 on this, how are we determining non-emergency because what we might not think is an emergency might very well financially or safety. I mean, there are lots of things that could fall into that gray area. And so I'm wondering how it is determined and if people have any recourse if they're put in the non-emergency category and feel differently. Yeah, we have spelled out a number of different matters in which the courts should schedule and hear the party's concerns, including, and I've got the list and I could send you electronically the administrative order, but there are probably a dozen and a half of these specific matters, including juvenile temporary care hearings, criminal competency when the initial evaluation supports a finding of incompetence and related hospitalization hearings, requests for search warrants when electronic means are not available. These are the kinds of things and again, there are about a dozen and a half of them that we've specifically identified, but we've also said in this administrative order 49, and I'm gonna read the language to you so you understand it says notwithstanding the above courts may in their discretion, et cetera, et cetera. So we've recognized the importance of the discretion of the trial judges in individual matters to exercise that discretion based upon beyond what it is that we've specified and some of these specifications, by the way, expressly referred to the judge exercising their discretion, but allowing the courts, the individual judges to exercise discretion matters that they see and that they perceive require court intervention or to be addressed through judicial proceedings is something that we've recognized in the order. Thank you, so my other question is this, we've been, as you know, entertaining, having people be witnesses on Skype or other mechanisms, does it make any sense to look at doing virtual court hearings more in this time period or even as you're gonna have that huge backlog? Are there- Yeah, right, this is exactly the kind of direction that we're going in. As a matter of fact, on the conference call we had with the judges at noon, Jeff Lower, who's the head of IT for us was talking about the effort that's being made to ramp up the ability of individual courts to hold video hearings so that their virtual contact can be made. And I think this is the direction that we need and we all recognize that Jeff talked about it, that we need to be going as fast as we possibly can and that is what is happening. I can't give you a timetable. Like I say, we are having hearings telephonically right now and some of the courts will even, and Judge Greerson is gonna testify next, I'm sure he'll be able to give you more specifics, but there are some courts that are having hearings of sorts in courthouses in one way or another. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, great. Thank you for the question. Appreciate it, Your Honor, thank you. Judge Greerson. We all- Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, good afternoon for the record. Brian Greerson, Chief Superior Judge and it's good to see everyone. I think the Chief probably said it as simply as any of us could and that is since I last saw all of you, we are operating in a completely different world. And I guess I would start by telling you that the AO 49 that he talked about does list a number of proceedings that the Supreme Court has identified as emergency proceedings and to respond to Representative Rachelson's question, what do we do about the gray area where there might be a question of something as an emergency? I think you're probably looking at the gray area. The order after it lists all of the emergency proceedings that the court has allowed, there's a catch-all that says any other matter where the Chief Superior Judge concludes that the interest of justice require that the matter be heard during the course of the suspension, I can order those. So I don't determine the merits of a particular proceeding but if it's something that doesn't fall within the provisions of AO 49, the judges can forward the request to me and I will make a determination of whether or not it's something that should go forward if it's not specifically listed. The reality is we are working with a substantially reduced staff because there are a limited number of proceedings that are authorized under the administrative order. We are operating with many fewer judges. They just aren't the hearings that require a judge to be in a court every day. We've set up a schedule depending on the different courts, for instance, where there are three judges in a particular county, you would not find a judge in every one of those courts every day, all day. So they're rotating their schedules and I've left it to the individual courts to work out a schedule that works best for them. Literally, the landscape changes every day and that's particularly true with staff. We have set up also a reduced staff schedule but even beyond that planned reduction to try to accommodate the stay at home order, individuals are impacted by this differently and so the staffs have been reduced even beyond what we had planned and just by way of example in one court, they were left with one staff member and it didn't make sense to keep the court open with that one staff member, so they've suspended operations with that court, move that staff member over to another courthouse in the county that's still operating. So we're trying to take advantage of not only in judges assisting in other courts where they can but also staff perhaps going to a different courthouse to keep operations running, but clearly it is a reduced workload for everyone. Every, and we're doing things differently to the great extent everything is being done remotely in one fashion or another, there still are some in court proceedings when it can't be avoided. Obviously we're addressing arraignment proceedings, juvenile emergency hearings, RFA requests, mental health requests, so a lot of those are still coming in and where we can, we try to do it remotely, but they don't all lend themselves to that and by remotely I can tell the committee that we are now connected by video with all of the separate DOC facilities throughout the state and that means that they are connected to the courts of Wyndham, Windsor, Caledonia, Orleans, Washington, Franklin, Chittenden, Bennington and Rutland. And in all of those courts, my understanding is that they have now gone to video rule five proceedings and understandably, many of those courts had not used video before so for the attorneys, whether state or defense or even some of the judges, it's a new process, new procedure. And I'm sure there have been some hiccups but we are putting all of those video capabilities into operation. We have tried and I think my sense is that the state's attorneys and the public defenders and defense attorneys have been working, understanding this is a new world and I'm not going to use the term embracing video but they understand that that is a way that we have to proceed for the time being to the extent that we've expanded it into other areas where we can with, for instance, changes of plea or sentencing. If there is agreement of the parties, in other words, they're still not used for contested proceedings but where parties have a plea agreement and we can get consent of the defense attorney and the defendant, we