around working in juveniles than working with adults i'll try and work with some of our colleagues to figure out who the appropriate folks are to testify on that and i have one additional question about this section we heard from the judiciary i think maybe not maybe somebody else that we need more deputies to do transport if they're going to be mandated to do transport and where are these deputies going to come from i mean some departments are really i think ours in st albin's are really down on employees right now so where are we going to get them and who's going to pay for the extra um mandated jobs that they're going to be doing i heard less concern about the sort of specifying the duties of what the transport sheriffs do and there's obviously the labor concern across all law enforcement right now but that the really big challenge that was in s17 that's coming up that's related to this but it's not exactly addressed in this section is the mandate about coverage of core houses that that actually was the biggest point i think of friction and there's a real desire so not knowing exactly how to resolve that without doing more there's a report in here that i've asked for because right now we're called that there's the use of private security there's per diem courthouse security that are uh payments to sheriffs and then there are some deputies that are permanently assigned to the core houses from some sheriffs departments and so there's inconsistency and some of the core houses don't have coverage of the coolest things up and so you know we heard from the judiciary administrator saff uh and judge sony that you know they'd like us to invest more the budget recommendation had more money um and it was about the rates and then what's been brought in testimony to us was this idea of adding positions and i didn't feel comfortable at least in this first draft saying oh yes i know exactly which how many positions would cover the gaps and i had questions um that i would love to ask of um from our colleagues and you know trickstones and um about you know what would what would it look like to phase in and add on to the sort of state employed people the way we heard the request from representative moller so it's just such a big question and it was a budget in such a way that didn't want it so i kind of put a placeholder report in here it might have to figure that out next year maybe there's a way in the next couple weeks for us to sort of start moving in that direction but there is money in the budget to increase the financial support for um this courthouse security at least that was a number the request that came over from house judiciary is my understanding okay so um i did hear 25 the number 25 thrown out there that new new positions are needed for these particular functions are we mandating that now deputy sheriff's primary responsibility to transportation of prisoners persons with a mental condition or psychiatric disability will now need to also i'm mandating that they will now need to be the ones to transport these juveniles that's what the addition of this language is is that correct um i don't know if it would mandate it so much as just clarified that if they are transporting it um those individuals the juveniles that is they shall be paid by the state of vermont and perhaps i misstated that earlier but it's really about um clarifying who will be paying this transport okay great um and just as an aside on the workforce shortage i also heard that correctional institutions are now saying that sheriff's deputies are required to transport individuals from correctional facilities to certain hearings and other places which i don't think should be happening according to what is in statute but i don't know that but i just want to put that out there that our sheriffs are being pulled in so many directions and there are so few of them that i'm i'm just really concerned that all of this work that we're asking them to do is not going to get done and it's all necessary work right i mean somebody's got to do it and it seems like the legislature feels like oh it's just really easy just tell the sheriffs they got to do it i would say that this draft took a big step back you're from you're from the demands that were put on sheriffs that were in s17 and that's great yeah so we're trying to have that direction that's fine that's fine i'm just this is the day for me to lay it out on all out on the table that's i am smooth and sheriffy i love it i think we're making a lot of progress here um rates uh all right so anything more on the uh section 5d all right let's pull ahead the next part of the bill pertains to sheriffs students this is section six um the new duties which were introduced by the senate two of the three are reserved uh the senate had them was being the sheriffs being required to maintain a work schedule and the requirement that uh sheriffs deputies um sheriffs departments provide um sorry that they apply with the provisions of standard operating procedures and manuals and policies created by maintained by dsas it does modify the new duty um pertain relating to the provision of escort services for survivors of domestic violence essentially removing the affirmative duty for sheriffs to provide that but maintaining the prohibition on seeking fees for that service fees from victims that is and it will now read starting line 11 subsection g the sheriffs department shall not seek a fee from an individual who has a relief from abuse order pursuant to title 15 bsa section 11 of three or any representative of the individual for providing assistance in the retrieval of the individual's personal belongings from the individual's residence sir and before i go to represent hang go uh i just want to highlight something that tim just said so everybody's kind of got a top of mind before we talk about this section so in s 17 it said sheriffs will be the ones who do this work when there's a period and the feedback we heard in testimony uh and i got in several emails i don't know if you all got it was that there are lots of law enforcement agencies that do this work already um and some chart and some don't and so i think there was broad agreement um that uh it's probably not good