 Good morning. This is the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs. It is a very chilly Friday, February 3rd, and we're here today to take some testimony on the domestic violence fatality, and we have with us the Attorney General today, so welcome Attorney General Clark. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the invitation to come in and talk about this issue. I want to begin by acknowledging that because it is such a cold day, many of us have children who didn't have school today. So shout out to all the friends, the family members, the play dates that are happening right now so that we could all be here in person to talk about this very important issue. Let me just orient you a little bit about what this commission is and does. A little over 20 years ago, this legislature created the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission, a wonderful name for a commission because it says exactly what it does, which is it literally reviews the fatalities that have occurred the previous year and makes recommendations that identifies trends for this body and also sends a copy to the governor's office as well. It is housed in my office, and I will tell you that I was not even aware this commission existed until I had worked in the Attorney General's office for several years. When I decided to run for Attorney General, one of my priorities was to amplify their work and to amplify their recommendations, and I hearty thank you to the chair and others in this body who have been so encouraging of the work that the commission is doing and the recommendations that have been created. The commission is made up of 17 stakeholders, and the 17 stakeholders are thoughtfully pretty much everybody you can think of who might work in the domestic violence arena. It is prosecutors, it is a survivor, those from the nonprofit communities who support domestic violence survivors and all sorts of other folks who are involved. I say that to emphasize that they all came together and agreed on these recommendations to you. It is a very strong testimonial, if you will, on the recommendations. The way that they come about is as follows. The medical examiner sends the fatalities of the year. Those that are related to domestic violence are identified and then analyzed. Related to domestic violence, it is not just a person who had been abused and was then killed. It is also a law enforcement officer who might come to someone's aid or a family member who might come to someone's aid. It also could be the person who was the responsible party themselves. I remember when I was last year you asked me about suicide and suicide is included. The domestic violence review report is posted on the website now and you should take a look. There is a long list that explains all the different people who might be included in this universe of domestic violence-related fatalities. It is instructive. I would refer you to that to understand this universe. The commission also does not look at cases that are open. It has to be a closed case. Emphasize that so that you know it is not just cases that actually happened during a specific calendar year. It is also cases that are ready to now be reviewed because they are closed cases. This report which comes out by statute on the third Tuesday of January looked at the fatalities from the year 2021. The year 2022 was taken to review those fatalities, identify the trends and come up with the recommendations. That is the overview of the commission. Before we get into the recommendations I just want to emphasize the statistics that a tremendous number statistically of people in their lifetime will be the victim of domestic violence or sexual violence and that means that there are people here either watching on YouTube or here who have themselves been the victim of domestic violence or sexual violence and we should be mindful of that and know that the work that we're doing matters and we have an opportunity to make change so that the attorney general in 25 years has been sitting in this committee and say the same thing so we can make progress on that. Emphasizing that before I tuck in, before I move on to the recommendations, does anyone have any questions about the commission itself or our role? Okay. And I did want to just let the committee know many of us are used to the habit of being on our devices when there's a report or a slide deck but the report is listed on the committee website today if anybody wants to have it up while the attorney general is giving her testimony. I'm also grateful to be here because I've talked about this report a number of times and I haven't been able to get into the weeds and I'm glad to be here because I think again I think I have to but I did identify the themes. If you'll look at the report you'll see there's four buckets of recommendations. Two of them relate to the work of this committee and two of them I'm going to just focus on the first two so I'm not wasting your time. The other two are good to read and be interesting. It's the first two that relates to the work of this committee. So there's the two themes of the two buckets I would say the first one is to ensure that we institute the best policies when it comes to domestic violence that is officer involved and this is both for the officers and also someone who might be working at a law enforcement agency and be involved at home with domestic violence. In other words they are the person who is the survivor or the victim of that domestic violence. So that's the first bucket and the second bucket relates to the criminal justice council and their ability to take disciplinary action against law enforcement officials who are involved with domestic violence. So that's what we're looking at and now I'll unpack each one. So let's go to the first one that relates to a law enforcement officer involved domestic violence. So there's basically three buckets. There is to orient you maybe you know this but to orient you there is a model policy that's created by the Vermont law enforcement advisory board related