will go ahead with these proceedings and sometimes they are certainly to the benefit of the defense where an individual might be detained in a facility and because he's on a, he or she is on a pre-pleased status, they cannot get into programming. So in some situations, we're going ahead with sentencing via video that allow the person then to begin programming. So I think collectively we're trying to find as many ways as we can to expand the use of video within the rules and certainly do process in mind. Where we're not using video, there is certainly much more phone participation and we're attempting to use that essentially when someone requests phone contact, the courts are allowing that. Again, these are with the exception perhaps of temporary care hearings and or relief from abuse. Those are the contested hearings that we still, the courts are open if that's the only way someone can access those courts but it certainly is a different landscape and it sometimes changes every day and we obviously issues arise that we hadn't anticipated and we try to make accommodations for that. I can stop now and take questions or I can whatever way the chair wants to proceed. We have about two and a half minutes left. Thank you. Any questions? Again, I'll looking for hands. Okay, I see you will. Thank you. My question is about the drug courts. So, is there anything in place? Is there any substitute even if it wouldn't be as helpful for folks who are trying to improve themselves through drug court? I mean, I know the structure and whatnot is very beneficial for them. Is there anything that is currently being done to sort of make up for the courts being closed and the drug courts not being available? Short answer is yes. The longer answer is that again, through remote means all of the drug courts are continuing the treatment teams are meeting remotely that never required a court record being made. So that's in some respects is the easy part. The difficult part is maintaining contact with the participants. And so what each of the courts have done is to establish an ability to talk to these folks remotely. And it's usually by telephone because they don't have access to video. But in my view, if we don't find a way to do this remotely then these courts will end. We have to maintain that contact with the participants. So all of the treatment courts and the teams have been working hard to come up with a process to maintain that and it's in play now and it's working obviously. This is a difficult time for those participants. So we're trying to maintain that contact. In other words, they do end up talking one-on-one with the judge in those sessions because that's what we think is necessary to keep it going. So it's like everything else, it's difficult, it's new, but we are trying to maintain that contact with the participants via telephone. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we are gonna move on for now, but certainly Judge Grishan, I'm hoping that we can visit with you next week. Sure. Thank you very much, thank you. Yes, Chair, I'm gonna sign off if that's all right. Absolutely, thank you so much. Thank you again. Great, take good care. Thank you, you too. Great, thank you. James, James Pepper. Hey, great to see all of you. James Pepper, Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs. I know that our time is very limited, so I'd like to just talk quickly about how our offices are maintaining our continuity of operations internally, the kind of policies and guidelines that we are giving to law enforcement about how to proceed with prosecutions. And just some of the concerns that state's attorneys have identified for us, and then I'd be happy to take any questions. With respect to continuity of operations, all 14 of our offices have created a staff plan that allows for remote work, and there's limited essential personnel going to the office in person every day. It's typically state's attorney, maybe one deputy and admin, victim's advocate. That being said, all offices are available around the clock. They're still responding after hours to emergency situations. All hearings that can be conducted over the phone or by video are, and though there's still a very limited number of hearings that are requiring in-person appearances by attorneys and witnesses, so that's still going on. We at central office are having weekly conference calls with all the state's attorneys and then also our executive committee just to discuss any issues that are coming up and trends that they're seeing on the ground. With respect to our policies, we don't generally talk about our internal policies. However, many of you have probably seen or maybe not the attorney general recently released guidance on prosecution. I think you did that yesterday. It's a fairly accurate restatement of what's been going on on the ground for the last for about two weeks now. Of course, it's a dynamic situation. We're continuously trying to balance the new information we're receiving and keeping our community safe. But in general, for all new nonviolent offenses, those folks are being cited for between six and eight weeks out and of course that could change. That includes for violations of conditions of release that don't directly impact public safety. We've been reviewing all the citations that are currently outstanding and we've been residing people for that same kind of window sometime in June, generally speaking. We're continuing to flashlight and lodge individuals as appropriated for listed offenses, violent offenses, violations of conditions that directly impact public safety. We've been reviewing all active warrants to see which ones can be quashed where the public health concerns outweigh public safety. We've reviewed the entire list of pretrial detainees, excluding the hold without bail and the federal detainees and we've made recommendations to either strike bail or strike other conditions or impose conditions to make sure that people are getting out of prison as to the extent possible. We've been reviewing and resolving pending cases for time served or appropriate. And currently we're reviewing the entire incarcerated population for people who might be able to be released. And you may have heard, but there's a number of motions right now for our resentencing that are ongoing. They've been consolidated and we're looking into those individually. The outcome of all this work, I think you may have seen from DOC, they gave me data yesterday. The kind of baseline data that they're using is from February 24th of this year. The population on that day was 1,671. The population as of yesterday is 1,463. So that's a decrease of 208 inmates. And it's huge accolades to all people in the criminal justice system for getting to that. Just to put these numbers into context briefly, the justice reinvestment package of reforms was designed to reduce the prison population by 135 people over the next five years with a $200 million investment. And that's been done largely over the past two weeks, which is incredible to think about. I only mentioned that as a way to kind of segue into some of the concerns that we're seeing. One thing that we're closely monitoring is how the pandemic is impacting essential services, community-based services like our community justice centers, our domestic violence shelters, sober housing, juvenile residential programs. We've seen some