 I'm also co-chair of the Governor's Workforce Equity University Council. So I'm kind of speaking from both of these perspectives. And I don't, you're dealing with a really complex bill here as you're seeing, right? And I don't have, I'm not gonna tell you that I'm strongly in favor of this or strongly opposed to this, but I wanna kind of share some thoughts that I've had as we've gone through this process that hopefully might be helpful. So I do wanna say just broadly speaking that I think that there's tremendous value in taking a systemic approach to looking at racism within state government. And I think that Commissioner Festigy made a good point yesterday about the retention level of people of color in state government that we lose people of color as employees a much higher rate than we lose white employees. And I was glad that she made that point because that's something that the council has been trying to pay attention to and that there aren't really obvious reasons for. And so that lens support to the idea that there's something kind of underneath this all that's going on that we really need to take a close look at. It's not just a simple matter of fire this person or change that policy. And so I appreciate that approach and that you're trying to do that. So just to speak a little bit as a co-chair of the Governor's Workforce Equity and Diversity Council. This is a council that I don't know if you've heard testimony about exactly what this is. Tell us. Okay, so it exists by executive order and I don't know who started it. It's been around for a while, but it's kind of like the Equity and Diversity Committee of the State Workforce. And so I have been, this is the third time I've been part of such a committee. For my technical college when I worked there, I was on their Equity and Diversity Committee. When I worked at Norwich University, I was part of their Campus Climate Committee is what they called it. And so I had a fair amount of experience with this kind of employer based group that's trying to provide some advice, trying to provide some recommendations. I will say it's been kind of quiet in this sense last fall. And I take responsibility for that. There are, we have big plans, but getting them into motion is, it's hard when you have people who are just kind of doing this as a committee that they're on as part of their regular job. So I would say that this council is kind of simultaneously, if we're looking at the work that the bill is trying to accomplish and you compare it to what the council is trying to do, the council's kind of at the same time too broad and too focused to be able to accomplish what this could do. So we're a little bit too focused in that we work with the Department of Human Resources and we provide input to the Equal Employment Opportunities Plan. And we have a particular mandate to assist with a report and to assist with that plan every year. And then it's kind of broad in that it's not specifically focused on racism. It's just sort of everything to make this workforce better. And so it's not an adequate body to be able to deal with the kinds of issues that this bill is trying to deal with. Although it certainly can be a collaborator, it can be part of the picture in doing that. And so then I also wanted to talk just a little bit about the structure as you're looking at how to do this. And again, I'm not gonna tell you which way I think you should do it, but I think you're kind of dealing with two choices. You can have this very independent body and staff person who is working on kind of that outside and is not subject to political appointment, is not answerable to the governor. And I think that was really the goal of the Senate committee was they wanted it to be very separate. And then the other way to look at it is a state employee who is serving at the pleasure of the governor who is carrying out the administration's wishes. And I think there's real value in both of those. They both have their pros and their cons. In my experience, doing this kind of work in other places and also doing gender equity work in schools and tech centers, you gotta have a top-down approach. This kind of stuff just doesn't work when it's not coming from the very top. And it has to be not just the top person hires somebody and says, okay, you got it or forms a committee and says, okay, you take care of it. Because there's really a tendency to kind of push this stuff off into that group or that person and say, all right, we've got someone who's gonna handle it. It has to be an investment that's really coming from the top and infuses everything downwards. So this is, I think, sort of the challenging place that you're in is how to make that happen. And again, I say there's pros and cons to both ways to do it. If you wanna go this kind of independent route, we have a structure built into state government already for an independent body, a commission, a panel, whatever you wanna call it, and somebody who works for that group. So we've got the Human Rights Commission, which is this group of people that are all appointed and they hire the staff who carry out the work and they're completely independent. The Commission on Women is the same way. We've got this body of 16 commissioners. They're all appointed by different people, not all by the governor. I work for the commission and we're not answerable to anybody else within state government. We don't have any kind of responsibility or authority that allows us to tell anyone else in state government what to do. And so that's a key difference that you need to sort out. But I would say if you're thinking about doing this independent route, I would encourage you to look at the structures that are already in place. When it comes to things like posting a job and hiring and supervising and firing, it's all there already within the structure of state government. You don't really need to come up with a new, I mean, I noticed in here there's something about coming up with a process for removing this staff person. And I don't know that you need something separate and new for that. I also agree with the witnesses who've spoken about the title of it. Civil Rights, I think is too broad. I think if you want to address systemic racism, you should say that. And however you want to title that, but I would encourage you to get that in there because I think there's a lot of value to having the title very clearly say what it's for. And so there's gonna be a lot of explanation about it. And then also just, and maybe this is a question for appropriations, but as you're thinking about supporting this position long-term you're thinking about funding, there's salary and there's per diems for the panel members, but then there's also all of the administrative support and the infrastructure that comes with that. And it may be that the administration is perfectly fine with just kind of absorbing all that, but things from there may not be down the road. And a significant portion of our budget goes to things like fee for space and allocated expenses, which I'm not absorbed by anybody else. So that may be a consideration for you. That's just amazing. So we're just talking about the budget for a minute. For the Governor's Commission on Women is, so you have an allocation that's in our yearly appropriations, is that right? And then you raise money outside of that? Well, we get grants occasionally, but the primary source of our funding is state appropriation. And that's been now, it's been a long time now. We were formed in 1964, didn't have much in the way of budget for most of that time. I was just trying to think a little bit about continuity of the director or whatever we decide to call the head person. If they're directly in the cabinet then they're gonna transfer, they're gonna keep changing. And continuity would seem very important in this sort of work. So you wanna keep it sort of a little bit independent because of that, because then you wouldn't have to switch with the Governor. What do you, do you have any thoughts on that? Well, I think it would be really problematic to have them switch with the Governor like all the other cabinet members do. And so that might be an argument for an independent panel that hires and supervises its own person. It could also be an argument for creating a position that's not a cabinet position, that's not appointed by the Governor, but is simply another state employee. You still have the danger of kind of, yeah, having it not really be incorporated into the administration's priorities. And I'm not sure what you do about that. Yeah, okay. Thanks. Okay, I didn't fully grasp what you were talking about with what you're doing. Is it around employment equity that you were talking about? It doesn't have a name. Oh, the Governor's, of course, Equity and Diversity Council, what was it called? Yeah. I didn't hear the name. Yeah, so that's a council that's formed by executive order. It includes, it's up to 15 people. Several of them are in the executive order are named. So for instance, I'm in there, not me personally, but my position, and then there's members of the public, other state employees, it's kind of a mixture of people. And what are the goals of that group? So that group is designed to assist with the Equal Employment Opportunity Plan that the state comes up with every year and provide advice and counsel to the Department of Human Resources, to the commissioner in equity university issues related to the workforce. So in the past, we have looked at things like the recruiting process or the online application process. I mean, in a letter, that's accessible to people with disabilities. We've looked at ways to be more accessible to people whose first language is not English. Some of the kinds of things that we've looked at. So it's just people that, just like advisory. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Dennis? So I think you were here when the attorney, when the attorney general's office was talking about the six concerns he had around separation of powers, subpoena power, confidentiality, collecting data in operational primaries, and stuff like that. Do you share his concerns and those, since you're dealing with those issues with the traditional women and being involved with the university council, do you share some of those? Yeah, our role is pretty different, though, that as this bill outlines the role with subpoena power, they have some kind of authority that neither the council nor the community women has. So neither one of those groups is in a position of being able to demand data or being able to hold anybody else accountable within state government, and so that's a difference. I'm not an attorney, but I've worked with Julio for many years and I have great respect for his viewpoint on things, so I would take anything he says very seriously. Thank you. Anyone else have a question? It's time. Okay, thanks very much. Thank you very much. Karen, sorry. Good morning. Good morning. Karen Richards, Executive Director of the Vermont Human Rights Commission. Thank you for having me this morning. And I actually appreciated the opportunity yesterday to sit through the testimony and to have an opportunity to testify today because it actually gave me a chance to kind of sift through a lot of the information that you got yesterday and try to make some sense of it myself without having to do that on the fly, which is always a dangerous thing to do. So the first thing that I wanted to say was I think that really the question this committee has to answer, the big question in the room is how do you best effectuate change with regard to systemic racism in a system where the very institutions that you're trying to affect are all controlled by white people, right? So one of the things about systemic racism, one of the underlying premises of it is that because of the way that our country has grown up over the years, right? All of our major institutions are controlled and the power structure is in the hands of white people. And so if you look at our legislatures at the federal level, at the state levels, you look at who sits on our benches in the courts, you look at all of those power structures, all of them are controlled by white people. And so when we start talking about systemic racism, which most white people don't really understand and quite frankly, I've done a pretty deep dive into it and I can't say that I understand it at the level that a person of color understands it or come anywhere close to that, right? So part of it I think is trying to figure out how you get into that power structure and allow the people that are experiencing the systemic racism to actually give the input that's necessary to move it forward. So I think that that's kind of an underlying thing