 Okay, good afternoon. We're back. We're back this afternoon. The Department of Corrections with a commissioner. To really speak more of an update in terms of what the department has been doing under the issue of COVID, which really began last spring in basically the first part of March. And the committee just wanted some. So, information over what's occurred over the past year and also where we are now in terms of this DOC. COVID response is how we titled it. So welcome commissioner. And you've brought some folks with you. I brought some guests with me. So for the record, I'll introduce myself. I'm Jim Baker, the interim commissioner of corrections. And with me today is deputy commissioner. Judy Henkin. I asked the deputy commissioner to come with me because she has the point. On the medical process inside the department, but for this conversation, she's the point on vaccination. And I'll touch on that in a little bit. You know, where we are with that. And the deputy commissioners with me to address that. Normally I would bring chief Cormier with me, but he's, he's at a legal proceeding today tied up for the day. I will tell you, he's been the incident commander running the operation that we've been running nonstop for the last year. I'll get into a few details about that. And I also have with me today. Sarah Turcott. Sarah is one of our recruiters. She's involved in the hiring process. And she's been key in redesigning our hiring process. And that's not the reason why I brought her. She's also involved in the logistical support. For the operation that we run continuously. Supplying our facilities with PPE cleaning supplies and so on. And I brought Sarah along with me. And we also want to emphasize that. This is what we've been doing for the last year nonstop. Everybody's got two and three jobs now. Nobody's got a single job any longer. With COVID-19 COVID-19 kind of. It's our, our focus every day, but we still are trying to move forward in other areas as well. And everybody's doing two and three jobs. And Sarah is an example of that. And she'll be able to talk to you a little bit about how we're handling logistics. And I've kind of kitted with this committee and other committees before, but I would put the work that Sarah is doing with her teammates in the logistics section of this operation up against Walmart any day of the week. I think you will hear her talking about how we have production supplies coming in. We have our own transportation system to move supplies out to the facilities. We're self-contained, not depending on anyone. And I brought Sarah along to talk about that today. Madam chair, I think the place to start is just, especially for the newer committee members. Let me just take them back to February of 2020. And, you know, we started very early on as we started hearing from our colleagues around the country about what was then not even the virus hitting the shores of America. We started a very immature, underdeveloped, unsophisticated screening process for people coming into our system. It was as simple as, hey, have you traveled to the Far East? Have you been in China? That's where we started this operation back in February, when we first started hearing about what was happening. And we started hearing from some of our colleagues around the country about what the concerns were with the jail system. And then we moved to an early screening process for our employees and for people coming into our system. And then we started thinking about logistics and supplies. We started building up our supplies, for example, our food supplies, our water supplies, our cleaning supplies. We started building those up at the end of February, moving into March. And what I would describe at the time to be a very unsophisticated process. We were just starting to get as many supplies as we could, because we started hearing that this could get real serious. And so that was kind of the early stages of logistics and supplies. Just like you all left the State House on March 13th, I believe it was Madam Chair, you said. It was a Friday, the 13th. I'm going to come back. I left Waterbury the week before. And I have not been back since. So, you know, we're all in this environment where, and I only say that because the, the operation I'm going to describe to you in a few minutes. We've been running remotely for over a year. Chief Cormier hasn't been to Waterbury. He's kind of in the same boat I am sitting in a kind of a high risk area. And so we have a lot of time to do that. And so we just go into the Waterbury office. We run this completely remotely. Doing the same things you're all doing over. Except we don't use zoom. We use teams. Run the operations. I just wanted before I start describing this in detail. I want to emphasize something. Many of you know my background. Some of some of the committee members heard of my background. We first got introduced. This is by far. I was not directly involved. In Irene as a state employee, but I was involved in Irene as, as. It was some consulting work for towns. Preparing for it. This is my experience is the largest operation I've ever seen. Now you wouldn't know this is going on every day. Because we just, it goes so smoothly. And we do it as a course of business every day. That you wouldn't realize the amount of effort that goes into this. Every single day. And I must, I must tell you, I had a conversation with the chair earlier. And forwarded to the chair and the vice chair. Press press release. We do have three positive inmates at Chittenden. Currently. And we, we, we have done contact tracing. And we have 18 staff members quarantined. As a result of contact tracing. And I tell you that in the context of what I'm going to tell you as we walk through what's going on. This week alone. This week alone, we're conducting almost a thousand tests. Within our system. We're doing a thousand tests. Our strategy is. Test the suppress. And so every two weeks. We test employees. Including employees inside the facilities. And employ, we just started testing about a month and a half ago, five weeks ago. And we're going to be testing. Our employees in our probation and pros offices. So every two weeks, our employees are being tested. We know now at the point where we are in the virus. That the art, our threat of coming into the facility. Is going to come from the outside. And so we have focused our efforts on testing staff. Every two weeks. We test every facility every six weeks. Except when we have a positive test or contact tracing. We're going to do that in a minute. So today. We've tested. 2433 individuals. Now again. Some of those could be twice. We've tested 2400 plus individuals. And we've conducted. 