closures already or programs refusing new intakes as a result of COVID-19. The state's attorneys have reported kind of an increased difficulty in finding alternative housing for victims of domestic violence or responsible adults or released defendants to. Of course, this is an incredibly stressful time for people who are losing their jobs, childcare centers are closed, schools are closed, parents are often being asked to fill these roles. There's limited access to household necessities. So we're closely keeping an eye on domestic violence, child abuse. We saw actually an initial spike in DV cases, initially when the school closure order happened, but it seems to have leveled off in the past two weeks. But we're still concerned that this might intensify as the pandemic extends. So it's something that is really a great concern to the state's attorneys. The state's attorneys are also very concerned about backlog in the courts when the situation stabilizes and the kind of normal operations resume. And just a very general concern about the kind of impact of impact on crime rates that this kind of economic downturn generally will have. So it's something more for more long-term planning, but certainly something that could have a long-term impact. I think that's about it for my update, and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you. We just have about a minute or so. Any questions? That's seeing me. Not think I am seeing hands. Have I missed anybody? I have a question. I'm wondering, Pepper, if there are any particular initiatives or anything we can do with respect to the domestic violence issue that you raised? You know, just making sure that the programs are open, that the shelters are open. I mean, I don't know. I've been hearing talk on the Senate side about potentially hazard pay for essential workers just to make sure that these places stay open for people. They are essential services. I know that there was a question in the governor's order whether they, you know, some of these shelters counted as essential services when he ordered the nonprofits to close. And the governor's office did confirm that they are. And so, you know, just we'll keep an eye on it from our end and we're happy to report back as much as possible about anything that we're seeing, any trends that we're seeing. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. So I think Deputy Commissioner Herrick, would you like to go now? Yeah, if that's okay. I apologize to those I bumped in line. I'm actually the EOC manager today to have a bunch of calls. I'll be glad to never talk on the phone again. I'll say that. I think what I can tell you is the governor just announced that the modeling that we've been operating under in terms of expected patients as a result of the COVID-19, the projections, we're working off on our worst case scenario. We have no other choice but to plan for the worst and hope for the best. But we are seeing the actual trends are moving in a direction that are, I just want to be careful, but they're better than the worst case scenario. So folks, people staying home, social distancing, all those things are working. Seeing it with the actual number of cases and sadly the number of deaths that we have. However, with that in mind, the modeling still project a peak of an apex around mid-April. And that surge, if you will, that's what we're most concerned about is that the number of patients will exceed the number of available beds in the hospital. That's the number of ICU units will be exceeded and the number of ventilators in the state that we have that are gonna be needed will be outstretched. With that effort, we have been buying or trying to acquire ventilators like crazy. We are looking at, how can we modify, and I'd say we're working with you to be a medical center or the expert there to have multiple patients utilizing one ventilator, extending what we have in the state. We've also, the governor just announced the surge plan that we've been working on, aside from Patrick Jim, where there will be a site at the S6S physician, which could accommodate 400 patients. Rutland, down at the Spartan arena, 150 additional patients. We already have Patrick Jim set up and the methodology there is UDM would place folks with COVID who aren't in acute, needing high-level improvement. And then there are two sites already open in St. Albans and Berry, but they're not open. When I say they're prepared is what I mean. The next fight for us is finding staff and for these locations. Are the National Guard will provide medical support. At the S6S site, the Rutland site, we're going to have Rutland personnel by utilizing volunteer and the medical reserve for. And so those two sites will be coming online over the next few days, so we're prepared ahead of time. My goal is to never have a single person in there. The other thing that we're working with the office of the chief medical examiner, we've purchased four 56-foot trailers, they're different-rated trailers. And these are temporary, mortuary services. One is at the Bride and Barlboro Memorial Hospital. One will be at Rutland Regional, one will be at UVM Medical Center. These are for the life of the American, number the fourth one. It's a grim planning thing that we're doing, but it's absolutely necessary. And hopefully those will also be able to use, but it's the mortuary services are succeeded. We have that built-in capacity. The way to look at this for my first, and it's not just me, it's people way smarter than me. When you look at the modeling, if the APEP is planned in mid-April, if you look at it like a bell curve, we started these actions back in, April, early March of all joins. We're gonna have to be probably in the same posture on the backside so that we don't have a research. But the things we're doing are working and to the extent possible, we need people to comply in terms of really protecting each other and washing your hands, social distancing. And so I don't wanna eat up my whole time. I could go on for probably three hours on everything that's going on. It's significant, every state agency's involved. And in my 35 years in the emergency services, I've never seen anything like this and I hope to know her again. Would that only answer any questions the committee might have? All right, thank you. Thank you so much. Looking for hands. Am I missing anybody? Somebody's got their hand up. I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing. Celina, Celina. Okay, thank you, go ahead. Well, first, thank you for everything that you're doing. And I think not for this time, but in the future, it would be good to understand, like I just went through a very long briefing about all of the scenarios that are planned for law enforcement and what they'll be able to enforce under different scenarios and just how that's anticipated to work. And I think our time is very limited today, but if at a future date, it might be really good to hear. So I can address that really briefly and I can be prepared. And that might be the thing to do. If there are questions, people want to give me ahead of time, I think you said, but from law enforcement, we are not looking to enforce any of the stay at home or any of those orders. It's education. But let's say we ran into a situation where a bar was ignoring the order. The best way to, we're not going to arrest people, but the best way to educate, and