 Good afternoon. You are with the Vermont house government operations committee. We are meeting this afternoon to take some initial testimony from members of the executive branch regarding the executive order creating an agency of public safety. So thank you to Commissioner Sherling and thank you to Jay Johnson for being here today. Before we get started with the commissioner. I did want to take a moment just to have a conversation with you Jay Because I in, you know, my first reading of of this rather sizable change. I noted that, you know, this reorganization would create conflicts with existing statute and so I wanted to just check in with you as the governor's legal counsel to find out if you have thoughts on offering Bill language that would achieve the statutory changes that you envision in this executive order. Thank you, Madam Chair, I have not prepared draft legislation. Primarily because the executive order itself. The process contemplates restructuring that would conflict with statute. So what every executive order does when it does this historically is essentially lay out the framework. Make the changes in the executive order and then where necessary. I think there is usually some kind of confirmation over time by legislative council. Conformation confirmation so they can form it over time. Okay, and actually for some of this. Some of this is contemplated in exact in in and it's noted in certain places in the executive order. So for example changes to DMV. If you look in title 23 some of that is already contemplated. And how the Department of Public Safety works with the wardens is there's some of that already in statute. So I mean some of it is facilitated by that but I think that the way that this has been done historically is that the EO speaks for itself. And any changes that need to be made are made by the legislature or they proceed by sort of considering the executive order to be the codification. There are just different ways that I think lech council has chosen to do it in the past. Okay, I'm unaware of any process by which statutes can be changed this dramatically by without an act of the legislature being signed into law by the governor. Well if you look at three VSA 2002 that's exactly what's contemplated and then there's a process in there for that. Okay, thank you for that reference. John Cannon. Thank you Madam Chair. I just want to follow up on that question. You know I was looking at the fourth whereas clause one no one two three four for the one that discusses that the criminal justice council retain its independence. However there's nothing in the executive order that actually implements that except for that statement, which is not authoritative so I mean how does that happen. Actually if you look at the section where in the executive order where the transfer of the criminal justice council is made. That's done a couple of ways. One is a notwithstanding provision that says that notwithstanding anything in the executive order, the criminal justice council remains responsible for its functions. If you if you look at that provision of the executive order I don't know if you need me to help you find that I don't have that up right now. But I can find it. Okay. Thank you. So I have. I have another question regarding the second whereas clause in your executive order. And this was a bit of a head scratcher to me because the second whereas clause states that unless disapproved by both houses of the General Assembly. Our legislative council has has reminded us clearly and in reviewing previous executive orders issued by this administration. That disapproval needs to happen by resolution of one chamber so the House or the Senate so I just wanted to double check to make sure before we embark on spending time on the substance that we all understand the process that goes into approval or disapproval of an executive order. So in 2017, we issued three restructuring executive orders one was ADS which went through one was an agency of economic development that was shot down. And then Department of liquor and lottery was also shot down but then later codified and statute the following year. So there are different ways that the legislature has handled this we noted at the time in those executive orders that it was all pursuant to 2002 which refers to a one house veto. Since that time, we've become aware of the and you know that was obviously in the first 15 days of the first biennium that the governor was governor. And honestly that I was counsel. So since that time we've become aware and more sort of knowledgeable about the provisions regarding this process in the Vermont Constitution as well as US Supreme Court case law. And that is why we felt that it was necessary to point out to the legislature that are our belief that you will need a two house disapproval in order to act to invalidate the governor's executive order. And I don't think it's appropriate actually to get into a legal debate on this topic and I don't know if you're aware but we have been sued on this matter so as you know different lawyers can, can reasonable lawyers can disagree. The law is what it says on its face that it's one house. There is obviously constitutional provision the enactments clause in chapter two section six second six of chapter two. And also us case law in SV chatter, which makes clear that a one house veto is unconstitutional. That said, we've also been sued where we're cool there the plaintiff is claiming that the entire legislative process the entire provision. For this action is unconstitutional. So, since it's in the courts, we're thinking that the most appropriate venue for this to be resolved is in the courts. So could you, we don't need to get into, as you say, a debate on this at this moment to know that I only heard confirmation that you were able to join us this afternoon, less than two hours ago. And so I wouldn't be at all surprised if you didn't have a full briefing available for us but can you point us to the to the case law that you're talking about, or the. So the case law is a is a is a law or is a case called I n s V Chata. It's a US Supreme Court case. I also just sent to the to your administrative assistant and opinion from 2017 where Michael Grady actually briefs representative Oliver Olson on the two that's sort of the two sides of the issue. So, um, there has been a little bit of chatter that I have not necessarily been privy to with respect to that. To that memo, and I understand that that it was not ever publicly released. Maybe Amron you can help me understand or loop. The status of that memo and why is it now no longer on our committee page. If you can just remind me, thank you for the status of that memo. Good afternoon, everyone. Luke Marland, director of legislative council. So the memo was written for a client, a former representative by one of the attorneys in my office and as you know attorney client privilege attaches to our legal opinions and our legal work product. Michael I've been in touch with him he's out on leave right now, but he does not remember if that was ever released publicly. Apparently governor's council has obtained a copy of it, but we don't know and Michael doesn't remember if it was ever released publicly or discussed in committee. And the clients privilege stays with attorney work product with the memo, even if it is available through other means. So we don't know if it's still privileged. We don't know if Oliver Olson ever waived that privilege. If he did not, it should not be released publicly. If he did, it is fine to post it. So that was the issue I raised with other committees, when they were sent the same memo, and it was posted. So the memo done quickly for a client in which, as J Johnson says, Michael laid out the arguments on either side to constitutional arguments. Thank you. Any other questions from committee members on on the topic here. All right, Jay, any other information you can share with us to orient us to how you arrived at at this at the language that you put before us in the executive order. Really, I think it's the enactments clause, which is, and I would consider under using that language to be an other thing that requires to action by the both bodies. So that's a lot of case I NSV Chata. And I think, again, since this is in the courts we would want the courts making this determination. I think if, if Attorney Marland wanted to, he could follow up with former representative Olson to determine whether he has waived the privilege. If it was issued and it's before the committee is no reason to disregard the arguments made in the opinion. I apologize, I'm not an attorney so I'm going to ask a question that may seem naive or uninformed but I hope you'll give it a shot. You are telling us that the, that this executive order provision is in the courts at this moment, and that for that reason you are changing your interpretation of the requirement for two bodies to disagree. You're, you're suggesting that, that, that that is how you are going to interpret this, because it is in the courts. Yet the statute very clearly says one body so I'm just a little confused as to how you use the, the executive order powers that have been in statute since 1970 I believe, but choose to change that part of the process. And I think that it's not my decision. I think that it's very clear in the case of ins fichata which was actually decided in 1983 that the one house veto is something that's unconstitutional when it has binding effect on the executive or others. So, as attorney of Brady notes in his memo. There's a good argument to be made that this action is legislative in character, and would require the action of two bodies. So this is not my decision, I think this is an interpretation of existing law that I think needs to be applied. Okay, I'm still a little bit confused. So, Jerry familiar with any Vermont Supreme Court cases that have addressed executive orders. I am not with respect within in this regard. Actually, I am not generally speaking, I guess I'd have to. I guess I'm not right now. Yeah. You're not familiar with in rate grievance of hood. I'm sorry about in rate grievance of hood. I am not familiar with that. Okay. Discuss executive orders and the ability of one house to reject one. Okay. Can you give me the year? VT412. I'm sorry. One more time. 156 VT412. Okay. And would you be willing to share with me and the committee, what the court holds in that case? It's in a footnote, but it said that it indicates that at least the court reviewed an executive order and then it didn't have an issue with respect to the process. And noted the process that one house could reject an executive order. That's in the footnote. Yep. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. I guess footnotes generally aren't binding as precedent, but I'm happy to take a look at it. I have Mike Merwicky next. I'm happy to take a look at it. I'm happy to take a look at it. I'm happy to take a look at it. I'm happy to take a look at it. All right. Lower hand on mute. So. Madam chair. I just might note for the, you know, again, this is in litigation now. All of this is public. So to the extent any of this can be used by the complainant. It will be used. So I'm happy to continue the conversation, but I would just note that again, we would prefer this to be resolved in the courts. So I'm happy to take a look at it. Given all that, madam chair. I wonder if our committee time could be better used. Not hearing. From commissioner. Or for any of this right now. But we put it to a vote of the house. To. Up or down on this proposal. If it's in the courts, or if they're looking for something from the house. I don't see why we should take up committee time. I don't think it's as problematic. As to whether it's, it's, it's legal. Legal at all. And we have lots of other things we could do with our committee time. I can appreciate that perspective. We are trying to drill down a little bit into understanding. The, the. Legal thoughts that have been put in front of us. So hold that thought. Mike McCarthy. Thanks. And I, I. I'm cognizant of the fact that we're struggling a little bit with trying to understand what. Our role is going to be given this, that this is in the courts. But I'm wondering if the. The memo that we're being, that's been discussed in the, the precedent that's been referenced the ISV Chata really. You know. And I'm wondering if, if that's getting into the very specific about what we're allowed to do. And I'm wondering. It as one body versus two, but I'm wondering if Jim could talk a little bit about the, the difference between when the executive does something that's already been authorized and one body of that, the, you know, versus we're being asked in this executive order. You know, I'm wondering if that's going to either affirm or deny a change. That isn't already set out in statute. You know, it's, it's not a, you know, the ability to change. What's in the executive order isn't already something that we've legislated. So I'm just, I'm wondering if the, if the case law here that's being cited in the. Olsen memo really applies. I would say that the constitution in Vermont is what applies. And the enactments clause actually requires two houses to take an action that's binding on the executive or others when it comes to substantive rights. I don't know of any other, and of course I'm, I'm open to, to being corrected on this. Examples of when one body of the legislature acts alone. It's a constitutional construct. The other thing I would just like to note, I think, for representative Marowicki is because it's in the courts and because the courts are aware that there is a timeline. It does seem to me that we would encourage the bodies to continue their review on the merits. Just because you may have an answer at the end of the day. And if, if you are listening to your counsel and your counsel is saying that you can go forward with one house. There is no reason not to proceed on the merits. I mean, that would be, that would be my, I would say that, that there is, you know, to the extent that this is provided for in law to just dump the baby out with the bathwater and not even consider the merits. Seems to be a mistake at this early stage. And both bodies act in, you know, jointly often. I mean, I guess I don't see what the problem is exactly. I mean, can I ask a follow-up to that point, Madam Chair? So I'm just wondering why then this is, this change was presented to us as an executive order. I mean, why, why not put draft legislation before us that we could consider. So again, this is a process that's been allowed in statute. So we took advantage of it. It's got a very, very limited window. We have 15 days at the start of every new biennium. So we're going to take an advantage of this process as we have in the past. If, if you, if the legislature and its wisdom thinks that this should be done through legislation, it has chosen to do that in the past. It did that with the department of liquor and lottery. So we have presented you with a proposal that would have the force of law if it's effective. The legislature is being asked to consider the proposal. But the legislature and its wisdom could decide that it would have a legislative enactment. It's just that this is the time for us to put forward a proposal in this manner and we have chosen to do so. The other thing is, I think the rationale for doing it now was that this has, this isn't a new concept. I mean, this is something that has been floated with. I think both bodies, it's been discussed in various committees. I think we have some seen some support in the Senate. So we were, I think we were optimistic that this would at least be heard because it's just, it's not a surprise. It's not a new concept that's being floated with the legislature. All right. I've got John Gannon next. Thank you. So, given your, your sighting of the grade, the grading memo, I mean, it acknowledges that this whole process, including the executive order itself could be found unconstitutional. So I'm baffled that you're, you're pursuing an executive order, given your statements. I actually think, and I think I heard attorney Martlin say this in the last committee hearing that I participated in. There is this concept of severability where the courts can actually decide that even if a provision of a statute is unconstitutional, the rest of it could stand if, and I believe that in this case, because there is a constitutional process for accomplishing the same end, there is no vacuum. I believe that you could actually proceed with the reviewing the executive order and take action by both houses. And there is no gap in the law there. Well, what if the court disagrees? Well, that's what makes court cases. I mean, if, if the legislature is now reconsidering the authority that it's given the governor, that's a different issue. Well, I'm not, I'm just, you cited this memo as the gold standard, so to speak. And so it does say the entire process could be found unconstitutional. I don't believe it's an entire process that's unconstitutional. I don't believe it says the entire process. I think that the legislature could easily empower the governor, you know, to recognize the governor to, to proceed with an executive order for an executive branch reorganization. What we believe is unconstitutional, which I believe could easily be severable, is the provision for the one house veto. Okay. Thank you. Look, Martin. I'm sorry, I withdraw my comment. I'll wait. It was about the whole issue of whether this memo is in the public realm or not. I'll wait. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate you. Staying tuned. Mike McCarthy, are you good? Okay. Mark, Mark Higley, go ahead. Yeah, I for one would appreciate hearing the merits and the changes in this executive order. And I also agree that even though the house and Senate are, are in separate bodies in a sense. I also agree that they more or less go along for the most part, and especially on something like this. So I just assumed here the merits for one, I would, I would appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. We will certainly get to that. Bob Hooper. Thank you, Madam chair. I have never experienced this before. So a piece of paper got sent somewhere and then got deposited with us. I'm not entirely sure of what the actual process is for this to be completed. I've heard that somebody may file a objection to it and that puts the end to it. Is it the whole house? Is it an individual member that files a resolution? What is the actual process we're talking about here? And, and that. While the attorneys are chewing that around. I don't think there's a real room for precedent since this is not a novel case that has come forward. This has been executed several times before I would assume. So the purpose of this conversation really, in my mind, before we get to commissioner Schirling on the substance of an agency of public safety is really to, to establish that the legislature reads. And I think it's really important for the committee to be aware of that. And I think it's really important for everyone. To read that either body may disagree. By passage of a resolution. So that resolution in this case. Could originate in this committee regarding this executive order or in the natural resources committee regarding the act to 50 executive order, or it could originate in either of the Senate committees to which it's not individual member based. I think it would be referred to a committee if an individual member were to introduce a resolution to that effect, because it's the policy committee who, who needs to decide whether this is the right way to proceed. And my hope with this conversation was to get some of the procedural legal issues out of the way before we get to the substance of it. And I think it's really important for the committee to be aware of that. I'm not sure that we've actually gotten a whole lot of clarity. I mean, one, one additional option would be that you could. Neither body could take an action. And it would have the force of law, which obviously is the path that we prefer. I can appreciate that. I think you can probably also appreciate the great deal of, um, I think it's a great opportunity for the committee to be aware of what has been suggested and, uh, and subsequently passed in order to, uh, make sure that the structure of government in practice doesn't violate what is in statute right now. And, um, And so I can assure you that we will come back to that question. Uh, if and when we decide to, uh, to, to pursue. Um, I think that would be great. I can appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions from committee members or thoughts from legislative council? Luke, Martland. I do have some thoughts, madam chair. Uh, did you want to hear them? I don't want to get into the weeds of arguing specific constitutional cases, but I think it might be helpful to the committee to focus on certain key points about what it's being asked to do. Would that be helpful? I think we should do some more thinking about this, um, before we decide how to proceed. So, uh, we can take another five or 10 minutes on this before we, uh, get to commissioner. Well, thank you. And I think it might be helpful to just step back for a second and look at the current law, the current law, which is three VSA chapter 41 was passed, I believe in 1970. So it's been on the book for decades and used for the past year. I think it appears to be an effort to allow the governor to, um, expedite reorganizations, but also allow the general assembly to have a voice. And as I mentioned, this has been applied for 50 years, including multiple times by the current administration. So the current law is very clear. It's black and white in Vermont statues annotated, and it only requires a one body disapproval resolution. Now I think you can make valid constitutional arguments on either side. It's an unusual law and it's an unusual structure. So we're not claiming that it, there's no question as to its constitutionality. To the contrary, we think valid arguments could be made, but valid arguments could be made on both sides. And I won't go into those today, but these are based on the exactly the same cases that J Johnson is referencing another case law and also the constitutional provisions. So the takeaway is you have a valid law on the books that's been applied for 50 years. That's very clear on its face. But if it was litigated and now for the first