to domestic violence involving law enforcement officers but not every agency has adopted that policy in Vermont. So recommendation one is that every agency adopt that policy. Now of course they could do that on their own or they could be instructed to in statute. So that's number one. The second would be to amend one of the sections of the policy to require a member subject to a relief from abuse order to immediately surrender all service weapons. Let's talk about relief from abuse order. We think of that as like a restraining order and there's a process that you go through to get one of those and it's in civil court. It's actually a family court but it's not in criminal court. And there's a process involved and the judge has the authority to require the subject of the order to relinquish and surrender their firearms that they have. We know that a combination that is deadly is domestic violence and firearms. The statistics which are in the report around what happens if there's a firearm in a home where there's domestic violence are chilling. And so we always want to have an eye on on the issue of firearms and domestic violence in combination. The next anger has a clarifying question. Thank you. Any law enforcement officer involved in a relief from abuse order to surrender all service related weapons only or any weapons that they may have. Well I I know that Sarah will probably touch on this more from the network against domestic and sexual violence. So I she might have details. I being a newer member of the team haven't just been sworn in less than a month ago was not a part of the conversation. So that level of weeds I don't I don't have the information on. Sarah is already with us and she's signaling that she OK great. Another clarifying question. Are you not reading from the report. You're reading from your own. I might be reading from the report. I think I probably cut and pasted this from there. If it's helpful I can follow you. Oh sure. Let's why don't I read from the report. So this my report is not page numbered but it's the recommendations and I'm starting at the beginning. Yeah. Page 12. Thank you. I have an earlier copy. OK. So that the second one you scroll. The second bullet is that the same group that came up with this Polly policy revisit the policy to make sure that we didn't miss anything that it doesn't need to be updated etc. So that's recommendation number 2. And then the final is just acknowledging that there are people who work at a law enforcement agency who may be suffering in a home with domestic violence or in another situation related to domestic violence. And you want to make sure that they have support available because I mean picture what it would be like if you were in a abusive relationship if you were suffering in some way from domestic violence and where are you in a turn thinking you know your partner's friends are working at the law enforcement agency. It's not a good situation. So we want to make sure that those supports are needed. So taking a look at that. That is basically the first bucket. So very specific. I think those are very doable. And we of course are happy to partner with your legislative council and be any way helpful as we can in putting language together and answering any questions that that folks have related to that one too. So the next one which is titled transparency of information about officer misconduct begins with the data collection portion so that we can have more information about what's happening which always is helpful at driving effective change. So that's one element. The second relates to I'm going to summarize this in layman's terms. This category A category B business essentially there are these different categories which Sarah will explain that relate to when disciplinary actions are taken. And right now when you look at them they are not quite where we would want them to be in that there are there's misconduct that doesn't qualify for to get involved by the criminal justice council. And these recommendations suggest that they should. So I'll let Sarah unpack that for you. But that's sort of the main takeaway from that is that we want to make sure we're giving the criminal justice council the tools that are needed to effectively protect folks from domestic violence and hold officers accountable. But I think it's really also driven by this you know the protective element of that work. So so those are the 2 main buckets. I as I say they're really straightforward. They're very specific. I they're very thoughtfully rendered. Although I wasn't present at the Commission meetings. My impression from talking to folks who participated in the process last year is that they're very collaborative that this report wasn't necessarily even written by one person. It was really written in collaboration. So really good work being done there. As you see from the report there's also a lot of great statistics and graphics that are very informative and I think are helpful when putting everything in context that's being recommended. So that that's the main overview. I'm happy to answer general questions. I'm sure Sarah will be able to answer more specific questions for you. Then we're looking at this is a little bit of a tangent but just big picture. You mentioned before about how many women experience harassment, abuse, domestic violence. First question is is there ballpark figure. Well, I'll say first is not just women. It's men. It's also my second question. Yes, the percentage. Yeah, it's also LGBTQ relationships. It's not the traditional. Well, I shouldn't say traditional. That's my own perspective. But I feel I've learned a lot over the past few years about some of that. So the I think the statistics because there's so much under reporting, the statistics are, of course, are representative. But the statistic that I read about intimate partner violence specifically was that 40% of women will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime and 26% of men. It's a very high number. And as as we say, it's really happening behind closed