if they continue to be non-compliant, liquor can pull their license. Well, there's other administrative ways to ensure that that doesn't continue. Frankly, most people will get it, but I'm understanding a question, but law enforcement's not looking to enforce these things at all. And I think my question too is just not, that was my understanding as well. And I really appreciate that and think that is very much the right approach. So I've been really encouraged to see that. It's hard to remember, we get so much information every day, but a briefing maybe from the Capitol Police Chief that was like, even just more generally about what law enforcement will and won't enforce and prioritize under different scenarios. So I don't think we need to hear about that today, but I thought it was interesting and raise some, and then also we raise some questions. We still have about a minute and a half in Chris's time. If there are no questions, I'll sing. You don't want that. I'm hoping somebody comes up with a question. All right. Again, I'm looking for... I will tell you this. I never thought I would say this, but I miss seeing you all. Thank you, appreciate it. I can't wait to the day when the biggest thing I worry about is what might be happening in the State House. It puts everything in perspective. Right, right. We're all in this together. So if there's anything I can do, every one of you can reach out to me. I think you all have my contact information. Thank you, Chris. Very much appreciate it. Yeah, take good care. Thank you so much. All right, you all be safe. Yeah, thanks, you too. Okay, so Marshall, let's go back to Marshall, Paul's. Hi, can everyone hear me? Yes. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Marshall Paul from the Office of the Defender General. So the impact of COVID-19 on our office has been pretty similar to what everyone else is reporting. You know, it slowed our caseload to a crawl, which doesn't mean that our caseload has gotten any lower because we are not only are we not adding cases to the caseload, but we're not resolving cases. So really it's just sort of ground the normal churn of cases to a halt. But that's really not sort of reflective of a lack of work because really what's happened is everybody in our system has shifted their focus from the normal churn of oncoming cases to looking back at cases that have already been closed, that have already been clients who have already been sentenced and trying to figure out whether we have vulnerable people who we've represented in the past who are currently in facilities that we could get them out of. Because frankly, that's what the people in our system are the most concerned about right now is we all have clients that we can think of who are serving stretches of time that for one reason or another, may not be appropriate given the current context. Just sort of off the top of my head, I have one client that I've been working to get out who's in his 70s and he's already passed his minimum sentence and that's the kind of work we're doing. That one case has taken up most of my time in the last five or six days. And it's not necessarily an easy thing to do because the court system was never designed around this issue. We don't have laws in place that really allow us to respond to these types of concerns about already sentenced people. And so what we're doing is we're using a lot of tools that are kind of designed for other things, rits of corondobus, rits of petitions for extraordinary relief, things like that to try to accomplish the goal of getting some of these people out. So that's really been the focus of our people during this crisis and that's where I'm seeing most of our energy being put. As far as the concerns that we have, like the state's attorney's office, we're very concerned about what happens as this problem eases up. And what are we going to see as far as a backlog of cases coming into the system? I think that's the primary sort of looking down the line, long-term concern. And then just as far as the present concerns, we do have concerns about the consistency of practice around the state. I think what we're seeing is that things are progressing differently, county to county. We're hoping that as time goes on, things start to come together and we start to see a real consistency of practice. But at the moment, what we're seeing is, as usual, whenever things change and whenever there's not been a lot of time for people to sort of crystallize guidance into some sort of best practice that's adopted all over the state, we're seeing people, state by county, by county, prosecutors, judges, DCF offices, everyone, kind of interpret the situation differently and move in different directions on it. And so that's a concern of ours. That's also something that we are expecting to sort of resolve on its own as this, I don't want to call it a crisis, but as the situation unfolds. So I think that's a big piece of it. And then I think finally, there's been talk about a potential legislative remedy that would allow state attorneys and defense attorneys to put together sentence reduction packages, sentence reduction, inappropriate cases. And we support that in concept. It ended up in the Senate bill and not heading, it was apparent in the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was not going to be a way to get it out of the committee without a lot of restrictions on it, which probably would have actually had the effect of limiting current practice rather than opening up some additional practice. So while that's something that we are very much interested in and very much concerned about and would like to see some tools available to us in addition to what's already there, it is important that anything be written in such a way that it's not actually reducing our abilities to move people out as opposed to expanding them. And I think that's the concern with the language that was suggested in the Senate. Other than that, I'm happy to take any questions. Okay, thank you, Barbara. I see your hand is up. Actually, my hand was up earlier, so I apologize for that. Okay, all right, sorry, I'm good. Oh, sorry, no question. Selena, and then Martin. I had a question, Marshall, about I know in the past the defender general has had concerns about the video arrangements. And as we're expanding those to more courts and looking at the possibility of other proceedings moving to various teleconferencing technologies, I'm wondering if there's best practices that can help us do that in the fairest and best way? Sure, I think there are. And I think that we continue to be concerned about the use of video when it's done inappropriately. I think that in this context, there are many more appropriate uses of video than there have been in the past. I do think that the video teleconferencing systems that the courts use are very limited. They allow for one thing, which is for a defendant who is in a facility to have two-way communication by video with the courtroom. I think that when it comes to the problems that we're gonna be seeing during this outbreak, it's gonna be, we're gonna be needing solutions that allow everybody to join in on the same video. Honestly, something more akin to Zoom than to the video systems that currently exist, something that would allow all parties to participate by video. And I've actually seen some interesting video captures of