that underlays everything that I'm gonna say. So I know the Attorney General's office raised a bunch of issues around possible constitutionality of some of the provisions and separation of power. So as Kerry said, the Human Rights Commission has a structure that's not dissimilar. I think they were using that structure as sort of the underlying premise for S281. So we have five commissioners that are pointed by the governor to five year rotating terms and those commissioners are the people that hire and hopefully don't fire me. And so I report to them, I am not subject to removal by the governor. And that's a very important thing with this kind of work. And the reason for that is that this is really hard stuff that this person is going to be doing, right? When you start talking to people about racism, the hackles go up, right? And people get very defensive. And so to do this work is gonna require somebody who has some major skills in communication with people. But it also means that you need to have a structure that does not allow when those hackles go up for people to basically say, I'm not going to participate, right? Because that's gonna be people's first reaction. And I think that probably makes you think I'm leaning towards having this be a cabinet level position, but I'm not. And the reason for that is because, I think because of how difficult it is to have these conversations, when you start getting that pushback, if you have a governor appointed person in that position, that person is not gonna be able to be as effective as they possibly could be. Could you take a couple of questions right now on this piece, you've got Zorn and Rob. I wanted to go back to the testimony from the Attorney General's office yesterday. And the bill is, as we have it right now, it says at least three members shall be persons of color. And he said pretty clearly that that's unconstitutional. Yes. So how do we make sure that we have persons of color well represented, not just one person, but at a minimum to preferably three or more. Right. What I would suggest is language that says either that the panel members need to have have extensive knowledge of systemic racism, right? Or and or something like lived experience with systemic racism. Because if you use those words of lived experience, that's pretty much gonna say it either has to be a person of color or maybe it's a white parent of a child of color, right? Who has had those experiences. So it could be a variety of different people, but it doesn't say people of color. So it gets around. And I apologize for that because that was my idea. And the constitutionality of it never entered my mind. And when Julio called me, I was like, oh, oops, sorry. Yeah, so I obviously not gonna advocate for something that's unconstitutional. Right. Okay, well, that's helpful. Thank you. And there is language from Act 54 that you could borrow about how that panel was set up. What concerned me most frankly about that testimony was that my statute, which does require one person of color to be on my board, may not be constitutional, but whatever, no one's raised it so far. You can do whatever you want for some reason. And so I thank you for that information. And we've gotten a raw and then Jim. Of course, one in your deeper dive here, is there a definition of systemic racism that you've come across as a? I think there's probably multiple definitions out there. And it's really just a matter of, I mean, if you wanted to put a definition in, which one of the witnesses suggested that you look at the various definitions and just pick one that seems to resonate. Is a fair amount of what you do on human rights commission isn't a lot of that already in statute as far as fair housing and employment and that sort of stuff? Yeah. And I don't know if you get real masses, but we've talked a lot about this issue, but I have yet to hear of any examples of what's going on within our state government that would indicate that we have this issue. I'm very specific in that, I could, it would help me. Okay. So the Human Rights Commission a month or two months ago issued a reasonable grounds finding with regard to issues related to racial harassment at the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital. That report is on our website. And what it indicates is very pervasive levels of inappropriate behavior around issues of race at the VPCH that have been going on for years. The culture of that facility at this point in time is pretty poison to people of color. And that's one state workplace. I suspect based on the fact that as commissioner of fastagies testify yesterday that we have retention issues with employees of color in the state that that workplace is not a unique place. And I have heard from people of color who worked in state government that they did not feel welcome, that they were made to feel unwelcome and that they did not stay because of that. So I think we have culture issues in our agencies. And some of that is just from my experience dealing with these issues at the Human Rights Commission. We have this idea that Vermont's a liberal open state and most people will tell you I don't have biases. The fact is they do. And the fact is that those biases play out even if they're not aware of that. So there are things called microaggressions that people do towards others that they may not see as being problematic but are heard as a person of color as a problematic statement. Thank you. You're welcome. June. Thank you. And just so everybody knows I just saw Marsha, she's not feeling well. So I encouraged her to stay. Jim, thanks. Thank you. Karen, first of all, in terms of the Human Rights Commission, how is your board appointed now? Is it strictly gubernatorial staggered turns or is it more like this model where you have the speaker appointing a position and the Senate appointing a position when they're all governor appointments? They're all governor but they're staggered. But they're staggered. And right now I have people on my board because I've had a number of board members that have stayed 10 years on the board that they have been appointed by three different governors. So some of them are Douglas appointees, some are Sheldon appointees and we've now had an appointment by Governor Scott. So similar, I guess, to what we've had with say the lottery board or the liquor board where the gubernatorial appointees but they're staggered. So it would be unusual to have all one appointed by a current governor unless that governor is there for a while. Right, yeah, I think the issue with this really is that for your initial appointments, right, they're all gonna be by the same governor, obviously. So. Well, because this is new. Right, because this is new. So, yeah. So my other question is related to, you know, and again, I don't know what the right answer is but when we talk about civil rights and discrimination, I think of your agency, your commission. Is there a way it could be either your jurisdiction or somehow be broadened or somehow if there is a new person, it sort of, you know, works in concert with you or reports to you, because I do agree. I do think of you as sort of an independent voice out there or watched on whatever you want to call yourself. And I'm just, I guess I don't want to set up too many silos and we don't know even what silo to go to but if there's a discrimination issue, I know it would be your shop. Right. So I'm just asking whether that makes sense or whether the Senate really looked at that as an option. Yeah. So let me just tell you what our mission is because that was one of the things I wanted to correct with you. There is this, I don't know what it is, out in the community that all the commission does is investigate complaints of discrimination like when we are an enforcement agency and that is our primary role. However, our mission is much broader. So the mission of the Human Rights Commission is to promote full civil and human rights in Vermont. Commission protects people from unlawful discrimination in housing, state government employment and public accommodations. Commission pursues its mission by enforcing laws, conciliating disputes, educating the public, providing information and referrals and advancing effective public policies on human and civil rights. So it's a pretty broad mandate that could conceivably encompass work like this. Is that in statute what you just read? Yes, but not in those words particularly but I guess all those things are in the statute. And so the Human Rights Commission could do this work. I think that the advocacy community for whatever reasons wanted it as a separate entity outside of the Human Rights Commission. So that's- I appreciate that because obviously it would be perhaps more focused but I, again, I just had that concern with setting up all these silos and all that. I do have concerns that you have this person as an independent entity, you have an independent entity, you have this person as the employee of that, whatever you call that and I also echo, please don't call it the civil rights officer. Call whatever you want but not that. You could just call it the executive director of the whatever the panel is which is what Carrie is and what I am but you could also call it communication officer or whatever. But I think that what I worry about is that we have these siloed things going on and my commissioners actually expressed some concern about that at the last meeting because we do work on systemic racism. I go around the state and train on implicit bias. It is to me racism and race issues are the major thing that civil rights should be focusing on right now because of all the issues and so it's not like we're not doing anything on that, right? But I also understand the desire to have it be something that is gonna be totally focused on that and that it's not gonna be pulled in a bunch of different directions because we obviously protect all kinds of different categories of people. That said, I worry that this person is not gonna have anyone to run things by or to talk to when they have problems or to feel like there's people that have their back, right? So some relationship with the Human Rights Commission I think would be really good because then there's people who are also working on these issues, you're not gonna have this entity going off this way while the Human Rights Commission could be doing something over here that's completely inconsistent with that. So I don't know how, I mean it says already in the bill to consult with the Human Rights Commission but I don't know if there's a way to make that stronger or more actual, actually structural. When you have a complaint that you believe whatever you're aware of a situation and you need to take enforcement action, you have a staff attorney. Me. Okay. So that's, I mean that's one of the issues with the Human Rights Commission is my job in compasses, all the administrative work, supervision of staff, review of complaints, reports, reporting to the board and doing the public policy stuff being over here. I'm also the major litigator and I have to do all the post cases when they come to be set. That gives us maybe a better appreciation so you wear a lot of hats. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I also do the education and outreach program. So I had a couple of questions. Probably more than five years ago, one of the black state police members left the state police because he felt there was racism and stuff and among his other officers, I'm sure the lieutenant may have a little more background and speak to him later. But it was unfortunate and I'm sure of the attitude and everything has improved without a doubt. Were you or the commission involved with that? Not at all. I think there was a lawsuit. That would have been before me. So I guess it was probably more than five years ago. Yeah, I'm only better than five years, I'm not sure. We'll probably hear more. The other thing was since even if the panel is created, created by the legislature, it sounds like because we want people involved in talking that are involved, it seems like two of the five members of the panel, one could come from the Human Rights Commission and one could come from the Diversity Council. They would be part of the payload. So we want, those are the groups that are involved. These are the ones that know the most about what's going on with this issue. It seems to make sense that they would be part of it, be part of the panel and that would be helpful. So they're all dealing with the same issues and talk because they bring experience. They bring all this knowledge together. Yeah, that could be possible. I think the problem with that that I would foresee is that because of these are really essentially volunteer jobs, they get paid their whopping $50 a meeting in their mileage, but essentially they're volunteers and with the Human Rights Commission, depending on what's going on with any given meeting, it can be a ton of work. So we could have five cases on it and they could be getting a packet, this thick of stuff that they need to read, understand and digest before the meetings. And so to have even one of them be willing to serve on yet another panel that's got a pretty heavy lift associated with it would be a lot to ask. And I think you would have trouble getting someone who would be willing to do that. But I appreciate that. Any ideas? Cindy? I was just looking or going to ask you about your staff, how many staff members you have and do you have a board? So the board is the commissioners. So there are five commissioners. They have rotating five year terms at this point in time. We have majority minority, so we have three minority members on our commission. The staff consists of myself and executive staff assistant and three investigators. And that's it, that's all of that. Thank you. Other questions for Karen? No? Thanks very much. Okay, actually I had some more. Oh, that's right, because we stopped you waiting back. That's okay. I'm sorry, I have to continue. Yes, okay. So I wanted to re-emphasize that the structure that you're working from already exists, this board and somebody who works for it, right? The transportation board is also set up like that. I believe the labor board is set up like that. So most of your boards where you are essentially not regulating state agencies but being able to kind of tell state agencies what they're going to do. Most of them are set up in the structure that you already have created. So I don't see, I wasn't clear yesterday from Julio Thompson's testimony whether he thought that because the appointments to this were from different entities that that was part of what his worry with the separation of powers was. But it sounds like the commission on women has that structure and that hasn't been challenged as a separation of powers issue as far as anyone, or as I know. The other thing that I think through Julio Thompson off a little bit was the references to the cabinet in the bill. But the bill does not actually say this is a cabinet level member. It says that the cabinet shall cooperate with. And it says that the person shall work with the cabinet but it doesn't say this is the cabinet level position. And then he said it reports to the legislature which it doesn't report to the legislature. It says it's an executive grant agency. It says that the panel should provide a report to the legislature which that's a very common thing for like I have an annual report that I have to provide to the president pro tem of the senate and to the speaker of the house. I do that every year. So providing a report in and of itself doesn't mean I'm reporting to the legislature. I'm just telling the legislature what I do which everybody does. So that I think those things were not as probably maybe from my perspective as they appeared to be to Julio Thompson. And then the other issue that Commissioner Fastigy brought up was that this was gonna be a difficult thing for somebody to do from an independent position where they're not at the, where the governor is not able to really manipulate and how this is happening and how this person is interacting with the various agencies. While it's true that if it were a cabinet level position the governor and the governor were in there saying, okay everybody's gonna work with this person. It might go more smoothly. I think the danger with that is that it becomes politicized and that you end up with that person either not being able to function in that atmosphere and leaving or the governor not satisfied with how that's working and then they get rid of them and then you don't have the continuity that you really need for somebody to get this work done. And I think my understanding is also that as we are working on this bill the governor is working on an executive order that is basically going to tell the agencies that they need to focus on issues related to race and could certainly tell the agencies through the executive order as these executive orders go and work with this person, whoever it is, to work on these issues, right? So to the extent that those two things are going on hopefully in tandem is my understanding then that working relationship could be established. The other thing that happens, so I'm an outsider, right? I don't have any direct access to the governor's office and vice versa, which makes it easier for me to do my job. Like frankly, if I had to worry about issuing a report about the conditions at the Vuma psychiatric care hospital and I knew that the governor could terminate my position if he didn't like what I said, I would be more hesitant to do my job than I am able to do right now. And I think the same thing needs to be true with this person. This person needs not to be hesitant about telling people things they don't wanna hear and about working that way. But I think so the way that it has worked in the past or worked with the Shumlin administration was that I had a liaison in the governor's office. So that was his general counsel, Sarah London. And if I had a problem with another agency where we were struggling a little bit in how we were working together, which was the case when I first got to the commission, I could call Sarah and she would call that commissioner or whoever and she would try to help us work out that problem. And so I think that same structure could work here. You have an outsider, but they have somebody, a point person in the governor's office that they're able to communicate with when they run into problems with agencies so that you don't have to worry about whether they're gonna subpoena people and whether they're gonna drag commissioners in for testimony, so some of that stuff could be adjusted. And then you just have a more collaborative working relationship, but that means that everybody's gotta be on board. But that's the reality anyway. If everybody's not on board, this is not gonna work no matter how you structure it. And while you take a breath, Jim has a question that was precipitated by somebody who just says. So that relationship with the administration, is that a part of the structure or was that just an informant about how it worked? I'm not sure, so all I know is as soon as I got in my job, I got a call from Sarah saying, hi, I'm your liaison to the office. I have not had anyone tell me that I have that person in the governor's office now. So I don't know whether that is something that the Shumlin administration did particularly or whether just nobody's gotten in touch with me. Were you in your position when Jim Douglas was governor? No. So you don't know if you have that same relationship with the, because you haven't been told one another, but you could pick up the phone and talk to the governor. I could talk to Robert Appell and see whether Robert Appell remembers whether he had that, but I don't know. Yeah, okay. And Rob? Do you have much interaction with other state agencies as in you have points of contact through different agencies? Yeah, so I am in regular contact with the Department of Human Resources. I'm in regular contact with the Attorney General's Office. And then I have contact with other agencies depending on, so for example, if we have a reasonable grounds finding, because we do the state employment cases. So if we have a reasonable grounds finding against Fish and Wildlife, which we never have, but if we had one against Fish and Wildlife, I would then be through the Attorney, the Attorney General's Office would be representing Fish and Wildlife, but I would be working with them. I also did do an initiative that Jim was part of actually, a few years back with Accessibility at gas stations and the Vermont Grocers Association was involved by the Agency of Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture, all the agencies that have- Still see the stickers. Yes. Don't fade it. And so any of the agencies that had anything to do with regulating gas stations worked very collaboratively with us on that project. So. I think we're good for you to continue unless you've touched your head. Let's see. I think that was pretty much all that I, let me just take my notes. I intend it to be more organized than I am, but time runs out and I have to sleep. Oh, the confidentiality issues that Attorney Thompson raised, our statute has very strict confidentiality provisions in it. It says exactly what is public, what's not public. So I think that's something that's easily fixed. You just need to figure out how you wanna structure it. For example, when we get some of those records that he mentioned when we're in the course of an investigation. So for example, if we are investigating an inmates complaint at one of the prisons as a public accommodations disability complaint, we can get access to that inmates file, which the inmates file is protected by statute from being released to the inmate. Our statute says the complainant in a case gets to look at anything that we gather, but our statute says if it is within some of these other protected areas that we have the ability to withhold that and the person would have to go to court with a subpoena and try to get the information from us if it's in that protected category. So I think there's ways to structure this that would allow the entity to get the information that they need, but to have it either redacted, which is the other way that we do it with employment records. We'll get redacted records from, or we'll redact them before we pass them on. So there are ways to deal with those issues of non-competentiality and privacy issues that were raised. He also mentioned collection of data regarding race, and I understand the sensitivity of that, but the reality is if you look at the Act 54 report that the Human Rights Commission and the Attorney General's office put out, there was a lot of data in there about race that just came out of various reports of state government. So we're already collecting this in a lot of places, and there's a lot of data that's already available. What isn't there, as Mark Hughes was talking about, is a centralized platform for collecting it so that there's one-stop shopping to go get the data from all of the various agencies. That's a whole nother, and he's a data person, I'm not. So that's a whole nother structure out there, but right now there is data available from lots of different agencies about race and how it affects things. And I also think whoever's in this job is gonna have to go out and really do community work, talking to people about how people of color, about how they interact with these systems and places where they have problems. Because if you talk to people of color, they'll tell you, oh, this agency or that agency, I don't feel like I get equal treatment there, right? So that would be information that's anecdotal, but it's also information that's useful to know if you're trying to look at systems within state government. Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention that was touched on is the whole economic issue and how this is helpful from an economic perspective. And the other thing that I learned when I was writing the F-54 report is that people of color are the fastest growing demographic in Vermont. Asians are the fastest African Americans after that and then Latinos, Hispanics. So if you're looking at how you beef up your workforce, and if you're having issues within the state workforce around retention of those folks, you're potentially missing out on a whole group of folks that could be adding to your workforce. And so making state government a better, safer place to work just as a starting point would be helpful from an economic standpoint as well. And I think that's all right. Jessica. So when you were talking about the, what you were just talking about, the community work, are you kind of thinking, I immediately thought of, and this might not be the right word, but the day's work, day's pay, that was sort of a needs assessment of how are things going out there for women? And then they put together this whole incredible report, but it was expensive and a pretty amazing job of helping us all see where the issues are. Is that sort of what you're thinking in? Well, the way the Act 281 is written right now, it contemplates that this director or whatever you call it would maybe hire a consulting firm to look at some of those issues. So that could be part of what the consulting firm does, or it could be while that consulting firm is looking at aspects of state government, this person is going around the state and doing just what they call circles, right? Of bringing people together to talk about what their experience is with. I focus groups. Right, focus groups, so we don't, yeah. Yeah, a lot of people see that a lot. And then just a totally separate question. Do you, at the Human Rights Commission, get many concerns about Native Americans? Do you know anything? No, we don't get a lot of complaints from the Alunaki Commission. So it might be interesting to look at why, what are we doing right in that area maybe? Right, or why aren't they contacting the Human Rights Commission, which could be the other side of that coin, right? Yeah, I know that's good to know, thanks. All right. Just back stepping a little bit to the fastest growing segments of our population that's valuable information, but if there's a minority, let's take, for example, if there was one Tibetan family in Vermont and one more Tibetan family moved in, that'd be 100% growth. So when you have being we are as white a state as we are, pick a minority, any minority, and it's very easy for them to grow rapidly because they are so few. Thank you. So I always just want to bear that in mind that the fastest growing segment of our population because there are so darn few. Right, but I can say just anecdotally, I moved here 25 years ago and it was unusual for me to see anyone of color walking around my failure, right? That is not unusual anymore. And according to last census data, and I think this was 2016 data, there are 38,000 people who identify as people of color in the state, and that certainly wasn't true 25 years ago. Certainly wasn't. And if I could for the record, there are many more than two people of Tibetan origin, many of them live in my district. I knew that I was walking on very nice one, I'm just kidding. The entire Tibetan community in Vermont lives in South Burlington, and a small component over in Burlington. Okay. They don't live in Montpilder. I knew I was using a big example, any example. I mean, I celebrate the fact that these are fast growing populations because we need this place in the United States. Any other question? Thank you, you've given us between yourself and Kerry, you've started offering just a fabulous amount of information. Thank you for the opportunity, and I really appreciate very much the legislature and this committee's hard work on this because this is, it's an important thing. Now, do you have Kate Moulton? Yes. Kate. I mean, just so you realize that these three women were finishing up on yesterday's before we started today's conference. Yes. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks to the chair, vice chair, for the committee for having my testimony today. My name is Kate Logan. I'm the director of programming and policy for rights and democracy based in Burlington, Vermont. Rights and democracy is a member of the Racial Justice Reform Coalition and is committed to considering on the one hand the disparate impacts of particular social and economic issues on the basis of race, but on the other hand also to supporting the efforts of our coalition partners to advance reform initiatives that more directly address the root causes of racial inequality in Vermont. In particular, S281 is designed to address the root causes of racial inequality. S281 would create the infrastructure needed to implement the recommendations of the advisory panels convened as a result of Act 54, but rather than review the findings or recommendations of those studies, I'll use my time to discuss the reasons why this infrastructure needs to be developed and why the panel's recommendations need to be implemented under the authority of to use the title from the original draft of S281, the Systemic Racism Mitigation Oversight and Equity Review Board, which I'll just call the board. And so essentially I'd like to talk about the important work that you can do in establishing this board. Racial injustice in the United States is far more often an effect of structural systemic racism rather than personal, consciously held racial prejudice. And in response to the request for a definition of systemic racism, I would define that as composed of intersecting, overlapping and interdependent institutions, policies, practices, ideas and behaviors that give an unjust amount of resources, rights and power to white people while denying them to people of color. So again, more often the effect of systemic racism rather than consciously held racial prejudice. In a state such as Vermont where overall there is a culture of fairness, a love for equality and freedom and a distaste for racial prejudice, many white folks may feel alarmed and confused by evidence that Vermont is not that much different than any other place in the post-slavery and post-civil rights here in the United States. For example, reports on racial bias in policing, the report from the Human Rights Commission in state systems that came out recently, the data in Act 54 report, for example. So how can white folks respond to the diverse identifiable harms that are done to people of color in Vermont and white folks are not racially prejudiced or at least not consciously so? Why is structural racism so persistent and what can we do about it? So studies of implicit bias and I did submit my testimony and there is a reference there for you that I think is a helpful overview of the topic of implicit bias, which is also known as implicit social cognition, helped to reveal the involuntary attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions. Implicit bias can be positive. For example, you may love children and so you smile when you see a child and you wanna protect children. But implicit bias can also be negative, especially when negative stereotypes influence our response to those who are unlike us. This is especially a threat within relatively homogenous societies where there's not a high level of integration among historically distinct social or cultural groups. I was lucky to grow up in a place in Chicago where people of color are the majority of my peers and where I form my attitudes toward and beliefs about people of color based on living side by side with my friends, witnessing the good, expressed worthy testimony of my peers regarding the subtle but devastating presence of bias and structural racism even within our own melting pot community. This kind of awareness is far less likely to happen organically for the average Vermonter. The board instituted by S281 will enable progress towards racial equity by combating implicit racial bias and structural racism. The lack of awareness of implicit racial bias and systemic racism is actually part of what it means to be a white person in the United States. We don't have to know about things that impact people of color. Similarly, it's been the burden of non-whites to know that white people see them differently than they see themselves. As early as the 19th century, African-American social commentators were aware that white people did not know about black experience. That is, white Americans did not assume nor understand that black experience was fundamentally different than their own. The fact is that stereotypes move in to fill the void when we don't have concrete knowledge about the experiences of those who come from historically distinct groups. Humans are creatures who form opinions about things so we can make decisions about how to act in the world. And as such, there's no such thing as neutrality when it comes to race in the United States. Either one is aware of what race means in the lived experience of people of color or one is not. And if not, then implicit bias can arise. Implicit bias that's structured by prejudicial stereotypes as well as false beliefs that things are not as bad as they really are. In fact, these false beliefs may often seem reasonable. For example, as a white person, I do not personally experience the sharp end of systemic racism. In fact, the world seems to welcome my presence and reward my hard work and my talent. For the most part, I feel respected and protected within my community and I do not consciously harbor racial prejudice myself. So cannot imagine that I'm doing anything wrong. However, this lack of awareness of the experience of people of color creates two harmful barriers towards systemic change, especially in places where whites are the majority demographic group. Among scholars of social injustice, the term epistemic injustice has become increasingly common. Epistemic injustice refers to the power and balances that exist among different social groups when it comes to knowing. It occurs when implicit bias structures one social group's ability to hear and believe members of other social groups when they speak about their experience. These are the two barriers, hearing and believing. In the context of race relations in the United States, the inability to hear and be heard by another person is what scholars call testimonial injustice. That is, when the hearer gives a deflated level of credibility to a speaker's word. We have all likely experienced a time when someone spoke over us or thought so little of us that the meaning of our words seemed to not register in the least, particularly as a woman. I've had that experience. Likewise, the inability to believe and be believed by another person is called hermeneutic injustice. That is when another person's knowledge about the world as they experience it is discounted. It creates a situation in which members of the oppressed group are not given the space to effectively create knowledge about their own experience and then having it have the same status as knowledge created by other groups. This creates a conundrum. We want to address systemic racism, but white folks in Vermont are likely highly unaware of the lived experiences of people of color in their communities. This means that white folks are more likely to be skeptical of the testimony and knowledge claims that people of color make. This does not mean that we should walk up to the nearest person of color and ask them to educate us on their lived experience. That might be something that a person of color would want to do, but it might also not be. Rather, we must systemically address ignorance of people of color's lived experiences and negative consequences of that by creating educational and training programs and data gathering infrastructure as well as opening seats of decision-making power to people of color. Only by combating implicit bias and sidestepping and voluntarily prejudiced decision-making processes of well-intended white folks will we be able to address systemic racism. And it's precisely this that a permanent board would provide infrastructure around. So rights and democracy urges the committee to pass S281, but to first consider adding to this bill provisions that are found in H868. In particular, H868 would allow criminal prosecution for racially biased policing. Again, the reference that I gave in my written testimony, Greenwald and Hamilton-Kreiger, does provide some legal basis for H868 in particular, allowing for criminal prosecution for racially biased policing. Well, rights and democracy does not support an increase in our prison population. We do support the reconstruction of our society such that racial bias is responded to with appropriate societal consequences, especially those who willingly take on the duty to protect and serve the public. Further, so basically you need to incentivize the behavior that you want and disincentivize the behavior that you don't want. Reward the people who do their job well and stop rewarding the people who don't do their job well. Further, while testimony of the Attorney General's office has challenged the recommended composition of the board, we do recommend that the committee consider with the aid of legislative council amending S281 with language such as can be found in Act 54. For example, that the board be comprised of members, quote, drawn from diverse backgrounds to represent the interests of the communities of color throughout the state who have had experience working to implement racial justice reform, unquote. So that's straight out of Act 54. And that's my testimony. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Questions from the committee? Thank you very much. And we have your testimony posted. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, that takes care of yesterday's list. Is Dana Stevens with us? Laurie Valverne? No. Ingrid Jonas, I know, and I do not see Ingrid, but they do have Gary Scott. Not as good looking. Lieutenant Gary Scott. Morning, I'm Lieutenant Gary Scott. My current role is the Director of Fair and Partial Policing for the Vermont State Police. I've been with the State Police for 18 years. My prior role was the Williston Station Commander, and I was also in charge of traffic safety, but most of my career has been in Northern Vermont, in Chittenden County, Memorial County, Franklin County area. As you heard a little bit yesterday from Curtis Reed, the State Police sort of went down this path of Fair and Partial Policing starting in 2004, and it's sort of groaned to where it is today. We have, early on we developed, I guess to back up for a second, I'll just talk about what we're doing as an agency and how we've kind of got where we got. We have a Fair and Partial Policing Committee, which is about 20% people of color, 50% male-female ratio, and it's a lot of community outreach trying to determine where we're missing the mark, what can we do better, what can we develop in training. So that sort of leads to the point that our command staff has recognized this issue right from the top. So every commander in the State Police has gone through some type of implicit bias training. So every State Commander has to incorporate a Fair and Partial Policing strategy within their strategic plan that they present to command staff once a year and what type of progress they have made on that. So from right there for every State Commander, they're pushing that message out to the troopers on a day-to-day basis. If you're not aware, we have 300 and, just over 300 State Troopers. We cover about 80% of the land mass and about 50% of the population. So we are the primary police agency for the majority of Vermont. We do have 10 barracks throughout the state and headquarters in Waterbury. So how we're trying to tackle the problem a little bit more recently is through recruiting, we're sending our recruiters out of state to predominantly black universities up and down the East Coast trying to attract candidates to come to Vermont. That's challenging as we all have heard anyways to get young people to wanna come to Vermont. So that is, we've seen an increase in applicants. We are not at full staffing. When we do get a person that it makes it through the testing phase, which is a physical fitness test, a psychological exam, before they come into an oral board situation as they're waiting to sit and meet with the oral board of interviewers, they are asked on a clipboard what will they will bring in way of diversity to the state police. A lot of times it's our way of messaging right up front that this is important to us as an agency. They are asked scenario-based questions during the applicant phase of how they will deal with LGBT issues, people of color issues. So right there we're getting a gauge of what this candidate can bring to the state police. If they are hired through our process, which is for the state police is a three week, which is known as pre-basic academy and then there's a 16 week, sort of everyone didn't ball academy locals and everything. And then we take them back for another eight weeks after that for training. So pre-basic academy and post-basic training. During pre-basic, we have about a two hour block of just talking about implicit bias. And we use a member from Marlboro College. His name is Aetan Nazareno-Longo. He and myself will do that training just starting to talk about racial relations and things like that and start again, just starting to get the conversation going. That phase of the training is very military style to boot camp. So they're lucky if they can, you know, remember to eat during the day. So. If they remember to eat during the day. A lot of times they eat during the day. Yeah, they usually are afraid. They eat very squared up. It's a situation going on there. So then during the academy, which every officer in the state, you know, whether you're DMV or fishing game, they have scenario based situations that we part of patrol procedures. So now implicit bias training and LGBT issues are really incorporated throughout the academy. It will be in motor vehicle law, it will be in criminal law, it will be in patrol procedures. So there's different things brought into that overall that every officer gets. For post-basic training, we again take the troopers back and Mr. Reed and myself again do another full day training where they have taken the Harvard implicit bias test. He has sent out reading material to them and when they meet with us, we go over that material, we watch the documentary, the 13th with them. And it's just sort of a full day of just talking about implicit bias and what that means as you're going into this career in law enforcement and the effect that I can have. So we also have every patrol commander shift sergeant within the last two years has now twice gone through implicit bias training. We just did all of our sergeants again the last two months of recognizing just all the different parts of implicit, explicit bias and privilege and things like that and then how that relates to the people that are supervising. So every new trooper coming on in the last two years has gotten all that training now our sergeants are having it. We've also designed a program of informal leaders within barracks, the troopers that are sort of designated that will probably get promoted in a few years, they're regarded by their peers. So we sort of give them materials that they can instigate lunch table conversations about racial topics that are happening around the country and sort of in that informal relaxed environment have these conversations and express different viewpoints. And so we're sort of sneakily attacking them in that area also. So that, because that has more power, right? Your peers talking to you about these things and another person you respect and what their viewpoints are. So every employee now we have implemented a real-time web-based employee evaluation system. So if a trooper has two or three use of forces that will pop up on his direct supervisor's email list saying this is the second or third use of force that may have happened in this time period. It allows us again to go back and take a look to see if these will legitimate use of force and if there's any issues and concerns that we should now hopefully catch again a safe gap in there. And that's been fairly successful so far. So that sort of also leads into our internal affairs process and complaints. We have on our webpage right at the top how to issue a complaint against a state trooper. It's right out front. You can also do it through our Facebook page, Twitter, you can walk in, you can call. So that lends to hopefully a way to have complaints about troopers put right out front and then everyone is initially assessed and then we'll go into an internal affairs process that meets that sort of criteria. Our, we have a citizens advisory panel for the state police that is appointed by the commissioner and we have obviously a commissioner that's a civilians point by the governor. So the complaint process internal investigations leads to the commissioner's office and then that, the citizens advisory panel will review if a case makes it that far what type of discipline should be, should be sort of doled out based on our policies and procedures of what the violation may be. So there is a civilian oversight process for us. I've also mentioned that we do have an overall agency strategic plan where fair and impartial policing is listed right on there of what we're doing. We are the only state police agency in the country that has a director of fair and impartial policing. So that is, you know, again, that's the, it's our priority to us and what we do. So there is buy-in from the top. Now we've kind of our thought processes we've hit it from all of our commanders have buy-in. It's part of the promotion process to get, if you wanna go for a service position you're gonna have, you're gonna get hit with a question about what you are doing in regards to fair and impartial policing. Moving up into the lieutenants so commander positions that again. And that's happening now this week where every commander is at the core is talking about their strategic plan of what they're doing within their communities for this topic. That also, so reach the outreach community, outreach aspect, we do a tremendous amount with that. Community, we have a subcommittee in our fair and impartial policing committee that's talking about how we can do a better job in community outreach. We're gonna put out a survey this year for the public that will just be able to tell us how we're doing so public feedback on how they believe the state police is doing. And working with different groups throughout the state. The traffic stop data collection is something we have welcomed. We voluntarily started collecting data before it was legislative mandate. There's been a lot of learning and hurdles going through that process. I was part of that process early on of what we were gonna capture in the back of the ticket and not having the foresight to know where it would sort of lead. We've realized we missed a lot of marks there. So the most recent data that Mr. put out yesterday to the committee, it still misses what a passenger, so if we search a car, we're talking about the operator of the car that's exclusively what is being documented on that ticket. It doesn't take into account what if the passenger in that vehicle had any contraband on them. So it's another way we have to try to figure that out. It is captured in a case. So if a police officer stops a car and is gonna search the car, a case is generated and there's a narrative written up with that, but that's not captured on the ticket. So that data never is gonna show that type of information on it. But regardless of hearing from communities of color and their lived experiences about the problems within the state, that's more important to us. Not so much of what the data is telling us. How can we do a better job of communicating in making people feel like they've been treated fairly by the state police? So that's really what our mindset is. The data is just a diagnostic tool that will help us sort of guide where we wanna go. Much like blood pressure, I guess. You get it and then you realize, I can't eat donuts. Yeah, all of these different things. So really what is the problem and how do we navigate it? So that's how we look at when the data comes out. We do have a lot of policies and procedures. We have a fair and impartial policing policy that sort of exceeds some of the requirements out there already. We've had one for quite some time and it has had public input on how we know the data came up with that. I'm happy to take some questions, go ahead. We've got some questions that were just initiated by my wife and me. So we've got Jessica Cindy, Jim Dennis. So first, thank you for what you've already said. It's amazing. I have no idea that you are all working on this so diligently and I'm curious, do you know if the local police are doing similar? I think you'll see a hit or miss on some agencies. It comes down to resources. The majority of departments in this state are pretty small, five or fewer officers and then how they're gonna delegate and figure that out with them. So I think that's part of the problem even for data collection as they try to go about that. So Burlington is doing a pretty good job of it but I think it's gonna be hit or miss through agencies. So do you offer support? Yeah, I do. I go all personally in early this year. I went down to Wilmington, Bennington and Dover competes and did a training on data collection, how to do a better job of collecting it and implicit bias that's a more half day training for them. So the other piece of that is when your car is pulled over and there's a decision to search, is that if it sounds like for state police it's always documented so you could go back and look. Is that true with local police? Because we ran into a situation in our own family where the car had been essentially destroyed and yet there was no documentation. I can't, I can't. They should be. I mean there's been criminal law that's been put out there about a case law about when a trooper or police officer's state can search and what they need and how to articulate the facts of that. So we require that and all of our cruisers have video in them also. So that is another sort of check for us along the way but I cannot speak for the local agencies and what they are or not doing. So there's no sort of, these are the things you're supposed to do. I mean there are through criminal case law but it's, and then it can be hit or miss and what happens after that. Okay and then a total separate question. Up around you're recruiting people of color outside of Vermont. Is your, how's your turnover in that area once you are able to recruit? Are you, are you able to kind of keep them? How's that? No, it's still a challenge. We're at the testing phase. The exam, the academy is something that