 We're taking up H962 this morning, which has to do with the duration of temporary relief from views orders. The committee is pretty well set on the goals of the bill and how it worked. There is one provision, however, that has certain committee members concerned. And so we have an amendment. And unfortunately, when I did the agenda, I forgot an important person. He is here, Eric Fitzpatrick. Could you just briefly go over the amendment and then we'll hear from Sarah Robinson, John Campbell, Brian Grishen and Matt Lario. Yeah, sure. We'll do. Morning, everybody. Eric Fitzpatrick with the Office of Legislative Council here to talk about, as Senator Sears said, looking at H962 again, this is an act relating to the duration of temporary relief from abuse orders. Everybody probably remembers that this is an attempt to get at a gap that's created under current law because these temporary relief from abuse orders are generally in effect for only 14 days. And they need to be personally served on the defendant before they can become effective. So the temporary order is in effect for 14 days. Then you have a final hearing within that 14-day period. And if the defendant turns up at the final hearing, that's no problem. The statute provides that if the defendant is there personally, then they are deemed to have been served by the final order. And therefore, the temporary order is in effect until that final hearing and the final order becomes in effect right then when the court issues it if the defendant is physically present. The issue comes up when the defendant is not physically present at that final hearing because then the temporary order typically expires after the 14-day period. And it takes a few days for them to find the defendant and sometimes longer to serve him or her. So you have that creates the gap. That's a period of time after the temporary order has expired after the 14-day maximum. And before the final order has been served, you have a little window when there is no order in effect. And that's the issue that H962, as it came over from the house, attempted to resolve. And the way it did that was it said, if you think about the timeline of the temporary order being issued, you've got 14 days within which the court has to hold the hearing. During that 14-day period, there's really say three different options for what could happen to that temporary order that's in effect. First of all, during that 14-day period, say the court could conceivably just dismiss it. That happens once in a while. That could happen. Maybe the parties agree. Maybe there's some other facts that present themselves. The court could conceivably dismiss it during that period. But if not, then the final hearing comes up and at that final hearing there's two options for the court. The court can either grant the petition and issue a final order or deny the petition. So those are your three possible results after a temporary order has been issued. So what the legislation proposed to do was to say, okay, we're going to make it clear, the language will make it clear, that that temporary order will remain in effect until one of those three things happens. Till either the court dismisses the temporary order till the court denies the petition at the final hearing, or if the court does issue the final order at that final hearing, then the temporary order remains in effect until the final one is served. And that closes the gap, you see, because the temporary order, although it would ordinarily expire after 14 days, proposing the language in the bill that says, well, if the court issues a final order at that final hearing, then the temporary order remains in effect until it's served, that way you don't have that gap anymore, because that temporary order remains effective until the defendant is located and served with the final order. So that's the gist of what's going on. That's what was in the House bill. And as you mentioned, Senator Sears, there's some amendments that are proposed in this version of the bill that are highlighted in yellow on the document that's posted. The first one, we went over this one last time, you'll see, has simply to do with notice. And this is in section one, page one, lines 12 to 15. And this just is a mechanism to provide the defendant with notice that if they don't appear at that final hearing, as I just explained, they don't show up, then the temporary order is going to remain in effect until it's served on the defendant, unless it's dismissed by the court. So that's the notice piece. Eric, can I ask you a question? Please. Line 14, the word it. I know what you're trying to do, but in reading that in plain English, what are you referring to? The temporary order. Okay. I don't think you are. I think you're referring to the final order. So I think you're right. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. I've just proved your point. So yes. So yes, exactly. So that should be. I think what you wanted to say was will remain in effect until a final order is served on the defendant, unless the temporary order is dismissed by the court. Yes. Nice catch. Thank you, Senator Bennet. I was waiting for my colleague, Senator Baruth, to catch it first because he's the English major. There's another issue here with this language that Sarah from the caught as well, but I'm going to come back to it because we're going to get to when we look at the other subsequent language will become clear. But there's another tweak that might the committee might want to make depending on what your decision is with respect to the maximum period that we discussed last time. But I've got those changes that you just mentioned, Senator Ben, thank you. So that's the notice piece. So then we move on to bottom of section two top of sorry bottom of page two top of page three. And this there's you see the language it's not highlighted is what I discussed earlier that the temporary order remains in effect until it's either dismissed by the court or denied at the final hearing. And then I'm going to skip that middle sentence. The last sentence also one change is that the final order is issued temporary order remains in effect until personal service to the final order. That's the piece that closes the potential gap. Another issue that came up initially in the house and that this committee has been discussing as well as leaving the defendant aside for a moment. What about when the plaintiff potentially might not show up at that final hearing. And that does happen occasionally as well. And you can see that that's what's addressed in that middle sentence in two way. So if the plaintiff fails to appear at the final hearing, the petition shall be dismissed, provided that the court may continue the temporary order until the final hearing, if it makes findings on the record, stating why there's good cause not to dismiss the petition. So that's the language that attempts to address the situation where the plaintiff might not turn up at that final hearing. And the idea is that generally speaking, the default is that if the plaintiff doesn't turn up, the order gets to the petition gets dismissed. But there is some leeway language there for sort of, you know, exceptional circumstances where the court can can continue that temporary order. As long as it makes these findings on the record that there's good cause not to dismiss it. So you can see the highlighted language, that was tweaked a little bit just to make clear that that the court was not going to be able to continue the temporary order indefinitely. And that's the same issue that's addressed in that last highlighted piece, because the committee was then discussing last time, well, should there be a maximum period? Should there be a, you know, rather than a temporary order potentially being in effect indefinitely, should there be some length of time beyond which the temporary would expire? Again, that would obviously mean that for that period of time, the defendant couldn't be located and served, right? If for some long, for some length of time that the defendant couldn't be served with the temporary expire, essentially, and the committee hadn't settled on a length of time, but you did want some language in there to address that concept. And that's what you see that's newly highlighted line six to eight page three. This says, okay, notwithstanding anything else that you just said about how long the temporary remains in effect, in no event is it going to be longer than X number of months. And I put in both three and six just as, and even that's not, it doesn't have to be three or six, it could be any period that the committee chooses, or no period at all, but at least the language is there for you to discuss the idea of whether or not you need to have a maximum length of time that applies to the temporary order. And just one one last point that I'll make that I mentioned just a moment ago that Sarah Robinson caught. So thanks for catching that Sarah. If you if you look at back at the language regarding notice, this is on page one lines 12 through 15, if you do decide to have the temporary