We are back now from a seven and a half minute break, which I think expanded a little bit. But here we are and we're going to have, we usually have our legislative attorneys walk us through bills, but we had scheduled this one and there was some conflict with Ameren. So Senator Rom Hinsdale is the sponsor of this bill. So we're going to ask her, which is very unusual, but we're going to ask her to just give us a sense of what it is and and then we'll take it up more thoroughly later. Yes, sounds good. So for the records, Senator Keisha Rom Hinsdale, I am not an attorney. I do not play one TV, but I do feel like I gained some legal knowledge of this issue when I was the community liaison in Burlington's Community and Economic Development Office. We drafted a language access plan for Burlington and I spent a lot of time in the city attorney's office discussing what the implications are for creating that. It would help me to share my screen just because then I can see you all. Sure. OK, great. How they do it, they make it look so easy. But just wanted to share S 147 in an act relating to language access plans. The only other context that I would give before we start is that there are a lot of states where a large city or municipality or a department of the state have a language access plan. It's a current wave of states kind of coordinating across language access plans and maybe having one overarching language access plan and the states that are more likely developing language access plans at the state level are smaller states, you know, where their whole state government might fit into one really large state department or, you know, New York City. We're not we don't compete in terms of the size of their government. So, you know, that that's where you see language access plans. The only other thing I would say is that the urgency of this became really apparent to me in the pandemic. And I hope it became apparent to some of you. And it's definitely became apparent to others in state government and emergency services and in the general public. When the pandemic first started, there was a volunteer interpretation effort that started up so that videos about washing hands, public safety and school closures, et cetera, could get out into the community in people's own languages. We have several popular languages in the state that do not have a written equivalent. So my my, for example, that's spoken by the Somali Bantu population is a spoken language only. So you need to really understand each language and the combination of needs of written materials, videos, trusted sources of information, translating things culturally and not just in terms of the actual words. As as, you know, Virginia DeAmbu would point out at at CBOEO. There's no equivalent word for weatherization.  So, you know, you language requirements require you to do some of that thinking in advance. So with that said, more with my lead sponsor had on. And now with, you know, more of a of a legal lens to this, this would add to this would add a Section one Chapter 69 to require greater language access in the state. The first section is on translating materials, explaining agency services. So that's where we talked a little bit about the difference between translation, which is is is defined as a more direct word for word description of what you're doing. Interpretation really opens you up to recognizing that as someone gives you a full sentence and you say it as best you can in the other language. That's an interpretation of the information. It's not a direct translation, but this asks that every state agency that serves as a substantial number of non English speaking individuals provide its critical materials, explaining services in non English languages, commonly spoken. The definition of a non English speaking individual is one that has limited English proficiency that has its own definition. But, you know, hopefully it's a bit obvious to people. And Amron could go into that further before after. This is a really key piece that will come back, which discusses what should be considered a priority document to interpret or translate, I should say, because if you have thousands of forms, you have, let's say, you know, then there are cases in civil rights law that make it clearer, the sort of decisions there made it clear that the most important things that get highest priority if you have limited resources are things that inform an individual of their legal rights, duties or privileges and information that's life saving. So, you know, those become critical agencies to have go first, right? Like public safety and health, you know, over things like parks and rec, which is really nice to have. And those are often the departments that have extra money to do stuff like that. But you need to make sure that the ones that are life saving and critical to participation go first. This is a lot about notice of having those translated materials available. This is about encouraging local offices to have material available. And I would say, as some may know, municipalities really felt the need to be supported in this way. You if you have state forms that can help municipalities, it's really helpful. If the municipality knows from the state, oh, these languages are commonly spoken in your area, that would really help. And that information was kind of slow to get across during the pandemic. And the only other thing I would say about the pandemic is in some ways as horrific as it has been, we're more fortunate that it is a slow moving disaster. If this was a quickly moving disaster and you needed to get life saving information because of a chemical spill or a flood to people, we were not well equipped to do that at all in other languages and probably as well in certain, you know, ways for in the ADA compliance world, you know, ASL, et cetera. I don't know to be sure, but certainly with spoken languages, we were not. This again, just sort of talks about the prioritization of high populations, certain populations that speak a language and that it be tied to their rights, duties or privileges that those are important. This one's a critical piece on having the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Health, the ones I mentioned that are pretty life saving shall maintain contracts with organizations within the state for translation and interpretation services needed for all hazards events. So that's kind of what I was just explaining. That feels like a really critical piece to get right first. And there's a reason we