it's gonna be moving out to an RFI process right now of some of the issues and concerns that are happening with that. We are seeing people of color probably in a range of 50% are not passing the test. Okay and then one final on that. I just, because of all the stuff that's been in Vermont Digger, I just received a phone call from a constituent who's a man of color, a person of color. And he was interested in applying for a state police position but said that there's a rule that you can have no tattoos, is that true? That's correct. So that's a hard one because he said most of the time. Right, it's a hard one to navigate. I can tell you that it's a constant conversation amongst our command staff about what is an offensive tattoo on someone's arm. If you get pulled over. So one candidate had testicles on his forearm because he had overcome testicular cancer. So what is offensive, what isn't? So the colonel kind of has to make that decision so his overall judgment is just no visible tattoos. But it's a challenging, we're losing applicants because of what one person may find offensive and other. And so he doesn't really wanna go down that road so he just made a sweeping. So it's visible, you know what I'm saying? Just visible. What does that mean? So if our shirts come in here so that can't be below the shirt, can't be in your neck or face or things like that. Okay, thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. You talked about getting input on a subcommittee. Excuse me, I couldn't hear it. You talked about getting input from a subcommittee. Yeah. Who's on your subcommittee? So the fair and partial police and committees, I said, is about 20% of people of color. On the subcommittee, it was about 80% people of color. Curtis Reed's eye, Bruce Wilson from Burlington, Aetan has red lines on it. I don't remember who else. Robert Appel was also on it. Tabitha Morfone and NAACP and Rutland was sort of the general makeup of myself. I go to most of the subcommittee. So community members. Community members. Okay, thank you. And now we've got Jim and Dennis. How long have you had the fair and partial panel that evidently were the only ones that do that? The community, the committee? Yeah, over 10 plus years. Oh, okay, so, okay. My other question's related to when you do find a case of bias and you go through, you have a, at what point does it become criminal in who investigates and charges the person? So if a call would come in of anything like that, it goes into an internal affairs process. And then from the internal affairs process, if it's gonna turn into a criminal investigation, it's into the AG's office. But we haven't had any that have turned to that than I'm aware of for our state trooper. But it can become. It could be, yeah. But anything, like so, if a trooper's gonna be charged at any time, that's the general process. I'm just trying to recognize, I reconcile with the suggestion previously about allowing for criminal in the cases of racial bias and potentially it's already there. Yes, we would go through our internal process and then that is handed over to the AG's office and the AG's office would do the prosecution. Thank you. Dennis? So I don't remember raising my hand, but I... Oh, no. I thought you said that, so I put it right here. Something over here. But that's right, yeah. So you heard the question earlier. Yeah. It was probably closer to 10 years ago. Yeah. So he would have been, I'm pretty sure he was the state police. I can think, I can't answer intelligently, so I'm not, I don't think I'll go down next. I think I sort of remember, but I don't have that. Okay, so. I wondered, you know, I want to hope, I can't remember the officer's name, that some of the stuff that you've done and you said you've been involved, it's been 10 years that you've had this fear. I wonder that that was one of the outcomes and your creation of all that. I don't, it's not my known history of it. It's been more external than an internal process. But he'd left the state police. I'm not sure. And then he, and then he left the government. I think it's the other way. He left, he left rather than came. Okay, but I'm not, if that's the case, you're thanking him. I know that one, there's a relevant police officer that came to the Vermont state police. He was getting harassed. Yes. But I don't have all the facts on that. But he came to the state police. Okay, I had it. Thank you. Any other questions for the tenor? Thank you very much. Good. And congratulations to the whole group. Thank you. Yes, I saw, there you are. What's the, good morning? Good morning. Chloe, what detail you want? Chloe, hang on one second. Okay, thank you. Oh. We want to look at some points so that I'm sure. Oh, okay. So actually, Chloe, would you mind? No, of course not. Okay, so that's everybody. She's the only one left to testify on this right now. Well, not everybody in the room who testified wanted to testify. Done so after Chloe. Well, then, okay. I did not realize. No, no. What do you wait, then? Yes, what? You can wait. I didn't hear that. That's fine. Good morning. For the record, I'm Chloe White with the ACLU of Vermont. It's a pleasure to see you all. My testimony is very short. You know, we, we in Vermont, we are, we pride ourselves on being very fair and open-minded people. And I don't think that's untrue. I just think that they're, you know, we at the ACLU, you think that they're, you know, there are layers that there's always, you know, whether conscious or unconscious bias and the history of systemic racism, whether through, you know, our fault or the fault of our ancestors. You know, it's, it pervades our country still. And the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, both our U.S. Constitution and our Constitution outline this bold vision for our country, a nation in which there is equality for all. We, this promise has yet to be realized for everyone. We've made so many important gains in legal, political, social, employment and other areas, but our nation and our state have yet to break free from an intrinsic system of racial injustice. Stem of racism can be seen throughout Vermont. In our communities, our schools access to employment, housing, healthcare, interactions with law enforcement, our prosecutorial system, and especially in our prisons where black men are incarcerated at a higher rate than in any other state. Unfortunately, on the national level, at times, progress on civil rights and battling racism can seem to have stalled, if not been rolled back. So here in Vermont, we have the opportunity to buck that trend and to continue to battle systemic racism through enacting S-281. Instead of another study committee, we can put our money where our mouth is. And with an independent officer to address systemic racism in our state and a panel comprised of people with experience in combating racial injustice. There are a few changes we would urge the committee to make with regard to the bill, however. First, as others have suggested, we think the names of the entities should reflect its position of battling systemic racism. We think this is something examined by Senate, and the issue merits the same consideration here. We also urge the committee to amend the bill with the provisions of H-868 relating to expanded data collection and policies on use of force. These additions will help to reveal and mitigate systemic racism in the practices of Vermont law enforcement and really continue the work that the SP and others have started. I do want to... There's been talk about criminalizing racial profiling. We at the ACLU are working on a smart justice campaign where our goal is to cut the population of our prisons in half. So we would be hesitant about supporting a provision with incarceration as a possible result I also think it would be very difficult to prove racial profiling on its own in a criminal case because of the high evidentiary standard in criminal cases. But there's been proposals about the NAACP to outlaw racial profiling and to create a private right of action so that you can go in civil court. In New York, they have a bill pending that I believe would also give the Attorney General power to enforce the sort of law. And we think that is... In any case, we are one of the few states in the nation that doesn't outlaw racial profiling. I think if there is racial profiling within a case of the use of force case where that would escalate, as Lieutenant Scott said, then to the Attorney General, I think that would be taken into account but we don't actually have in our law, it's as racial profiling is outlawed. So I think that would be an important step but basically it would caution against having incarceration be a result of any sort of criminal prosecution for that. So we think through this bill on these amendments we can begin to fully realize the promise of fair and equal treatment for people of color in Vermont and would urge you to pass this bill, to make the necessary changes but to really pass this bill and help lead our government into a more fair and equal universe. Questions for Chloe. John. Chloe, one of the amendments you proposed was adding language from 8, 6, 8, to increased data collection. So is it increased data collection or is it centralized the collection of data? I think it's a little bit of a, I think you're right that it is more of a centralized component as well which I actually, I can see a lot of benefits of. I think, I wasn't able to be here yesterday but I see Mark talk to you about that a lot of the data together it's very difficult to look at unless you have a passion for Microsoft Excel and the ability to compare and contrast statistics and with the background of statistics and I think you all have talked and you've seen me here on public records I think one of the things we talked about is accessibility of public records and management so that it's easier for public to see and I think that's really important and you can see, you know, Lieutenant Scott talked a lot about the progress that's been made, I think it's really important for the public to be able to see that and compare it and not have to, you know, take a five week course in Excel management to really read and get down into the data. Okay, so I'm just, I mean, you've heard a lot about data and you've heard a lot of specifics about what data we have and what data we don't have so if there's data we don't have can you give us specific examples of data that we're not collecting because I understand the centralized centralization issue but you know, we've heard testimony that there's a lot of data out there and just maybe sometimes hard to get to. So those are two separate sort of issues. You know, if the data exists and it's just figuring out how to make it more transparent, that's one problem. Another problem is that we don't have the data we need. I think there is, I think our use of, I think I can't speak to specifics at this moment. I don't want to say something and be incorrect later. It's a fault of mine. I think our use of forced data I think is, I think it's mentioned in there that it could be improved but I think I would be happy to get back to you on that but I don't have specifics other than, you know, thinking that what's in 868 right now is, would be useful. Okay, because I mean I just have overall concern both S281 and 868 are a little vague as to exactly what data we're attempting to collect here. And given that, you know, some of the data may involve privacy and confidentiality issues I think it's important that we start tackling exactly what we're attempting to collect. I could check that. There's just a response. If this is more community discussion maybe but I think Karen Richards earlier today did talk to us about the importance of community collection of data which would be the other, I agree with you that there are two issues here and that would be the second which is that we may need, there may be need to be a funding piece that has to do with a needs assessment by talking to the community. Am I referring to that appropriately? Yes. If you could one or the other of you for the record establish what was just communicated. That I just checked in with Karen Richards from the human rights commission. Who confirmed what? Who confirmed that yes it's important that we look into the, do some sort of community needs assessment around this issue. Any other questions for Chloe? Jen? I'm not going to suggest this is the same but the inherent in this, you talked about it earlier is bias. How do we get at bias? Is there a way to really effectively, I mean it's an all walks of life and I'm not going to presuppose that this is any different, this is very serious and we want to get at it. But how do we, I mean I have a, again as an aside, I have