affected for some maximum period of time, just for the sake of discussion, let's say six months. And you probably want to amend this notice language as well, because the way it reads now is that the temporary order remains in effect until it is served on the defendant. Sorry, unless the final order is served on the defendant, unless the temporary order is dismissed by the court. So you probably want to include some reference in there, you know, that it's not going to has, you know, won't remain in effect for a maximum period of six months, and then go on to say the rest of the language, something that because that's written right now, if you do choose a maximum period, it wouldn't technically be accurate. So you want to include some reference to the maximum period if you decide to go that route. Does that make sense to everybody? You're just meaning referencing the last paragraph as opposed to putting in language here that would mirror that. I think you had just probably a few words that something like, you know, some, let's say six months, then it could be just something that said, you know, shout until the temporary order remain in effect for a period of six months, or until it is, or until the final order is served on the defendant. You're going to want to be careful because you're not going to want to give a judge carte blanche to say, we'll extend the temporary order out five months, and then come back for the final hearing. I would only suggest that we reference the last paragraph, in other words, saying something like subject to be below, and then go on with the rest of it, that it'll remain in effect until either final order is served or dismissed by the court. I just, I don't want to leave any confusion where a judge feels like they have authority to continue a temporary order in place for a given period of time. Right now, I think the attempt is made to get a final hearing within 14 days. Right. So just maybe cross-reference the provision, right? Yeah, that could work. All right. Any further comments or questions for Eric? If not, we'll go to Sarah first, please. Good morning, Sarah. Good morning. Good to see you all. Thank you very much. I appreciate the committee taking this back up. I'm happy to speak to these proposed changes and believe Judge Gerson will also be able to provide information about how these cases are already handled for the court in these circumstances. So the first proposed change that Eric outlined on page one, providing notice to the defendant about the temporary order remaining in effect if they fail to appear refined with this language. I did want to just note for the committee that the court already provides notice to the defendant when they are served with a temporary order. So it's on the order itself and it warns them that at the court hearing, the court may decide to, quote, extend or change the order. And so they are already warned of that possibility, but if the committee, you know, believes it's necessary to let the committee know that it may happen if they fail to appear, we would certainly support that. So refined with that language. And refined with the language around the plaintiff failing to appear, I think that really accurately reflects the intent and certainly our intent. So thank you very much for that suggestion. And then I think the only place for concern for us is the second change on page three regarding time periods. And I think Judge Greerson can speak to really what is already current practice, but in our view, essentially the temporary order should always be temporary. And the ideal is certainly that the hearing is held within 14 days. The temporary is not much longer than those 14 days. And if the defendant can't be served with the final order, that law enforcement continues to attempt service until they're successful. And the concern I have about putting a time period on here is that you could essentially be creating two kinds of temporary orders. One that is 14 days if the defendant shows up at the hearing and then a three or six month temporary order if the defendant doesn't show up. And, you know, certainly from the victim's perspective, achieving a final order rather than an extended temporary order is much preferred because the final order may be more tailored to the relief that's specific to their circumstances. So, you know, the hope with the bill is really to try and address just this hopefully very short time period. But I do have some concern about adding an additional time period. I think it's just going to be confusing to both the defendant and the plaintiff. And frankly, could also create just more court involvement for a plaintiff who's really trying to achieve a fixed period of safety in their lives. So, our preference would really be just to maintain the current court practice whereby the court is the one that determines the length of the final order, certainly, and that law enforcement continues to try and serve a defendant with a final order until they're successful. And I would just finally note that, you know, this is, it's really in the defendant's hands whether or not they appear at the final hearing. So, if they would like the temporary order not to be extended, they are certainly able to appear at the final hearing in order to try and achieve that. So, that's all I had, and I'm happy to take questions. And big questions to Sarah. Yes, Joe. Sarah, I'm just going to throw something back at you to think about. This paragraph was designed not as a target of the defendant, I'm sorry, of the, yeah, the defendant. It was designed as being targeted at the plaintiff who doesn't show up for a final hearing. And the desire, at least on my part, was that we not continue ad nauseum a temporary order if the plaintiff doesn't show. There's another possibility, though, I hadn't thought about until you were just speaking, and that is a defendant might show up for a temporary and say, I haven't had time to get an attorney yet. So, the judge might look at that as good cause to continue the temporary and then come back to have a hearing where the defendant might come back again and say, I haven't had an opportunity to get an attorney yet. We don't want to see that problem continue either because then you've got a temporary order in place that would automatically expire. But this would actually force the court to issue a final order under the defendant not showing up. But we have nothing on the other hand, when a plaintiff doesn't show up to limit the timeframe by which the court can keep issuing an extension of a temporary order. So, just asking you to think about that, that's why, at least in my head, this language was originally proposed. That's helpful. My sense is that in practice, if the plaintiff doesn't show, obviously the court has to, in the language, if they have to make findings on the record and there has to be good cause to not dismiss the petition. And the sorts of cases that my understanding and Judge Grierson can also speak to this, this might happen, are exceptional in our cases where someone might be, for example, hospitalized and unable to come to court and in which case the court would reset a hearing. So there would then be another opportunity. The court would again have to make findings on the record and have good cause for extending again. So I don't believe that under current practice or under the current law, it would mean that the court has the ability to really extend these orders in perpetuity as long. So that would be my take. Okay. I'd like to hear some more from Judge Pearson to figure out if we can get to a solution here somehow. Judge Grierson, you said. Yeah, there is a Judge Pearson. Sorry about that, Judge Grierson. Actually, the next witness is John Campbell. If we'll finish with Sarah. John, any thoughts on this? Well, I'd be interested to hear Judge Grierson what he has to say. But first of all, I actually caught the same thing that Joe, Senator Benning and Senator Baruth were catching there and that first one was, so it looks like that'll be taken care of. I think the biggest concerns we see is the fact that the service of process on these things, what would concern me is if law enforcement is right now that this is a priority for them, that this takes priority over any other summons or any other process that needs to be served. And if they're feeling that, oh, well, if I don't serve, sorry, if they feel like this doesn't really worry to get it served right away because it's going to be this temporary order will be extended. Am I on here or because I hear maybe you're locked up, Senator Sears. I think somebody is saying something. Senator Sears is locked up. He shouldn't be, but maybe you come to his aid there, Joe. John, I believe we've lost a portion of your testimony to a Zoom failure. Okay. And now we're back on. So if you would start from perhaps even the beginning, I don't know how many people lost it. Am I the only one that lost Zoom? We actually lost you, Dick. I think we lost you, Senator Sears. Oh, okay. So never mind then. Everybody else heard you. I didn't just remember that. The