talk about organizations within the state. There's different, there's sort of best practices that go back and forth. If you are talking about someone's one on one case work, sometimes it can be tricky to use an organization within the state. There may be only two people who speak that language that are on call. And that may feel really exposing for that person to know that there there's someone who's hearing or seeing their information that's within their community. So then you might want to get someone else on the phone. When you're talking about explaining general information to people, it's generally better to have the organization be within the state because there's again, a lot of that cultural translation. You want to make sure they understand the context of our state as they try to get this information more clearly to people who speak other languages. This is then more of the backstop requirement that there be language access plans within each state agency that they work as hard as they can to build a language access plan that explains how they're serving non-English speaking individuals. It's filed with the agency of administration and it's reviewed and revised at least once every five years. Probably should do it given the way that our refugee resettlement programs work and we take very different populations every year. Probably should be done more than once every five years, but that was a starting point. And the requirements for that language access plan shall ensure meaningful access to services, including a list of translated documents and languages into which those documents are translated. Interpretation services that are on contract. Most agencies now in the state have a contract service. Probably helps if we know which ones those are. So we know if there's duplication or we start to use one contract and that kind of thing. Total number of staff with language access skills and the ability to provide interpretation services, a language access training plan. So how when someone calls and doesn't speak English, knowing exactly what to do when that happens or walks through your door at the DMV, let's say, a monitoring plan, outreach strategies and any additional information the agency of administration might want to include. This should also include monitoring and reporting complaints around language access. This this gets to some best practices as well. It's not a best practice to have an individual's family or acquaintance provide the interpretation instead of a qualified interpreter. They could be interpreting legal information, life-saving information, could be a child interpreting for a parent. That is never a best practice. And unfortunately, we see that a lot in situations where they can't figure out how to get an interpreter available. Senator Ramizzo, may I ask a question here? Now, sorry, but really fast. No, this is this is great. Are there, I know, for example, with ASL, that there are professional and licensed interpreters, but I'm thinking about all the different languages like that are spoken in different communities. Are there professional interpreters for those languages or or could the Department contract with somebody who would be considered a a safe person, even if they're not a professional interpreter? I mean, I certainly ran into that when I worked at a domestic violence agency and someone would say, this is the only person I trust. At the same time, there's a lot of best practices around making sure that's the person they really trust. And it's safe. And they're not just saying that because they're afraid that it would cost them money or that they're afraid of something else. So it's it's generally just not a best practice ever to use someone who walks in the door with that person. Also, there's different levels of certification, depending on the kind of information you're interpreting. Court information is very different than permitting information. You know, it's very different than medical information. So you really want to make sure that that person has certification in that particular language, in that particular field field. So there's modules that people can go through for that. And do we have those people in Vermont? Yes, we do. And one of the the one of the reasons to talk about contracting with a specific group is to give them a retainer contract. That's more you can't just say, oh, my gosh, we're having a flood. Get me a my my interpreter on the phone. Right. You know, you have to sort of have that person retained. And of African living in Vermont and USCRI, they have interpreters, but it's really hard for them to keep that consistent.  So, you know, the state being a consistent contractor is is helpful. OK, thank you. So then there's a process that they have to have that you can file a complaint if you didn't receive a significant strong language access steps. The agency is taking to improve language access if they receive complaints or just through their evaluation process. The the state's emergency plan and how they're communicating life safety information and disaster relief material specifically to non English speaking Vermonters and just regular evaluation and monitoring of the composition of these populations. Kind of what we're talking about, making sure you know more regularly who we're talking about and the kinds of needs that they have. Even depending on age, you could need slightly different information or support could be gender based. You just really want to know what the cultural needs are of the populations that you're serving as well. The so this is again agencies furnishing these reports to the secretary of administration and outlining the number of qualified bilingual employees needed or the contract employees and interpreters needed. This obviously has dates that are now in the past, but this is sort of to say right away. This is that we need to do an evaluation and kind of an assessment of where we are or are not with the gaps and unmet needs or the populations that are seeking service. And this has the chief performance officer determining the application of this to each state agency in consultation with regional planning commissions and appointing authorities. And I should say, Susanna Davis has been very interested in this. We talked a little bit before session about, you know, what language might be helpful or sort of get in the way of what she's trying to do. So I'm very open to her feedback. We just haven't talked about this in a couple of months. And the chief performance officer needs