those types of systems that have been in use in certain jurisdictions that are pretty impressive, things that allow defense attorneys and defendants to communicate privately during the, just by hitting a button in the middle of a hearing, things like that. So honestly, I mean, I hate to bring it down into the nitty gritty, but it really is sort of the practical problems of video that are the barriers here. Do we have the technology that allows both a whole bunch of people to communicate together, but also defense attorneys and defendants to have private conversations at the same time, things like that. And I think that, depending on how long this situation goes on, we're gonna be exploring those options and developing some new technologies to rely on. Thank you, Martin. Yeah, I was just wondering if you could comment a little bit about what this is doing to diversion opportunities, or maybe it's not happening or not a concern because things are slowing down, but if you could just comment on that. Honestly, what we're seeing is that cases that would be appropriate for diversion are not being brought at all or if they are being brought, they are being postponed for such a long time. Frankly, we don't see them when they're postponed. We don't even know they exist until the information in affidavit is actually filed in court. So we don't, to the extent that this has had an impact on pre-trial court diversion, we may not even be aware of that. To the extent that we're talking about things like Tamarack or post-arrayment diversion, what we're just seeing is that those are cases that aren't being brought in the first place right now. Thank you. Great, thank you. I'm not seeing any other hands. Am I missing anybody? Nope, okay, great, great. Thank you so much, Marshall. Okay, we'll now turn to Center for Crime Victim Services. There you go. There you are, Chris, hello. Yeah, and we also have Carol, I believe. Yes, I don't know that Carol's gonna have anything to add. I just wanted to make sure that she would be able to participate if we needed to. Great, thank you. So I wanna start by thanking the committee for being interested in what is happening during this very unusual time. I think that the one thing I would say that is really clear to me is how all systems sort of touch each other and that definitely has had something to do with our work. So what we have through the Center is that we support the victim advocates and they are who are in the state's attorney's office and they are doing an incredible job. They are being able, what we discovered the first week when I worked out of the office but everybody else basically was not working out of the office. What we discovered was that the advocates were calling me, which was fine when they needed to get some kind of an immediate response. I wish that crime stopped when, if everybody home, but then we all know about domestic violence. But the very first couple of weeks there were a couple of murders and they were complicated cases. I'm happy to say that our compensation staff there's one person who's on call, she came in and worked almost 15 hours over two days to work with an out-of-state family to ensure that the claim was processed and that we were able to arrange for some transportation. The same thing with the second one, another out-of-state parent arranging for working with the major crimes unit and the state's attorney's office, the advocate there to ensure that the body was taken care of and then sent to the parent. So those kinds of things are still happening in addition that our comp staff have a full case load and they're coming in, they're staggering. So it's one person every day who are coming in and making sure that calls are returned or we reach out that we process payments that we are paying a lot of attention and we came up with a new protocol for the victims of sexual assault who have rape exams done and who have security concerns and all of that is done through a confidential fact so that we can work with the hospitals and their billing departments to ensure that bills aren't sent, that service information is not sent in those cases. So we are doing that on a daily basis to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks there. So our old, our claims are being paid on a weekly basis. We have administrative staff, Carol and Carol as the finance director coming in one day a week and they collect all of that and then process it. So nobody, it's not quite as fast as we used to do but things are getting out. Likewise, what, because the courts have slowed down, our restitution work has also slowed down because there aren't a lot of orders coming over that we need to work on and we're not doing any kind of assertive collection right now. Doesn't seem like the time to do that but we do have a lot of offenders who are paying through credit cards or they send money in and so we are processing those credit cards and their money on a weekly basis. Also victims, we're getting calls from victims who were collecting on their behalf and that's something that as an organization we're gonna have to have a further conversation about because I don't know how that is going to work for victims when people can't pay their restitution. So it's sort of on the back burner, well, not even on the back burner, it's on the burner to have a conversation about whether we need to look at for individuals, not businesses, but for individuals whether we can pay above that 5,000 mark before we collect it. Right now we can go up to $5,000 and pay victims without anything being sent in by the person who owes it but it stops at 5,000. So we may have to look at that again and see if we might need to raise it. They also have one to two people in every day to do that kind of processing and then finally we have been in touch with our grantees, definitely the network who represents the programs to try to make some of the administrative programs and functions go easier on the federal level. We are getting guidance and we're getting dates moved back so that the pressure is not on the grantees to have to give financial information and that sort of thing on a program information on certain dates or getting some leniency on the federal level for that. It feels like we make plans about every three days now which is better than at the beginning where I felt like I did it every day, I changed the plan. We're trying to do everything we can for victims the whole time. We're also sort of holding our breath because we know all of our special funds are gonna be down. We got notification today that we got a 25% cut in our VOCA award and so just trying to figure out, I think it's gonna be a difficult time coming forward but we're doing everything we can to get money out and ensure that victims are assisted. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. Again, I'm looking for hands, Barbara. Hi, Chris. Hi. So thanks for letting us know what's going on. I'm wondering a couple of things. One is, or in any of the conversations either at the state level or even with our congressional delegation, I don't know if anyone's, people keep talking about people not being able to pay their bills but I don't know if there's been anything specific brought up or raised around the issue of people not being able to pay the resolution and it hurting the victims. So I'm just wondering if that conversation is happening at other levels or is that something we might help initiate as a committee? I think, I haven't heard anything on that national level. I would be surprised which is why I think we're gonna need to fast track our thinking about that and we might need some legislative fix around that around what we can pay out with two individuals, individual victims to see if we might need to raise that $5,000. About two minutes. Okay, I'll try to be super quick. So when people are going to get examined if they've been a victim of a sexual assault, are we having those exams happen outside of a hospital so that we're not jeopardizing, like I know nobody wants to go to the hospital these days for anything and I'm just wondering if we're able to move those off site where people might not be exposed so much to sick people? Sarah Robinson might have a better answer because they run that, we fund them to run that program. I would be surprised if they were doing them anywhere but in hospitals, but let's check with her when she presents. And my last question, which I was gonna ask a couple of witnesses ago is we hear a lot now about gun sales being up. So I'm just wondering how that is impacting everybody and in particular, you know, thinking about your organization and your grantees. Well, I think it's interesting with people being much more confined to their homes. I don't think we know what that really means yet. I know that I got notification from DCF that when this started, they saw an uptick and then they didn't. And so I think none of us really know what it is. I know that, you know, just because we have some formerly battered women who are on our staff that we have had an increase in sort of crazy contacts to me from the person who has no contact order against them, you know, that it feels like things are a little wonky for people. And so I imagine that, and I bet the network programs know this, that there might not be a whole lot being reported or called in right now, but because people are trying to get through it. But that's, I have no basis for saying that. And so I think it's interesting to see that. And my cat says hello to. Thank you. Great. So let's, let's move on to Sarah. Welcome, Sarah. Welcome. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Sarah Robinson, deputy director at the Vermont network against domestic and sexual violence. And I should be able to answer some of those questions that came up for Chris, but what we're anticipating the impact of COVID-19 to be on victims of domestic and sexual violence. And especially the systems that survivors rely on. And how those systems have been impacted. And I think as a few of the witnesses have already mentioned, there's good reason to be concerned that a pandemic such as this and the social distancing recommendations that are so important to public health can actually put survivors at risk. And some of you may have seen a joint press release that came out last week from the Vermont state police, the Vermont attorney general's office and the Vermont network, highlighting these risks and really asking and encouraging survivors to continue to reach out for help when they safely can. So. We know that the very kinds of abuse that we're so concerned about domestic violence, child sexual abuse. Is really thrive in secrecy and in isolation. And the economic impact that the pandemic is having on so many Vermonters is really exacerbated for victims of domestic and sexual violence where economic challenges can really make the difference between them seeking safety or leaving an abusive situation and staying where they are. So I wanted to talk a little bit about how the landscape has changed for victims of domestic and sexual violence over the past few weeks. And then happy to take any questions. First, I just wanted to make sure that everyone knows that the statewide domestic and sexual violence hotlines continued to be answered 24 hours a day. There's been no introduction and services. All 15 of our member organizations continue to operate and provide comprehensive services to survivors. So some advocates are working remotely. And domestic and sexual violence advocates were declared essential workers. And so they have continued to support survivors. And really the work that's happening throughout the state at these programs is remarkable. And what we're hearing from survivors is as you would imagine, it's harder, excuse me, what we're hearing from our programs is that it's harder for survivors to be reaching out in these times. Especially if they're isolated in their homes with an abusive partner or an abusive family member. And that what we're hearing right now is that calls are actually down, but that the folks that are reaching out for help seem to be in greater distress than they were perhaps just a few weeks ago. And at the direction of the department for children and families who kind of oversee all homeless shelter operations in Vermont, including some regulations related to domestic violence shelters. Shelter intakes are being limited to prevent the sharing of bathrooms with other common spaces. And while our shelters are uniformly working to implement that public health guidance, it is severely curtailing the already limited capacity of shelter in Vermont. So medically vulnerable survivors who are already living in shelters have been rehoused in hotel and motel rooms at the direction of the department for children and families. And most of the new intakes coming into shelters, those individuals are being housed in hotels and motels. So as a result, what we have is in effect scattered site shelters where our member organizations are providing advocacy, providing food and other basic needs to survivors in multiple isolated locations, which does pose some challenges. And we're watching with interest what is happening to domestic violence shelters in places that are a few weeks ahead of us in this pandemic in Washington and in New York State where some domestic violence shelters have been forced to close and we're working diligently to prevent this from happening in Vermont. And due to the judicial emergency that you heard about earlier, there are also new processes for accessing relief from abuse orders. So after hours, access is happening completely remotely. And in some counties that was already happening primarily, and so it's been less of an adjustment in the after hours context. During court hours, relief from abuse order paperwork can be accessed in several ways. If someone has access to a computer, they have internet access, they have a printer, they can print that paperwork off, either scan it or take a photo of it and send it by email to a court clerk. They can also go to the court, pick up the paperwork in the lobby, complete it and return it to a drop box. And survivors can also request that hearings are happening by phone, either directly to a court clerk if they are prosalitignant or by emotion through their attorney if they're represented. And as of right now, those orders, relief from abuse orders continue to be served by law enforcement throughout the state and we're very grateful for their partnership and for their continued work to serve those orders. As Chris noted, there have been some changes in accessing sexual assault exams and child abuse exams in the state over the past few weeks. Sexual assault exams are continuing to be offered in hospitals. That