 We are live now. So committee, thank you for coming together today Senate government operations. And I see that Chris Bray got the informal memo this morning. I was not on the all Senate call, but so with our next meeting, Anthony, Brian and myself will look more a bit more presentable because we understand that it's important for us to be professional in these hearings as we would be if we were in the state house. So- That's not the way I heard it. I thought it was just for one on the Senate floor. Yeah. My understanding was that it was for committees also. Was that right, Chris Bray? I didn't see any memo. I just put- No, I meant- Not- He always dressed us like that. No, I said artificial because it was discussed my understanding at the all Senate meeting this morning. I don't know. These are from my pajamas. So I don't know what to say about the floor. Okay. We do know that for the floor, we should be, men should be wearing ties and jackets and women should be probably not wearing this. The committees, I guess we can decide unless there has been some decision about it, but we'll leave that up to the three men on our committee. Well, I just think we have to remember all the time that we are live in a stored YouTube video that will be forever and that we should be how we wanna be seen publicly. Yeah. Yes. Agreed. That was the point. So I see we have, Pat Gable has joined us. Is that you down there? That is me. Okay. And we have Judge Grusen with us. So one of the things and Bill Boneyack, Sheriff Boneyack is also with us. Is Jack Anderson with us by any chance? No. No. Okay. So Betsy, do you want to go over the, there was a question brought up by the sheriffs around emergency, the use of the emergency fund that I know is controlled by, it's a county fund, not a state fund, but I thought that Judge Grusen and Pat Gable might have some, be able to shed some light on it for us. And Jack Anderson, who was the President of the Assistant Judges Association was going to join us. He is on the agenda. So we'll look at that issue first so that the judge and Pat can leave us if they want to. They're always welcome to stay with us because we don't get to see either of them very often. But so Betsy Ann, would you like to walk us through what you've put together? Sure. So I'm going to go back to the record. Betsy Ann Rask, Legislative Council, do all the members and the witnesses have access to the language that we'll be reviewing? What's it called? I just emailed it to you in draft 4.1. It's a potential new section five. Judge Grusen, I included you on that email. It's the same language that I had pointed out earlier the Senate GovOps webpage. Looking at that draft 4.1, it starts on page five, the new highlighted section five. I haven't. Is the court administrator, Ms. Gable, are you able to see this also? Not where I am right now. If you could email it to me, I could look at it on email. Sure. But on the document page, it says Secretary of State Emergency Funds and then it says DR-20095. But you've put it into the regular bill. Yeah. Okay. It's an excuse later. Okay. So committee, I just emailed it to the court administrator. Committee, I have a couple problems. So I'm not able to post right now the document that Betsy Ann is referring to. But I think it is probably the same language that is on our documents page that's listed as SECX Emergency Funding. So it's the same document, but she's just put it into the overall bill. So on page 10. Huh? On page 10. Yes. So you can look at either the new draft or the one that's listed on our document page. Okay. So what's going on? Big picture as I described in the email to you. Statute in current law provides in 24VSA section 73 how a sheriff's department gets supported. And subsection A of that section provides that the county provides, generally speaking provides the sheriff with suitable equipment and supplies and bookkeeping and secretarial assistance. And then the sheriff is to use contract funds to be able to support any necessary salaries, other salaries and equipment and funds. So big picture, a lot of the sheriff contract funds goes towards supporting funding for deputies, for example. The county budget statute in 24VSA section 133 and subsection E provides for the county's budget every year. There is language in that subsection about having a reserve fund. That reserve fund and statute says that it should not exceed 15% of the current budget presented. What this language is doing would be to allow that reserve fund to be used for the emergency needs of sheriffs. It's a temporary provision, the way that it's written. Emergency needs would be defined as needs to respond to COVID-19 and specifically would include, not an exhaustive list, but would include hiring deputies, dispatchers and other personnel and purchasing equipment and supplies to respond to COVID-19. So this language would say to support the emergency needs of sheriffs due to the state's COVID-19 response, a county's reserve funds described in 24VSA section 133E shall be allowed to be used for the emergency needs of the county sheriff. And that the funding of those needs would be in addition to the normal support of the sheriff's department set forth in 24VSA section 73E. The way county budget works is that the statute provides that generally unless there's some other provision, the assistant judges allow funds to be drawn for four from the county funds. So the way that this language is drafted, meant to be, still have the assistant judges be the ultimate entity that allows these emergency funds to be used for the reserve funds to be used for the sheriff's emergency needs. That's what's going on in subsection A. Subsection B specifically would require any sheriff who receives county reserve funds for emergency needs under this section to apply for FEMA for any allowable reimbursement. I understand from speaking with Sheriff Boiniak that right now as I understand it, the FEMA reimbursement is at 75% at this time. Whether FEMA would reimburse is a separate question, but the sheriff would be required to apply for FEMA for reimbursement if the sheriff did access those reserve funds. And then finally, subsection C is a sunset. As I said before, is a temporary provision. It would be repealed two weeks after the day that the governor terminates the state of emergency for the state. So that's when this authority to use these reserve funds for a sheriff's emergency needs would terminate. So Sheriff Boiniak, would you like to just give a little bit of background for people who may not know why sheriffs are losing funding right now? Yes. So thank you everyone and thank you for inviting me. As most of you know, the sheriff's business side, we rely on traffic control details, especially like right now we should be starting them and throughout the summer. So we're already taking a hit on that. As you know, Pike and every other construction outfit out there has been put on hold. So throughout the summer, we're able to accumulate some monies that help us through the rest of the year with equipment and other supplies that the county doesn't pay for. So we, some sheriffs do have a reserve, their own internal reserve fund that they built up over the years, but the other half of the sheriffs do not have that. And we do have one sheriff who's looking at in payrolls from now, in other words, six weeks, he'll be out of money. So this may help depending on this county does have that reserve fund. And the other big part of this is that, any sheriff who does utilize these funds, shall ask for reimbursement from FEMA because of COVID-19. And right now on the statute side, it says 75% reimbursement. However, we've been hearing about 100% reimbursement whether that happens or not, the county would receive all their money back if it's used. So it's just one, the other portion that we're looking at was not portion, but the Small Business