point I was just, what I was trying to point out, Senator, was that if the law enforcement right now has consider diseases of priority for service and what worries me is if they go out and try to serve at one time and they don't get service. And if they know that this is the temporary order will remain in place indefinitely, it may, they may not go and try to serve that final one as quickly or it might fall down the priority list. But because oftentimes the other thing that has to be taken into consideration is, and I think Sarah touched on this, is that the final orders is often different than the temporary order. It could be more restrictive. It could be taking other things into consideration. They could have had some agreements. So I think any effort right now to try to deal with these issues is positive. And I see what you're going through here is the right direction. Again, it's the question about the last one, which was B, putting the timeframe on there. And I think that's a policy decision that, again, I'd like to listen to Judge Greerson and then possibly offer further testimony if that's possible. Anything's possible, John. Did you get straightened out with the house on that budget item for the domestic violence folks in Bennington and Wyndham counties? I have not checked whether that has gone through to there, if the recommendation was made. If we need to, we can put something in this bill. Okay. If that's possible. Again, we certainly don't want to lose the prosecutor. Right. Over that testing and we could put that in here. Okay. Just put the language, okay. And so that they don't, if we don't get the money that way there, they wouldn't lose the positions. Okay. Because we don't have the other money to pay out for the compromise. So I think this would be the best way. Okay. Well, let us know as soon as you find out. Okay. Thank you. I'll have that back to you as soon as I'm off. In fact, Pepper's listening in. So I'll have him check with Senator, I mean, House Appropriations. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Judge Grierson. Good morning, everybody. The record, Brian Grierson, Chief Superior Judge. Thank you for the opportunity to testify to H962 or the amendments to it. I'll begin with the, on page one, lines 12 through 15. We do not have any objection to that language. It really would add to what we already say. Sarah indicated I can tell the committee that currently our form that is served with the temporary order includes language under a paragraph that capital letters important information for a defendant. And it says at the hearing to be held on the date and time specified on the face of this order, this is referring to a temporary order, the court will decide on whether to extend or change the order or issue a final order. After hearing an order may be issued, which will remain in effect as long as the judge decides the relief is necessary. And an order may be issued against you granting the plaintiff's request for relief as the court deems appropriate. If you, I'm sorry, if you fail to appear at the final next year, if you, yes, Senator Sears, we can't see you or hear you. I can actually see him, but I can't hear him. Oh, really? You can see him? Yeah. He's frozen. He's frozen. I can't see him at all. Interesting. And Phillip, I can see your mouth moving, but not hear you. He's muted. Dick, maybe if you turn off your video, Nick, could you take over for a few minutes? I'm moved since I've lost the zoom. Yes. Okay. So go ahead. Do you want me to continue, Senator? Yes. So our current form has language that says if you keep running out and I think it failed to appear at the final hearing an order may be issued against you granting the plaintiff's request for relief as the court deems appropriate. So this would just add language on page one would just add another element that saying that the temporary order will remain in effect until the final order is served. And that's the, that was certainly the whole purpose of the original bill. So we don't have any objection to that. The language at the top of page three. Whoops. Have you lost me? No. Less words at the top of page three. Okay. So at the top of page three, again, we don't have any objection to that language. We really, in my opinion, have the inherent authority to continue or not continue a hearing. So this just provides some guidance in under what circumstances we can continue a temporary order. So again, we have no objection to it. The section B on page three is what I guess really brings the committee back this week. And I was able to listen to a portion of last week's testimony and the concerns raised. I'm not really sure why this language is necessary. For this reason, a temporary order would issue on an exparte basis, on an emergency basis. And one of two things will happen. If the defendant is served with a temporary order and does not appear at the hearing, the whole purpose of this bill was to extend the life of the temporary order until the individual can be served with the final order so that there is no gap that's been referred to. So there would be no reason to limit the length of time on that temporary order having been served on the defendant. And under the current statute 1103, there is no time limit on a final order until the person is served with the temporary order. I wouldn't see any reason to then time limit that order. That would be the only order that's in effect until the individual is served. The other circumstance would be a temporary order is issued, but the defendant has not been served. If the plaintiff then appears, again, keep in mind these are civil proceedings, if the plaintiff wants to continue the temporary order until service is made, generally speaking, that is their decision. So you have a plaintiff appearing, wants to continue the order, we would continue the order. If you put a time limit on the temporary order that has not been served, I think if anything, it could incentivize the defendant to stay away from a void service and defeat the whole purpose of the request. And, and, Senator Benning wants to weigh in along the way there. Go ahead, Joe. Thank you. Judge, you are reading this as if this language is targeted at the plaintiff. I'm sorry, the defendant. And I understand why you're reading it that way, but the initial intent here was, let me give you a practical example. We would both agree that if a defendant gets served with the temporary order and a final hearing is scheduled, if the defendant shows up at that hearing with an attorney, but the plaintiff does not have an attorney and requests one, I think we'd both agree that that's good cause for the temporary hearing to be continued and to enable her to get an attorney. I would agree. And just the question, it's a normal practice. Now, if either side requests an attorney, we will continue it for two weeks. So the question then becomes what if the plaintiff comes back a second time and says, I haven't had a chance to get an attorney yet. How long does that process continue before the court decides it's no longer good cause? That's what this language was intended to address. Well, first of all, I don't think that's what the language says. I think it goes way beyond that. But taking your example, Senator Benning, I've certainly been in situations where, and I think it's fairly routine when someone requests an attorney, my practice and I think fairly common practices go out two weeks for a simple reason that within the 14 days, number one, but also it's hard to get an attorney on one week's notice. If that person comes back in two weeks time and still doesn't have an attorney, my practice and experience, and I would tell the individual at that first hearing, you've got two weeks to get an attorney, we will not continue this again. And I cannot tell you that every judge would proceed that way, but we're mindful of the defendant's rights as much as we have the plaintiff's right to pursue this. And we give anybody an opportunity to get an attorney. It doesn't make any difference a plaintiff or defendant, and we generally will go out two weeks to give them that opportunity with these expression that if you do not get one, we're going to proceed that day. Somebody would have to come in at the end of that two weeks with a real strong argument, Senator Benning, as to why they weren't able to get an attorney. But that already happened and judges dismissed these or they move ahead with them if it's the defendant doesn't have an attorney. I mean, the problem with RFAs and the problem with using an example is every case is so fact specific. And that's my concern is that if you create an artificial deadline, I think it's going to quite frankly defeat the purpose of what the original legislation was. It's because it's a civil proceeding. If the plaintiff has obtained that order and wants to continue to pursue it without the defendant having been served, I don't think there should be a time limit on that order. On the other hand, if the order is granted and has been served, that is the intent of this bill to keep that