practice to have the uh for a victim of or survivor i should say of domestic violence have to pay a direct fee to law enforcement in order to accommodate this but um that uh the mandate that the sheriff be the only one doing it that was implied or maybe it was explicit actually in um s 17 as it passed the senate so it took away that mandate acknowledging that some places the local police department or or some other law enforcement agency might be doing that work and basically just said you know the department shouldn't charge a fee when they have to do that at least remove that mandate thank you my question is with what remains from s 17 on line five on page 10 that the sheriff shall maintain a record of the sheriff's work schedule including etc etc so so i disappointed that that's still in there because um the nature of a sheriff's work tends to be confidential in some respects in that they may be doing investigations um they may be um trying to solve a case i don't even know how to put it but why and well never mind the why because it's in there but who will be able to view i think we heard this is a question from a witness who will be able to view this sheriff's work schedule will it be public and how will that affect the sheriff's ability to get their work done i don't know if that's a question that anybody who's here at the table can answer but i certainly can't put the public records exactly um the public records act would be in play here in this uh work schedule would be subject to request by anybody last and i don't like that because um of the sometimes confidential nature of the work that a law enforcement officer has to do even um even if the sheriff themselves are not the ones going out on patrol or going out to investigate if they still would be involved in um in this type of confidential work um and and they're an elected official right so what other elected officials do we have who have to publish their daily work schedule for the general public to look at i don't i don't know the answer to that represent what i'm wondering how detailed the work schedule needs to be in order to be published because it could they just say i work Monday through Friday from nine and a half to five you know um or does it mean i went to lunch with so-and-so or i'm doing an investigation for as i read it to to that point it's just that they have to say which days they worked which days they were taking leave and when they were working remotely outside of their district those are the only pieces of information and past tense not future tense i will be working these days because that's my concern i would want people to if i would share i would not want them the general public to know when i was going to see in their town for just doing a patrol past tense right so they have to keep a record of what they what they've done not not a agenda of what they're planning on doing if for sure if we're to create a record of let's say just have a calendar and input something in the future um and somebody requested it today um that would be something to be public records act and then um that notification or that event would be part of the record that would have to be presented subject to exemptions of the public record act so there are um there's a very long list of exemptions of information that doesn't necessarily have to be or can be released to the public and certain elements personal information information to do with the conduct of ongoing investigation criminal procedures i know off the top i had just to a certain degree are exempted from public release so building on that i have no problem with the sheriff giving their um their work schedule to the body that hires them that contracts with them like for instance the town select board if they need to know when the sheriff is expected to be in their town and then for whatever reason and this is happening that the sheriff doesn't show up to do that patrol they can then immediately get on that and say hey we noticed you weren't here what happened but for the general public to know that's my concern i have no problem with with contractual this is my work schedule these are the days i actually worked type of thing to wouldn't any today absent this any documentation that sheriff's office has about you know for instance how many hours do they patrol in each community they have a contract with all of that subject to public record request now isn't it correct the general public has access to any data from any elected official unless it's explicitly covered as exempt for instance the personal information that ten mentioned but it's about you know how many hours patrolled and things like that those records would all be and in the past tense or in a general statement i will be in your town for 40 hours the week of april 20th i i'm good with that but i have heard town officials express concern that if the general public knows that the sheriff will be here between five a.m. and ten a.m. on friday the 21st that that becomes an issue with folks who are paying attention to the sheriff's schedule and maybe engaging in activity that they should not be engaging in under the law so i don't think that this language that's here addresses um any specificity about like where the sheriff's working or kind of the patrol strategy those pieces which would be subject to public records requests i don't think they would be advertised which i think is the point maybe that you're bringing up reference and hang this too would be it's a it's a requirement that there be a record of when the sheriff works took leave and a remote work um just like that language came over from the senate and i believe and maybe tim can correct me if i'm wrong that they looked for a much greater level of specificity initially because of some of the there were concerns about a couple of sheriffs who people were even questioning whether they were still in state for a good period of time um which is where i think this comes from but today did they initially have things about hourly and and more details originally had the word detail detail so one last question tim does this apply to just the sheriff or the sheriff's deputies as well because it doesn't really say i was right