11,920 tests. In our, in our system. And this is as of two days ago. I'm not counting the tests that have gone on. The last two days. And out of that, we've had 141 positives. And 11,647 negatives. We, as I said, we currently have. We currently have staff, six staff positive and Chittin. Three. Inmates that are positive. Who are now in isolation away from the rest of the population. So this is what the process looks like. We meet every, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at nine o'clock as, as a command team. We've had an incident command system up and running for a year. Chief Cormier is the incident commander. We have, we have a logistics sections. An operation section. And a medical section. And so every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we meet the process of what's going on. It used to be in the beginning that we met every, every Monday through Friday at nine o'clock in three times a week at noon time. But we've geared that back because we feel like the system is working. And when something does happen, our folks are, they know what to do. They know how to react. As I said, our strategy is to test the suppress. And we have, we are part of the health department's rapid response team. So if we get a positive test, if we get a positive response from the staff or an inmate, the rapid response team responds immediately with contact tracers and help from the health department. And we start contact tracing to determine who's been in contact. And then we make determinations from there about what the testing all look like. And as I said, this week alone, we're doing about a thousand tests. When folks enter our system, anybody that comes into our system new is tested in quarantine. So if somebody's arrested by an agency and they come in, or when we're bringing inmates back from Mississippi, they're quarantined for 14 days and tested. They're tested, they're tested on day zero, day seven and day 12. That's part of our protocol and guidance from CDC. Our protocol is reviewed almost daily. Not like it was four or five months ago, but four or five months ago wouldn't be unusual for us to be changing protocol every single day as a result of guidance from the Vermont Department of Health and from the CDC. That slowed down a little bit because the guidance has become really mature at the federal level. And our relationship with the health department here in Vermont is so in sync that we don't have to make a lot of adjustments to our protocol like we were early in the beginning. Well, if we get a positive test of an inmate or a staff member, that rapid response team responds immediately and we have trained contact tracers inside our department. We do all our own contact tracing in conjunction with the health department. We don't depend on anybody else. And we have several people that have really developed an expertise when it comes to contact tracing. And we'll figure out as a result of that contact tracing, meet with the rapid response team and determine what the next steps are. So let me give you the last week for an example of what could happen. We had a medical person that was going from the Chittenden facility to Northwest who tested positive. So we know that that individual was in Northwest with certain inmates, but was based out of Chittenden. The rapid response team did contact tracing. And in the case of Northwest, they determined that the contact was so minimal that we only had to do a certain amount of isolating or quarantining of inmates in that facility. But we didn't have to lock the facility down. And we determined that we didn't have to do testing until it was time for that testing to occur. But back at Chittenden, because of the contact and the number of positives, we immediately started retesting the facility. And that's how we caught the three inmates that are positive. And just like last spring, April, when we had an outbreak in Northwest, that contact traced and shut it down in its tracks. We were able to quickly isolate it, get people separated out, and prevent the spread going through the jail, like you see in other parts of the country. Now I'm going to say this, and I know some of this is pure luck, but we are the only state in the country right now that has not had a death of an inmate. We're the only state in the country that's done that. And again, some of that is simply because, you know, Vermont has done an incredible job on community spread. And right now we know in our system, our threat to our facilities is based on community spread. So part of the process that we do every day is we take a look at community spread based on what we're hearing from the Health Department. And we have, we do use a tool that was developed by the National Governors Association in, I'm forgetting the name of the nonprofit that developed it. But it's a predictive modeling tool. We do utilize that tool. And it's been very, very accurate for us. So almost at a point of I'm not mistaking last week, the tool predicted that we would have a couple of three inmates positive at Chitman. And that's what it was. So we're being, unlike us being totally reactive before, we are sort of reactive now, but we are thinking forward all the time every day about potentially what we're seeing on the horizon, including the community spread and what that tool may be telling us, we know that we need to be paying attention to Chitman and we need to be ready to react quickly if something outbreaks. If we have an outbreak or positive tests that we quickly can move the rapid response team in that process. Let me just talk about staff a little bit in this process. We've been through several renditions. We've, we've rented hotel rooms for staff when we've had outbreaks. You know, at one point, as Representative Campbell knows, we set up a triage unit, a surge unit up in St. John'sbury. We've changed that protocol. I'm not saying we won't ever go back. I'm hoping we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel here. It's been a long year for everybody, especially the staff and corrections. I'm hoping we're seeing the end of this and we don't have to worry about a surge unit. Because the other thing for the new committee members that I talked last year about, you know, when we start getting positive tests, we have to think about what is the capacity of ourselves to handle our medical needs internally, and what will be the impact on the external medical system outside of the jails. That's why it's so important for us to be prevented. So Madam Chair, I'll think about Springfield for a minute. If we had a major outbreak in the Springfield facility, it would not take much to overwhelm your hospital in Springfield. So we are very conscious of that and work with the external partners all the time. But that's why we are so focused on trying to keep the virus contained inside our facilities so it doesn't impact the care of folks on the outside. And, you know, again, much of this is luck and we understand that. But much of it is because of how hard the staff is working. We have really pushed the staff in the last year. And we still struggle with our vacancies. And, you know, when you have 18 staff out of the community that are currently quarantined in one facility, in this case it's six medical staff from our contractor, but 12 of our staff are quarantined. And that puts a lot of stress on the facility and the staff. And they've done an unbelievable job. You know, I come here today as the commissioner telling you the successes we've had. But it's not me doing it. It's the staff. And they've done it for the same purpose. We have done it for the same purpose. We have done it in 4-2 months. We have been able to do it for the constant cleaning and constant paying attention to