temporary order alive. That would be the only order to protect the plaintiff. And I understand that we have, there may be some confusion around the plaintiff not appearing that already happens from time to time. And we address it on an individual basis. Obviously, this is, as John Campbell indicated, this is a policy decision on a part of the committee. I see this in some respects as a problem, looking for a solution. Solution, looking for a problem, I guess is what I meant to say. I just don't think it's necessary. Let's have a question for Judge Rerson. Well, Judge Rerson, were you finished with what you wanted to say? I think I was, Senator, but I'm glad to answer any questions. Does anyone have any questions? Senator Sears, do you? You're muted. All right. Who's next on the, I don't have the sheet for who's next. Senator, I would just add this comment if I could. As I said before, the court is mindful of the rights of the defendant in this process as well as the plaintiff. It has not been my experience that judges continue these temporary orders for an extended period of time if the plaintiff is not participating. If we have no information from the plaintiff as to why they're not there, these matters are dismissed. There are many occasions when we end up in court with only the defendant there having been served and appeared and the plaintiff does not appear. We have no information. Those are routinely dismissed as a matter of course. I would think you'd almost have to be careful that if the plaintiff doesn't appear and you put in a time limit, there may be a tendency to extend the temporary order. Even if the plaintiff isn't there, if you then put in this timeline and say, well, the plaintiff isn't here, we don't know why, but the statute now says we can continue in temporary order for whatever you choose, a month. You may get the consequences that you don't want by adding that language. I think the court is well equipped to deal with these individual situations be it plaintiff or defendant not appearing in addressing those issues. The other parts of the bill are consistent with the original intent and I think they do serve an appropriate policy choice. This one just concerns me because I think it has a possibility of creating more issues than it's solving. I'm not sure it's solving the issue. I'm not sure what the issue is you're trying to resolve. I'll leave it with that. Thank you. I'm back and Comcast had problems yesterday. Actually, several of us missed the end of yesterday's session and I think that's what happened here, but I moved inside just in case it's on my end. I think it's Comcast having problems. I apologize, but if I hear the gist of what's being discussed, it is B on line six on page three that is problematic. So I'm with the gist of what you were trying to say, Judge. If you have any questions, Senator, I'll be glad to answer them. No, I don't. I think I got enough of your testimony. I'm sorry I missed parts of it, but I think I got enough to, and I know I was ably replaced by the Senator from Windsor County, but Senator Baruth has a question, I believe. Oh, Senator Baruth don't. All right. So why don't we, are there any other questions for Judge Greerson? Judge, thank you. Matt Valeri, do you have any comments that you'd like to make? The only comment that I wanted to make about this, it doesn't deal with that last paragraph. The rest of this is fine as far as I'm concerned. What I think needs to be addressed to some degree is the fact that we have the potential now for temporary orders to remain in effect indefinitely based upon the reading of the rest of the bill. And because they're temporary orders, then the defendant has not presented any evidence, or they may not have even notice of what went on. I wouldn't want to see a temporary order remain in effect indefinitely, and that is the concern. And there are all kinds of nuances about who shows or who doesn't for the final hearing. If the plaintiff doesn't show up, I mean, oftentimes, my experience when I was doing this for the 15 years before I was defender general, it was because the plaintiff and defendant had made some kind of reconciliation or made some agreement between themselves. And all of those things make for odd results where the court has really does have discretion to do all kinds of things, continue the order or dismiss it outright. And the vast majority of times, and Judge Gershwin is absolutely correct, the orders are dismissed when the plaintiff doesn't show up. But there are other times when they're not. And I just thought that it would be, and I still think that it's a good idea to give some direction to say, you know, we aren't going to be sitting on temporary orders indefinitely. And so after some period of time, and whatever that is, the temporary order goes away. And it does, and perhaps creates other problems. But, you know, prior to this amendment of the statute, the temporary orders didn't just, you know, if they weren't served, they didn't just remain in effect. And so by creating that, which was the original intent of the bill, you now create this other situation where you basically have the potential for an almost indefinite temporary order. And, you know, I don't think anything's totally indefinite. So, you know, that's why I say almost. And so to me, there should be some reasonable limit on how long a temporary order would remain in effect. And you can dream up all kinds of scenarios, whether it's the plaintiff would show up or the defendant who doesn't get served and doesn't show up. And, you know, how the court deals with it. And I was hoping to provide some direction for that by this paragraph. And I hear what the judge is saying, you know, just leave it, basically leave it to the discretion of the court to figure it out at the time, because there are too many nuances to what might be going on. To me, however, I do think that it, I would not want to see a temporary order basically be hanging out there indefinitely without being in an effect without service. Hey, you know, I just, when you were saying that, I was thinking of the Woodside example of the kid that was there for 500 odd days temporarily. Just one comment. Yes, just one of the committee to know that when the temporary order that has not been served is continued, the order would remain in effect, but we send a new notice of hearing for service on the defendant. In other words, we just don't leave the order out there without a notice of hearing. We reschedule the final hearing and send a new notice with the original temporary order. So it's not as if the order is out there and the court isn't taking any action. We are continually trying to get that final hearing and get service. So it's not just left without any action by the court. We will issue a new notice of hearing, notice of final hearing for service upon the defendant, get that into the hands of law enforcement. So it's served with the original order. So there's no confusion over the date of the new hearing. I think that's important for the committee to understand. It's not just left out there. Okay. Yes. May I note one thing? I just wanted to note that, you know, I think that there is some restriction on the extension of the temporary order, and that is that the court needs to place on the record findings that there's good cause to extend that hearing. So in the case of, for example, as the defender general highlighted, a reconciliation between the parties or something like that, you know, in my experience, I've never seen the court use something like that to extend an order if a plaintiff does not appear. Clearly, you know, we do believe that these orders ought to be pursued by the plaintiff that that is the nature of the civil process. And if the plaintiff doesn't appear, then unless, again, there's very extraordinary circumstances, the order, the order should be dismissed. John Campbell, any thoughts? If you'd like, you're still there. You're still there. MIDI. The decision really, I didn't hear any issues with, other than changing the wording in the section one, the it to make sure that we don't mess that up. And so the real disagreement is about be on page three, line six through eight. Any thoughts, John Campbell? I don't. There were a couple things I was thinking, but it's really so far into the weeds. And again, I think it's it comes down to a policy decision that you guys have to make. You know, Matt's made some good points as well. But I think it's with a look at the importance and the original purpose of the of the bill and the legislation and protecting, you know, the people who have sought these orders. I am concerned about temporary. And the example I gave of the kid at Woodside, I can't remember the exact number of days, but he had been temporarily placed there for over 500 days when we met him. You know, it was temporary, but there was no better alternative. And and sometimes I think things fall through the cracks because so can you can you do something along the lines of the temporary, the period cannot extend the beyond the the I think you could