time, the constitutionality may be litigated. You could make valid arguments on either side. So where does that leave the committee? First of all, governor's council is attempting to rewrite the statute. She wants to change the word either as an either body could pass a disapproval resolution to both. So she wants to rewrite the existing law. That's not the governor's role, nor is it my role, nor is it the committee's role that only can be done through amending the existing law. Now the impact of this suggested change obviously makes the general assembly's job more difficult. And now I'm talking as your attorney. So I'm a little more opinionated, but they're asking you to jump over a higher bar. Instead of a one house disapproval resolution. Now they claim contrary to the statute. It has to be a two body disapproval resolution. And obviously that may be more difficult or more may take more time. Now, if the governor is concerned about the constitutionality statute, they could pursue the bill option, which has already been suggested. They could introduce a bill. They could have someone on the committee who supports the idea, submit a bill and go through the normal process, or they could stop while the case is litigated. So now we have a case before the court. We don't know if it'll be a proceed or not. It could be dismissed. We don't know if the court will address the constitutional issues, but at least for the first time, we have a claim before a court, which is raising these constitutional issues. So one other option is you withdraw the EO or stop this process in its tracks and wait for the court to decide these issues. But until a court decides that the statute is unconstitutional, it's valid. It's on the books and it can be used. And in essence, the governor is saying, let's use this statute to achieve this reorganization. We're not going to do it through a bill. We're going to do it through the EO, but we also want to rewrite the statute to make the general assembly have to jump higher and jump over a higher bar to do a two house resolution disapproving. And I don't think that's a very valid argument. There's a couple of other points I'll make. I'm really glad to answer questions. We are very prepared to talk about INS versus Chateau, all the other cases, the constitutional issues. We love this stuff. We like talking about it, but I don't know if it's really before the committee at this point, if the committee wants to go into that, I would welcome the opportunity and I'd welcome the opportunity to hear. Jay Johnson's thoughts, you know, fully fleshed out and anyone else and any other witness, and we could then respond as appropriate, but it seems to me that's not necessarily before the committee right now. There was a question about whether you should make statute consistent with this EO if it proceeds. And our answer is yes, most definitely. You don't want statute to be inconsistent with the EO. So even if the EO goes into effect, we think you need to make statute comply with it. And the best option is to do it at roughly the same time, which would be to have a bill that makes all the statutes consistent with the EO that would pass hopefully at roughly the same time that the EO becomes law. So we think that's very important because you don't want a disagreement between the terms of the EO and what's in the actual statute as codified law. The final point I would make is about the memo. We're not running away from anything in the memo. The memo merely states that arguments can be made on both sides. I'm fully able and willing to drill down on all those arguments as much as this committee wants, but we respect your confidentiality very much. And we take it very seriously. That's why I raise the issue of whether that memo is appropriately in the public domain. That's the issue. We're not trying to cover up anything. It's just we respect your confidentiality. And we take it very seriously. I'll be glad to answer any questions if there are any. Thank you, Luke. Committee members, do you have any questions for legislative council? Mike Marwicky. Thank you. I sometimes forget that Luke and the others are our lawyers. And we can ask them these questions and, and I don't need an answer right now, Luke. Or council. But. Your, your opinion. On how we should proceed, if we should proceed. If we should put a pin in this and wait until things unfold or. It's not clear to me. My personal preference is to put it on hold. And work on other things. The only thing I would say is we take no position as to the merits of the reorganization. So if you like the merits, do nothing. Let it proceed. If you don't like it for any reason, the EO for any reason. Then you have the option of disapproving it. If you disapprove it should be one body disapproval resolution. Thank you. Rob Leclerc. Thank you, madam chair. I guess I do look at this a little bit differently. I would encourage us to, to pursue this and hear all the different facets and aspects of this. The, the concern about whether it's going to be a disapproved by one or two bodies is down the road. And that's assuming that it's going to be disapproved. Maybe after going through this and having everybody speak to it, we could decide that it does have a lot of merit. And it's worth pursuing. So I would encourage us to go through and take all the testimony that's appropriate to make the determination as to whether or not it should be supported or disapproved. Thanks, Rob. I can appreciate that perspective. I would, I guess say that in the event that we decide, we would like to pursue this on its merits. We would prefer for the conforming statutes to be proposed by the executive branch and, and have us take the opportunity to look at the statutory changes necessary to achieve this. So Jay, I want to thank you for joining us this afternoon. This has been an interesting conversation. It's always fun to, to have more than one lawyer in the room because you can get more than, more than four opinions sometimes. Right. You're the first person I've ever heard say it's always fun to have more than one lawyer in the room. So committee, unless there are any last questions for Jay Johnson, I think we can let her go on her way. I'm not seeing anybody diving for their little blue hand. So thank you so much for being with us this afternoon. And we look forward to talking again. Okay. Thank you for the invitation. Commissioner Sherling, thank you so much for joining us today. I apologize that, that we had to put you on hold for a moment. While we spoke with governor's council, but at this point I would like to welcome you to, to take your high level proposal of an agency of public safety and help this committee understand what you think the benefits are and what that would look like and how that would work for Vermonters. So take it away. Sure. Thank you very much, madam chair for the record, Mike, commissioner of public safety. And if only I could take credit for this, the, the work on this began actually before I was born. This has been something that's been contemplated. The organization of public safety assets has been contemplated in Vermont for 51 years. There are at least 23 significant studies and reports that have been done. Many of them have been done by the general assembly on the organization of public safety assets in Vermont. They generally take two forms. The organization of municipal assets, which typically ends in various recommendations around regionalized safety services. And those that address the organization of state assets, which typically end or almost universally end with recommendations that are similar to what's been outlined in this particular executive order. Most recently with legislation that Senator White introduced during the last biennium in its original form, S124 had an agency of public safety. That was quite a bit larger than the one that we have put forward here, but that was the, the most recent genesis of the work to reframe the agency concept using modern constructs and the current operational methodologies that are in place to, to create the best possible product. And that's how we landed on what you see before you as the, the executive order. This is a piece of a larger modernization construct that we began talking with you about in December of 2019 and then into the beginning of the session in January of 2020. There's a slide deck that I sent, which is an updated version of a slide deck that I presented last year on this topic. And there's additional information and some of the historic versions of that slide deck and other documents available at our modernization site for anyone listening in any committee member that wants a little bit more of the background from last year. So at a high level, it, this is a piece of a variety of modernization strategies that are outlined in the slide deck that I sent you this morning. We could spend four or five hours going through those things, but in the interest of ensuring that we're on point and using your time, most effectively, I'll go through a couple of things that I was asked to do, including differentiating between the existing structure and what would change under this executive order. And then some of the high level components of why this is an improvement over the current operating state. So to begin with a quick primer for, I know there's a couple of new committee members. And if you are walking the actual hallways of the state house, you'd hear people referring to secretaries and commissioners and often inverting those terms. And while it really doesn't matter all that much, the difference between an agency and a department and state government and the difference between a secretary and a commissioner is supposed to be clear cut, but it's a little bit more nuanced than that. And agency typically has multiple departments in it, which are led by commissioners, secretary leads and agency. But that's not always the case. For example, the agency of education has a secretary, but no departments, therefore no commissioners. And there are both departments and agencies that exist in the 12 person governor's cabinet. So the agency of education, for example, which has no departments, the agency of human services has multiple departments and multiple commissioners within it. The agency of commerce where I came from before this has three commissioners within it. The department of labor is a cabinet level organization that has obviously no sub departments, but divisions, the department of public safety is much the same. And I could keep going through that list. But the, so the construct of state government has both agencies and departments. And well, oftentimes folks think that there's a hierarchy to them. There isn't always a hierarchy to them. So what this would do, however, is to create, well, let me go through the department first. The department of public safety exists as a cabinet level organization. It has four divisions and then a variety of other organizational units within it. The largest division is the division of the Vermont state police led by a director who also has the title of colonel. The division of fire safety, the division of emergency management, and then a division, which is the administrative division, which is our