protocols. And we recently added an auditing process. So we actually have a person that audits the protocols at the facilities to make sure we're not missing anything. We're not trying to get anybody catch you. We're not trying to play hide, hide in the bushes and see if we can catch you doing something wrong. anything. Let me touch on Mississippi for a minute and then I'm going to slow the conversation down. Let, let, let Deputy Commissioner Hanken talk about the, the vaccine plans moving forward. And then I'd like to introduce to you, Sarah, and have her talk about the logistics because I saved that because I want her to talk about it. It's some impressive work. We did have an outbreak in Mississippi at, at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facilities, you all know, back at the end of July. There was a fair number of individuals that were positive and I believe the number, please don't hold me to this, but I believe the number was 185 positives. And to say that was a scary time would be an understatement. And we're very lucky that we didn't lose anybody down there. And since then, the conversation between our staff and the staff with CoreCivic who runs the facility and my direct conversations with the CEO, the CEO on a regular basis to make sure that we're on the same page. We dodged the big bullet. They're doing testing down there and they're going to be starting to vaccinate, vaccinate. But I got to remind you where that facility sits in Mississippi at one point about four months ago at the highest spread of any county in the country. That's the kind of stuff we pay attention to on the outside because that's how it's going to get in the facility and community spread. They are testing on a regular basis and we also have access now to camera systems. So we can remotely see what's going on inside the jail in Tallahassee remotely for computers. And the out-of-state staff monitors that on a regular basis. So I'm going to slow it down right now and I'll stop for a minute for questions. And then as Deputy Commissioner Hank can talk a little bit about what's in store for vaccinations. And then I'll introduce you to any questions for this is a great summary. Thank you so much and thank you for all the work that you've put in and all your staff as well for all the work. So we do have a couple of questions. Kurt and then Michelle. Yes, Commissioner, you mentioned that when somebody comes in there immediately quarantined. So does that mean that they are in a single cell by themselves for two weeks or what does that quarantine involve? That's what it is. They're quarantined in a cell by themselves for the 14 days. Thank you. Now let me touch on this representative to tell her because just like everything we've all faced in this in this pandemic, there are so many negative things that come out of what we're doing because you have to set the priority of keeping the facility safe. And one of the negative things has come out of this in these isolation situations. The mental well-being of the individuals come into play because your point is well taken. They're put into isolation quarantine for 14 days. And, you know, we've had a couple incidents where it's been challenging on self-harm. And we are looking right now as a result of that. I've asked the team to take a look at making sure we're doing the absolute level best we can on best practices around mental well-being as we bring people into our system in quarantine. Thanks. Michelle. Yeah, I was just wondering if you could say a little bit more in terms of the population in Mississippi and the protocol that they have while they still are there. I mean, I know we have a lot of safety guidelines we've put in place for our population here and not having people come in and do special activities. I mean, just a whole lot of things have changed in our system here. Are they following those guidelines in Mississippi or not? They are now. Yes, they are. And how long has that been the case? Well, that really came to a head as a result of the incident during the summer with the outbreak in Mississippi. That was part of my conversation with the CEO and I think we have an understanding about what our expectations are. And have there not been, has the rate changed? We haven't had a recurrence of cases since that time? Right. Again, part of the protocol is if you have a positive, don't hold me to this. I think I'm going to have this right. I always run the risk of not having Chief Cormier straighten me out. But if you're positive, the norm is that you don't do a test for 90 days because of the nature of the virus, you could keep testing positive. We did have one inmate that kept testing positive, but was asymptomatic. But we have had, we have, we've had no other inmates positive. Okay. Thank you. So I also, we have another question, but I want to interject here for a minute. So the folks down in Mississippi, the Vermont inmates, they are housed separately from the other folks in the facility. That's correct. They're in a separate wing from the other, the other clients that CoreCivic have, the Vermont inmates are housed separately. So I just wanted to put that out because sometimes people think they're intermingled. That's correct. Scott. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask a little bit about staffing. Is this a good time or are you going to get into that more? Nope. If you have a question on that, so by all means ask me. Okay. I'm just thinking back to testimony we heard from the employees association a couple of weeks ago and talking about the retention problem that you had mentioned before. I believe you put it, it's not that you have a hiring problem, you have a retention problem. And so I just wanted to explore that a little bit more. One of the things that they talked about was feeling like their correctional officers are in an untenable position, not knowing really whether they're just for enforcement or whether they're also there as social workers. And that, so they expressed the need for clarity. But it seems like that we're allowed to be pretty clear that they're actually kind of both because they're working with people who, they're going to develop a relationship with the inmates. So there's no way around that. So I just wanted you could talk about that for a minute. Sure. So there was a time they were called guards, right? And I still have to correct people once in a while when I hear them calling them guards because that was the old mentality. You're there to guard somebody in jail. And it's not, it's not, not by design that their title is Corrections Officer because it is, it is a mixture as you, as you say. And I don't disagree with them that there's confusion out there. And it's part of the process we're going through right now with the Moscow to develop a new mission, digit and value statement in order for us all to be on the same page. So I can't disagree that there's confusion. But I think you answered your own question, sir. They are there. Security of our facilities is a priority. We can't lose control of our facility. Somebody could get hurt very badly. That happens all over the country inside systems. And to the credit of the people that are serving time in our jails and our