to consider the number of individuals served by the agency, the number of non English speaking individuals served by the agency as a proportion, the frequency by which they are served, the language minority populations that are eligible for the agency's programs or activities, but maybe underserved because of language barriers and the extent to which information or services rendered by the agency constitute life saving services or information that affects their legal rights, privileges or duties. So that's the CPO basically coming in and saying with limited resources, we get that you want to you want to interpret everything, you know, translate everything. But the resources that are limited right now need to go to public safety and health, for example, first, that kind of thing. These evaluations need to be filed with the state and the chief performance officer needs to evaluate the sufficiency of translation and interpretation services. And they shall submit a report to the House and Senate committees on government operations appropriations because this, you know, UVA medical spends millions of dollars on interpretation. You know, when you do it right, it is expensive and you need to understand that at a budgetary level. And judiciary, it's a civil rights issue, but I can't remember exactly why we put judiciary in, but we can talk more about that with recommendations on increasing or maintaining a sufficient level of translation and interpretation and the chief performance officer shall take into account federal requirements, guidance for interpretation, recommendations from groups in the state that are more interactive with non-English speaking individuals and recommendations on the use of videos to help with life-saving services and legal rights privileges or duties. So again, just a nod to the languages that don't, that are better graphically, where they don't have a strong of a written form. And the CPO shall note where the agency is not meeting federal requirements for public participation under the Civil Rights Act. This is the last piece that really just speaks to emergency management needing to do this, you know, now. You know, before there is a disaster or some kind of emergency that really, you know, leads to a safety hazard. Erica Borderman and I talked about this last session and it's something, it's really important to her. For example, you know, we talked about how we have an alert system with Everbridge, where you can sign up for alerts around the state on things happening in your municipality. Didn't have great information on the pandemic. Unfortunately, it was a lot about a water main breaking or traffic on, you know, particular route. We talked about having more emergency information through that system and being able to click to have it in other languages. That's one thing. And she was happy to do that right away because places like New York and LA obviously have that with very similar vendors. But there's a whole nother layer you could go, like having WhatsApp broadcast channels is a very popular way to speak to people quickly as a trusted government channel so that they get the information quickly. It doesn't, we don't need to write in statute, use WhatsApp, but WhatsApp, for example, is a very important way that most people are used to getting government information in other countries quickly. This has an effective date still in the future, but yeah, some of the dates in here are not quite in the future. So thank you, thank you. That was helpful. And really, my joint rules meeting got canceled. Oh, perfect. So what we're really talking about here is requiring state agencies to have a language access plan addressing all of these particular issues. We're not telling them, we're not designing the plan for them. We're telling them that they need to have a plan and we need to start with those three places like public safety, health, and emergency management which is part of public safety. Right, and your legal rights and duties. So like most of A&R doesn't fall before public safety but what if you get fined or thrown in jail because you didn't know about a hunting regulation or you didn't know about a permitting process that you missed, you know, we have a burden to give that information so people can meet their rights and duties in the state, their tax burdens, et cetera, you have to have permission in other languages. You know, I know this isn't language but the Vermont Bar Association has put out a little pamphlet that says now you're 18 or something like that and it's all the rights and responsibilities and duties you have once you turn 18 and that's the kind of thing that would be, here's what you do when this happens. Exactly, I mean, a lot of communities are departing upwards, right? Like when you see a grant from the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston that they weren't able to use yet because of the pandemic but it was to take new arrivals on buses around to meet at the library and the police department and understand civic centers of life and where you have your rights and responsibilities like so you feel you really understand government. What you said also reminds me, what this often does is make agencies put things in plain English first before they put them in other languages which helps people who speak English. Often anytime you say, none of this makes any sense in another language, you simplify it in a way that often benefits people who speak English as well. I was going to say a similar comment about having, I know a lot of Vermonters that should go on that bus tour. I often find with these kinds of equity related issues you help everyone when you think about a specific population that is learning something culturally for the first time. Absolutely, absolutely. I actually think this is also a great jobs creation bill because it will attract more translators and more people with language skills to Vermont to live, work and do this work, which would be great. It's often an under compensated skill as well. We'll use the 16 year old kid, which is not a good practice and you can hire someone and actually compensate them instead. Asia, I'm wondering what, it says substantial number of non-English speaking people. I'm just wondering who would determine not, it could be sticky question for some people who just say, well, it's not substantial enough for us to deal with it. Just wondering what your thoughts are on that. That's a great question. And one I think we need to really dig into with some legal experts on