is generally where the trained sayings by and large, they're all emergency run nurses. And we have developed protocols with hospitals throughout the state so that those are happening in safe locations that survivors are seeking that care are not being exposed to the patients that are seeking care for the coronavirus. But one of the major changes is that victims can't bring any support people with them for those exams. And only emergent child abuse exams are happening at Vermont's only child abuse clinic, the Child Safe Clinic at UVM. And the clinic is offering phone consultations to non-offending parents for non-emergent cases. Finally, the last piece I wanted to highlight for you all is that domestic balance accountability programs have all suspended their operations because they rely on group formats. And so investigating whether telemedicine may be able to use for those treatment groups, but as you might imagine, there's really wide opinions across the country on the efficacy and safety of offering those two offenders in their home settings when family may be present. And so we're consulting with some national experts from the Center for Court Innovation and others on what the best next steps are. But what's really needed most, I would say on the community level is flexible emergency funding for member organizations to be able to meet the needs of survivors in the way that they need to be met, given the limitations of the systems of support at this current moment. And so to this end, we have been in conversations with the Center for Crime Victim Services as Chris referenced the federal funders at the Department of Justice have significantly lifted a lot of restrictions on making budget adjustments if grant funds haven't been expended, grant funds that can be used to provide direct help to survivors haven't been expended by the grant period. They're offering extensions. And we're hoping that the state will mirror the feds and many of those bays and do the same. About two minutes. I'm done and happy to answer any questions that folks may have. Thank you. Let's see. Not seeing any hands. Sarah, as you were talking about how victims of domestic violence can access the course and you were going through the orders about printing and filling out forms and all of that. Again, how likely is that to happen given stay at home orders? I think this is the challenge and this is really challenging. Our member organizations are hoping to help facilitate that for survivors, but I think that we can, what we hear from our counterparts in states where they have had natural disasters, which is probably the most similar circumstance, is that often survivors aren't seeking the support and safety that they need in this kind of situation. And I think that we ought to be expecting and prepare for a wave of people to be seeking support in the months up to a year after this event. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else again looking for hands. I'm not seeing any other. Yes, I had a. Oh, sorry. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And what I found that was interesting. Madam chair asked me to check on the border. To see what the border organizations were looking like. And I had a very long conversation with the wise. With women's information services for the upper valley. And their domestic violence coordinator. I think that was very similar information as to what you did. With the concern that. This isolation. Is actually. Acting as a. Almost like a hibernator. For what's going on. There was a pretty. Big. Arrest that went on. And it was interesting. And it was interesting. The last weekend that she referred to. That it made the local news. Here. And it was interesting. The difference in. Leafality. Assessment. Between the two states. But it. That whole discussion around what's going on. Because of the. The isolation. That's what. Victims have is especially. And. Not feeling comfortable. You know, about accessing. That's going to be an interesting thing for us to deal with. I think collectively. But I just wanted to share that. That discussion that we had just a couple of days ago. Thank you for that. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much, Sarah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And we will conclude with David share. See you all. Thank you for having me on today. I apologize that I haven't been able to be on much of this call so far. I had an emergency call that I had to be on. And so I'm sorry that I haven't heard what some of the other folks involved in the court system have been. And I just wanted to go through a brief overview of what our office in particular has been working on and dealing with and approaching the situation. And I'll try to keep that pretty brief and then open it up for questions. The attorney general of offices a whole is working under a mandatory work from home order. So every virtually everybody in the office is working from home. And working with the court. And dealing like most people are with. Remote communications. And working obviously with respect to court appearances and so forth working with the court orders as they have been coming out. And in terms of the. A o 49 and the other social distancing measures that are going on. And along with other entities, we are doing the best we can. To maintain continuity of operations where necessary in terms of court hearings. One aspect of what our office is working on is. Assisting. The governor's office and the department of public safety with enforcement of the executive orders and their various. Addenda and directives. One thing that we. Are all cautious about is maintaining. The governor's and the attorney general's and agree with that in agreement with this. We really want to maintain the education first approach to the enforcement of the executive orders. To that end we will. Fairly soon be releasing a. Guidance or the directive to law enforcement. That weighs out the process by which law enforcement can. Consult with our office to determine whether court action needs to be taken on an executive order violation. In order to make sure that we have a uniform approach to this across the state. And to make sure people are being treated fairly. And in the same manner everywhere, we are going to be directing. In cooperation with the department of public safety. We are going to be directing. The. Cases where. Law enforcement. Believes they may need. Some court action, all that will be coming through the attorney general's office and by statute, the attorney general's office is the only entity that can. Bring cases for injunctive relief. So. And there are the possibility for criminal charges for violations, but again, we would view that only as an extremely rare. Very much last resort circumstance, not something that we are looking to do at all. To that end, we are, as I said, going to be releasing a guidance and sort of funneling stuff through the AG's office. If there does need to be some sort of injunctive relief, we will work with law enforcement to do that. But again, our first approach, even in those conversations, I think is really going to be all right. We've done the education that we can do. Have we talked with folks. To get them to help them. They may need to get to. Abide by social distancing regulations and stay at home orders. Because we assume that a lot of what's going on