staff, we have very few incidents of violence in our facilities. I think since I've been here, I could count them on two hands. And that's a credit to our staff and to the inmates serving time. But you answered your own question. It's a combination there. We are there to, our primary focus is to take people from being good inmates to good citizens. Well, that's good to hear. One of the things that they talked about also was training and the need for really continuous training to meet that role. And it sounded like, from what I'm recalling about the training protocol that was described earlier, there, I think put in the, well, maybe you could describe it. I think they were put in the facility for a week and then trained for two weeks and then back to the facility or something like that. Yeah, that's accurate. So what happens is that we have a hiring process that we're in the process of changing and tweaking. And so people are hired by facility and they go there for a shadow week is what I think we refer to it as. And then they go to a five-week academy. Now, the five-week academy has been compressed as a result of COVID because we're better off compressing that, continuing to hire people instead of having them co-mingle for five weeks together to try to avoid the issues around COVID. And as far as the request for more training, how does that fit into the plans of the agency or the department? Well, I guess I would have to hear what context they're talking about when it comes to the more training. You know, I'd have to understand what the context is. There are conversations about expanding the length of the training academy. I do not think that five weeks is enough time to train up people for the complexity of the job that they do. These are very complex jobs inside facilities. You know, it may seem that folks from the outside looking then as simple as coming to work and your corrections officer maintaining safety in a facility, it's much more complicated than that. Right. Well, I guess what I'm thinking about is sort of continuous training. I don't know whether there's some sort of a, you know, a retraining program or something like that or opportunities for staff to take further further training programs, you know, a few times a year or something like that. Is that available? There are skill sets that trained on every year. There's core skill sets that are trained on every year, de-escalation skills, self-defense skills, those type of things. I do think, again, I don't have the context of what was said, but I think I've said this in the committee before, where corrections really lacks and again, you know, if you had all the time in the world to deal with these things, we would have done it by now. Is the investment in first line up the mid managers in the organization? There is little to no training for those individuals. So you become a first line supervisor. Hey, congratulations, you're promoted. Tonight's your first shift. Tonight, go to work. And, you know, we have a lot of challenges around that as a result of people going from being, you and I worked together when we worked the same shift for three years together. And now all of a sudden you're my supervisor. And, you know, we have some challenges around that. And, you know, it doesn't look much different than any other organization I've seen. It's just that we need to do a better job of training and investing in those individuals. That makes sense. Is there anything that you would that you see is needed to improve retention among the correctional officers? Yeah, I think. I don't know if you've got a couple of days, but sure, we got all the time there is. I think we're going to get into this maybe a little deeper as the session proceeds. I'll just put it just to save time for the committee today. It's the vicious cycle of we're shorthanded. People are forced to work overtime. Just picture you're on a treadmill and you just keep pushing the button faster and faster, and you're going nowhere. And that's the story of our retention. It's a burnout. People get cross and maybe sometimes we don't treat people the way we should treat each other. It's a combination of things. And then COVID. So there's a lot to unpack there, sir. I think maybe another day that Madam Chair can have me come in and I'll bring the staff in to talk about it. Okay, thank you. You're welcome, sir. So we have another question, Karen. So my question is, well, first, just to thank you for all the work that you and your department has been doing to address safety in the facilities. I can't imagine that undertaking and the numbers are impressive. I'm always curious to hear about the flip side of things, though, because I think with that of having that infrastructure and keeping the numbers so good, what has the impact been? Just like us in the community, we're having good numbers, but it means that we're sacrificing a lot. What would you say the sacrifice is, I think, twofold for staff and also for the inmates? As far as programming, access to services, that kind of stuff. We can have anything on the flip side. It's all of the above, right? You've hit it, right? It's, look, we had, you know, part of our strategy, I didn't get into this earlier, but, you know, as we got into April and May, we shut down everything coming into the facilities we could. That meant our volunteer system to include the religious community. You know, we shut down programming for a while. Our educational piece got shut down. And for the inmates, the most impactful thing, we shut down visitation. And we didn't do that lightly because we know that, you know, no matter who you are and where you were, you've got a family somewhere. And we didn't do that lightly, but we felt like we had to do it. Now, we've been talking about starting it up again, and then we had the holiday spike, right, of community spread that we've all seen. And so we're kind of just holding our breath on that. But there was a lot, there was a lot of impacts, not only on our staff, which I described earlier, fear of going home and bringing the virus home to their families. But on the families of the inmates as well, not to be able to have visitation. So we did step up the ability for them to have free tap, each of me has a tablet. They're able to do video visitation. And we stepped up free phone calls. But again, that's not like being able to see your loved one coming and visiting. And so there was a lot of downsides in this. We've got some of it back, programming is back, we're doing some educational stuff remotely. But again, we are limited just like that, you know, everything that's going on in the community is going on inside the facilities. And as I often say, if you take a look at Springfield Jail, it's like a city. You have medical, you have a school, you feed people, you house them, and you have the same impact as a result of what we've been dealing with with the virus. Thank you for that. It's helpful just to hear that that's also part of the daily, weekly assessment of not only what can we be doing to protect this, but also what can we be doing to expand and apply our services and programs. And let me just give you one other example, because I think it's important and I want whoever's