doors. This is violence. This is a public safety issue that is an epidemic happening behind closed doors, which is one of the reasons why I've been talking about it so much because I feel like it can be overlooked because we don't, we don't see it out and about the same way that we do other kinds of public safety issues. Is that who we under the fifth circuit? A fifth circuit. No, we're in the second circuit. It's odd that we're talking about this at the same time that there's this flashed across the CNN. But the fifth circuit just rolled it. What we're talking about is the Constitutional. Oh, yeah, I'm not worried about that. We will definitely not be stepping too much on judiciary's toes, but working in partnership with them, I think so I just wanted to make it clear for the committee that I asked that the parts that are relevant, especially the this council policy pieces, I have flagged for legislative council and I'll loop you in as as they pick up my initial email saying, Hey, we're going to be looking at this. So they have it on in the part and a lot of things that that we'll need to work on language with and I'll bring you and your staff into it so that we can bring some draft language before the committee. We're going to be looking at a committee bill that has the recommendations of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. And so it might make sense to take the language that's related to them and their recommendations and have that all moved as one. Yep. It's one bill from this committee. So I've already spoken with Senator Hardy and I think we'll we'll be starting at least with that piece here in the house. Representative Chase. To make sure I understood you early. I thought I heard you say suicides were included and on page four at the top I'm seeing it does not include suicides and other deaths that may be related to a domestic violence incident. The third line down. This is that did you read the definition the long definition. The full page. No I just got to that part and wanted to clarify. So it does say the fatality and Sarah of course can answer this probably more specifically says the fatality is a substance abuse really a death chronic abuse suicide overdose that is related to domestic violence. So that's where I noticed this and then the fatality is a suicide with a documented history of domestic violence. It's a suicide alleged perpetrator. So it's broad and of course suicide is another. There's more statistics on that but there's a there was. Sugran to see a very high number of. Well this whole report is vexing because you see how many Romaners are affected and imagining that it's magnified because the truth is so many people who are experiencing domestic violence. There's not a death. It's just intimidation threats and they're really being terrorized and they're just living among us. So it's good to it's good to have this report and have such specific recommendations to know there is something that we can do to be to move the needle forward protective to help people and to raise awareness in our action just taking by taking action raising awareness and knowing to survive it survivors can see that we're doing something and we see them before we go to hear from the network. Are there any any more questions for Attorney General Clark? Yes, ma'am. One other question for you under the fatality assessment program is noticing that Crandall County, which is a majority of the district herbs that it appears unknown. In other words, no response. No. Does that mean no plan in place? I don't know. It would be good to follow up and find out now that you have information that you have. Where would be the. I was going to try to say youth have work unless you have a direct quick way to find out Sarah is nodding it and telling me. I feel like I'm just holding her up. You can arrive and have all the answers on that because I would like to facilitate that if needed. So thank you. Yeah, I think I really thank you so much. Attorney General Clark for elevating this issue. My wife, Stephanie, when she started her career in mental health, one of the first places that she interned was with the voices against violence. Some of some of the stories that I heard come home have taught me a lot about the importance of this issue and want to support the work of the commission and and I just appreciate you elevating it today and I think that we we may hear some hopeful things about the progress and I'm really looking forward to hearing Sarah's testimony and and because I think you painted a picture of how the issue of this and how pervasive and insidious it is. So hopefully we can do something with the needle. So thank you for being with us today. It's truly my pleasure. Thanks for for listening and I will stay for Sarah's testimony. So if you have any follow up questions, I'll be here. Well, we're doing the seats while clarifying my misunderstanding. What I read was it's not related to a single suicides related to a single incident, but it is accounting related to a history like an ongoing situation. I think that Sarah may be able to tell us a little bit about that. So let's pin it and pin in that. But I would like to talk about how the what the stats cover and don't as we get into it. So Sarah, welcome. If you'd like to introduce yourself on the record, thanks for the record, Sarah Robinson. I'm the deputy director at the Vermont network against domestic and sexual violence. And it's a pleasure to be with you all today. I think this is the first time I've seen you this by any on this committee. And so just very briefly for those of you that haven't met yet, the Vermont network against domestic and sexual violence. We are statewide organization and we are a member or membership organization. So our members are 15 independent nonprofit organizations that serve all the communities that you represent. And together these 15 organizations provide direct services to victims of domestic and sexual violence throughout our state. Just last year, those organizations helped in person about 8,200 Vermonters and spoke