this topic. My understanding was always that the threshold, there's almost zero threshold for requiring verbal interpretation. If someone needs to pay their taxes and they call the tax department and they say I don't speak English and you get that sense, they need to have a hotline that they can call a contracted service. Usually that has people all over the country available any time of day or night, mostly during the day though, that you can call them and say, I need a my interpreter right now and they will get someone on the line somewhere in the country. Those services are used right now by our state and local municipalities. And we can go into detail with them on what those contracts look like. When you talk about the requirement to have a translated document, a translated written document, the federal threshold is that there are 5% 5% of that population in the county speaks that language. We, there's very few places where we meet that threshold in Vermont. Probably my guess would be maybe by my small and gone to French and and boot knees Nepali in Chittenden County, but even there, I don't know if it gets to 5%. And so, you know, you want to just start to look at maybe the top five to 10 languages that are spoken in that area and rely on those. The other thing to keep in mind in Vermont and elsewhere in the country is we have a big population of people that may not be counted in the census that speaks Spanish. And so Spanish is always a pretty good language to do, even if it doesn't show up in the census. So substantial, I believe Ameren can probably come in and talk about whether or not that has kind of a definition that's been worked out between court cases and Civil Rights Act compliance. There are certain Civil Rights Act standards and then there are best practices and often knowing the top 10 languages spoken in an area or requested when you contact a certain agency are important. I will say one of the most specific languages that people often reach out to me and say they're having trouble with is Mandarin Chinese. We, it's a very specific language. And if you don't get it right, you can't just sort of make it up as you go. And there's no, there's not a lot of equivalence. And we have had people like the one Mandarin interpreter in the state left and he reached out to me and said, I'm just really worried because I'm moving out of the state and I don't know what's gonna happen. So, you know, that's just an anecdotal example. Oh, my niece is a Mandarin speaker. She spent a lot of time in China and she now works for a think tank or for the state department. We can call her. Maybe we could get her to move to Vermont and be a Mandarin interpreter. I think you might be expressing a conflict of interest or something there. Thank you. What does that, when they call that hotline, Keisha, do we know what they charge a state or an agency for that? For that? That's a great question. I mean, it's become pretty standard depending on the level of intensity and how hard it is to find that language. But that's a great question.  I just don't have the itemized breakdown. And then for example, at AALV, Association of Africans Living Vermont Elsewhere they might charge anywhere from 60 to $120 an hour depending on who they can get and what if you're interpreting for one person versus a whole group of people, that kind of thing. So we might... I'll go ahead, Allison. No, no, so we could add to this that this is a job creation bill and a good paying job creation bill. Go ahead. I mean, you develop a lot of skills by doing this job and getting the training. And so it's a very high-skilled job to be able to interpret quickly in a public meeting, that kind of thing. Hence, as you may know, ASL interpreters, it's pretty much $100 and above is pretty standard as well. Which is why we can't rely on that, whatever you call that on the bottom of our screens that does the translating because it is really bad. But... So I had another question that I was going to ask you. Oh, we should talk the judiciary, I think has a pretty good, from what I understand, translation service. And I don't know how they do it, but we should have them come in and talk to us about how they do that. Cause that could be some kind of model for some of the agencies. And they're always improving, right? There's specific best practices for court. When I used to go to court, they would use the same interpreter for the defendant and the plaintiff. That is not a best practice, right? That is not a good idea because that person is also just helping people culturally understand what's happening in court. And that puts them in a very difficult position. I imagine in Chittin County, they've sorted that out. I don't know if all over the state they're following the best practice or not for financial reasons and other reasons, but each agency or division or sort of segment of government has very specific best practices that it should be following. Actually, providing those services now will be, I would assume, easier than 10 or 15 years ago because we have technology that allows us to... So if you have an interpreter in Burlington and you have two people in Brattleboro who speak that language, you don't need an interpreter in Brattleboro, but through technology, the court or the agency or whoever could, yeah. Improving all the time, that technology, absolutely, yeah. Any other questions for Kasia? That was very helpful to me. I would like, I hope we do this. I think this is... It fits a lot of our other work and supports a lot of our other work and I would look forward to moving this forward. I think particularly your introduction about kind of framing it was helpful because I didn't understand a lot of that. I mean, I don't. And so I live in this little bubble where some of us have a hard time speaking English, but that's not because we have a different native language. It's because we're just... We don't pay a lot of attention to the language, but yeah, that was very helpful. Good. There's been a lot of learning through failure, right? I mean, I'm not picking on anyone in particular, having worked in the city of Burlington. We got it wrong a lot. Burlington and Winooski have learned a lot of hard about how to do this right. For example, if someone speaks Somali-Somali and someone is Somali-Bantu, so someone is ethnically Somali-Somali, someone's ethnically Somali-Bantu, the person who's Somali-Somali speaks Somali, the person who's Somali-Bantu speaks Mai-Mai. There's a past conflict there that if you have someone