out there listening to hear this. It also affected our ability to do medical care. A lot of times inmates need to be taken out of a facility to see a specialist. And the ability to do that, dentist, that routine kind of stuff that was done, we're slowly trying to get geared back up for that. But every time we move someone from one place to another, we run the risk of bringing the virus into the facilities. So we have a couple more questions. We've got Michelle, and then we had Sarah and then our hand went down. So I don't know if we still have Sarah or not. Michelle. Just a quick question, Commissioner Baker. You mentioned that some programs have been reinstituted and I was wondering if you could just say a little bit more about that. I used to work at the Community Justice Center and at the time that I left, there were no programs that had like religious services had been shut down. Recreation things like writing classes, art classes, those had all been shut down. And as far as I know, they hadn't been replaced with like a virtual option. So can you just say a little bit more about that? What kind of things have been introduced to fill that void? Yeah, I mean, none of, none of, much of that has not started up, started back up yet. So I would have to, I would have to check with staff to be exactly sure of what has and has not. So for example, the religious community coming in has not started up yet. Volunteers coming back in has not started back up yet. When I talk about programming, I'm talking about our violence programming and our sexual, our sexual abuse programming has started back up. And some of our educational stuff has started back up with our educational team. So what we've tried to do is from facility to facility, you know, prior to the colder weather, but this is also a challenge, try to upwreck time, provide them with more tablet time, provide them with more time out of their, out of the cells. So, but again, it gets limited if we get an outbreak, we go into a lockdown. And every time we get a lockdown, I just, you know, I just, I just think about the impact on the facility. And that's why I say to you is that we've come this far in this process. And a lot of the credit goes to the staff, but the inmates deserve credit as well, because being in lockdown, not lockdown, not having program, not having access to family, that wears on people. So we've tried to step up our mental health piece. And we try to give them activities to be able to to fill their time. And, you know, I personally talk to inmates that have worked like on cleaning crews, working in our shops. And I've authorized things like pizza parties for them to get pizza from the outside. You know, it's amazing how they appreciate that. Because, again, institutionalized pizza is not like getting it at your favorite pizza shop, right? So doing little things that that can keep up morale amongst staff and the inmate population. I wonder if you have thought about, and if there's a plan to, to perhaps move to the next step of, of offering some of those services in a remote way, for example, 12 step programs or religious services. I mean, I know some of the volunteers that used to go into the facility, and some of them are doing remote offerings in other, in other places. And I'm wondering, you already gave them the tablets, it feels like it might not be that hard to add that, add that piece. Yeah, there is some technology. I don't have it off the top of my head, but I will have somebody get back to you. There are some technology challenges around that. Our ability on having Wi-Fi in the facilities is very limited. So they're kind of the GTL tablets are very limited in what kind of access they can get. And the last, the last time I checked on upgrading our Wi-Fi in all six facilities, we're talking in the multi-million dollar range, to be able to do that. So there are challenges around that, but I will have somebody get to you to give you feedback on that question, because I don't have the answer right now. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. And as a little follow up to that, we did try to increase the Wi-Fi access within our facilities, hopefully with the CRF dollars for the COVID dollars, but the price tag was very high. And part of the problem is because our facilities are built with concrete walls. And it's hard to get Wi-Fi through concrete walls. The other thing, they're not getting tablets like we are where you can access the internet. You've got some real security issues that you have to the DOC really has to look at. So there isn't always that access to the internet and the outside like we have, because you're in a security setting. And you don't want possibly an inmate to have access to their victim or vice versa in some ways. So you have to be very, you have to be very, very careful in corrections. So Sarah. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Commissioner. How are you? Good. Good. How are you? It's great to good to see you. It's good to be seen in my age, representative. And thank you for your work. Earlier you mentioned that Vermont is the only state in the country that hasn't had a COVID death. And I did not know that. So I'm happy to hear that. But one of the questions, something that you said raised a little bit of a flag for me. And I'm just wondering if you can elaborate more just that folks are not having access to health care in the way that I know there's health care provided in the facility, but there are cases like if somebody has cancer and cancer treatment, they might need to go outside the facility and other. I'm sure there are many circumstances like that. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? Or how, because I think that's, it's a bit problematic. Yeah, we, we, and now Deputy Commissioner Henkin has got the point on health care. But I think I'm going to get this right. You know, there was a point in time where it had really slowed down. But also, when our new contractor came on in July, you know, again, not a small feet coming on in the middle of a pandemic, right? Not, not, not a, not a small fee. There was a fairly significant backlog of requests for medical care, both internally externally. And we slowly whittled away at that. And so we try to be very careful. It's almost a case by case basis for folks to go out. So, and I'll give this example, we, we, we recently moved an inmate for, for a trip to the dentist from one facility to another. And it's one of these oddball things with the virus, where that inmate ended up positive. But the dentist and the dental hygienists were not positive. The two transport officers weren't positive. So we're very careful. And it's kind of a case to case basis. But we are at a point where if you need medical care, we're going to get you out, right? So it's not like we shut that down. And you know, that, that, that's a case by case basis. Deputy Commissioner Hanken, are you, are you there? I am here. And I get that right, Judy. By all means, correct me in front of everybody if I didn't, please. Judy, I think we're hearing an echo with you. So I don't know if you have a couple of devices open. Well, I just have the one open right now. It's better now. And this may be a good transition time to go into you and talk about the vaccines and everything. Sure. You could fill in what Commissioner Baker just addressed and then transition. Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Deputy Commissioner Judy Hanken, and I'll elaborate a little bit on what the commissioner was speaking about. There were a few reasons for a large backlog of medical appointments at one time. And some of that has to do with the community. As you know, nonessential care stopped happening in a lot of practices. And people were unable to get they were not going to be taking the patients. So we had that going on. We had a new health care provider as of July one. So there was still some adjustment time. And they were assessing the backlog and looking at the most urgent cases. And there's also the concern with people go out and then they don't want to have to quarantine. We have to have space for the quarantine. So there were a lot of issues as far as clearing up the backlog, getting the most urgent cases out and making sure they had follow up care. And that's something that the new contract or vital core has been working on. They've reduced the backlog significantly and had a real concern for care shouldn't be delayed when it's going to cause further complications. So they have started reviewing those on a regular basis to make sure people get out and they're trying to increase the use of telehealth also where it can be used, of course, can't be used for everything. But that's another one of their strategies on reducing the backlog. If that answers your question. I can tell you now about the vaccine process. Wait a minute. I just want to make sure that, Sarah, did you have anything else, Sarah? I had a follow up question that's pretty quick. I remember last, but as we were getting the new health care provider and that there were you were looking for a new medical director. And just wondering, and I know that there were some challenges in hiring somebody for this and we increased the salary. I think during the joint fiscal process, but do you have a, do you have a, is that position filled? Commissioner, do you want to take this? Yes, we do have a medical director representative. That's the good news. Bad news is it's part time. It's 20 hours a week. It's Dr. Scott Strenio who works in Diva and on Medicaid review issues. And Dr. Strenio has a very deep background in correctional health care. And so we do have him part time because we couldn't find somebody. And it's meeting our needs for right now. And he was instrumental back in the summer when we had the outbreak in Tallahassee or Tallahagie. He actually went down there to make sure that they were following community care standards. Thank you. Okay. So deputy commissioner, why don't we get the vaccines? Sure. As you know, Vermont has chosen a kind of simplified way to move through the population to get vaccines accessible to people. It's made it a little easier for corrections to the first round vital core staff, our contractor, their nursing staff and their health care providers. We're getting their vaccines through the community at the hospitals. We're now moving into the same stage that the rest of the state is that offenders and staff age 75 and up are are eligible for vaccines. Right now staff we I don't believe we have anyone 75 and above a staff, which sort of a surprise because people do make careers out of things. I'm always amazed. But we do have several offenders that are in that age group and they're housed in two of our facilities. Unfortunately, the first clinic we were going to have was at Springfield yesterday and you heard there was a glitch. So it didn't occur, but it is rescheduled for next week. We have 10, 10 residents that will be vaccinated and the vaccine is being administered under the order of Dr. Levine through the health department vital core staff is not doing the clinics for us. And that was determined after some discussions with the health department about what would make sense. And given the quantities, the storage and how the vaccine has to be handled. This was the alternative that works the best for at least the first several rounds of vaccines. Next week we also have scheduled in addition to Springfield, we have several residents in St. Albans facility that will be getting their vaccines and that will take care of the first round of 75 plus. As you probably also know that whole process is going to take several weeks to go through they'll be getting scheduling their second vaccines around the 20 something of February. Both of those groups will get their second vaccines and when the state moves to the next age tier. So we'll corrections and we do have. I think there'll be 15 people in the next round statewide. And that will be another few weeks when we get down to the 65 to 69 group. We do have several people that are in Tallahatchie and we're working with that facility to get those folks vaccinated on the same schedule as if they were in Vermont. And we're watching that we have the names of who that is we're watching how that's going to play out and our out of state team has been following that for us. Other than that, I think kind of the simplification of this design of the rollout makes it a little easier for us. Also, when we get into a more generalized larger population, they may the vaccines may be administered at that time by the vital core staff and they have agreed to do that. But as of now that is not decided. So Deputy Commissioner, I have a question. So for the first rounds that are coming out, is someone from the community or someone from the health department going to come into the facility to administer the vaccine? They're having it on the same days as the community vaccines. So for instance, on there's a vaccine in St. Albans next Tuesday, when that clinic is closing up at three or whatever, nursing staff from that clinic will go to the facility to administer the vaccines. And they're also doing the 15 minute observation. So they'll stay until their vaccines are completed. Okay. Questions? Are inmates having any concerns about the vaccination, about the vaccine at all? Are you getting pushed back or are they anxious to get it? You know, it's interesting to me that the first round, the 75 plus, we had nine persons in that first group that were asked and eight of them agreed. And we did have someone who needs a guardian to determine to consent. So that was a good, almost 100%. We did have questions and the commissioner may want to address this by staff, but who are still concerned that they were not getting their vaccinations as a essential worker group or first responders would. And that there's been questions as to that. So there may be some concerns about seeing other folks that are incarcerated getting their vaccinations when they're not. But again, they would be entitled as in the community, if there is an employee that's 68 years old, when that age tier is eligible to get vaccinated, at least for now, they'll also be signing up as members of the community and they'll be able to get their vaccinations that way. Okay. Questions from the committee? Anything? Okay, commissioner, where do you want to go next? Well, I think we can wrap things up with, like