budgeting and finance and, and technical folks in that arena. And then in addition to that, we've got a division that is the Vermont forensic laboratory led by a director. We have the Vermont crime information center, radio technology services group, the marijuana registry, and a host of other smaller components, some of which are embedded within divisions and others that exist in parallel to those divisions. That's the existing structure of the department of note. There are other components that are related to the operations of public safety with small p small s that exist outside of the department of public safety. And there are a variety of ways that those things have been defined over time, but most commonly the types of things that are contemplated in either historic legislation or in historic studies and reports are the Vermont police academy and the Vermont criminal justice training council, the 911 E 911 operations, the 911 board and the four other law enforcement agencies in state government that exist in parallel to the department of public safety and are embedded in other departments or agencies. There have been other historic constructs that have contemplated doing things like moving other regulatory entities into a super agency of the department, an agency of public safety. Certain drafts have had things including moving the department of corrections into an agency of public safety. So there have been differing definitions of that public safety umbrella, but the one we're working with is essentially sworn law enforcement and anything to do with emergency operations exclusive of emergency medical services, which for good reason exist within the health department because they are operating under physicians licenses. So they're much more closely aligned as an extension of health operations than of the types of things that we're talking about that exist within the department of public safety and Vermont's public safety traditional infrastructure. So that's the backdrop in the existing landscape and a little bit of the history. I could walk through our various strategic priorities, but without going into the weeds of each one of those, they exist in a number of different lanes of the state highway, if you will, modernizing the way we deliver services, enhancing services to Vermonters, ensuring that we're providing enhanced service to other public safety operations statewide. That is police fire and rescue organizations throughout the state, whether that's with training, integrated training, fair and impartial operations, communications and communications infrastructure, et cetera. Simplifying the way we deliver services to them is a core tenet, the more complexity, the more expense there is and arguably the less effective we are in many instances. And developing an overall construct for the way that we look at the delivery of safety services has been a core tenet for many years and something that we've accelerated in the last year. And one of the reasons why the agency of public safety appears to make a good operational sense right now. We've spent years continuing to add fragmentation to the way services are delivered, not just in public safety but across a whole host of things that government delivers and oftentimes it makes sense to take a step back and determine when and how to consolidate and streamline some of those things to decrease that fragmentation and complexity in order to deliver better service. And that's one of the underlying principles behind why the agency construct is a piece of our overall modernization strategy. On slide eight it gives you an overview of the four components of our modernization initiatives from the internal components of how we're budgeting, planning for capital expenses, aligning internal effort. The second bucket if you will is the modernization and organization of state public safety assets. That's where the agency model comes into play. Modernizing support for county municipal and other non-profit public safety assets. We can talk about that for an entire day with all the things that we have going. I'll talk about some of them when we talk about the agency in just a moment. And then finally informing and supporting the public safety system. And at toward the end of this presentation we won't have time to get into it today or some of the core constructs around how to deliver that. So with that as the backdrop I'm going to skip through the overall modernization deck and into the public safety agency of public safety model more generally. We look back at the 23 plus reports and studies that we've done over the last couple of years. They've been a little bit longer than my lifetime. Historic versions have failed for a couple of primary reasons. First they've been efforts at saving money. This is not about saving money. This is there may be some savings in terms of investments going forward in the future. But it is not an effort at budget cutting in the near term. It's not an effort at budget cutting in the near term. It's not an effort at budget cutting in the near term. Historic fears particularly in the law enforcement components of this that anything absorbed into an agency would simply be sublimated to the state police as the largest law enforcement agency in Vermont. That is not, that is very carefully contemplated in what we've put forward here. We've put forward a couple of reports and studies that are happening in a couple of different ways, which I'll describe in a moment. And finally, the complexity. Some of the models before it have suggested as many as eight or more departments existing within this super agency, something that would get close. Not quite the size of the agency of human services, but pretty close to the size of the agency of human services. This is not that. I think that any of the ones that have been put forth. Historically, it should be noted from the outset that this approach, the agency construct is currently endorsed by the chiefs, the sheriffs, the Vermont League of cities and towns, the, the prior criminal justice training council, the new council has just begun meeting. So they have not gotten to this level of depth in their conversations yet. And not only this particular construct, but the, those organizations and many others have endorsed this concept for 30 or 40 years, going all the way back to 1974. So this is not a new, a new idea and not something that comes as a surprise, either to legislators who have been through this many times, but also to the operational folks who execute public safety strategy statewide. So how does this, how does the agency will pivot now to how the agency differs from the department in terms of it's, what's contemplated as a construct and then what would actually move under this particular executive order and then what would happen subsequent to that. As put forward, we would create two departments and a division inside the agency of public safety. So one of the things we wanted to do is not cascade the size of state bureaucracy to create more complexity and more costs. So we, we very intentionally streamlined the size of the organization to be efficient and not overly costly. And in doing that, we created two departments, a department of fire safety and emergency management and a department of law enforcement alongside a division of support services and walk you through what goes inside each one of those things beginning with the department of fire safety and emergency management, both fire safety and emergency management are both within the department of public safety now. They would exist under a commissioner. Within that department would be the division of emergency management. The fire safety operations as they exist now, which include fire safety and building code, inspection division, the fire investigation unit, fire prevention and safety, our technical response unit, which is the hazmat and urban search and rescue and Swipwater teams. And there's the opportunity to make some movement in there, depending on a variety of. Assessments that are done once that department. Were to begin operations, but no substantive alterations are envisioned early on. So that one's relatively straightforward. No new components of the agency would exist. Under that particular department. The second department would be the department of law enforcement, which would also have a commissioner. The first department would be the department of law enforcement. But right now the Vermont state police obviously are inside the department of public safety. What's contemplated here is we would move the, the first and only move directly contemplated is to move the motor vehicle enforcement staff. They would retain their statutory charge. They would retain their director in parallel to the director of the Vermont state police. And that would be the department of law enforcement. One of the advantages there is adding another executive. To this is. Is beyond needed with the amount of work that's going on, both legislatively directed work and work that the executive has got going in terms of modernization of the. Operations of law enforcement assets, particularly in state law enforcement, the amount of work is. That's something that we would certainly welcome. But that's not the main reason for doing this organization. This component. Would begin to streamline a variety of different things. As we talk in the larger modernization construct about sharing assets, whether that's radio communications, infrastructure, technology, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure providing those raw assets, whether that's radio communications, infrastructure, technology, the information technology systems. The facilities themselves. Vehicles, specialized vehicles. It is, and I was not going to surprise anyone that. State government is good at doing each of those things multiple times over. We have multiple radio systems. different words painted on them from Vermont state police to Vermont fish and wildlife to motor vehicle enforcement. While there is not an enormous savings to be had in the near term as I outlined in the beginning, going forward by unifying the delivery mechanisms of these parallel organizations, there will be more substantial opportunities to share assets, whether that's vehicles, radio towers, communications infrastructure, it systems which we tend to buy multiple times over facilities. And you heard me talk about this last year as we build new barracks we envision those to be public safety facilities and not only facilities for those who are working within the Department of Public Safety but there are opportunities potentially to extend those to others in state government but also others in municipal and county public safety to share those assets to the greatest extent possible and then deliver more unified efficient and high level service to as a result and this is just a one piece of laying the groundwork for that kind of future delivery mechanism and that I would describe the entire agency as that not just this department of law enforcement and it gets even more interesting as we start to unpack the division of support services which is next the components that exist already inside the Department of Public Safety include the