who's Somali-Somali, speaking to someone who's Somali-Bantu, they could be incredibly afraid or just uncomfortable in that interaction. And you would never know as a person who's not part of the cultural conflict that has brought them here to this country. So we learned a lot by failing and getting this wrong and just hoping that the state learns before it's too late. So I think that one of the questions is going to be resources. And I know in the governor's state of the state yesterday, he talked a lot about welcoming refugees here. And I wonder if he would be willing to put some of that, some of those resources behind something like this to help him with his goal of bringing more refugees here. It's a very basic step, I mean, imagine, you know, folks may remember we passed a bill I had put forward last year for cultural liaisons that would be shared in the school districts. In the height of the pandemic last summer, many people in some of those communities had no interpreter that was reaching out to them because that person had been paid by the school and they weren't available to them in the summer. They had very little information about how to be safe, how to get anything. And if you can imagine, you don't feel very welcome here if you literally are in a pink mess with no information in your language. It was very scary for a lot of people. And, you know, it's something we can only slightly imagine and appreciate. So, you know, I hope the governor would see the need for this also civil rights issue. And it helps people survive disasters that are quickly moving as well. I think one of the pushbacks is going to be that if people are living here, they should learn to speak English. And I think that that is an okay argument because most people will eventually learn to speak English just because their children are in school and so their children come home. And both sets of my grandparents came from Norway and Sweden and didn't speak a word of English at all, but gradually learned to speak English. But the only thing that saved them was because it was 100 years ago and it was very rural where they moved. And everybody else that lived there also spoke Norwegian or Swedish. So I think that that is going to be a question that some people have about why, why we need to put all these resources into helping people who don't speak English instead of helping them to learn English. But I think we need to do both. Absolutely.  At some point, there's like a plasticity of the brain and a lot of times with limited English proficiency, we're talking about elders. We're talking about people who get even more isolated because they don't know how to get on the bus. They don't know how to call for help. They can be taken advantage of. We talk about elder exploitation a lot. They can be taken advantage of even more. I don't wanna cast any blame, I mean, by using this example, but we know kids can be kids.  This is a huge power you have over your parents and grandparents.  We have lots of language classes.  And we start to fund more of that as well because a lot of those classes are pretty basic. And people who might also interpret might also be able to be paid to teach higher level language skills to people in the community as well. Any other questions or comments? I would love to have, I guess the secretary of administration maybe join us. And just find out where people are. Yeah. Yeah. So it strikes me that Burlington as a municipality would be interesting to hear from because they've clearly made choices about this. And the director of the refugee resettlement program which would be helpful to come and testify. So a couple of years. Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say, Association of Africans Living in Vermont probably has the most robust long-term distribution program, USCRI, which was formerly Vermont Refugee Resettlement has a growing program. And Winooski and Burlington both have really interesting stories to tell. I mean, Winooski's smaller. So it mirrors more of the rest of the state, I would say. And it has 35% in the school's English language learners. So just a really high proportion and they've had to learn different aspects. Was that Winooski or Burlington, did you just say? Winooski, that a third. And it has 35%, wow. We had in the Brattleboro High School, this was years ago, the front corridor when you first came in, they had a picture of a tree and all the branches. And at the end of the branches, they had the languages that were spoken at home, not that the kids themselves couldn't speak English, but that their parents or grandparents couldn't, and so they spoke it at home. And at that time, I think there were about 30 or 35 languages on there. And that was, that was a little Brattleboro High School. And some of the languages were, I mean, we think of those languages as people who are coming as refugees, but they're, and they may be refugees, but they're people who are coming from Poland and Germany and Ukraine and all over the world who don't speak English. So. Yep. But often with West people coming from Western countries, they have a common communication language, whether they all speak also French or they all also speak English or Spanish. I mean, they often will speak a language that we do generally translate into. Right. We already have translations into. Yeah, to be fair, I mean, when you ski calls the students English, the English language learning students, multilingual learners, just to remind people, they probably speak three other languages. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So, well, thank you. This is, thank you, Keisha, for introducing this. Okay, so we will put this on, I think next week is probably pretty full, but we'll put it on the week after that. At some point. And then I have a list of people who would love to testify from that point, but we can whenever. Great. Okay.


Come join the fun at the Auburn University Fisheries Field Day on Saturday April 6th from 10 to 2. Free and open to the public, activities include tours of the world-renowned facilities and ponds, plus food vendors, child-friendly fun, extended fish market hours, and presentations by faculty and students. Located at the EW Shell Fisheries Research Center at 2101 North College Street in Auburn, Alabama, this event is also celebrating the official grand opening of the Fisheries Learning Center, where you can find engaging interactive electronic and live animal displays. For more information, check out our website. We hope to see you there!