someone that lives nearby that as I drive up early in the morning, 6.30 she's on my way here and she's walking her dog. I wave, she turns the other way because I'm a Republican. So that's your right, you know. Do you have a sign on? She's walking into these shoes. How do we get that? I mean in a more serious nature, you know there's an article about our colleague here about getting a threat because he voted in one person's mind the wrong way on a piece of firearm legislation. That's part of the process and what that constituent of is obviously has a bias. I don't know how we get at some of the hate in our society. You know I have a 93 year old father and he has some biases. You can't say that, you know. But I don't know. I think that's a wonderful question. I think you know looking, I think there are different sorts of biases. I think there is one where I have biases against different things but there is a bias that has been long standing in America due to, especially African-Americans that I would say, other immigrants, you can go down the line of those Asian-Americans, Jewish people, the no Irish here signs. The problem of racial bias is especially inherent in our society because of our history of slavery and our history of exclusionary laws and it's something that even with, we pass lots of laws but sometimes the law doesn't follow the law may not necessarily follow the community or vice versa. I think part of it is we need to be exposed to different people but it's also, you know someone from a different walk of life but it's also recognizing the problems inherent in the system and thinking about how to fix it so there was an article recently in the New York Times a data study came out that showed that no matter your class, so if you come from a very wealthy family or not that African-American students end up having worse outcomes than white students no matter if they were wealthy African-American students or poor African-American students and compared to their peers so we see that data then you look at how do we address that and I think through that we, through looking at how to address the inherent problems in our that kind of issue that kind of systemic systemic issue in our society there's always going to be bias but how do we not just fix bias but ensure that people can succeed in life and overcome both systemic racism and become members of society a more equal society and then through a more equal society one would hope that bias through exposure to different people being on more equal footing that there would be a lessening of bias of course it's difficult it's people's feelings and sometimes feelings aren't rational or there may be rational you have one bad experience you all have met me, Jewish person maybe now you'll hate all the Jews because you met me but seriously I think it's difficult to combat but I think that we can look at issues within our system and hope that through addressing these issues that we can combat also the personal biases that may exist in people or at least they learn to keep them to themselves and maybe wave at you when you leave in the morning just to be Karen Richards it's from the Human Rights Commission so I do implicit bias training and basically there's a million ways to approach that but the approach that I use is basically to do the brain science around bias and to get people to understand why implicit bias exists and how it operates behind the scenes how it then affects it's affected by your perceptions of the world and then how it drives into behavior and then we talk about systemic institutionalized racism so that people have a frame for so the idea is it allows us to try to work on this one is you recognize that you have implicit bias two you understand that in order to overcome your implicit bias you need to take active conscious steps to overcome it and so you need to care about why to do that because you're not going to change your behavior unless you care about why it's important to do that and then we give strategies for how you can begin to uncover biases for yourself and how you can begin to work on changing yourself so I've trained over a thousand Vermonters on this and so hopefully that trickles out in other places and it starts to have its own effect over time but it's not a one and done you know it's something that people have to work on and I think the other missing problem in our society as a whole is we don't talk about race we're very reluctant to talk about race and when we talk about race we don't do it in a way that's productive and so that's a whole another conversation is how do you begin to have conversations around race that bring out these different issues and that respect a lot of what Kate was saying around anecdotal information from people of color and how as white people we respect what they're saying instead of trying to minimize or you misunderstood what happened there or you like how are the ways that we can talk about it that better bring about better outcomes thank you we've got Warren Dennis Jessica okay so I'm not sure when I'm going to end up with a question but when we're thinking about bias earlier Karen mentioned life in Vermont was very different 25 years ago than it is today 25 years ago Vermont was the way we all think that we're reasonably non-prejudicial in our own personal lives but yet I would posit that every person in the state has certain personal biases that probably don't express very often but we only have to look at the time and it was at least 25 years ago and we had the Irisburg affair that brought out very hostile racial prejudice is almost immediate and my oldest and best friend from my childhood is Jewish and remembers very well when his family could not get a hotel or motel room in Vermont that was back in the early 50s he was actually younger then about 10 years old I would think when that happened for him that was a very hard-learned lesson for him back then so this the concept of bias is very pervasive and having said that I don't think I have a question but you shared good information thank you Dennis then Jessica so about 40 years ago GE decided to show this film to all the apprentices and the apprentices ranged from right out of high school 18 to people that were 30-ish they were men and women some were veterans some were not because they wanted to cross representation because the federal government paid half of the salary for this program so the university of Denver put out a film I'm sure it's still out there called what you are now is where you work when and it was so popular that they updated it and changed it and improved it what you are now is where you work when so if you were 15 years old you had feelings because of the age you were about the Vietnam War or anything else going around you or your grandfather they felt different and of course in the 1970s a lot of the younger people had long hair and what came out of that some of the comments from the apprentices were I wish my father could see this he'd understand why I had long hair or he'd understand why I felt the way I do about things and it helped the young people understand how their fathers and mothers felt about things too when and it was very helpful I recommended it to one of the classes I was taking at the time to the professor and GE loaned him to movie so the whole class could see it too so I saw it twice and it was a real it was very helpful and I don't know if it would be helpful but it was still irrelevant I'm sure of that how long I'd say it was probably an hour I'd say it was probably an hour and if you go on to you John if you go on to you because I know you're very capable it's probably a new truth I'm turning to Don it's 100% triad trait now later check some mail or something it's easier to ask John John's been on me so he loves this stuff University of Vietnam Jessica mine was mostly a statement too being grateful actually to Jim to bring up the issue because part of I think a lot of us think about what Jim asked and I've talked a lot to folks in my community about this bill because it's been in the media and I was last weekend at a meeting in the town so a lot of folks came up and talked to me about it and my sense even I something this week I mean I hope that I've never been not let me explain it more with an example is that I feel as if a lot of folks feel like they themselves have experienced some sort of discrimination or bias and therefore think they know what everyone else must be experiencing because well what do you mean you know and for example my daughter's long where's it in ponytail when she runs and feels as if she can only run in certain places because people either whistle at her or slow down and drive right behind her or things like that so she feels that she's experiencing bias towards her if she were running with her tall boyfriend no one would do that right and so I think a lot of people feel you know my mother talks about being a Catholic Italian and what she dealt with and so we all sort of have our own little experience and we don't what the thing that has really struck me today even more than yesterday or the last time we talked about this is that this has something also to do with being able to get good grades in school being able to get into a good college to move on to be to have a good job and move up the rungs and that's what's different than what maybe my daughter feels when she goes for a run right I mean that's very different and very important here is my sense so Jim I get a lot of the same thing in my district and I go out on my way to be extra nice I would stop some morning and tell her good morning and hope she has a nice day because I go out on my way and it drives them crazy I thought you were talking to Jesse but it does get their attention to stuff I just want to respond to representative I know we're all waiting for a break I think that's true there is that sense I know what it's like because I've gone through this and I think there is I think at times there's also the kind of thing where people will say well I don't understand why you say I'm privileged I grew up very poor and I faced a lot of discrimination because I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and I made my way up I did it myself people were terrible to me but I did it, why can't you do it you'll experience things like that and I think that's a very important experience and it's not something to discount and it's something to be celebrated but I think that through one of the reasons why this board is legislation and recognizing systemic racism is so important is that for let's say mainstream a poor white person and a poor African-American person is that there is this long history of systemic racism against African-Americans and on context bias so kids, African-American kids when you have for instance police officers in school they're more likely to be disciplined to be suspended to be expelled even though they don't commit a crime because a lot of times they don't commit discipline disciplinary infractions at a higher rate than white kids they may not have the same support system that other kids have when you cross the street at night and you unconsciously clutch your purse if you see an African-American man behind you versus a white man so there's this long history of keeping of trying to keep one portion of the population down whether it's conscious or unconscious or now as a result of actual conscious biases so I think it's so important to recognize both that the experiences that people have are so valid and that I can't imagine the difference between running by yourself and running boyfriend and that also that this is an area where there's been such long standing systemic discrimination against people whether conscious or unconscious that this is something where we need special mitigation where we can work on special mitigation and address this without not discounting other people's experiences but I think that's why it's so important. Any other questions or comments from the committee members? Then let's take a break and when we come back together in say 10 minutes does that work? Dennis, 10 minutes? It's a documentary It's a documentary It's a 25 10 minutes and what I'd like to do is spend some time as a committee can you hang in with us? It's a participation I'd like us to talk as a committee about S281 based on what we've gleaned so far okay? So go before us and break so so we've heard from everybody that was scheduled and who has appeared so far we did get word that one person who contacted late yesterday needed to change up to next week when we take this up again I think it's Tuesday afternoon but also I can't remember if I mentioned yeah Tuesday Wednesday morning Wednesday morning we'll take this up again and