administrative division. We have communications in two forms the two public safety answering points dispatch facilities that the state runs and a radio technology services unit, which maintains critical radio frequency point to point radio communications, microwave systems, and other communications assets, including a telephone system, all maintained by that unit not only for the Department of Public Safety but for other state assets as well. I'm going to not talk about the things we're going to bring in until the end here, we have fleet services division which is currently split between the state police and other fleet services right now we have the forensic lab division which I mentioned the training division which has training facilities and all of the fire training oversight there is a fire training council much like the criminal justice council that guides fire safety training, but the operations the budget. The administrative support is all done by the Department of Public Safety. And finally the Vermont crime information center, including the sex offender registry the marijuana registry and other information services are all run within the department. All of those would go under the support services division which would be led by a deputy secretary. And in the construct of the agency we would move to components of state government in there the first would be the Vermont criminal justice council on in July of 2021. The operations and budgeting and administrative support for the academy or the core things that would gain additional support. They'd be elevated in their view within the executive branch. They had more closely tied to public safety operations statewide. That's that that is the core component or the core. Those are the core reasons for moving the operations of the academy and a criminal justice council. It is an underfunded area of of state government. It needs additional infusions of administrative support budgeting support and of cash and quite simply embedding them into $130 million enterprise creates a variety of new opportunities to provide that support with the staff we have of over 620 people. And let's say for example it was the General Assembly wanted to invest another $500,000 on top of the $2 million that the criminal justice council currently has at their disposal. And it looks quite different set against a $2 million budget than it does set against $130 million budget in the Department of Public Safety or the agency of public safety. So there are significant benefits to accelerating the work in criminal justice training by aligning it directly with a state entity or an executive branch direct executive branch entity like an agency. The new proposed in this construct is the independence of the criminal justice originally the criminal justice training council when we talked about this last January, but certainly the same extends now the new criminal justice council, the independence of that council and their statutory charge would remain for a couple of different reasons, one the representative nature of that is important in the same way that the representative nature of the fire service training council is important. Because, you know, put quite frankly if you get the wrong person in my job or the wrong person in the secretary's job. They could do significant damage to the delivery of that system without the checks and balances of a representative training council because that council is not delivering service only to state assets it's delivering service across the entire spectrum of law enforcement throughout the state so having that representative component is, we believe remains critically important as you contemplate now the agency. And then finally, moving the E911 operations into a communications division alongside the two PSAPs the public safety answering points that we run and the radio communications technology unit. This is something that the legislature actually directed now two years ago they directed the Secretary of Administration to determine not if but where the E911 operations should go in the executive branch. And this is an extension of that work. Again, we envisioned, and we have proposed that the 911 board because 911 operations again touch all facets of public safety and all public safety operations statewide not just state operations that the board retain its current role, but that moving into the agency of public safety would allow a couple of key things to occur. One, again the budgeting and administrative support alongside the talented team that they have, but equally important and actually, I think pretty exciting. Moving the 911 operations more closely to the operations of the two PSAPs and the radio technology unit would allow us to really move forward with a unified vision for the future of emergency communications statewide, rather than having separate entities along parallel paths, whether that's unifying investments or strategy, or again equipment, engineering prowess, technical capabilities, and cross pollinating those things has great advantage to Vermonters with one of the most important pieces of our overall delivery system is the ability to pick up a telephone or a device and be able to access emergency services as swiftly and efficiently as possible. I'm going to pause for a second. I'm happy to know I can walk you through the timeline or we can go into more depth on sort of what this is and what it isn't at your discretion. I'll open it up for a moment for questions from committee members about any of the shifts that the Commissioner has talked about so far. Rob LeClaire. Rob, we need you to unmute. Sorry, I clicked on the button I just didn't look. Thank you madam chair. Good afternoon, Mr. Shirley, how are you my friend. I'm well sir, how are you. Good, good. I have several questions around this. I guess the first being. I've heard that we're looking to make some significant changes structurally. My question would be is what difference would say for lack of a better expression the frontline force or the boots on the ground. What would they see. In other words, if DMV became a part of this larger agency or different agency. What, what, how would it affect them how would it affect the officers that that work for DMV. And the other question I have is, is Vermont kind of an outlier in that don't most. I guess states have their emergency services broke down at least by county where Vermont we seem to have it even down as far as town go but the main question I'm looking for is just so where would something like DMV how would that affect them in your opinion. So, immediately, there wouldn't be significant changes that that they would note. I would hope that what they would see was is additional attention and additional focus on their needs and their ongoing operations as they attach to an organization that is whose primary mission aligns directly with their primary mission. Which is being directly attached to an organization whose ancillary mission aligns with their primary mission which is enforcement and safety. So that's the, that's the primary thing they would continue to support DMV operations, because there are other components of what the Department of Motor Vehicle does, does in terms of regulatory oversight and support for a variety of different things that they would continue to do in much the same way that emergency management fire safety and state police provide support to other components of state government. But the first thing I think that would be noted is the alignment of vision and effort around delivering public safety services in particular enforcement regulatory oversight that would benefit from being attached to a larger organization with the same mission. Good. Thank you. Peter Anthony. Thank you very much madam chair. And I'm Mr Shirley must be breathless after that introduction I certainly am. My curiosity, being a new kid in this enterprise has to do really with how would the delivery of services, the decision making the directness of access up the chain of command if you will excuse the expression. Would that be different what what in short would be sacrificed, if anything, and in the conversion, as you've described the current day, and obviously we have on the paper, the creation of the two divisions and if you like combination of some of the parts of you, as you've described it. I'm, I'm, I'm searching around for what should I watch out for as I evaluate this proposal, in terms of what would be lost either an efficacy of decision making, or the quality of the services delivered and feel free to use either department A or department B so to say is the context for that. Sure, that's a great question. And one of the things we very intently focused on was not to create a bureaucracy that would water down decision making create additional layers of bureaucracy that could impair communication decision making etc. Essentially, you'd be going from a leadership team that has seven right now to a leadership team that has nine. So that's the primary difference you'd add to commissioners. That would actually add capacity. So, whether it's the, the speed with which decisions can be made. The amount of communication that could flow the volume of communication that could flow. I think those would be enhanced with this. This particular setup, as opposed to having a large bureaucracy as was contemplated in some prior versions of this. And I feel like there's a second piece to your question and I'm, I'm not able to put my finger on it so there's our piece that I'm missing. So the, the sort of architecture in terms of whether it is efficient in the, in almost the physics sense. Can you make a decision and implement it quickly. And what would the quality of service, if, if any, be sacrificed the interface between, as my good friend Rob LeClaire said boots on the ground and the general public who are consuming those services. What we can see in terms of service provision is an incremental increase. I want to be really clear that all of the components that we're talking about moving together, both in at this stage and the ones that might we will study a little bit further and contemplate how we might move them in the future are all high functioning in general. So there's some incremental additional service that you would get so for example. And this is a micro example between emergency management, fire safety in the department and the state police. The search and rescue teams operate out of the out of the Department of Public Safety primarily. So adding the 911 folks potentially adding in the future fission wildlife to the the agency of public safety that's something that's contemplated in the executive order to be looked at in the future. Those kinds of additions would add expertise and tie together more closely teams that operate separately that could deliver better service to Vermonters. That's probably not the best example because fission wildlife is contemplated to be in the future. In terms of motor vehicle highway safety having the expertise of the commercial vehicle enforcement teams tied closely together with the operations of the state police can could potentially create some efficiencies could create some additional the ability to brainstorm on