it will apply to it only the sheriffs uh you know the place of the um of course this is a mandate to um create records doesn't necessarily prevent deputies or other employees and sheriffs department from creating records before the court schedules that may be a condition of employment in those uh departments as well thanks any other questions on our section six right we're in the home stretch here um no modifications have been made to senate section seven from the belt section seven a is a new section added from the to these uh 17 titled sheriff's deputy provision of court house security let me call the report and honor before december 1st 2023 the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs in consultation with the gg sharing shall report to the house committee on government operations and military affairs and the senate committee on government operations on the required number of sheriff's deputies that need to be made available to provide law enforcement and security services to county and state cour houses to facilitate regular for house operations the department shall also provide recommendations to adjust the number of sheriff's deputies necessary to accomplish facilitating regular cour house operations and develop a budget request for any necessary additional sheriff's deputies so um before we get into discussion of this section i would practice this by saying this is basically a placeholder i don't know what to do about this issue right yeah i'm getting so sticky it's just yeah we all know we need court house security who pays for it and who can employ by whom is a really thorny new question if we can make some progress on that the next few days fantastic but i don't know if we can do the mandate that's in seven without doing something else on the budget side or at least specifying that that increased funding that was requested and that the house judiciary committee supported when they were here for administration as well i just i don't know what to do about it right now so basically this is just a i don't know what to do right now i represent morgan i'm just going to throw the table yeah exactly i've heard um because i'm dealing with the grand aisle county situation with their cour house right now they their contract votes from the judiciary because they just don't have the manpower to provide cour house security like they're just now getting more fully staffed and i think you and i know why it's a result of something else that has occurred so but but anyway regardless of that it's not a guarantee at any given place in time that any department in the 14 counties is going to be able or not be able to do so i just we just need to be mindful of that as well like as this so it's a it's a sticky wicked yes yeah i get it and there's um i just started to really dig in this a little bit but there are some memos from the years that members of house judiciary have shared with me a lot of stuff from terry corseans that would you know that basically talks about the long history of this and we heard a little bit from her and others about you know there there is a budget increase in the hourly compensation in the sort of statewide yeah um so i think in the budget this year we're taking some steps in the right direction in terms of trying to support the staffing but i think this this fundamental question of should they be more like the transport deputies is something that seems like a good suggestion i'm not sure that in the context of you know a budget that's probably 95 percent along its way that we're going to be able to do but i have some questions that i'd like us over the next few days to ask appropriations of judiciary and the court administrator and see if there's something better we can do on this issue but uh as of today i'm not sure what it is represent if we go ahead and this issue it's restricted to 25 well so here's the thing well that's 25 i want to be careful about that because i think that if i understood that correctly that would be like if you wanted to say the mandated one deputy for every courthouse you would need 25 positions i think to get there we'd have to start with what is the gap that we're trying to fill today and how many positions would it take for us to fill the gap and phase in more goes over time i don't think there's any scenario where we can realistically in one budget year would add 25 positions and say we have this whole new fleet deputies i also think that that would disrupt existing contracts that exist that are going well where one sheriff's department has the staff and they're fully contracted to courthouses and it works great it does in a few places but yeah i wonder i inferred from what somebody said the other day that maybe some of the transport deputies were used or some of the else when they had any transport stuff to do which then it was completely inappropriate but one of the other sheriffs said their transport deputies are a block that comes and never goes and the difference for me i think is that if you don't give them benefits and that guarantee you're looking at a part-time job somebody's going to look for another job when they have the opportunity and if you want a permanent and functional staff you probably have to go the way of making them employees not at wills yeah and in the flip side of that the problem that that that we're having now is we are paying for private contractors that don't have the the same ability that a certified law enforcement officer would have to actually assist the courthouses to maintain the public safety that they want so right now we're spending money on private security that you know doesn't really do do as much as the what we heard uh what you should be very lucky to do post-covid we have the luxury of a lot of the courthouses still yeah so we're the the interests of keeping the courthouses open and safe at the same time i think we've taken a step in the right direction with adding some more money to the budget and increasing the compensation to try to get those per diem folks who are attached to the courthouses um but i just don't think we've i think there's a clear answer to this problem right now that we can just drop into this bill maybe there's a step we can