extend beyond six months or three months without another additional hearing like that temporary. I'm sorry about an additional hearing so that at least at that point there's some kind of you don't have to say that it it ends. It just says without an additional hearing. That would to me to be, I don't know what the rest of the committee thinks, but that to me would be a kind of a compromised position that would get us where we want to be to make sure that there's some review if it's going on and on and on. I don't know how people feel about that. I wouldn't I wouldn't want to go certainly longer than that, maybe even go shorter. But that would be my way of at least assuring another hearing that it doesn't go on and add in for an item. Joe. Yeah, I think I agree with you. I was going to ask the judge a question. One of the concerns that I saw in your correspondence was that this was being looked at as if the defendant was ducking service. And I don't know if this has ever happened. This is a civil proceeding. If a defendant is ducking service, can they be served via publication? The short answer is yes. The long answer is that is so expensive or someone to pursue. In other words, you'd have to have solid information that the person is still in the area where you're going to publicize. And service by publication is extremely expensive for the plaintiff to pursue, but we've done it. I mean, it's happened. Yeah, at least you get a final hearing scheduled that way and the temporary doesn't continue on at infinite. At least what we're trying to do here is avoid this gap. I think the bill does that. And I think the amendments are healthy and help the bill. Then we come to be and what happens if it goes on and on and on. And that's why I'm suggesting some format of rewriting it so that it would require another hearing if it goes beyond a certain Senator. So I thought I heard both Judge Geerson and Sarah say that every time there's a few extended it for 14 days, every time there's a potential extension, there has to be good cause found. So if there isn't good cause found, then do they just issue a I mean, it seems to me that there is some check on it, but I may have misunderstood that so that if you have a 14 day extension and then you come back for 14 days and there's no good cause found for the person to not have shown up, then you issue the final order. So I don't know that if you put that time period on it, then somebody had talked about, then they just they're going to say, well, they have three months, so we're just not going to serve and we're just going to hang around for three months. And so I just wondered if I misheard that, or if it's true that every time there's a 14 day extension, there has to be good cause shown. And if good cause isn't shown, then there is a final, the court just issues a final order. So if the plaintiff does not appear, under the language in the bill, there would have to, we would have to have evidence of a good cause as to why we should continue it. If the defendant doesn't appear, if the defendant has been served, and the plaintiff appears, we're going to issue the final order, if that's what the plaintiff requests. Sometimes they come in and say, a defendant has been served, defendant doesn't appear, and the plaintiff wants to drop the order because it's a civil proceeding, that's their call. Regardless of what the way the affidavit reads, plaintiff does not want to pursue, we will not pursue it. On the other hand, the plaintiff, not appearing, usually ends up in a dismissal because there is no evidence of why the plaintiff hasn't appeared. It is a rare, rare case when we have information as to why a plaintiff has not appeared. And I think we talked in one of the earlier meetings, it just can't be that someone has indicated the plaintiff is afraid to come into court because they're afraid of the defendant. That's not, if a plaintiff wants an order, they have to pursue the order. And if they showed good cause, and then you... And we would continue, but if we continue to... But then they're not going to keep showing good cause. I mean... At some point, I would think the good cause for the plaintiff not appearing would end fairly soon. In other words, that usually is not, that's why it's usually only extended for a short period of time. So I don't know that this is even... Senator Baruch says... Thanks. Judge Grierson, did I understand your testimony correctly that you would strike the... I don't... Yes. Okay. On the other hand, I will say this, Senator, in response to what Senator Sears has proposed, understand that with the information the plaintiff has provided, that they, if this order expires, let's say you put a three month time limit on it, we could conduct a hearing and the plaintiff is going to have the same, probably the same testimony that they provided in the temporary order. So what you would probably end up with at that point is either an extension of the existing order for good cause, or if your bill says that temporary order has to end at three months, absent a hearing, that hearing would probably be on the same evidence that was originally presented to us and we would again issue an order. So I... So I guess the reason I asked the question is I keep coming back to where we are in the process. So we're just a couple of weeks away from ending and it seems like the rest of the bill makes sense to everyone. This piece that we've tried to add on seems productive of possible complications, possible unintended consequences. So I suppose I lean toward getting rid of B and moving with the rest of the bill. Senator Benning. I'm actually okay with that if I can get the judge to look at page one for a moment. The 14-day requirement, do you believe that means that if an extension is granted of the temporary order for good cause, that you would have to come back within 14 days for the next hearing? I can tell you that that is certainly the practice in my experience because of that 14-day limitation. Having said that, I will tell you that there have been times in my experience where the information we have on that 14th day is, let's assume at the first hearing we have very little information of why the defendant hasn't been able to be served. By the time this we come back now, two weeks later, there may be more information. The defendant may in fact have moved out of state and so then it's a question of whether we're going to, whether the plaintiff is going to pursue the service on out of state. So there may be an occasion when we extend it beyond that in order to obtain service but there's always a date of final hearing set. They are never just continued for the sake of continuing. There's always a date because that's the only way this docket functions. I understand that and what I'm trying to do is look at the trade-off between eliminating a drop dead date as is presented on page three with assurance that the 14-day requirement is still in place because they have to come back every two weeks. Somebody has to establish good cause. If it fails at some point in time, then the temporary order goes away. That has been my experience that we go out for two weeks. So with that I guess I'll go along with Philip's suggestion. I think I'd like to go with Philip's suggestion as well. Okay. Me too. Well that's four to nothing so I guess we'll go with Philip's suggestion. I'll vote with the majority, not that it's necessary. All right. Thank you very much. While I've got everybody here, I don't know if Peggy, there's an email with an attachment from a letter from Erica Moss, the state attorney in Bennington County about the problem with the rollout of the Odyssey system down there and the fact that over the Labor Day weekend none of the law enforcement agencies had any information. So if you could post that letter on our website and I mean we've talked about it. We've sent letters. We've done what we can. Maybe it's time to put something in language to stop the roll out of this mess. All the law enforcement agencies were according to the email and people can read over the email and maybe Judge Gerson, you may want to look at it once it's posted and just check with Pat Gable and see what's going on. But to be taking up a domestic violence bill now, knowing that law enforcement is not able to get into the records, none of the law enforcement in Bennington County were. And so how would they know if there was an outstanding court order on this individual that maybe is coming under this new law? I'm concerned about it and John Campbell, if you would, and I know Matt Valero has been outspoken about it. So if you could check with Bennington Rutland, when Bennington Rutland, Addison, Chittenden, your folks there, if they're having similar problems, we may take this letter up next week. Not that I know what we can do because we even the letter from the Judicial Rules Committee didn't stop, didn't slow it down but. Did you and I had, I got frozen there for a second. Are you talking about the letter from Trevor Whipple? No, I'm talking about the letter from Erica Mathidge this morning that