strategy more closely. And folks will say well why can't you just do that now I can just take two pieces of state government have them sit down in a room and work on those things, you can. It's completely different having two components of state government or state government and municipal government collaborating on a case by case basis which is the way it works now. It's completely different to have those exist side by side in the same organization and constantly continuously collaborating and improving operations to Vermonters and that's what we're, that's what we're shooting for same thing in communications infrastructure so by taking the expertise and the talent from the folks in 911 are doing a great job right now, but attaching them to folks that are doing a great job with PSAP operations and technology services and those engineers and infrastructure folks. What we hope and and certainly plan will happen is that we'll unify our investments and enhance the service to Vermonters by doing things like there's another micro example. Take all those components. We need to stand up a new tower to do microwave relay for PSAP operations and 911 operations. Well at the same time in that particular service area. There's two police departments a rescue squad and three fire departments that have substandard communications infrastructure for their radio frequency. Why aren't we having all of those players together at the table, led by this new communications team to stand up a tower that everyone co invests in, or the state purchases allows folks to put their communications assets on. That's thinking that's not happening right now and we envision that that's the kind of accelerating continuous improvement that will be enabled by doing the things that we're proposing here. Thank you Madam chair and thank you commissioner Shirley for the overview. And as I understand what's being proposed. The goal is to modernize the enterprise possible reforms cost effectiveness efficiencies. And there are a lot of moving parts to this effort. So my question is, what will this cost, what are the hard costs, what are the soft costs. And when I say soft costs, you know, training, cultural shift, whatever it takes to bring together one agency from multiple pieces. So what will it cost approximately, obviously you don't know. Well the short answer is about $400,000 in in salaries is the cost. The rest of it is, there are potential, you know, again incremental savings and really what I would describe as cost flattening in the future. So whether that's, you know, buying a piece of radio test equipment that can be used in 911 operations and radio technology services and buying it once instead of buying it twice. Those are the kinds of incremental things that we certainly think will happen. Buying Highway Safety gear that right now is bought, you know, once in the DMV operation and once in the state police operation. There are instances where we think we're going to be able to buy one of those things instead of two or two instead of four or two instead of six. And then in the future as we get into, you know, the discussions around whether the warden service were to join the agency or not. We have specialized a host of different kinds of specialized vehicles dozens of snowmobiles ATVs and specialized vehicles that are bought multiple times over. And we paint, like I said in the intro, you know, we paint. There's no wildlife on them. We paint Vermont State Police on them. Why don't they just say state of Vermont boats. They should just say state of Vermont on them and we share those assets across all of the safety services. I believe to include municipalities instead of buying a boat for XYZ fire department, we should have a fleet of boats. They're trained to use those assets and they're shared instead of maintaining storing and purchasing an exponential number of assets than the ones we actually need at any given time. Thank you. And if I could just follow up, what, what challenges do you envision for this, this process of creating an agency of public safety. Well, the first one we're engaged in right now, sir, so convincing the legislature that this isn't something some nefarious thing that's going to break state government. I don't believe it is I would not be part and parcel of something that I thought was going to in any way be detrimental to the delivery of safety services something I have dedicated my entire life to The next thing is we have to be very careful. As we bring in the components into the agency that the primary asset we can talk I keep using the word assets and usually I'm talking about physical things but the most important asset we've got are the people. The people that deliver exceptional service. There, there isn't anything broken about the way that the Vermont police Academy operates 911 operates or DMV operates the three components that we're talking about moving into the agency. The advantage is the is it's a mathematical advantage by taking a positive number and adding it to another positive number and multiplying that talent out. That's where we think that the huge advantages it's not about trying to fix something that isn't working well it's about elevating the level of service, and that's the most important thing to communicate and to make sure that that transition happens and that folks do not feel like they're committed to what is currently the larger organization the Department of Public Safety, they're coming in as as equals as a as part of the public safety small p small s family. That's the biggest challenge is to make sure that is executed well. So we not only continue to deliver great service to Vermonters but that we elevate that service as a result of this work. John Ganon. Thank you. And thank you for testifying today Commissioner Shirley. The question, going back to Rob's example about boots on the ground with DMV. Now, any law enforcement officer has some discretion about what laws they enforce correct. They do. So, if public safety was to take over DMV. The determination of what discretion to apply would become public safety's responsibility, and not the Department of Motor Vehicles. Would that be correct. I suppose if we were to, you know, sort of hyper analyze that could be accurate but important to note that much of DMV's focus is based on national standards, it's based on data driven approaches to where to focus in much the same way that the state police is. One of the arguments I heard early on last year was that if you took the other entities that are law enforcement facing and you put them inside the Department of Public Safety or the agency of public safety. The risk is that they become 911 responders. I can assure you that that is that will not happen unless there's, you know, obviously a significant emergency in which case that already occurs. And I can say that with confidence is even prior to my arrival at the Department of Public Safety. You don't see that happen with the state police we're not taking the technology investigation unit or the executive protection unit or the drug unit and and those are just examples of a variety of folks that have specialized focus. We're not pivoting them to take 911 calls or we're not taking them out of their assignments to go do some other XYZ flash in the pan priority so Ultimately, everyone rose in the same direction relative to the state's priorities, but there is there are diffuse priorities and there are diffuse needs relative to law enforcement and any other component of the current Department of Public Safety. And I think no credit to me but the way that the organization is set up enables the requisite level of focus regardless of what your assignment is. Well, I appreciate that you and have everybody respond to 911 calls that is your personal decision. I mean, if you chose you could have everybody respond to 911 calls if everybody was under the Department of Public Safety. That's true but the the premise of the question we would be breaking and whether it's me or someone who follows me, you'd be breaking our ability to do other core components of the delivery of public safety services so Well, it's technically what what you're saying is technically possible the Commissioner or Secretary could direct that operationally that wouldn't make any sense there are just too many things the scope of service in the existing department and in the proposed agency still has to have a requisite focus on all the key areas of operation or we will not be achieving public safety in Vermont. Following up on that what interface are you going to have with the Department of Motor Vehicles with respect to their priorities with respect to enforcement because all of a sudden you're taking away their enforcement abilities, but they're still another department not under your authority yet. How would you coordinate with them. So it's the sworn components only that would be coming to the agency of public safety, and we know we put most simply, we coordinate across the cabinet on a daily day to day basis on everything you can imagine, most vividly over the last 10 months, only back up a little ways. That has been the case or had been the case for three years prior to coven coming to our shores in early March of last year. And what we've seen since then is all of that communication all of the collaboration that happens among the various departments and agencies was taken out for a serious test drive with coven and as a result. It's been in peace of why the state's experience with the most substantial emergency and in human history in the last 100 years has been so successful. We would simply be replicating that on a micro basis relative to DMV operations. Okay, so I have a second question which deals with the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. They correct me if I'm wrong but right now they have an independent budget from your from public safety correct. Now, once this merger occurs, they no longer will have a separate budget it'll be subsumed within the public safety budget. Yes, they would have a division budget would still exist separately with separate codes but yes it would be part of the larger construct, but you, but you would have overall responsibility for that budget. Yes. And so, given that if you were unhappy with say the way the council was handling on professional conduct cases you could start starving the council for funds. Only to the extent the General Assembly concurred with that because the budget is passed by the General Assembly as proposed by the executive branch with particular line items authorized and we only have the ability to move small components of that once the budget has been galvanized. Or you could hire an executive director that was totally opposed to the council's mission to investigate on professional conduct. Except that the council would be weighing in on on that appointment and ultimately that would go to the governor so there's a political overlay to to key appointments as well. But you'd have a lot more say in that appointment. I would have probably more than I have now as a single council member yes. So, I just have to say I'm very concerned about what I think happens under this executive order. And that is that what was an independent