Administration, one sheriff looked into that, some of the loans for payrolls. And since we're a government entity, we're pretty sure we're not able to access the Small Business Administration funds for payroll. So that's a good part of it. And we're being respectful. My County Sheriff Macklin, she sent me an email, she's in support of 100% of this. We're working with the side judges, not against them. So I think this is a very reasonable option if we need it. Thank you. Is that a question for, we also have Sheriff Anderson here and I'd like to hear from him. I just have a question, if I may. Sheriff, you're also losing, you get paid for transport of prisoners and given the sort of court actions of ground or halt, I would assume that was a piece also of your loss of income. You're correct. We do have many of departments have state deputies, not everybody, but we do use per diems quite a bit. And right now we're just doing emergency transports only. That's the same with the courthouses too. We usually have anywhere from three to five deputies working daily. In Orange County, I usually have two to three. Now I just have the one at the court door. So could we hear Sheriff Anderson, do you have anything to add? I apologize, Madam Chair. I was having some technical difficulties getting in. You're here now. I'm here. Thank you. So I think Sheriff Bonyak covered a majority of it. One of the weird twists with how this has kind of come to play in addition to our transports also being extremely reduced and we do have a very busy county in that sense, our civil process service is also extremely reduced almost to non-existent. And our fingerprinting services have been postponed. The net effect is that the way we've built out the services that we provide specifically the law enforcement services is that we're essentially giving subsidization to our commercial contracts in terms of providing government services to towns. So ultimately my dispatch operates at an expense. That's because we utilize it for a variety of services about, I'm gonna go approximately two thirds of my budget is from my business side and that's what helps fund my dispatch and all of that work is gone. And sorry, what county are you in? Wyndham County. Thank you, Mark. So any questions for them right now and then we'll jump to Judge Geerson. Yeah, I'm just curious. I'm sorry. Okay. No, go ahead, Anthony, please. I'm just wondering how big these funds are these reserve funds. Are we talking about a lot of money? I'm just curious, is it gonna make a real difference for you to be able to access these funds or is it just a small amount? I'm just some ballpark idea of what we're talking about. Mark, if you wanna talk about your shop, go ahead. I'm not sure I understand your question, Senator. I think he wants to know how big, for example, how big is the Wyndham County Reserve fund? Would it be $4,000 or $400,000? And would it, is it enough of a fund that it would be helpful? Is that right, Anthony? Yes. Speaking with Assistant Judge Barnett, who's one of my side judges, he felt that with their current funds that they'd be able to sustain our payroll in its entirety for approximately three months. So I would say it's in the hundreds of thousands. Okay, thanks. I had a quick question if I couldn't answer. Yep. So the county reserve fund, how is that administered? Does that come through John Campbell's office or is it housed in each county? And when you get those funds out and then you apply to FEMA, we'll be putting those back into that same fund, correct? Yes, that's sure, Bonnie, I'll answer that. Each county, you take up to 15% of their county budget. So it's each county, Orange County, I believe does usually about 10% of the budget. So around 50,000 for Orange County. So if that money would be used, it's county funds and the reimbursement would go back to the county. It does not, this has nothing to do with the John Campbell's office, the state's attorneys and the sheriff's. All right, thank you. Any more questions for the sheriffs? We might have more. Judge Gerysen, do you want to weigh in? I don't know that this has any, that you have any interest in this or care at all, but we thought we should talk to you, hear from you and Pat Gabel, both. It's not that we don't care. I know. We understand what the sheriffs, like everyone else is going through. This is a different world we're working in and living in. I don't see, unless Pat sees something that I don't, that this is not a bill that we would support or oppose. I mean, it's certainly a policy type decision. I would just echo Sheriff Bonyak's comments as well as Sheriff Anderson, that the court schedules have been substantially reduced. We're down to skeletal staffs, judges, not all judges are in all the courthouses all day long. In other words, we're rotating the judges in many of the courts, reflecting the reduced scheduling that's going on. And to a great extent, the incarcerated population that the sheriffs would routinely be transporting, the sheriffs can tell me better, I suppose, but I don't think we've been doing any physical transports. It's all, most of the incarcerated population is being processed through video for initial proceedings, rule five proceedings, some plea changes, some sentencing. So I would guess that the transport of incarcerated individuals to the courthouses is at a minimum in the last two weeks. And I don't see that changing. The attorneys as well as the courts are looking for different ways of using the video processing. Quite frankly, the issue is to reduce the in and out out of the correctional facilities. That's one of their biggest areas of risk, at least that we've been told. If you take someone out for a brief hearing and then bring them back in, that's what we're trying to avoid. And video has allowed us to do substantially that. And we're now operating, a video is operable in all of the facilities. And in the major courts, Wyndham Windsor, Washington, Caledonia, Orleans, Chittenden, Franklin, Bennington, and Rutland. So we are in where a court, for instance, like Addison or Orange does not have access, direct access to video. We're suggesting that they move the proceedings to either, for instance, in Orange County, we would move them to either Barrie or Windsor. Convenience of the parties to try to process those proceedings via video. So we're looking at expanding that use. Those are my thoughts on understand what the sheriffs are certainly experiencing. And Pat may have some other thoughts. Any questions? Let's go to Pat first and see if she has any and then we'll see if there are any questions for them. So maybe I could provide a little silver lining to the dark clouds in that, as you know, the sheriffs in a way are entrepreneurs. They have to run a business and they have different revenue sources. And the state transports that Judge Gerson was just talking about and the other sheriffs mentioned are contracts that they have with the executive branch. The sheriffs also have contracts, Gary, and we have committed to honoring our contracts with the sheriffs. And therefore, although I understand they'll have revenue streams that have dried up in many ways, at least the court security contracts currently are being honored. And I think I may have been before your committee, Madam Chair, earlier, at least mentioning and passing that we're very concerned in general about the viability of the sheriffs' businesses and their ability to be available for us for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with COVID-19. And so now having the COVID-19 overlay, I think puts them in a very precarious position. So even before COVID-19, we were advocating for an increase in the amount of money that we could pay the sheriffs under our contracts. So I think just as Judge Gerson said, we would in general be supportive of anything that helps maintain the sheriffs as a viable law enforcement group of organizations with whom we can contract and we're doing everything we can to support the vital service that they provide. Thank you. And as you and particularly Sheriff Anderson know, I'd been working on an issue around court security and the sheriffs before this all hit. And I do hope to keep working on that and maybe come up with some solutions. We're with you on that. I know, I know, thank you. So any questions for the judge or Pat? Sure, Banya. I just want to say to both the judge and Pat, Patricia, thank you for all your support. And I know you've been working with us with the court security contracts and even the per diem. So thank you again. And we will be there and we'll continue to be there. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you. If there are no more questions, does, has Jack Anderson joined us by any chance? I don't think so. Okay. But we haven't heard anything from any side judges that they're in opposition to this, right? Have they been asked? I mean, somebody's. Well, some of the sheriffs have worked with their side judges, like Sheriff Bonniak has worked with his and she sent us a letter saying that she was 150% in favor of this provision. So, and we did ask Jack Anderson, who is the president of their association. So they have been asked. Madam chair. Yes. Sheriff Anderson again. I did spoke with assistant judge Barnett as well, who fully supported it. His concern is that law enforcement resources won't be available when we need them most. And he didn't think that assistant judge stuff would have any concerns about it, given our being able to go after the funding from FEMA and reimbursing the fund. So my only, thank you. My only question is, should we limit the application to reimbursement from FEMA? My fear is that, that FEMA might not be the best place and that there might be some other COVID related money that could we expand it to digitization apply for COVID relief money that might be. Makes sense. I think that makes a lot of sense. They might even set up something brand new that we never heard of before. So we could say or other COVID-19 relief funds. I agree. Betsy Ann. Can you word that in a way that might include other potential funding? Sure. Just adding in almost basically exactly that or any other available resources for COVID funding. The reader. Yeah. Allison. Yeah. Brian and Pat, have you combed the summer? I mean, I assume you have. Combed the sort of summary of the CARES Act to see what was made available for courts and for sort of law enforcement issues around the courts. I'm gonna defer to Pat on that one. We're still reviewing that. The, there are some issues that might indirectly relate to the judiciary, but I don't have anything more specific than that for you at the moment. And I take it the sheriffs have done that work of looking at the law enforcement pieces and that the FEMA looked the best to them. Cause you're right. I don't think the SBA grants would work for you. Yes. And yet here currently FEMA is the most, I guess reasonable one to buy for. Realistic, yeah. However, we are looking at every grant that's been coming out there. It's not just anything to do with this COVID-19, any type of grant that's coming out there we are looking at. And I've been kind of the full key point to receive a lot of these emails from the federal government. And I've been forwarding to all the sheriffs and making sure that they're aware of, what funding is coming out. There may be another fund. They're talking about in Washington, a fourth major fund. Yes. They're not having too much agreement on that. Yeah, you know, that's where it doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on. Republican Democrat doesn't matter. This is unprecedented times we're going through. And we just need to, everyone work together. All right, but to that end, have you worked with our congressional delegation to make it clear what your needs are? Senator Leahy's office is aware. Great. We're in touch with them. Great. Okay, so does anybody have, thank you, Judge. Thank you, Patricia. Thank you very much. Unless there are more questions, we'd love to have you stay, of course, but feel free to go if you want. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll say goodbye now. All right, bye. So committee, do we have, do we buy any chance to have Rick got here here? No, Rick is not on the phone. That's why I am here, Madam Chair. Good, thank you. Who's that? Chris Brackell from Brandon PD, also the chair of the criminal justice training council. Right, hi, Chris. So we, we're gonna shift here a little bit to that issue. When we met last week, there were a couple issues that came up. In particular, that we had questions about, one was the issue of the hiring, and what we did is we went through what had been S124 and pulled out things that we thought needed to be passed immediately in response to COVID-19. And two of the issues that we didn't know if they were important to pass now or not, or one was the issue of when hiring somebody the directive to inquire of their current employer and the current employer's responsibility to reply to that. That was one issue. And then the other issue was about the first, should the first offense be related, I think it's category B, should the first offense be related, be reported to the training council or not? Is that important to do now in response to COVID-19 or can it wait for kind of a medium term, those two? So if you, and then there was the issue of other issues around the training council and did we need to address any of them in terms of online training or training that could be done in other regions and the pipeline and people who are currently in it, how are we gonna deal with them? So those were the issues that we talked about. That's quite a handful of issues that you've just brought up. So let me first start with the first reporting of category B offenses. And I think that there's, my impression is that there's no reason to worry about that at a later time. This has been discussed at the council level prior. It's also been discussed at joint meetings of chiefs and sheriffs. And all we're in agreement that it's the proper thing to do for them to be relaying first offense categories of category B to the council so that they can document those. Does that answer that first part? Do we need to put that in legislation or do you have the ability to just do it without us putting it in? I believe it would have to be put into legislation. And you want us to do it now? I believe that would be prudent and I was under the impression that's what the committee wanted as well. Yeah, we discussed it. I thought that's what we thought. Well, I think that what we figured was that we needed to hear whether it really was important to do right now or not on those two issues, Brian. And that was my question to Chris. Is there some particular intersection with what's going on right now at this moment in this issue or couldn't wait until we get back into whatever is gonna be considered a normal legislative session? That's the trust of this whole thing, Chris. Understood. So is it critical? No, it's not critical at this point. And if it were easier for you to settle on that at a later date that's more convenient for the committee, absolutely. You'll have no issues with anybody in law enforcement changing that to a first offense reporting that. When it seems appropriate for the committee is entirely up to the committee. There's, it's not critical that that happens during this pandemic right now. Okay, and that, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's, I think that. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Getting to the online portion. So we are in, as you can imagine, a state of emergency in dealing with everything at the academy. We are currently moving a lot of training that was not online to online training. We have a couple of plans that are out right now for the administration to look at and as far as how we are going to certify the class that was currently in. And we're waiting to hear back from the administration on the plans that we have submitted to them. We do have a plan in place for this class that was in week seven that had been abruptly stopped and sent home. We do have a plan in place for them to return if we do have approval and for them to complete their level three certification training. It may take a little bit longer than the initial date was, but if we do have that approval and we've been speaking with the administration and Department of Public Safety with this as well, that we would like to get all of those officers certified as quickly as possible. If not, we also understand that the training that we're used to just is not available to be able to do currently because we can't do hands-on training. We can't test proficiency skills and some of those things, but we can give a provisional certification. The council does have the ability to waive certain portions of training as long as we give them a provisional certification and when the time is safe for everyone to return to the academy for those proficiency testings and the things that they could not get because of social distancing, we would certainly do that as quickly as possible and get their level three certification done completely. How many weeks did they have to complete and how many are in the class? They would have had to complete 16 weeks and then there are typically about another two additional post basic certification classes that they come back for additional certifications. I believe this class, I don't have the exact number. I wanna say it was about 43 recruits that were in this class. So they still need to do nine to 11 weeks? Correct. So do you have the ability to just do that without having to have legislative and put something in the statutes? Am I right about that? You just need to get the administration and DPS to okay your plans. That's correct. I believe that the council has the legal authority to waive plenty of trainings. The only thing that we don't have the ability to waive is the mandatory statutory hour requirement of, I believe it's 972 hours of training. That's not something that the council could waive but I don't believe that the hourly requirement would be problematic to getting level three certification because we're going to have to do, even if we are leaving some non-essential training out, there is going to be plenty of on the job training and on the job hourly credits that they will be getting towards that certification. So you don't need us to put something in that says notwithstanding that provision that during this time you can do a provisional and waive the 972 hours? If there was a way for you to draft something that gave us provisional ability to waive the complete 972 hours, that would likely be helpful but I can't give you an exact number of what the appropriate number would be at this point. I could within a day or so but speaking for what we're looking at trying to do and put together right now, I just can't give you an actual number on the training hours that would be required for you to give us a waiver of. What if we just did a waiver Betsy that waived the 972 and just said something like to an appropriate number as approved by the administration and DPS and the training council. So that we didn't have to put a number in there. Would that work? It would, but I would be a little concerned. I think if you left it with the approval of the council rather than other state entities, the council is basically the certifying body. And I think it would be appropriate if you've changed that hourly amount with the approval of the council. Betsy and I didn't mean to interrupt you. Oh, sorry, I'm sorry, chief. For the record Betsy and Ras Legislative Council, I don't think that hourly requirement is in your statute. I just searched through the chapter. I really think it's all set out in rules. There are specific number of hours for domestic violence training and animal cruelty training and racial justice training, I believe but the 972 is not set forth in your chapter that I'm seeing. I really think it does come out through the council's rulemaking because the council has a general rulemaking authority to approve training schools and offsite training programs, the minimum courses of study, the minimum basic training for officers in each level and the time within which that training will be completed and minimum annual in-service training requirements. So I don't think the statute actually specifies the total number of hours. Okay, I stand corrected. Thank you. Brian, did you have a question? No, I just saw Betsy was wanting to make a comment. So it sounds like the council already has this authority, correct? I would say so, yes, sir. Okay. Okay, Allison. So Chris, given that they haven't even completed half their training, I would hope that a provisional credentialing would be very limited in terms of what they were able to do. I mean, they- So to your answer on that topic, we have already, the council has met twice in emergency session already and what we have agreed to do so far is not knowing what the outcome will be to bring these candidates back. We have two methods of how we would like to bring them back. With administration approval, bring them back full-time and get their training done. If we don't have the ability to do that, we are going to complete the online portion that we're doing currently right now. Bring them back for a firearm certification and a limited amount of use of force training that they've already had. And we are going to give them a provisional level two certification, which at the same time would only limit them to their scope of authority being a level two officer. And the online training would be equate to one or two additional weeks of training? What they're doing right now is moving classes that normally would have been held in lecture type to an online forum so that the students weren't not, they weren't losing a lot of time. And they've also given them additional online training through different sites like JPMA and training sites where they could get non-essential training, but nonetheless training that law enforcement needs to keep them busy until we have some sort of answer on where we can go with our training. Brian, did you have your hand up? Oh, okay. So do we need to put in anything about the specific number of hours required for the domestic violence and racial training? Or are you able to meet that somehow with online stuff, Chris? I believe that we'll be able to meet that even at domestic violence training is something that we'll be able to handle, I'm sure. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. It looks like we don't really need to do anything around the training aspect of law enforcement in this bill. Am I right about that? Seems like you know. Yep. Anthony? Yes, I agree with what you said. I do know this manager, Colonel Birmingham's in with us. I don't know whether he had anything to add. Oh, I didn't see him. Okay. Colonel, do you have anything you'd like to add? I do not. Thank you. Okay. Oh, sorry. Can I just mention one thing? Yes, please. Betsy, I'm gonna ask again, just to mention to the council, maybe something probably want to discuss with your, the council's council, is that all of this does seem to be the council establishing its training requirements by rule. So I just wonder if this is something that you would need emergency rules for to deviate from your current rules. That'd be something that you would discuss with your own legal council. But if everything's set out in rule now, it seems like you'd need an emergency amendment to those rules. Do we need to put that in legislation that they have the ability to do emergency rules? No, if we find that if there's an emergency circumstance, for example, not being able to train the law enforcement officers because of COVID, I would think that would be to correct the public health safety or welfare. That I would think that they would have the emergency, the ability to adopt emergency rules. I just don't, I don't know if the council's discussed that yet or gotten that far as to whether they think emergency rules are necessary. But we don't need to do it. We have discussed a lot with our council, just not any change to the rulemaking process. But I can certainly do that today. Okay. Okay, thank you. Any other questions on this topic? No. So I guess, so are we okay then with Betsy's XXX number S point XXX whatever our number is to be and where we will put it. Yikes, so that's a different section other than the sheriff's money? No, this is the whole thing that she, she emailed us the complete, she's got it all put together in one bill now. So 4.1 is that draft and it has no law enforcement in it additionally, so, but we haven't heard from Matt yet. Right. Oh, okay. I, so I mean, I'm curious, was there anything that Matt was thinking about that was needed that we hadn't addressed? Colonel? Not right at this moment. No. Thank you. Okay. That's what I thought I heard you say. Okay. I did too. Sorry. I needed, clearly needed to be refreshed or maybe I just needed to hear Matt Birmingham's voice again. Okay. So are we okay with that? We just need to find a place for it to live. Yes, that's okay. Do we need to vote? Are we allowed to vote? Yes. We are, my understanding is that we are allowed to vote today. And that then tomorrow, no, Wednesday, the resolution will be voted on by the Senate to allow the Senate to vote remotely, at which point we then can have a completed bill that we can bring to the Senate to vote on. But I believe we are allowed to vote. So with that, would the clerk please call the roll? Well, Madam Chair, may I break in just one second? Yes, please. I'm sorry to interrupt, but so you have this draft 4.1 and then the only tweak to it would be the one that you discussed with Sheriff Anyak in the sheriff's section, which would be in the reimbursement aside from FEMA, I think you decided on the language being that a sheriff who receives these county funds for emergency needs shall apply to FEMA. Or any other. Or any other applicable resources for COVID-19 relief known to the sheriff? Yes. Any other reimbursement? That sounds perfect. Okay, I'll add that. So that you wanna make that 4.2? Yeah, sure. Okay, thanks. So then I'll move that we vote out draft 4.2, a draft 2.0-0950. Thank you, Brian. Are you wanting, okay, cause do we have enough? Okay, so we're not amending, this is all new. So it's just draft 4.2. Correct. Correct. God. And then we will leave it, I think that what I'll do is leave it to Betsy and the pro tem. And if he wants any suggestions from me of where to put this, how to actually make it a bill. We probably have to choose, we probably have to choose a vehicle for it. We will, and we can look at the ones that currently exist in the Senate. I'm trying to think of what currently exists there that might relate to EMS or law enforcement or sheriffs. We'll find something. We'll find a vehicle. Okay. So Brian has moved that we... We have a motion to pass draft 4.2 and Bray. Christopher Bray, are you sure about that? Let's find a mute there. Okay. Christopher Bray. Yes. Allison Clarkson. Yes. Brian Collamore. Yes. Anthony Polina. Yes. And Jennifer and Jeanette White. Yes. Great. From Jennifer. 5-0, I know, I don't know where she came from. We have 5-0 and the motion passes. All right. I will, I'm happy to report this unless somebody else wants to. If it should be reported by a person who will actually be there, that would be... We're not voting in person on Wednesday, remember? We're not doing any bills on Wednesday. I know. I know, but I don't know if somebody will actually be in the state house or when we actually do a vote by remote or if all 30 of us will be elsewhere. I don't know how that's gonna work, but I will be happy to report it unless it should be done in person at the state house. And then I won't. Okay. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we find out. Yes. Okay. Now, we have amended. Yeah. Have we actually approved it since this kind of was an amendment to an amendment to a non-existing bill? Well, I think we need a vehicle. I think we need a number to say you're amending that bill too. Well, yes, but... So we've done all we can do right now. We've done what we can do at the moment until we have identified a vehicle, a number. I think we want to make our vote today the final vote so that we can attach it to a vehicle and use that. I'm gonna pull up the vehicles we might have. Well, Allison, not to jump in, but I think Senator Ash was pretty clear that his guidance this morning was not so much to worry about the individual committee finding a vehicle as he is going to try to do that, I think, for us. Is that what you heard too? Yes. Because I believe that there are other things that will need to be passed when we actually have the ability to vote on things. And I think he needs to make the decision about whether it should be individual bills or if it should be put together. And I believe he will make that decision. So right now we want a final vote on this bill, XX. Oh, I thought that's what we were doing. Well, I don't know, but I think that because we're, we usually do and approve the amendments and this has been amended a number of times with different since we started. I mean, we've added the sheriffs and we've added the electricians and plumbers. And so it is different than from when we started. So I think that what Brian suggested was that we approve draft 4.1 and now as a SXX as amended by 4.1, 4.2. And now we need, I think, to adopt or to recommend report out favorably SXX, whatever that may be. Okay, I'll be glad to make that motion if we need to. Yeah, sorry, I would appreciate it. I thought that was the motion that he had already made. Okay. No, we were amending it first. Now we're going to vote on the... Okay, here's the motion. I move that the committee vote out draft number 2-0-09-5-0 as amended by draft 4.2. Right. Then we're gonna die for lack of a second. Okay. We don't need a second. All right. We don't need a second. You don't need a second. Bray? Okay, would you call the roll, clerk? Yes. Senator Bray? Yes. Senator Clarkson, where is she? Yes. Senator Collamore? Yes. Great, Senator Polina? Yes. Great. And Senator White? Yes. Perfect. Okay. It passes. Shoot. Does anybody else have anything to say? Yes. So how will this language be presented to the pro tem or is that the next step? Well, we will send him the language as we just, you can do a copy without the highlighting on it and we'll send that to him and say that's what we passed today. Okay. And you can send it to him directly. Okay. I'll copy the committee. Yeah. Copy the committee and copy. And Peter Sterling. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Madam chair. Yes, Chris. I look at the Senate calendar and there is a very skinny little bill on there, S301 relating to repealing the 248A sunset. So maybe that's a skinny little thing that can be used that's already on the calendar. Who knows? Just mention it. I don't know. That's way beyond my pay grade. Nothing's going to pay grade. I'm leaving that completely up to the pro tem about how he wants to handle that. Okay. Okay. Right now we're just talking about it as 20-0950. Yes. Yep. Great. Okay. Committee, can we shift gears here a little bit? Nope. We are nimble. We are nimble, if nothing else, if I can get to my, so we didn't have anything else on the schedule for today, but one of the things that came up yesterday, we had an emergency, the Wyndham County delegation had an emergency meeting with Drew Hazelton from rescue. And they are in much deeper trouble. Oh, first of all, I should thank the Sheriff Boneyack and Sheriff Anderson, and then you're certainly welcome to stay with us. And Chris also, whoever wants to stay, but we are shifting gears. So thank you for coming. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for your time. And Matt Boneyack. And Matt, yes. So anybody's welcome to stay and hear the issues that were raised yesterday by our rescue people. So a number of issues, and I'm going to put these out, and then I'm going to try and list them. And hopefully tomorrow we will be able to have people come in and talk to us about how to deal with these, because these are pretty serious issues. And I'm just going to run through them and then I'll make a list, if that's okay with the committee. Yeah, sure. Does that work? Yep, sure. I think we lost Chris Bray. Oh, no. Yes, there's Mount something or other. He may have taken a break. He's just want to do. Don't care duties. So we have about 80 ambulance services in the state, and most of them are private nonprofit. They are not municipal services. So they will not have any ability to recoup any funds from FEMA because they're not municipalities. We're trying to figure out with, if there is any way of working around that, but we think not. So they're three main issues are supplies. Yes, Chris. So they, but they do, don't most of them receive of municipal funds, you know, like town by town on town meeting day, we vote for them. Could those municipalities act as fiscal conduits for them? We're trying to look into that and what I'm going to ask Chris Campani, today I'm just raising the issues. And we're going to invite Chris Campani from Rindham Regional, who is very familiar with how FEMA funds work and a number of other people to join us tomorrow to have the actual discussion. Because that is one thing we looked at. So there are about 80 ambulance services and most of them are private, I said. They have had over the past couple of weeks, they've had about a 25 to 40% drop in calls because calls where they transport people, they've had an increase in the number of calls, but a drop in the number of transport calls because people are not going to hospitals, they're being told not to go to hospitals and because there's no hospital to hospital transport because of surgeries that are not happening, elective surgeries. So they don't get any, they can't bill for just a call, they can only bill if they transport to a hospital. So their revenues are going way down. They've been working with Medicaid trying to figure this out, but so far they don't have any solutions. They have a number of people who have been in the training pipeline who are now stuck there and can't just as the police training council had. And so they are in bad straits right now because they can't figure out how to get those people through the training and get them certified. So the personnel is a huge issue. I just lost my train of thought there when Chris asked me that question. So let me back up. You were on issues and you had identified supply as the first one, personnel. And funding. That's where you're going. Yes, so the funding is a huge issue and they are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars all the time and most of them do not have enough to meet payroll within the next week. They are, their calls have gone down, but their calls that they're able to bill for have gone down but their calls have gone up. And if the state of Washington is any indication, they're within the next 14 days, they estimate that their calls that they can't charge for will increase by about 200%. So they're making a lot of calls but not being able to get any funding for them. So we need to figure out something there. There is the federal money that comes that we had identified for training, but that only 2% of that goes to EMS. The rest goes to the firefighters and they don't wanna deplete the money that goes to the firefighters, but we have now those 80 ambulance services who are going to be fighting for that little 2% amount because that's their source of funding. So I have sent a note to Jane Allison. Well, I'm just curious, have you spoken to Ginny about what might be in the CARES Act specifically for EMS? No, this just came up yesterday, last night, we had a meeting with them. So I'm sending out all the, what I wanna do is list all the issues here and then figure out where it is that we go for them. So the funding issue is one thing. The personnel issue is huge because they have these people that are in the training pipeline that they can't get through because they've stopped the training. There is no online training capacity in Vermont right now. And what they would like to do is perhaps use the money that 475,000, I think it was, that was in the fund, in the firefighters EMS fund. They'd like to use that to perhaps buy an existing online service from some other state. But so far they've met with resistance from the Department of Health and I'm not exactly sure why. They also would like to do away with the exam, having to have the exam before they can be certified, even with a provisional certification. We've done that for nurses, so nurses who've completed their education but haven't been able to take the, I don't think it's called the bar, board, I think it's called the nursing board exam, are being allowed to practice with provisional licenses as if they had passed. We've done that with nurses, but the emergency management part of DOH is very opposed to this and I don't understand why, but I'd like to hear from them tomorrow about that but they're unwilling to budge around that. The other issue is we have ski patrol people who are well trained and could be providing that service right now. But again, the Department, the Office of Emergency Management Services has put up a roadblock and is unwilling to look at that. So we also have lots, we have no state mutual aid agreement within the state for EMS people. So, and that was one of the things that we had put in the bill that we wanted them to develop. I'm not sure that DOH has the wherewithal to be able to do that now. They're so busy with other things, but it seems to me that perhaps they could, they could contract with a couple EMS people to help design that mutual aid system because right now there is no system that if one area loses their emergency people, they can serve another area. They can't do that. So we need to address that. We also have the issue of, I don't know if you remember when the adjutant general was with us and he said that they would not take people from their primary healthcare jobs in order to serve as in the guard. But the rescue has lost one of its only three qualified paramedics to the guard. They, he's been called up. So that's an issue. And one of the things, the Department of Health has eased up on the two certified people for transport so they can use drivers. So it seems to me that if the National Guard really wants to help, what they could do is they could call up people, not who are trained medical people, but who have lost their jobs someplace else perhaps and they could call them up to be used as drivers in the ambulances to relieve the current paramedics. So those are some of their volunteers are down. They do not apparently have access to the governor's volunteer. The governor set up this volunteer port. I don't know exactly how it works, but they're not given access to it. So they can't use it. They have increased sick time. So they're losing personnel because of quarantines and increased sick time. So that's the personnel side. Then the supply side is that they were unable to access, well, everybody was unable to access the stockpile of PPEs in February and early March. And it's only recently that they've been going into the stockpile. So some ambulance services actually bought it on the open market because