Sarah, to introduce herself. And I would say that she'll give you a pretty good overview of our logistical operation. I know early on, there was a lot of questions around PPE and supplies and cleaning supplies. And we struggled like a lot of folks, but I want Sarah to talk about the system that's in place that she helped develop along with Bob Arnell. So Sarah, would you introduce yourself to the committee, please? Hello, and thank you. Yes, I am Sarah Turka. I'm a recruitment and inclusion coordinator for corrections. Additionally, I've been pulled in as part of the COVID response on our logistics section of our incident command. Like commissioner articulated, this is multiple person effort. So additionally, Robert Arnell and Corey Stone are really heading the function of our central logistics. But additionally, we have points of contacts at all of our field and facility sites identified as log chiefs. So that we're able to have real time data on as far as needs that each facility or field site might have in relation to PPE. So we really built a robust logistical operation that's encompassed of planning, sustainment, warehouse operations, and then supply chain visibility. The supply chain visibility is really critical because it allows us to know what our customer base and their needs are, as well as what we have at the wholesale level and what we can expect to have. So for instance, it's no mystery that N95s have been in high demand and almost impossible to gain. And so knowing the visibility of the supply chain has been really instrumental in us to be able to have the items that we provided our facilities to not only protect the staff that are working there, but also our clients that are being housed in these facilities. What it really breaks down to is a couple core areas. The biggest one that I want to talk to you guys about is our manufacturing basis. We had to really be innovative in gaining some of the supplies that were not available in the supply chain. So initially, any of our requests for supplies goes through the SEOC and BGS procurement, but we have found roadblocks in that process just because the supplies weren't available. So we created our own ways to find those supplies, which was a lot of creativity. For example, we have several manufacturing bases currently. Our Burlington Probation and Pearl Office is ready to bottle up hand sanitizer that we get from silo distillery that we put in our facilities. Northern State Correctional Facility and Northeast Correctional Complex both have mask operations where they put together microfiber masks and cloth masks that we supply to not only our staff, but the inmate population. We have down operations at Southern State as well as Northern State. So we are able to provide a lot of the PPE that we see difficulty in getting from mainstream suppliers in-house so that we always have them. We've also created a dedicated delivery service. So if a facility or field site indicates that they are low on a supply or that they require additional supplies, that we can immediately activate our transportation network and get those supplies to them. So for example, Chittenden Regional that the Commissioner had indicated has some positive cases. They already were in what we call the green, which means good with supplies, but we always reach out and get them additional supplies if necessary. And so we were able to activate that transportation network and get those additional supplies to them. The way that it breaks down is we have a centralized inventory, which is encompassed of a large bulk amount of quantities of PPE. But then we also have a reconstitution, which means if we reach a depot level of stock that we're able to pull from this reconstitution as a pre-planning measure. So we're not in the situation we were last year where we're being reactive, that we're being proactive. And then at our field sites, they'll have their own the facility and field sites all have their own storage level as well. This has been really critical because we're able to anticipate the needs of what people need, do the research around, for instance, I talked about the microfiber masks. Not everyone uses those, but we found several articles from the Army that indicated that they have a higher filtration rate, which is better to protect our officers and our offender population. And so we create those in-house and that's not something you're going to necessarily see everywhere. Additionally, I just wanted to talk about some of the things we had to do with the transportation network. So COVID testing, Commissioner Baker talked about the sequential testing. We have had to supply those test kits to the facilities from BDH. So our transportation network does that. Additionally, we've started the CIC staff testing, which is CIC Health at a Cambridge, Massachusetts. And we have a supply network where we order the supplies at the central level. We prepare them and then we send them out to the field sites so that they're able to do the testing. I don't know if you guys remember way back when UVM network crashed. And so that shut down some of the processes that we had in place for getting our test kits there to be examined appropriately. So we activated our transportation network. And on a, I think it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday basis, we were getting those tests from all six of our facilities rapidly to be checked to ensure that no one was positive in our facilities. I think outside of that, I want to really articulate that currently due to the efforts that we've all put together. And this is a really collective effort. We have more than a six month supply of all six of our facilities were to be COVID positive, which is highly impressive to the point that we have several departments reaching out to us about where we get our supplies, which is like I've indicated before been done due to a lot of innovation. So we've gone to places like Etsy, eBay, Amazon, because we've hit roadblocks with the SEOC and BGS and them not having the supplies. Not that they haven't been critical in assisting us into the attainment of supplies, but there have been times where we've not been able to get it from them. And I think that is essentially all that I have to share regarding our logistical operations just ending. I know that there were some comments around concerns with Mississippi. We also have supplied Mississippi with microfiber masks because that's not something that they typically had in their PPE equipment because not everyone does have that in their lineup of supplies. And so on a monthly basis, we send an ample amount of microfiber masks to ensure that our offender population down there have those. So it sounds like a DOC, it's its own little city itself, your own little operation. You can take care of everything. And maybe some folks will tap into you folks to want more PPE and you could produce them. Madam Chair, just be careful. I don't want Walmart to hear about Sarah because they'll be stealing her away from me. Right. You got a keeper. I know there's a question, but I just want to make a comment. I had said to the community early on that I was going to start this year bringing other staff into the committee so you