make in the right direction so definitely gonna need to take some more testimony on this section and see what we can do sections eight and nine of the bill have not been modified sorry eight has not been um actually no nine has not been either uh the next new addition we'll see highlighted and that's on page 12 is a new section titled reading assistant heading it reads sheriff's department's reform report new section 10 and this will replace what was senate had as the creation of the sheriff's department's oversight task force will now have a report uh required here which will have desass and consultation with some other entities uh considered largely the same issues relating to the oversight of the sheriff's department online three section 10 reads sheriff's department reform semicolon report on or before november 15th 2023 the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs in consultation with the vermont criminal justice council the auditor of accounts the vermont association of county judges the chief superior court judge and vermont sheriff's association shall report to the house committee on government operations military affairs and the senate committee on government operations on the following one recommended policies and best practices to be included in standard operating procedures skip down to five which is new recommended membership and duties of an advisory commission for sheriffs comparable to or compare combined with the vermont state police advisory commission as related to both conduct and administration of sheriffs departments new language in six reads the creation of a sustainable funding model for sheriffs departments including the consolidation or re-organization of sheriffs departments and see those are what has been modified or added there and the representative has a question yes um on that section about consolidation i'm reading that as almost as if it's required and i was wondering if that was the intent or if it's just something that we want to make sure is put on the table as an option so um i guess i would answer that by zooming zooming back out um the senate created an oversight task force brought in a bunch of people who are already in large part working on law enforcement reform issues you know specifically the criminal justice council we heard testimony yesterday that probably a good step would be to have a department just do a report for us and so i really tried to scale down the like what do we really need to spend money on half people being asked to do an official set of meetings or because i think we're going to be working on these issues more here like at length and in the way that the task force was defined i think there's actually a lot of that information out there and there are really policy decisions for us to consider i took a lot of the things the senate recommended and i added a few things but i guess you know do you have a sense of you know and if people think that there's changes to this i'm i'm not married to these but i the general gist of this is i'm going from having a whole bunch of people be required to meet in session law doing a whole big task force to telling the department go out and talk to the people you already work with and summarize some of these things for us so that when we get back here in january we actually have some ideas to chew on yeah i guess yeah this would make sense to me given where we're at from what i understand that it would be good to put that on the table as an option but not necessarily required yeah i tried to leave things to say look at this but don't yeah i try not to go quite as far in terms of where where i wouldn't go on any of these issues as maybe the senate leverage in a couple of places representative boyd this would be a silly question but is it are we asking for just one report from annual i just i only meant this to be one report yeah because i think there's there's more there's more work that we're going to have to do that's pretty clear and there's some issues we left on the table or so i think we're just not going to get everything done this year and i don't know if it makes sense to ask all the entities that were listed on that task force to have formal meetings over the summer and evolve i think we're not quite there yet because the questions i don't think we even fully determine the questions that we would want to ask them i personally think that there should be a broader conversation over the next several years about how many sheriffs do we need could there be consolidation of reorganization this touches on that um you know it may be that we really do want to keep the constitutional historical thing in 14 sheriffs and 14 counties but i think that that's a question that this body is going to have to wrestle with and if we you know if we want to go to a task force that's going to talk about that and bring everybody formally i think we need to better define what the questions are that we're asking and you know report from the folks who are already working in these areas and are the experts that work on the stuff every day is i think that's going to be a valuable addition to our conversations next year i think they almost made it the only last section is 11 pertaining to effective dates and the only modification here is that it almost out the effective date for section five to january 1st 2024 section five is the amended language to the sheriffs contracting provision that five percent that we've been talking about and how the what's proposing this amendment to s17 will require those expenditures of those funds to be in accordance with the model policy the policy will be for the place by january 1st 2024 so um giving time for the pieces to fit together i suppose so thank you all uh a lot of good feedback and ideas that'll inform another round of this uh we'll come back to this uh probably next week and so i'll look forward to folks have other thoughts and ideas that we should ask them about on this but i think we're now due to hear a couple of drive-throughs on other bills that we've been asked to give you that before they get on their way so to me thank you very much for your hard work on this well have you back in next week i'm sharing thank you