I received an email with a attachment that has a letter. I assume that you had gotten a copy of it, if not. Peggy said she'd, I asked Peggy to post it on our page so it'll be there. It's about the problems. There's quite a bit about how they didn't, now she says no, we weren't trained, we asked for training, we didn't get it, we were directed to the portal and not training. That's beside the point. My concern is that they weren't able, law enforcement in Bennington County wasn't able to get court records. Right, I'll send Judge Gerstin also the copy of the email that I had seen from Trevor Whipple who's in charge of it. It's posted now, Peggy says it's posted now, so if you want to add that from Trevor Whipple. Trevor, what's Trevor now? He's, he actually is in charge of, let me just, I can pull this up real quick. Is it police chief himself, Burlington? He was, yes. And then he, if you just bear with me for a second, he's like in charge of the, of all the different chiefs of police or has something to do with it. And he was very concerned because he evidently had not heard about this. And well, if you, if I'll send you to Judge Gerstin. And I don't know what we can do in, I hate interbranched feuds, but this is really now impacting public safety. If Eric, I'm not the statements are correct. Um, this is, this is basically if you want, this is a letter to the chiefs. Thanks for a tip from Colchester. If you forward that to Peggy, she can post it on our committee page and then people can all see it. Okay. We'll do. But I'm asking you and Matt, and then I don't know what we can do. We still have a budget floating around that we can attend. I think all of us, I think Matt will join in this is that, you know, we want this to work. We want the, the, the online of the e-filing and everything else to work, but just, it just, we're, you're getting two different stories. Yeah. So we've kind of Peter sells up. Well, we are. So is there a motion to report or to amend S H? As I get off the subject here, we all agree. 962 favorably, or no, excuse me to amend 962 is seen. Or do you want Eric to do a new draft and get that to us or lead them? Which would you prefer? Eric needs to do a new draft because he needs to define it and he's going to think be out. I'm working on it right now. I could, if you guys, I certainly could get it to you in a few minutes, not a big difference, but, or we could, another day, whatever. We're going to go to Matt Valerio's budget. And if Matt Valerio's budget takes more than 40 minutes, that would give us time around quarter of 12 to make a final vote on this. If you can get a final one and you and Peggy can get it posted. Yeah, that works for me. Okay. Because our next subject is Matt's budget. And I don't think it'll take more than 40 minutes. Matt? Okay. We've been going, if it keeps shrinking, it won't take 40 minutes. So I thought we were going to be in a okay situation here with our, with our budget. It had a plan to try to address effectively a 3% reduction, having in mind that there were going to be available COVID relief funds that were appropriated by the legislature in the last budget go around. And then my, my general feelings about taking federal money, although I know every state needs it to survive within the defendant general system, it has typically been a nightmare anytime we get involved with the feds and federal money. And that has been the case this time around. The last, I guess, quarterly budget that came through and the budget adjustment that then accounted for the COVID relief funds basically put about $1.2 million available to the defender general's office to address a number of things. The easy part is dealing with the IT issues, relative to remote access to the courts and trying to do the job, excuse me, remotely as much as possible. And that part is relatively okay, but it's a small amount of the money. The hardest part was to try to deal with the surge and wave of cases that has started to come and is coming in the various counties that arises out of three things. Number one is the cases that have been basically put on hold from the beginning of March until present that had already been charged with people in jail and people out on conditions of release and the like. The second is the number of cases that would be coming in where people who were cited and not held on bail or conditions or bail or without bail. Those cases which have been were cited for down the road as opposed to a couple of weeks out. They were pushed six months out, eight months out, whatever as those started coming in. Then you combine that with the regular case load that you would expect to get during that time frame. Now all of that, the confluence of those three types of case load turn into a wave of cases that's coming in. And so our plan, and we describe this to the legislature, both in the various appropriations committees, was to use the COVID funds to address that case load. Now when we were first told about the opportunity for this money, I looked at it with the same skepticism that I always look at federal money is that it usually comes brings in reporting requirements that you end up spending more money administering it than you end up getting. But I couldn't have imagined that that would be the case with 1.2 million dollars. Nevertheless, it seems that we are back in a similar situation that we always are when we deal with federal money. The original direction from joint fiscal and the direction that we got from the bill or whatever it was that created the CRF funding was that the money had to be spent before the 30th of December of 2020. And we had run this by whoever we could talk to. So we put into place contracts that would basically be we would spend the money before that timeframe and the deliverables would take place through the end of the fiscal year. So those cases as they started coming in were basically being front loaded. So you'd get that paid front loaded. And then the cases would be worked out till the end of the year, end of the fiscal year ending at the before the beginning of July next year. So in doing that, we put a number of contracts in place, approximately $750,000 worth of contracts. And then just probably two weeks ago, we get contacted by a consultant who's been hired by administration to assist in the administration of these CRF funds. And basically we were told that the way we're doing it wasn't right and that the in fact the deliverable had to end by December 30th as though you were like, you know, making cheeseburgers. So you get all the your raw materials for the cheeseburgers. And you have to have $1.3 million worth of cheeseburgers completed by December 30th and eaten. And, you know, the way cases work, it's not like you get them in the end. You know, I anticipated I did a aging on these case, the way we're going to do these cases. So what we're the plan was is to take cases that were already existing in the public defense offices and assign them out to contractors who so it wasn't the brand brand new ones, but they were ones that didn't have a lot of work done on them. And most of the cases would end up being resolved, but I figured that there'd probably be 15 10 to 15% of them would be given back to the staff office as of July 1st of 2021. But what they would do is free up the staff offices to take on the new cases that were coming in and address the cases that were the ones that were coming in on citation and the new cases, and then the serious cases where people were being held without bail or on high bail that were in the facilities. The direction was that basically half of those 50% of the contracts amount does not comply with the CRF guidelines that were issued only within the last month or so by the Department of Treasury. And the consultants that the administration are using I guess are commonly hired by states to keep up on the daily direction that comes from the Department of the Treasury on the administration of various types of federal grant money and federal funding. I never encountered this before and I don't know that anybody else around has has either but effectively they said our plan wouldn't work for any deliverable that was going to occur after the 30th of December. So I immediately terminated all of the contracts effective September 1st that we had put in place and we had a meeting with the people with our contractors to let them understand what was going on because what we were doing is paying them one payment every, they were six months of payments that would cover an entire year and so we were already three months in and that basically covered the amount that they would have been covered through the end of the year. Now there were a couple of contracts, one in the Northeast Kingdom and the other in Windsor County which were with primary public defense contractors not additional they had already the all the other ones were new contractors new contracts that we brought in to do this work on the criminal side those two because of two things. Number one this influx of caseload that was clearly COVID related and number