council becomes not independent and it becomes right under law enforcement authority once again, which is something we try to eliminate in this one 24. I would disagree sir. And, and, and that's because the commissioner or secretary of public safety has some responsibility to law enforcement but my responsibilities are far more diverse than that I'm not a police chief the police chief is Colonel Birmingham and the, the, the, I believe the opposite and and our intent is exactly the opposite of what you're describing our intent is two fold one that the council retain its independence and its ability to guide the operations of criminal justice, both training and professional regulation with no change there, but to give them all of the assets of a 600 plus person operation and $130 million budget instead of a seven person operation and $2 million budget. Okay, thank you. Peter Anthony. Thank you very much madam chair. I'm sort of going in a slightly different tack following representative again and though, in trying to figure out. Back to my earlier worry about what what's the sacrifice I use our word but but what is, there's got to be some kind of trade off in this or invariably is let me ask the question, which I think you alluded to the test that the test that coven has presented the state of Vermont and all the services which were challenged during the, the pandemic since last March. Any sort of a thought experiment. Suppose we have another stressor. I'm trying to evaluate and think about the new construct. If there's another Irene, if there's a natural disaster that we're not even familiar with at this particular moment. Thinking of communication central over in Waterbury, and who would be in the room, who wouldn't be in the room under the new construct, what assets would be able to be harnessed, and who would be able, essentially, to bring a debate to a close and say, this is the way it's going to be, let's get going. So stress test for the new construct, I guess. Yeah, great question. That's the one thing that would not change at all. And the reason is this that in the state's emergency operations plan and the way we execute emergency operations, everything falls under the state's emergency operations center in the case of an emergency. Now, covids a little bit of an anomaly because it is, is primarily a health emergency so health operations is has a different role than in an Irene, etc, because there's just so much decision making that has to happen that's based on on health policy. But for the Iranians, the floods which are more tip are most typical disasters in Vermont, or anything else. All of the assets of state government end up under a unified command system which is run by the state's emergency operations center so whether they're embedded in the agency or then they're in their current locations doesn't change much. We have the Department of Public Safety has the ability under existing statute to to pull all of those strings in that in those worst case scenarios when there's an emergency. Thanks. All right. So, thank you Commissioner I, I have one other question for you and then maybe we can spend a moment just jogging through your any final thoughts you have. Thank you to the Criminal Justice Council. Of course the legislation that was passed out of this committee last year, made some significant changes to the council, really with our intention and focus on beefing up the ability of the council to be a professional regulation organization. I did rep Ganon's concerns about the council budget and and and resources being allocated to the council being more directly related to whether that's given approval by the fifth floor, but I want to come back just a little bit to the substance of what the council is doing as a professional regulation entity. We, we are very concerned that they maintain their independence. And you mentioned the, the strength of them as a representative body with members of the public and, and you know, a broader diversity of inputs. What can you tell me about how the council would maintain its independence. If, for instance, as you said in your presentation the wrong person at some point in the future has your job. I, I have concerns about that and I'd like to understand how you see putting some guard reels around that. I have a question the part of the, the, the early convert the early legal gyrations this afternoon, tangentially touched on this. What the executive order does is it creates the agency and it moves the, the, the support the budgeting as I keep saying the budgeting and the administrative support for the operations of the police academy to public safety. The very expressly states that the council retains its statutory charge and responsibilities. So, whatever statutory charges you give to that council exist in parallel to those given to the now the commissioner of public safety what the order says is the responsibilities of the commissioner will fall to the secretary. And that would just be a name change initially and then any other alterations that you choose to make statutorily would certainly be interested to work on some additional things. But because of that, there, the secretary of public safety would not have the ability to impede or interfere with the council's statutory charge and relative to to the to the oversight components and professional regulation. I believe that that separation is is important and would welcome a back end conversation and obviously my my first request is, let's create the organization that is the agency and move the components that have been contemplated. And let's also work to make sure there aren't other enhancements I'm confident that there are that the way the statutes are currently framed that there won't be problems because the, the, the council's given a particular charge, and the secretary's given a particular charge and they don't touch. That would be good. But I would also welcome an exploration and a conversation about any potential enhancements to that going forward. Okay. So, I understand that the, the, that conceptually what you're saying about the council maintaining its independence. We had some conversations with the council last week in which the council said, you know, we need a full time attorney to help us navigate these 25 or so allegations of professional misconduct we need an investigator, we need a technician. And at the same time, over the past many months we have heard, I have heard many commissioners and secretaries talk about there being a hiring freeze. And if the this governor or a future governor decided to institute a hiring freeze, but was being told by this by this very critical law enforcement oversight body that they needed these assets, these additional positions, how can we be assured that those positions would be made available. I can't speak to the assurance that positions would be made would be made available but I can't speak to having come from commerce. We had a number of both sort of cross section of governance and advisory boards and I would put the criminal justice council and more of the governance board role they have specific statutory authority to do certain things they are not advisory. It's not as usual for those boards to even though they existed with the, again the budgetary administrative support of the agency of commerce to come to the legislature and say, you know, despite the fact that this is not in the executive branch that we need X Y or Z. So, there's, and that's just one example I think that construct exists throughout. Probably all of the agencies and departments. I'm actually struggling to find an example of that within the Department of Public Safety currently but the service training council may lobby independently for investment independent of the executive branch I have to check with the director on that. Well, yes, but we all know that in a very tight budget year. The first plan get that gets laid on the table is the governor's plan and if the legislature strays from that, we have to somehow find the funds to do those important things and it's just a nagging worry in the back of my mind. Agreed. At this point in time. The, the goal is the opposite of the fear that you have, which is, we need to invest more we need to give more resources to, in particular the operations of the Academy and the criminal justice council because there's so much accelerating work to be done. See, I in particular see their move to the agency as accelerating that investment, not the opposite. Now, same fear, and you know that you elect a different governor in whatever number of years, and the priority changes. The same challenges exist as that. I think as director sheets will tell you from my conversations with him I think he will be relaying something along the lines of the, the challenges of being that $2 million budget up against our $130 million budget, which is up against AHS is $2.5 billion budget. You're just lost in the morass. So there are more advantages in terms of investment and, and moving forward than disadvantages. I'll stop there. Adopting a Dr. Levine term I'll stop there. Thank you commissioner done again and has a question. Well, first comment, having worked for a federal independent agency. There is a vast difference between an independent agency and how it deals with administrative changes. Then a agency that's not. You know, you can't pump a lot of political appointees into an independent agency. There's a lot of ways to ensure that such an agency does stay independent from the administration, who may have very political views on things. I'm very concerned about the Vermont criminal justice council. And I also am concerned about the perceptions that people are going to have when we through S 124 really tried to increase the independence of the council. And many people could see this as a step backwards that all of a sudden, the council is now under the police's control yet again. How do you undo that perception. They're not under the control of the police sir they are in the that's exactly why the Department of law enforcement and the division of support services exist in different areas of the agency. And it's exactly why, as I drafted it. I made a deputy secretary, which is above a commissioner in charge of that division of support services. And again, is the public going to understand those fine distinctions. If we collectively describe exactly that I think the answer is yes, if we politicize this and and decide to spin it in a particular way then the answer maybe no. All right, any other questions from committee members. Mark Higley go ahead. Thank you commissioner in your discussion around the sharing of equipment in particular whether it be stonemobiles boats and so on. I think it brought to mind to me in a sense the rivalry between even town fire departments where when there is an actual fire mutual aid comes together and everybody's on board. I'm just wondering, is it a similar thing with the ranking file the boots on the ground so to speak whether it's DMV whether it's fishing wildlife folks that they take so much pride in and their symbol on the side of that stonemobile that says fishing game. Have you reached out to any of the, like I say they rank and file folks as to what