with over 19,000 Vermonters by answering a 24 hour hotline. So I'm very pleased to be here with you all and speak a little bit about the Vermont domestic violence Fatality Review Commission. The network has served on the Fatality Review Commission since it was established. And I'm actually the network's represent representative to the commission and have a great pleasure of serving alongside my fellow commissioners there. So as you heard from Attorney General Clark, domestic violence has an outsized role in the deaths that we experience in Vermont. And throughout the past 20 years, approximately half of all homicides in Vermont have been domestic violence related. We know that the two leading indicators in terms of risk of lethality for victims of domestic violence are the presence of firearms in a violent home and recent leaving or estrangement that those two things present really significant risk risk factors. And while that's certainly sobering, the national research also indicates that in the year prior to an intimate partner homicide, more than half of either the victims or the perpetrators have come into contact with some kind of system of response. So that might be the legal system. It might be a hospital visit. It might be some kind of social services interaction. And that really tells us that there are opportunities that every time there is an interaction like that. There's an opportunity for our systems to respond better and to more accurately respond to risk. So the Fatality Review Commission report is annually an opportunity to really identify what some of those opportunities are to improve our system responses and to prevent future harm to learn from these tragedies so that they don't occur again. Due to the cases that as A.G. Clark spoke of, we, you know, there's kind of two missions of the Fatality Review Commission. There's kind of the data mission and the review mission. So annually, we are looking at a list of deaths from the medical examiner and in accordance with the definition categorizing which of those deaths are related to domestic violence. And there's also then the review portion where we're reviewing closed cases to really understand in depth what occurred. It's never to point fingers at, you know, where there may have been an opportunity, a missed opportunity. But it is also for us to understand how our systems could do better and where the gaps exist. And due to the cases that the Commission reviewed last year, you will note that the recommendations in this report focus in large part on preventing officer involved domestic violence. So the recommendations of the report change each year due to the kind of case that we reviewed. When we review cases, we it's a confidential body. So the recommendations come out of that. The data comes out of it, but not the details of witness testimony that we have. And when victims contact need to contact law enforcement, it is certainly imperative that they're able to access the resource without barrier. And when an abusive partner is themselves a law enforcement officer, there are even more significant barriers to victims who might be seeking support. So I'm happy to I heard a few questions that I want to make sure to address. But I'll go ahead and just speak very briefly to the recommendations and then I'd be happy to address anything in particular you'd like to discuss. The first is related to the model law enforcement policy as Attorney General Clark noted, we're very fortunate, in fact, in Vermont to have some excellent responses by law enforcement agencies to domestic violence. And one really shining example of this is the model policy from the law enforcement advisory board on domestic violence involving law enforcement officers. And the commission recommends that the policy be adopted by all law enforcement agencies in the state and that the policy which was originally written in 2010 is updated and that the updated version is adopted. Similarly, there are recommendations around transparency about officer misconduct related to domestic violence. In seeking additional information last year during the course of our review about the scope of officer involved domestic violence, we discovered that there really is a lack of publicly available aggregate data. The Vermont Criminal Justice Council has authority to investigate complaints about officer misconduct that are referred to them by law enforcement agencies. And the commission's recommendation seek to really address both the lack of aggregate data, but also ensure that the Criminal Justice Council has the appropriate tools that they need and processes for addressing instances when officers may be subject to a civil relief from abuse order, which is different than a criminal charge of domestic violence. So I'm happy to get into the specifics of any of the recommendations. I'm sure that the Vermont Criminal Justice Council will also want to provide you with some input and feedback about their thinking around the recommendations. But let me answer just a few questions that I already heard. Representative Hango had a great question about the model law enforcement policy, including I think that the language is that that the policy should include a requirement of a member subject to a relief from abuse order to immediately surrender all service weapons. So that is essentially the authority that the employer would have around their employee because the policy would be of the law enforcement agency. So the agency itself can order that their employee surrender their service weapons. In terms of all weapons, that would be something that would need to be ordered by the court. So I think that that answers that question. And Representative Chase, I think your your question was answered. But just to note that it was a few years ago, the Futility Review Commission took a really in depth look at suicide and the linkages between domestic violence and suicide. And it has not been the case that we have always been able to track the number of suicides that have been domestic violence related. But as our