here is really a matter of need. And not a matter of sort of willful violations. A couple other pieces that. Excuse me. David, before you continue, I see that Martin has a question. Yeah. So David, as far as the enforcement, you're mainly talking about it sounds like the stay at home or orders, but what about. Well, let me give you an example, something I've heard from several people of going to grocery stores and grocery stores don't seem to be. Following any of the directives that they've been receiving, such as. Making sure that individuals are staying six feet apart and that there's appropriate cleaning of surfaces, et cetera. I mean, is that an area where. If certain stores just are not getting their act together, that there's some sort of enforcement authority behind these executive orders, or is it really just the stay at home order? I think for any of these, it's, it's not, I should say as a blanket statement, it's not only the stay at home order. It is also the central businesses aspect of it. With respect to that example. Again, I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's an absolute net worth. With respect to that example, again, I really think the approach for something like that is let's work with you to get you what you need to, to do the right thing. It's hard to even say what kind of court enforcement would be effective in something like that. So I think it's really gonna be a, a case by case, let's work to see what we can do. and law enforcement, more talks with them to the phone call from somebody in the AG's office to talk about what they might need to do better. And some of the issues I think with people staying six feet apart, there's only so much policing, if you will. I use that in quotes that a store can do and we do need to rely on Vermonters to be the best they can too. And I think they mostly are. So I think, again, it's gonna be an education first approach and the point of having this centralized system is more just to make sure we have uniformity and fairness, not so much that we expect, but a lot of heavy hand. Yeah, no, I'm not certainly looking for any criminal charges against our important grocery stores. But as the AG office that they work closely with VOSHA on following these kind of issues. Cause I know that's a first point of contact that certainly I'm giving to people who are calling about this particular issue. I think that's a really good first point of contact and I recommend continuing that. I will say honestly, we're ramping everything up right now. This isn't, as everybody knows, it's not a normal circumstance. It's not something that we've dealt with before. And so we're in the process still of establishing connections with the various state agencies who can help with particular problems. We've certainly been working more with the agency of commerce and community development than we would on a standard day-to-day basis. Cause they're really in charge of issuing a lot of the guidance under the governor's orders. So yes, is my short answer. That's a good direction to go in. And we are also working to strengthen connections and the sort of inter bureaucracy connections. So, and I would strongly urge at least that particular connection be made because again, this is, I mean, different parts of the state are getting lots of different questions, but this has been one question that I've heard a lot about. And what I'm concerned about is that that with the stay at home orders, that is the main place where COVID-19 could still spread in the stores that are still open. And that's primarily grocery stores where people have to go there. So that seems to be that one really big risk area still. So I hope that the AG office will work with BOSHA to see how they can help in making sure this gets done. Thanks. We will, thanks. Yeah, thank you for that. I will, after I get off of this call, I will, there's a group within the AG's office that's really dealing with these issues that's been assigned to deal with tasks with dealing with these issues. So I will send an email to that group about how best to establish that connection and make sure we have a line of communication there. A couple of other aspects that we've been working on. I'm sure that- About two minutes. Gotcha. I'm sure this has been covered with, you know, extensively already, but really talking about the issues of minimizing incarceration and making sure that we are not incarcerating unnecessarily. We've worked cooperatively with state attorneys, the Department of Corrections and others to really end law enforcement, to really try to memorialize some of the practices that have already been put into place. And I do want to give credit to those entities for making considerable efforts to minimize incarceration. And the numbers certainly bear that out. I think that we all, one thing that we all need to do is make sure that we are speaking plainly and clearly about what's going on and some of the policies and we've tried to put that out there so that folks understand what's happening. But we do good credit to the entities that have been working hard on that. The final piece I'll bring up really briefly is with regard to the office more broadly, there's some aspects of the office that have slowed down like standard civil litigation and other aspects of the office that have sped up wildly like all of our agency of human services, legal counsel division is really working overtime. And so lawyers have been shifting around quite a bit to take on work that they don't normally do for those lawyers for whom things have slowed down. And it's really been a team effort and people are working well together in unexpected ways in these unexpected circumstances. So we're working hard and adjusting like everybody else's and we're grateful for all the support. I see that any questions. Yep, coach, see your hand up. Good to see you, David. Just in order to get back to Martin's question a little bit, having served on a different committee that had different jurisdiction, the Department of Health and the Chris Herrick's jurisdiction as well as Deputy Commissioner, they do a lot of the inspection pieces. So as far as the cleanliness and following those protocols, the Department of Health and the Deputy Commissioner office has had that piece of the puzzle from a jurisdiction perspective. So it might be worth at least checking in with them if they're not already coordinating within your office around those inspection type issues. Just a thought. Thank you. And there has been some coordination on that and the Vermont statutes actually do give the Department of Public Safety special authority for inspections when it's warranted under the executive order power. And so we're again in the middle of coordinating that stuff but that's a very good point. I appreciate that and we'll continue to work with Public Safety and the Health Department on that. Thank you. Thank you. I am not seeing any other hands in my app. If I missed again anybody, please speak up. Nope. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you everybody to all our witnesses. I think this was really helpful and our committee will have some time to follow up on this and see what other information we do want and do need. And certainly in the interim, if any of our witnesses do think of anything that would be appropriate legislatively, please reach out to me and thank you.