they knew they would need it. And so, and they paid through the teeth for it because the suppliers apparently raised the prices sometimes by as much as four or five times, but they bought them in anticipation of it. But those who weren't in the position to be able to buy only have about four days of supply of PPEs. And they are not sure that they're, how they're going to be able to get them because they don't know that if they're going to be allocated, then the same as the hospitals are. The other, one of the other issues is the decontaminating materials, not just the PPEs, but the decontaminating materials that they're using on the ambulances is that they don't have access to the supply. So they're using what they have and they're using materials that are actually deteriorating the insides of the ambulances faster than they might be, but they have to decontaminate them. So they're in a bind here about that. Laura Sibelia is going to work through BDC, the development corporation here to see if there's some Vermont company that can possibly gear up to supply to produce those decontaminating materials. I'm not sure if she can find them or not. But so those are, I think, and they also are not getting the right number of medical kinds of equipment that they need, like the medications and the IVs and stuff that they are going to have to use. So that's just a little bit of an issue that was presented to us by yesterday. Most of them will not be able to meet payroll by the second week in April. So there we are, Allison. So I have a couple of ideas. One is there is a lot of money for the medical world in that CARES Act. And I bet if you and Jeanne put your heads together, you could find an avenue whereby EMS could fit, an umbrella under which EMS could fit. I bet there has to be some, I mean, there's such an essential part of our medical delivery system. I just think there has to be something for them. The other thing is silo distillery in Windsor is producing material to sanitize things with their stills. And so we have possibly a local, they could conceivably be asked to focus additionally attention for EMS crowd. And then also it strikes me that the National Guard could be called in to help staff some of these EMS groups. We have the National Guard, they are on alert. They're not all been activated, but they're on alert and they are all better trained in emergency response than normal people. So I mean, they might fill in for some of the volunteers. So a couple things. Our distillery does the same thing down here. And that's what Laura was going to check into to see if what they are producing can be used and if there's other companies out there that can produce something that would be less deteriorating on the ambulances themselves. In terms of the National Guard, that was a suggestion that was made is that if they could deploy people who are, the problem is that if they try to get people who are trained, they're taking them from someplace else because most of those people are actually working in the healthcare professions or as Drew pointed out in the EMS system because they have taken one of the paramedics from rescue to send someplace else. So what they need to do is take non-certified people who as you pointed out, do still have some level of training and use them for drivers and dispatchers or whoever they need. So yeah, and the money thing, I do know that they are looking at every single, they are in touch with Medicare, Medicaid office and every other office about the, they're also looking at the carers' money. Right, and the plus of using the National Guard is they're paid. Yeah. So I mean, they wouldn't have to pay that. Right. So let me just suggest, Madam Chair, we have Drew already on the agenda for tomorrow along with Dan, Chris and Patrick. Perhaps we could add Jim Finger from the Rutland Ambulance Service and also somebody from DOH. I really would like to hear why, go ahead. Shayla, we've tried to get Shayla and Dan Batesy or Batesy to join us. And Jim Harrison was on the call with the Wyndham County delegation yesterday, Representative Harrison because the EMS is a particular interest of his and he was on the call with us and he's going to talk to the secretary and we're going to see if we can get the secretary to join us or at least have some kind of a response because I'm not sure that he is aware that it is such a serious, they're in such serious straits, but it is, it is really, so what I'll do is I'm going to try to make a list of these issues in the three categories and put them on. I suggested that if anybody wanted to who was invited for tomorrow, if they had the chance, if they wanted to listen to us today, they could hear it, but I'll put them those questions and Gail can send them out to all those people that those are the issues that we're addressing, does that make sense? Yes. And maybe if we could add Jen Carby or Katie McClendon, whoever is most versed on the medical cares pieces that we could look at as a funding, as additional funding. Senator White. Chris. On the mutual aid piece of things in the last few weeks, we just went through that and Senate natural related to wastewater drinking water systems. And so there may be a model there. Well, there's two things we learned about one and the whole municipal wastewater drinking water system. There's a thing called VT worn. It's a mutual aid agreement that had kind of faded out post Irene and now is getting reinvigorated in order to set up these relationships so that they can alone equipment personnel, stuff like that between municipalities to stand up services. So that might be a place to get some useful information. The other thing is a VLCT has a model contract already for mutual aid at the municipal level. And so someone's been working on these kinds of mutual aid agreements that and it might jumpstart work between these private ambulance services. Good, thanks. Yeah, that's a great idea. And we can see if there's maybe we'll ask Karen Horne to join us to see if they can provide some kind of a framework which would save a lot of time with Department of Health or whoever might. Yeah. I think Gwen because she, perhaps because she's a lawyer she also spoke with us about that. Thanks. Any other suggestions committee or other issues that you wanna throw in here for tomorrow? I think that's plenty. Yeah, that'll be a pretty full plate. But I think that it is really, really important that we address these issues. All right, so I will try to right now write up a summary of the issues in the three areas. And then I'll send it to you first so that you can look at it and add what you think needs to be added. And I'll also send it to Betsy Ann. Is that okay? And to Gail, I'll send it to everybody just in case anybody has something to add or if I haven't stated it very clearly my brain seems to be... No, no, don't apologize for your brain. It's doing fine. I have a question for you. If we could, is anyone hearing feedback about how our municipal flexibility is working or not? And is there anything additionally we have to do in the COVID response with our municipalities? I think maybe Chris has an issue around marriage licenses but I thought that they were working around that. Chris? That was the one, I mean, there's marriage licenses. But before we get back on the, I don't know if in your conversation yesterday how far you got in terms of looking at municipalities as fiscal conduits for these private ambulance services. I mean, every town is so reliant on it. I don't know if we've ever done something like that before it certainly seems like a reasonable thing to say all the towns count on the private services. Could the towns that can receive monies that the private services can't, could they then pass it along in some way? That's what... We just, we posed that question and we're going to, that's why we've invited Chris Campani to join us tomorrow