conversations with the medical examiner have evolved over the past several years, they have worked with us to better identify which suicides in the state may in fact be related to domestic violence. It's always pretty simple to identify when there's a crime that occurs and there's a murder or suicide as part of a domestic violence situation, but a standalone suicide. Those have been harder to identify and create those linkages. But I think that we're making good progress there. So you gave a brief overview about the process that the Commission goes through and also goes back and looks at closed cases. There's a variety of different voices and stakeholders at the table. Everyone from law enforcement, the network committed in different agencies. How like what is are there conversations and sort of debates about what what counts as being related to domestic violence? Like how how does the commission itself? I haven't seen proceedings of the commission before, but I'd love for the committee to get a sense of like how do you actually come to consensus or vote or decide which cases are related to domestic violence? Yes. So I'll talk about that process of identifying which cases are related. And then I'd be also happy to talk about kind of our commission process on hearing, looking at closed cases and coming up with recommendations. So annually, we meet with usually a small group of the Fatality Review Commission, often the chair who is an employee of the Attorney General's Office, along with a few other commission members. And that usually rotates year to year. Meet directly with the medical examiner's office. And they prepare for us a list of homicides as well as a list of what they believe are domestic violence, other related deaths, including suicides. We take that list of homicides and the Attorney General's Office prepares a document that provides some factual information about those cases and we review, we walk through each one of them. Now, fortunately or unfortunately, Vermont's a fairly small state. And so it is possible for us to look really at every homicide in Vermont and try to understand what the fact pattern is and understand whether domestic violence is part of that fact pattern. And then by consensus and using our definition of a domestic violence side, we will vote, we will determine together whether to classify one of those homicides as domestic violence related. Great. Thank you. Yes. Yeah, I have a question that's on page five, your graph in regards to homicides that are domestic violent related pretty stark, like 2002 down to 10% pumping up to 2003 back to 60%. Is there any analysis as to economics at the time? What drove that? It's a really great question. So what I will say is when we look at kind of the percentage of total homicides that are domestic violence related, there's a reason that we often look over a period of years because we do see this variation. Again, luckily in Vermont, we don't have a large amount of homicides each year. And so it really depends on a certain kind of fact patterns present. You know, I would like to think that, you know, as I've kind of noted over time, some years are definitely better or worse than others. And those can be related to certain crimes that have multiple victims, where there might be a larger number at particular year or other years where there are lower numbers. But I guess I would say I don't I don't think that there's anything specific that we can kind of correlate year to year. But that's why kind of looking over the course of several years is a better indicator for us in terms of how we're doing. Thank you. Senator Morgan, the representative hand up, sir, you said you were going to address the Grand Valley County. Sorry. Okay. So this is about lethality assessment. Yeah. So the lethality assessment protocol, again, it's this protocol that is used by law enforcement, and it occurs in partnership with the organizations that I represent. So it's is when an officer arrives on scene of a domestic violence incident, there's actually a validated risk assessment that they'll walk through. It's an 11 question questionnaire. It's pretty quick. But it allows an officer to have a better sense of whether the particular scenario that they're facing is something where there might be a higher risk of lethality or a lower risk of lethality. And it draws from the research to ask an officer will ask a victim a very particular set of questions and based on their responses, that will give them a sense of kind of how dangerous the situation is. If a scenario screens in to be higher risk, they actually right on scene will usually ask the victim if they'd like to connect by phone with a domestic violence advocate. And there's a special number that they call and they're able to be connected immediately. So it's a really great and promising program. I will say that Vermont State Police has adopted the lethality assessment protocol pretty much universally and it is variable in terms of municipal departments. I would be happy to get a specific list for you of those in your county. But the best thing to do would be to contact your local law enforcement leaders and ask them if they're using LAP. And if not, I'd be happy to be a resource for them. And the Vermont State Police as well. Yeah, it goes back to some testimony took the other day. Again, I emphasize the strength and need and the case of Grand Elk County Sheriff's only. I mean, we have DSP is the overarching, but you know, depending on their case load, their call load, they are not always available. So anyway, I digress, but thank you. No, I think it's a great I think it's a great point. And ultimately, the services and safety that a victim experiences should not be dictated by their zip code, right? And that should be available to victims across the state. And so that's yeah, something that we've certainly been encouraging is statewide adopting of the lethality assessment protocol. Thank you. Thank you. In both your testimony and Attorney General Clark, she both mentioned that the Vermont Criminal