two the fact that they were using that the court has been put in an odd position and it's really wreak havoc with our service provision part of it's I'm sure is a communication issue and then I don't even know what the rest of the part of it is but the bottom line is that the use of regional arraignments now has dumped significantly more work on the counties that do regional arraignments. The biggest problems right now are in Windsor County and and also we have issues in the Northeast Kingdom. There's a whole other issue going on with Chittenden County, Franklin County and then the northern part of the state and how that gets divided up but for purposes of this CRF funding we were able to to attribute a certain amount of money to both the Northeast Kingdom primary public defense contractor and the Windsor primary public defense contractor because of the increase in work that they had doing regional arraignments in the south what that basically means is that Windsor had been doing arraignments and has been for a period of months during this COVID term you know since March and shortly thereafter for Rutland, Bennington and Wyndham counties they had to hire another person to deal with that. Northeast Kingdom law also had similar situation the in concept that the consultant said to us well that seems to be legitimate that you can attribute an amount of funds to those two things that you are trying to do and that you are doing but again no deliverables after December 30th but we have the ability to amend those contracts to use some of that CRF funding to cover that cover that work the other all the other ones are I've terminated and we are we are that is part of where this $400,000 hole has come up with and that's about $300,000 of the $400,000 hole is covering those contracts if we want to do that or if you want to do that if those are not covered basically what will end up happening is just the system will I can't imagine it grinding to a slower halt than it already is right now but that's what that's what's going to happen it's just you're going to have a massive backlog of cases all over the state and they're going to be handled by the existing existing contractors who are in place and there'll be likely some backlash as we approach next year's contract time when everybody's going to be looking for more money because they got you know a third to 50% more cases than they did previously basically as pending cases because they can't be moved the the other part of this and I don't sometimes I don't understand I think the like the long-term thinking or not long-term thinking I I think of things in sometimes two or three year increments and we got notice about six to ten months ago that our case management provider would no longer be supporting the case management system that we have in place and that we need to put a new one in by July 1st of next year which is a very similar situation to what the state's attorneys have run into because they use the same provider we in preparing for that this the company we've been dealing with JTI same as the state's attorneys have some have a system called eDefender that has a known cost that we ought to be able to transfer into if you know after we go through the RFP process but we've been carrying forward IT money in anticipation of being able to pay for that when it came due without asking for additional money and that has always been left alone that that case management money and lo and behold this year after the first budget came out administration snatched a hundred thousand dollars of the carry forward and at the same time this here it's a little bit of a convoluted story but I have a little bit of time to explain it every year we have a maintenance fee of about a hundred thousand dollars that gets paid to JTI as part of the case management system last year agency additional services we had to do an amendment of the security agreement that is part of the part of the whole maintenance security and maintenance agreement where they sent when JTI sent the bill that agreement hadn't been approved by ADS and it went through a whole bunch of different hands and we still haven't paid last year's hundred thousand dollars that was going toward that was going to go toward this maintenance agreement because ADS never approved the security agreement it went through four people's hands apparently now they're very close to approving it and getting it all ready so we could pay last year's bill but what it has done is carried we were carrying forward the money into this year from last year to pay last year's bill and that money was taken by administration at the same time they're approving the bill that doubled the amount we have to pay so the bill went to 200,000 and they took a hundred of it away that we had had set aside to pay for it so the bottom line is that's how you add up to 400,000 dollars which is based that I sent you an email regarding that senator Sears and the participation that you would bring this to whoever needed it brought to did the house put anything in as I understand it today they went with the governor's recommend of the three percent reduction so there was nothing additional you didn't get any of the 400,000 no the at some point this this it issue is going to have to get resolved and the way I deal with any of these things is you know I figure the legislature makes a policy decision about what how much money they want to give them what they want to get done and so I try to live within it and in doing that it really what ends up happening is I don't do some things so I can do the things that are core to the system and I've been able to make it work and I can probably quote unquote make this work but it's not going to be without pain and significant pain and you know I don't want the courts breathing down my neck about oh you don't have people doing this work and you know clients complaining and that kind of thing because this is what we signed up for if this is the way we're going to do it it's not like you know in the meantime along the way we've also had we have positions we can't fill that have been somebody left and worst time ever for an agency like ours to leave so you have we have a juvenile division that had one support staff for two lawyers an investigator and then to coordinate the the state reviews of on in chin's cases the administrative reviews that person happened to leave in the middle of this COVID thing we can't fill the position and it sounds like well it's one administrative person well the problem is it's the only administrative person so I've got you probably know Mary Deat who has been over the legislature she is our HR person our stats person and she manages the case management system she's also now attempting to do the job of the that admin person so we we're very close to the bone at all times so when we lose you know one it's you know it's not like when when ahs loses one admin person and they've got you know hundreds of others who could fill in we you know we're now i'm using upper management people to to fill in for um admin stuff so the bottom it's a go ahead i'm sorry it that's all i'm saying is it's important money and the ripple effects throughout the system of things that look small on the outside like if i were in uh if i were in administration and i was looking at oh look they have a hundred thousand dollars out of 375 coming forward that we're just gonna we can take out of their it it doesn't look like a lot but they don't understand the details or the nuance of what goes on with that and how close we are to the bone and nobody ever nobody ever really has since i've been doing this job but you know because i've always tried to make it work and not complain very much just so i just so i have it correct um we would be recommending to the appropriations committee that they fund 300 000 in new money um to make all the contracts that will be needed between now and the end of this fiscal year and and a hundred thousand for you to be able to pay your it uh contract um yeah and be able to replace the system which was taken out of carry forward funds is correct is that correct so i just want it because they that's spending and they're double spending that right in a way because they're saying you you're carry forward a hundred thousand we're going to take that and buy birdhouses with it and now you're going to come up with a hundred thousand to pay your contract am i correct yeah and the thing that's annoying about it is that it was ads is delay in approving the security agreement that prevented us from spending the money last year when we had the money and we wouldn't have carried it forward to begin with so so that you know they kind of created the carry forward took the money and then left us with twice the bill okay and i know that the finance side didn't has no idea what went on with ads yeah i'm gonna uh and the third thing i want to mention of the 300 thousand i have no idea the whole state is just waiting for congress to do something whether it's pull their hair out and say we're not going to help you at all