their feelings are for this overall overall approach. The, the not relative the equipment sharing component, because it's, it is concept now that we're, we're slowly starting to move towards some version of reality. I should be even more clear, it doesn't even have to have a sticker on it. It could have a decal that says Rutland County Sheriff that they slap on there when they're using it that's fine. It's, it's about sharing the asset that is is the important piece. You know at any one time in Vermont how many rescue snowmobiles do we have in use. The answer is not that many, but how many do we have out there. The answer to how many we need is not to but it's not 200 and it's it's trying to figure out those things it's how many radio towers, how many 100 foot towers in one county do you need the engineers can tell us. But the point is we should build one in the correct spot rather than two because in two different spots because folks want to have theirs in their own backyard. Again, I can understand that but you know I also know that, like I'd mentioned in fire departments pretty, pretty much each department has such pride in their equipment their own equipment their own abilities. I know they always come together but I'm just wondering how it would be if there was a whole Northeast Kingdom regional fire department. That's a great point that's that's not what I'm suggesting here, although other reports have said that this is about how we're organizing the state assets and how we may share those assets more widely. I'm not, please don't take my descriptions as advocating for anyone to regionalize their services, I would simply refer them to other reports as they debate that going forward. Okay, thank you. Thank you madam chair. Commissioner in your PowerPoint you noted historic versions that have failed at this effort, and in your listed some some points. Can you point us to a state or states that have done this successfully in terms of standing up an agency of public safety. Specifically the transition there are a variety of states that organize their assets this way that there's a version of what we call public safety it could be called a variety of different things and they're all under one particular umbrella so this is a, it is more common I think to have these kinds of assets unified in one place than fragmented in the way that Vermont does and that's a. It's more of a New England construct the older states that have smaller municipal control versus someone mentioned it earlier. There are many states that county government has a much more robust. Intersection with services. It's a function of that more than anything. Thank you. Bob Hooper. Thank you madam chair. As presented this this sort of is registering with me, particularly with the equipment stuff and to some degree the chain of command stuff is like on on demand inventory control which kind of works well until you have more demand than you have inventory. And in this particular sort of situation I can see the fish and wildlife people needing a boat but there are three held in reserve just in case there's an emergency someplace where they're no longer in control that our assets, because they don't have any assets it's communal asset. That sort of bothers them because it's kind of like the public safety truck with the ram on the front of it it's always in the wrong end of the state. When you needed to ram somebody's door down. The other thing is I'm hearing from people in the field that the best example I can use at this point in time is the guy that goes around to inspect inspection stations. He's usually got the DMV inspectors right there in his department to do something. It's not going to exist anymore he's going to have to go up another tree and down another one so there are several examples of that sort of enforcement being taken away and leaving investigatory but no enforcement capacity, where they left. Then there's always the idea that the state police and the motor vehicle inspectors always argue about who gets to go out and weigh trucks in the afternoon. So there's a, there's a really smart guy on the West Coast named Gordon Graham he's a risk manager and my favorite Gordon Graham saying is there's two things people hate status quo and change. Yeah. What you're hearing is the fear of change. The difference between someone doing an inspection at an inspection station and coming across a fraud violation and calling someone who currently sits within DMV versus calling that same person who happens to sit within an agency of public safety. There's no difference the phone number will remain the same and the charge will remain the same. The support that that person has relative to their enforcement role will change they'll have a bigger bench to pull from. There's more technology to pull from of a bigger budget to pull from, etc, but operationally, there's, you know, it's a false narrative there. There's the asset remains focused on on what it's focused on now. The asset does but the control of it shifts. Yes, and it gains more support for its mission rather than less. That's the goal. I that these are not. And I realized that goal but going back to representative Anthony's question that's kind of a lack of perception so far. And it's new. Well, it's not new. This has literally been discussed since the year before I was born and studied 23 times since then, and they all say exactly the same thing. So, it's, it's new this month in executive order form. But these concepts have been vetted and re vetted. Dozens of times. I don't know if I've done it successfully, I suppose is probably that. But that's that remains to be seen. New people, new decisions. Thanks. So Commissioner, Shirley, you have, I think a few more pieces of paper that you have submitted to us. So is there anything else that you'd like to go over with us. There's the, the agents, there's an overview and sort of the high level overarching goals and things on a Word document and there's the slide deck which puts the agency in context with the overall modernization strategy. A lot of the questions that we've been through our things that are addressed in that three or four page Word document. And I could go through them point by point to have them on the, the audible or video record but I'm not sure how constructive that will be for the committee members so I'll defer to you madam chair whether you'd like me to go through more of that or or just leave it to the three or four pages of synopsis there. I know, and it's noted in the document that on the modernization site there's a, there are additional components and anyone who's interested in reading the literally hundreds of pages and the reports that we've called together I'm happy to share that directory with you if it is in any way useful. Yeah, I will leave you to jump in if you will have a preference on what the commissioner has offered and otherwise we can wrap the committee hearing for the day. I'm not seeing anybody jumping in and asking you to back up and go slower and say it all again. If I may madam chair I'll just reiterate that this concept, whether it was in prior administrations with prior legislatures and prior reports has been vetted thoroughly time and time again, including this time around we have engaged numerous stakeholders and there are no substantive reservations. Actually, I shouldn't even hedge that I said that there have been no reservations voiced around moving this finally forward after 50 years of contemplating it. Thank you. I appreciate the conversation it's been a long afternoon, and I feel like we have peppered you with questions but rest assured we will do this again. I look forward to it thank you for the thoughtful questions I do understand some of the skepticism and I, and I understand those who are are fearful of change I can only say to those who are listening and maybe fearful of that change that this will if it moves forward it will improve public safety operations and service delivery to Vermonters and not in any way impair our employees ability to deliver that service. Last call for questions from committee members. All right. Thank you commissioner, I hope that you have a good rest of your afternoon and we will see you again in committee soon. Thank you very much. Have a good day. So that is a wrap for today committee. We are back on tomorrow morning at 9am. So I will see you all just a few minutes before nine and Mike murwiki has his hand up. Thank you madam chair. I haven't looked at the whole schedule for this week so I may be jumping the gun but I'm just hoping we can set aside some time to discuss where we started the committee here and today. I'm just puzzling that the administration came forward with with at best the puzzling opening move of trying to dissuade the legislature from exercising their own due diligence and really putting a lot of effort into this. We did take a look at the proposal. So there's a there's more there to unwrap and I hope we get a chance as a committee to look at that. We most certainly will. And I suspect there will be other opinions that that come before us before we're, before we're done discussing whether to move forward with this on its merits and how to deal with the misinterpretation of statute that's contained in these executive orders. Peter Anthony. Thank you very much. I just want to draw my colleagues attention to the last whereas before the now therefore. It was it's it's it goes to the heart of my puzzlement and it's a separation of powers problem as as I am famous I guess from saying, but it says something like and I if I understand it. The executive order, and I'm reading it provides a framework for the agency to be created which the executive and legislative branches can work together to establish agreeable policy blah blah blah. I mean, I'm just puzzled because it's like we're we're partnering with a separate but equal entity of state government. It's not the way I think about my job. And it's just so confusing to me. And doesn't help me grab the substance of the proposal as Commissioner Sherling has laid it out. I keep getting distracted with the confusion over what our role is and I'm, I don't know, maybe I've got less patients than Mike for Ricky but I just, I want to not spend my time thinking if it's not going to be productive I guess is my where I come down. Well, I guess I would, I would add to what your concerns are. Just the, the other concern that even if we were to agree with the substance of this executive order there would need to be significant legislation passed by both chambers in order to enact and where it becomes. Whether it comes into existence by virtue of this executive order or not. There's a lot of statutory changes that need to be made and so we would, you know, hope that the administration would be planning to propose legislation to that effect. That would, that would clarify our role for sure. Yes. There's a lot of details, which is why we go over our legislation so very carefully as we are contemplating it. Any other questions, comments or committee discussion on this before we wrap for the day. All right. Thank you all. It's been an interesting afternoon. Now we get to sign off and go see if we can scrape together some of the details.