Justice Council has a lack of appropriate tools. What do you mean by that? Yes, so you will see in the recommendations about transparency of information regarding officer misconduct. It references 20 BSA 24 01. And if you look at that statute, it lays out category A and category B conduct. Right now, category A conduct includes certain criminal charges and category B conduct violations are policy violations. And from our perspective, certainly, first of all, a relief from abuse order, so a civil relief from abuse order that's issued by a court is not present in either of those lists. So it does not would not automatically trigger a report to the Criminal Justice Council from a law enforcement agency. It also really sits in, I think, a liminal space between a policy violation and a criminal charge. It is a finding by the court that abuse has occurred and that future abuse is likely to occur. And a final relief from abuse order happens after hearing where all parties are present. The other really important thing about relief from abuse orders is until the Supreme Court tells us it's no longer the case. People are federal law prohibits people subject to final relief from abuse orders from possessing firearms. And so right now, being subject to a relief from abuse order is not listed in either category A or category B. The Fatality Review Commission has made a recommendation that it be added to category A in statute. And I think that that will give the Criminal Justice Council an additional tool to really better understand, hear about, and address misconduct related to domestic violence that involves officers. Representative, follow up, follow up question. I apologize. I missed, what do you call again the, so there's an 11 step process and tell me that one more time please. Okay, it's the Lethality Assessment Protocol. That is the actual, that is the actual tool that the guy, thank you. To get back to the categories of misconduct, so we heard some testimony on that when the Vermont Criminal Justice Council chair and the deputy director were in, but I think we'll have an opportunity once we have some language drafted to have them back in to talk a little bit more for the community about, you know, what the kind of consequences of the different categories would be, but the idea behind that whole, just to refresh everybody's memory, the idea behind that is that the Criminal Justice Council on top of being responsible for training, now that it also has this responsibility for, you know, the certification of law enforcement officers. And so as they look into the basis of misconduct, there are different paths that they continue depending on what the category of misconduct is. And we'll learn more about that and testimony from them. That would be great. Senator Marwiki. So this might be a question for you or the AG. When the red flag goes up and a weapon needs to be removed, I'm assuming law enforcement does that. But where does the what do the weapons go? And what's the process for weapons being returned? Great question. It depends on the context in which the weapons need to be removed. So the process is a little bit different for a civil versus a criminal process versus a law enforcement officer actually being on the scene. So I'll just say that there are statutory tools that are available to remove firearms from individuals who are committing domestic violence in all three of those scenarios after they have been charged with domestic violence in the context of a relief from abuse order or actually on the scene by law enforcement officers. And the process is a little bit different for each of those paths. I will say broadly around the issue of storage. That's something it's a really good news story and something that we've made great progress on here in Vermont in great thanks to the Attorney General's office and the Department of Public Safety. So we've for a long time heard from law enforcement that there's been a reluctance to and concern about enforcing firearms relinquishment orders because of a lack of storage in local law enforcement agencies. However, the Department of Public Safety, VSP in particular, has worked really hard to bring on federally licensed firearms dealers who are willing to store weapons in those instances. There's actually a pretty brand new website, which I'd be happy to follow up and send to the committee, which is a statewide map where individuals can go and understand what the options are for firearm storage in or near their communities. And there are federally licensed firearms dealers who can store those weapons if there is not capacity at local law enforcement agencies. Thank you. Thanks for Sarah. Well, thank you so much for giving us your perspective on the report from the commission and for your work on the commission. Really appreciate you being with us today and taking this time, especially given the weather. It's rough today. All right, well, thank you all for having me. You're very much the same. I hope to see you again when we dig into some language. So before we break committee, we I would like to have everybody back after lunch, not too, too long, because I have some meetings this afternoon and I'm sure other folks have constituent work and things they're working on. But I wanted to give an opportunity for us to be around the table together and talk a little bit about the testimony we heard yesterday on H2127, the sports wagering bill and over the last few days and see, you know, are there specific areas where folks had concerns, questions they want to hear more testimony about? I wanted to check in about that. And then there were a couple of very specific things that came up in the testimony yesterday that I wanted to put out on the table and get a little bit of discussion going with the committee. So that'll be, we don't have testimony. I just wanted the committee to have an opportunity to process what we've heard over the last few days and, you know, help us prioritize what we're going to do moving forward for the next couple of weeks. So we'll be back at one o'clock.