can see the caliber of the staff that we have working. And Sarah is a shiny example of the caliber of the staff we have. The work that she's done with the team, Bob Arnell and Corey Stone is amazing. And she's being very humble when she describes what's going on. It is an amazing process behind the scenes every single day making sure that our employees and our inmates are safe. So I just, I wanted to say that I know there's some questions. Being humble is always great. Thank you. Michael. Yes, just going back to Tallahatchie Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner, whoever wants to answer. If I apologize if I missed it, Tallahatchie said there, I believe 180 something total cases. How many Vermonters? Do we know that number? Yeah, they represented, they were all our Vermont population that was positive. Oh, the whole population. At the time, it wasn't a whole population, but it was a good share of our population. I forget the number that was negative, but it was somewhere in the ballpark at 35. The rest were positive. It was a very serious outbreak. Yeah, we're going to be 14 or 15 years anybody. Okay, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Yeah, we were over 200 at the time when this happened that we had in the out-of-state beds. Okay, thank you. Karen. Yes, not a question, just a comment of appreciation again. Like, it does seem like this is a well oiled machine and just feeling fortunate that we have this team, this work in place and all the staff, for our staff, their families and for the inmates that are there. And I feel like it is something that I'm trying to do with, you know, we're going through these really challenging times and to just reflect and appreciate the kind of silver linings of things and that this is teamwork and leadership that we're seeing that hopefully we can hold through, through whatever comes next in it. So just thank you for that. You're welcome, Representative. I appreciate those comments. And I want to re-emphasize again. This is the team I found when I got the corrections a year ago. And it wasn't long before we were in the fire. I mean, two months into my tenure as the interim, we were in the fire. It's people like Sarah and the deputy commissioner and Al Cormier that stepped up and it's amazing to watch. I'm just kind of standing on the sidelines. Just, you know, it's amazing to watch. These are very talented people, very talented people. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else here? Scott. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just looking up the GTL tablets and looks like they're, they're fairly expensive for the, for the inmates to use. What happened? Oh, there you are. You disappeared on my screen. I was wondering about, especially around video visitation, whether because inmates can't have a physical visit visitation, whether maybe it's an appropriate COVID expense to provide some subsidy for the inmates to have video visitations. It's because it's a $2.50 for 10 minutes looks like. Yeah. So, so when we shut down visitation, you know, and again, I would have to get someone that really understands the technology here that completely go too deep into this, but I'll give you the half inch deep. GTL, when systems around the country were shutting down visitation, GTL actually stepped up and provided either discount or free video to, to the inmates. And then I believe, and I couldn't, this is where my memories a little foggy. I do believe at some point we picked up some of that cost because it would be unfair to, to the inmates to do that. Now they still do. If they, and I think it's one 10, two 10 minute visits a week or one, if they go over that they are paying for that, but we were able to work out something with GTL and they were very, very cooperative in this process. Okay. It's great to play. Thank you. So sometimes you'll find what we can access and pay for on the outside. There are different requirements and different contract structures for within DOC. So you can't always compare apples to oranges. I mean apples to apples with what we can get as a private citizen versus someone who is incarcerated. Sure. I mean, they're providing these tablets for free and there's no connection charges and all of that. So I say this in general, not just targeting the tablets, but in general, because there's a whole different level of requirements dealing with the corrections population than dealing with you and I or just us as citizens. So I just want to put that out there that it's not always apples to apples comparison for that. So that, you know, we don't get hooked into thinking that something that we can do is applicable to someone who's incarcerated and at the same cost for that. Any other questions here? I don't see anything. So this would be a good time for us to take a break. You folks to go back to your work. You're doing great jobs. I want to thank you all. We are so fortunate to have you all on board from the department and for the state. I think we have a real success story here and I remember what Commissioner Baker said to me the first part of March last year when all this was starting to happen and stating, you know, our correctional facilities are just like our cruise ships that are out there and we get a couple outbreaks and we're in trouble. So hats off to what all of you have been doing because we've been doing a terrific job with our incarcerated folks and our staff and your whole department. I want to thank you and I'm sure I speak for the committee as a whole when I say that. Thank you representative. Thank you very much. We don't get this work done without support and it's always, I spend a good part of my life in this committee so I appreciate all of your support. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I have a quick, don't, too late. Okay. No, I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. No, I had Kurt. I didn't see your hand. Was it up? Yep. One second. I got to turn my picture. Okay. This is a question coming way out of left field but I don't have the opportunity to ask it very often. So Colchester does have a jail where we at the police station where some people are held briefly before their process or something. Is there any relationship between DOC and such local jails or? No, the only relationship we would have, representative, as I understand it, there is legislation, I believe it's legislation, either state or federal. I mean, Judy, could you mute please? A lot of PDs will have holding cells, what's known as holding cells, like that. And if it's just a temporary holding, we have no role in that at all. If they're going to house people for long periods of time, in the day, in my day as a young road trooper in Bennington County, for example, depending on the police department had cells where you would hold people instead of transporting them to Rutland. And so if that happens, we are the agency that inspects those jails to meet the standards for humanity and dignity and safety and so on. But most police departments that have holding cells, we have nothing to do with those. Okay. Good. That's thank you. Okay, so let's take a quick 10 minute break, folks. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, Judy.