whether it's to rework the cares act funds that we've already received and say yes you can use them until july 1 2021 um which would allow you to fulfill the contracts or i mean this has been true at senator nick and those two as we sat in appropriations and heard the concerns of what we thought we could spend them somebody says no you can't or they say yes you can now spend that because other states spent it they didn't get caught back so it's been a really um strange system um and you know then there's the other thought that perhaps congress would write another check um the particular help to the states but because we're going to be gone before congress presumably does anything uh yeah one of the things right now they could even foresee that the direction from the treasury department would to would allow the expenditure of the money after january 1 right there could be a change in that policy um even even without congressional action um but they were hoping they thought for sure that they were going to get something before labor day which didn't happen right so which was the reason we scheduled our session the way we did i don't know of course the other reality was we have to have a budget by october 1 so um committee are there any comments questions or do you want to just recommend senator white was first senator benning was second senator anybody else who wants to comment third i was just going to say that the federal government is so screwed up and the treasury is so screwed up that this is the day today that i'm supposed to give my social security check then hasn't come there i don't know if they're not sending them out or if they ran out of money or what but for the mail for the mail no it's direct deposit oh direct deposit yep i do have one on the fourth wednesday of the month so i hope they straighten it out by then what for um matt alice alice uh joe is oh sorry and then you yep joe you're muted joe yeah my spacebar temporary unmute wasn't working matt i've got a question and then a comment my question is i've been dragging my heels on buying a new computer system because we're the last on the list for this rollout and you had said previously that there was two thousand dollars available for each of us to get new computer system and be reversed with is that still available yeah okay buy it and buy it and send the bill i mean buy it now don't buy it do not that's one part that is very easy it is not in dispute but don't screw around with it buy it immediately and buy the buy the best you can get especially the spacebar but i only get two thousand back max not necessarily that was our estimate based upon the number of contractors and we've had some who haven't needed anything at all and so there have been others that needed more and we were able to give them more okay um the comment is with respect to mary deat when i filed my statistics this past month i had more cases on that month statistics than i've ever had before it was at least four times the previous month and i responded to her with a comment when i sent those statistics saying maybe it's time for me to retire and just so you know she immediately shot back something it said if you're out of here i'm out of here so just be watching your your staff you may end up with another retirement not too distant well you know that's the that is the thing that uh it's worrisome is that you when you alter you got people who really like their job and they get fried by doing too much because we aren't giving them the support they need and they just say we're out of here um you know that is uh it's a real concern well and then of course i'm doing the best i can but you know you can only be so nice to mary well i don't know i i i don't want to continue the mary talk um or joe's retirement um you know you i think the system in the particularly in the kingdom could not afford to lose another good lawyer that's for sure now with that endorsement i'll go to alice next so just a question with regard to you know you're you're asking for the 300 thousand but the fact is you've already as you needed to do drop drop those contracts that would have spent that 300 thousand so now you don't know if they're available again or not is that the case or what's going on there well the i had a meeting with all of them and they're all paid through the end of december um so if if the funding became available i would um we would amend the contract or put new contracts in place that would start january first and go through the end of the fiscal year covering the same caseload okay thanks any other questions thanks for the opportunity thank you why don't we taggy if we could take a i believe it's 11 35 we said we get back at 12 at 11 45 so can we take a 10 minute break yep and then back at 11 or actually nine minute eight minute break and then come back to s 690 whatever that number yes it's posted thank you we'll be right back we're back from our break we have draft 4.1 i guess i gotta update my thing here because i don't have that 4.1 i don't either yeah i had to turn i had to actually log out not log out but i i turned off my internet and log back in oh i probably need to go back to the committee web page right all right i'm at the web page nope i'm not yeah i if you go out and come back it's there speaking of okay now i just pushed the wrong button wednesday september nine it is wednesday it is draft 4.1 is there and cambell has a letter to from rubber it's now posted so i don't see yellow anywhere so that means this is the final copy right that's right center two so it does does it do everything we wanted you to do it to do every order under on section one and page one every order issued under this section shall inform the demand if she fails to appear at the final hearing then the temporary order will be in effect till the final served on the final lesson temporary order is dismissed by the court that's much better the next part they order this issue shall remain in effect until either dismissed by the court opinion may be in place to appear at the final hearing position shall be dismissed provided the court may continue temporary order until final hearing if it makes findings on the wreck's day why there is good cause shown if the final order is issued temporary order shall remain in effect till purpose personal service final order act takes effect on passage any further any questions about it or comments from either Matt Valerio, John Campbell, Brian Gerson or Sarah Robinson our committee member looks good to the defender lost senator cam John Campbell but that's okay Sarah you okay with it yes thank you very much okay good and so judge yes it's fine thank you thank the committee thank you all right so is there a motion to report draft 4.1 or to amend h962 as seen in draft 4.1 so moved senator beruth has moved that we report favorably or excuse me that we amend h962 is seen in draft 4.1 second second and further discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye opposed aye that was a late aye there was a late aye but we're you know I've noticed that on the floor too sometimes I get in there late and forget to unmute and then I'm an eye when he's asking for the nose okay we have approved the changes shall we report the bill favorably to the full senate senator beruth senator white has moved that we report the bill h962 favorably to the full senate is there any further discussion as amended as amended Peggy would you please call the roll yep senator white yes senator beruth yes senator benning yes senator nickah yes senator sears yes we would like to report this bill feels like a bending to me well I thought the rule was if you move to amend first you're the one that gets to report on that's why I didn't move to sure I'll handle it what the thing would you if you'd like to Joe that would be helpful actually I I believe this has been approved by the rules committee so I don't think it needs to go through rules that is correct as I recall it I'm sorry I'm sorry Eric if you just give me a couple of sentences to give a overall summary that would be yeah I've got that check and work I've got a maybe longer than you want I've got a couple of pages but you know it's sort of summarized I can edit pretty well yeah so I figured just describe whatever you don't want to use okay and Peggy could you get me a list of the witnesses please yep and so that means it'll be senator benning that gets this vote and the version two bloomer correct I'm pretty sure yeah okay so get it to me Eric and I'll get it to him okay thanks committee my plan is to send a email to um chair kitchen with copies to the senator probes Stephanie Barrett and and this committee um expressing our concern about the $300,000 in contracts for the defender general that should be added to the budget for 2021 fiscal year 2021 and also regarding the $100,000 carry forward which was taken inadvertently which leaves them with a hundred thousand dollar bill for their it is that the sense of the committee yes all right we'll see you all tomorrow as we continue our efforts to find out what the house is doing