because I think he is, there are probably other people in the state also but I do know that he's very aware of all the regulations around FEMA and if there's any work around that can be done, he would know that. Thanks. Great. Hey, Madam Chair. Yes. I'd also say with the list of issues, I'd say to Lupin Nolan from JFO also. Yes, Nolan would be a good person. That's right. Thank you. He's already on the list, he wants to join us. Good, thank you. Somebody wants to join us. Nolan always wants to join us. Okay. Is there anything else committee that we need to, I will try to get these done right away and send them out to you. And then Gail can send out to the people and who we've suggested inviting is Department of Health and maybe the Secretary and Patrick Malone and Drew and the Adjutant General and Katie or Jen and Nolan and Gwynne. Anybody, and Chris Campani, anybody else I've forgotten? I suggest to Jim Finger. Oh yeah, yeah. Who's the, the regional ambulance guy. Yeah, great. He's the one that was so, it seemed so incredulous when I waved my wand. Yes. Is that right Betsy Ann? And then he was even more incredulous when it worked. Highlight of my session. Yeah, well, ours was when you were explaining the triple whammy. I'm missing your wand. Yeah, I'm missing my wand too. I think this emergency, I think you should always grab the wand first because every emergency needs magic. I didn't know I'd be gone for so long. Oh, no. I know. All my clothes and everything is still up in the apartment in Montpelier. And I don't think it goes back up. I know, ours is too. Yeah. Yeah. Oh well. Good thing I have two toothbrushes. Anything else committee before we, Gail? Oh, are you waving goodbye? Katie and Jen that you were talking about. Jen, Carly, or Katie McLean. Oh, okay. First council. When you said, did you mean Secretary of State's office? No, no, I'm sorry. Secretary Smith, because he's, he's over the Department of Health. Right. Okay. And Nolan is our, our medical money whiz. So he'll, if he, if there's EMS money to find, no one should be able to figure it out. Excellent. Sorry. Okay. And then on. I want to make sure that you know that he's watching right now, Madam Chair, also. He's what, hi Nolan. So, on Thursday, we won't meet on Wednesday because the Senate is meeting those of you who are lucky enough to go or unlucky enough to go. Well, are we not, is the Senate not meeting on Wednesday in, up at the State House? We were told Wednesday. Yes. That's what I just said. We are not meeting Wednesday. Right. But we're meeting first. It is. Right. We're meeting Tuesday and Thursday. We're meeting Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. So forgot today's Monday. Today felt like Tuesday. I know. Are you kidding? I think it's Friday already. So we are meeting Tuesday and what we will be, what are we doing? Tuesday. Oh, yes. EMS. What we just talked about. Yeah. Right. On Thursday, what I would like to do is continue the conversation about, with the vulnerable communities and the Secretary of State around, particularly around the voting protocols and how it will impact a low income people of color, the elderly, because they had some concerns, a lot of concerns about the voting protocol and the Secretary of State said that would be a good use of their time. And then have Jason and thank you, Brian, for being right on top of that and sending Gail the information and talk about those same communities and how the census might be impacting them. Does that make sense for Thursday? Nope. Yes. And Gail, what did I say for Friday? I can't even remember now. What about licenses, any additional licenses? I don't, I think we're kind of done with that issue, but I just wanted to make sure there wasn't anything else that we needed to do other than the marriage license issue. No, we thought we were done with that because OPR didn't ask for any other licenses. Right, right. Okay. I mean, OPR can extend any licenses over which they have control. And we haven't been asked by anybody else except the electricians and plumbers. So the only thing we're looking at for Friday is the reviewing EMS issues and looking at hopefully some language. Oh, if we end up tomorrow coming up with anything that we might put into a bill for EMS for the next Senate session. And then let's also then actually look at marriage licenses. Chris, does that work on Friday? Yeah, you saw the email I forwarded. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fairly discreet issue, but if you're interested in getting married, it's an issue at the moment. But I puzzled why given that it's a town license, why isn't covered by the flexibility we enabled in our original bill? But that was around deadlines. Oh, and not. And not issuing the license in the first place. That is my understanding. Is that right, Betsy Ann? I thought we gave towns more flexibility on all of that. Remember we talked about dog licenses and extending. Yeah, but that's extending the time, I think. Yeah. There isn't a time for marriage licenses. If you want to get married, you have to get a marriage license and it has to be signed. And that is a local municipal authority. The town clerks sign it, but right now, according to some town clerks, they're supposed to be signing in person, right? Right. So here's another license that may or may not, it hasn't come up, but I'm wondering if it's an issue at all with the alcohol and the licenses or those simple deadlines? Those are deadlines. Okay, great. Okay. Chris. You're muted, Chris. Chris. Well, it's gone. I said, Gail, I don't want to alarm you, but there's a bear in your seat. Yeah, she's a laughable. Okay. Is your dog, or it's the size of a bear? Very furry. Is your dog bigger than you are, Gail? No, she just looks bigger on screen. It's only about 40 pounds. It's funny how pictures always make you look better. I'm really only about 90 pounds. Okay. Anything else committee that we need to address today? All set. All set. Thank you very much. I will send this out and Gail, add marriage licenses to Friday. Got it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, everybody. And tomorrow are we one or 130? One. I think we did 130 today because I think it was Brian who suggested that it might be Betsy and a chance to actually breathe between it. Elkar and this. And Senator Bray. Oh, and Senator Bray was the. Hero here. Okay. Well, to be fair, I thought more about Betsy than Chris, but. That's true. I'm taking a tougher job than I did. Okay. So. Right. Stay at one Thursday at one and Friday at one. And we've got permission for all those from the protest office. And, and then we have joint rules this afternoon at four and all Senate tomorrow morning at eight 30. Okay. I guess. I've had to, I've had to not listen to everything that all the joint rules and stuff. Cause I'm getting so overwhelmed. But I missed you this morning, Jeanette in our all Senate call. I know. And I. Yeah. I'm just going to say. I assume that Anthony did a wonderful job reporting where we were. He did. It was adequate. Oh, it was good. No, no, he's thumbs up. So. And you know, I, I just have to tell you that I had a conversation with. The pro tem because I was a little bit nervous about. Us kind of. You know, to be honest, you know, I think that was the first time. Was. The first time, we really did not have a panel for vulnerable communities around. Because it's hard for them to know where to go. Often. And since we're government operations, it seemed that we could fill that role. And the pro tem actually, I don't know if he talked about it this morning or not, but he actually said he thought that was. He thought it was a wonderful idea because those communities are having a really hard time knowing where to go and that if we could help in that in any way, it would be a good idea. So I was pleased to hear that. So, okay, I got to run. All right, take it easy. Bye.