this afternoon right? member from 3-4 I meant with we do have it 4 o'clock two people scheduled to testify this afternoon yes but there's also a list representative of Sullivan from Burlington told me that gentleman by the name of Patrick Brown who's very much involved in equity issues over in Burlington he had a list of folks that we should hear from yesterday to drive me maybe it was the day before I don't know but not today I asked her to please get that list for me so that we could make contact and I reminded her again this morning so those folks hopefully will get in on Wednesday next so there's that still out there by way of testimony now after yesterday's testimony we haven't had a conversation with if we could start with these questions of the six points that's right which kind of put a chill in the air shall we say yesterday and again I can't remember if I mentioned to the whole committee I did ask Julio Constance to send us in writing a memo over viewing his six concerns so that we had that post on our website that we have it in his words to be able to refer to so Brinn and John however you could share with us what I basically just went through the six issues that Julio Constance raised with us so I think Brinn would be the best person to respond I mean some of them she was aware of beforehand they actually came up during Senate Gov Ops so they weren't a total surprise but she's I think has the most knowledge to speak to those issues I was just sort of the messenger because I thought it was important to hear from legislative council about this issue Thank you John George for the record I'm not sure if I have the six points identified all of them but I can generally respond to oh you can read another but I'll go ahead and generally respond and if there's things that I missed please feel free to ask me about them I think that the first question that came up was the question about the panel membership about the requirements that three members of the panel be people of color this did come up in the Senate and I think as you know there was a floor amendment introduced by Senator Brock to address to change that quota to I think the language was that it would be a requirement that the panel be racially diverse instead of the actual quota requirement so there'd be three people of color so I would agree with with Julio that quotas tend to be sort of a crude way of achieving a state interest and there is other language that is more narrowly tailored to achieve the state's interest but I think that it's important to identify what the actual state interest is so I'm just going to remind everybody I'm sure you all know this that when a classification is based on race the court undertakes an equal protection analysis that's called a strict scrutiny analysis and that analysis is that the law has to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest so I believe that Julio was talking about some jurisprudence from the 80's and 90's that was cases involving a state's interest in remedying historical discrimination so for example affirmative action cases or state contract cases where there was a program established by a law that would make it easier for state contracts to be gotten by people of color I believe so really the interest in those situations was remedying historical discrimination that was the compelling interest on behalf of the state so I see, I think that the senate contemplated a different interest in this case which is that as you've talked about all morning institutional bias there may be some compelling interest in having actual people of color who've experienced this bias to be responsible for overseeing the identification of this bias or working to remediate that bias so that's a different interest than the state saying we're going to put these three people of color on the board because historically people of color haven't been pointed to boards it's quite a different interest it would probably be a new question for the court whether or not that's a compelling interest for the state the second question of whether or not it's narrowly tailored to achieve that interest is a separate question and as I mentioned earlier historically quotas are found to be not narrowly tailored there are other ways to achieve an interest without imparting a quota so I would agree on that point but I do think that this is a this would be a unique question for the court and it's interesting behind the legislation and do you have thoughts about the language that was suggested this morning the so that would be language from Act 54 yes I think that would be that it's similar to the to the language in the bill here so I think it meshes pretty well that is one way to achieve something similar perhaps without using a quota so saying pass it the way it's written is it worth the test in court for this or shouldn't we be making an effort to fix it before it's put into law and then is left to the challenge in court I think that's up to the policy makers to decide whether or not because I think all too often we pass things with the attitude oh well we'll just defend it later and I don't think that's the right way to do it I think we should be making laws that can pass the smell test and I would not put it out there so that it's challenged later so I would say we definitely need to fix this thank you Patty for continuing to speak for a minute I was sort of oh dear ma'am I agree with Patty that was my point why this bill is going to cost money no matter what and I'd rather be putting the state's money into understanding the issues and getting on top of making a difference than spending it to defend the law in court so let's try and make it as as good as we can that's essentially what I would agree so right from the beginning I kind of wonder why another panel, another thing is being created and stop the cost is a concern too but there's groups out there watching this and I'm not saying that the state couldn't do a better job of doing things but looking at 868 which I haven't read all the way through and I don't think the committee has read through the way we did we have not touched it at all but in looking at this it says number one it proposes to prohibit racial profiling but number five is the interesting part expand the jurisdiction of the Human Rights Commission to include managing clutching and data and all that other stuff and those are the things I'm interested in doing whether it's the council or the commission they certainly can do the things they want to do and if they need it in statute that we expand their jurisdiction or what they're doing I'm more interested I think in going from that place then creating another whole group that's involved with the same type of issues and spending money, I mean a lot more money spending maybe some money to help with the existing ones is one thing creating another one where we have six issues that we're talking about now just in S281 Can we just go back to responding to the and save the committee conversation I think you know Dennis brings up some good points and I may have to fine by me I think Dennis was I could have been interpreting I think Dennis was basically saying why spend time talking about panel composition why not I thought but if we could if we stay with a separate panel how does the committee feel about using the language similar to what was in Act 54 to talk about the composition as opposed to doing the quota thing we're okay with that any objection if we stick with the separate panel if we're going to do the panel then we ought to do it right I'm not convinced we're going to do some with a separate panel but given that I think that's how I tried to phrase it can you phrase that again I'm sorry I'm trying to hear you can we maintain a separate panel such as this proposed in 281 yes 281 are we as a committee okay with using language to define the composition of the panel similar to that used in Act 54 as opposed to a statement of quota I guess I'm a little unclear on the question you're asking here so you're looking for support of the makeup of the panel no I'm not asking for support I'm simply asking the question as to where the committee is because it was suggested yesterday that to go with a quota is not going to fly and Patty spoke to that I mean that we could leave it in there and wait for the courts to challenge it and there's more money doing a court challenge thing Jessica spoke to put the money into a court case when we have had suggestions as to language that would avoid the constitutional question language which is not make sure I understand this correctly the language that was used for composition purposes in Act 54 is not constitutionally challenge it's not likely to be challenged from a constitutional perspective I think that it would be much more difficult to survive a challenge if it was challenged I think that a challenge in the first place is unlikely because we're not talking we're not talking about we're talking about an appointment so a person would have to have standing to challenge this standing to challenge the law so it would have to be a person who could prove that but for the requirement in the legislation they could have an appointment but yes I would agree that the language in Act 54 is more likely to survive the challenge if it was challenged so all I'm looking for is if we maintain the approach that's outlined in 281 which establishes a new panel to deal with systemic racism in our state government if we maintain a separate panel as opposed to giving that task to something that already exists it would be okay with putting in the Act 54 language to describe composition as opposed to having that little statement about there shall be this quota when we have been told having a quota is is pretty weak from a constitutional perspective so I will end up in court I'll reserve judgment at this point we'll go forward okay so we don't have we'll we'll just put that question still in the veins okay so then Dennis raised the question do we want a separate panel at all based on what we've heard so far thoughts from the and we did hear from the Human Rights Commission ED that you could do this if tasked with doing it or not so much Erin Richardson from the Human Rights Commission we could do it with additional resources we cannot do this with existing resources thank you John that was your hand wasn't it yes it was so I mean I think if we're going to go down that path we need to understand exactly what the Human Rights Commission does and what we think that this panel should be doing I thought we heard a lot of testimony yesterday and I think the most important testimony was from Curtis Reid Diana Wall and Beth Fausti and I think they had fairly similar visions as to how they thought this panel could help which is to take it out of a sort of investigatory role and more into a collaborative role with the administration in trying to identify best practices with respect to how to combat systemic racism in state government so the question to me would be is the HRC if that is what we're trying to achieve and that's a question for the entire committee if that's what we're trying to achieve is the HRC the best land in place for that objective if our goal on the other hand is to conduct investigations of state government you know I'm getting into an issue with the subpoena language that's in there and while we might not be bringing well it's unclear what we would do with this subpoenaed information to some extent but if it's more of an investigatory role then that's another option personally I think having a collaborative role with the administration in trying to solve these problems I think is very important I think that Fausti's testimony about that is very important I mean creating some stove pipe organization that doesn't report to the governor at all doesn't really have any connection to the governor or the administration in any way is not going to lead to success especially if what we're trying to do is work with state agencies to address this issue identify best practices that are out there we heard from Vermont State Police today about what they're doing and I think looking at those models and ensuring that those models are known to other state agencies and that there's encouragement through the performance process of implementing them in other state agencies is a far better way to go about this in conducting investigations so now we've got Dennis, Jim and Jessica so looking getting back to the six issues that were brought up whether or not they all need to come out I'm looking at the six issues coming out of 281 and there's not much left of 281 if all of them are addressed and legitimate there's not much that's why maybe there's some pieces that could go into the expansion of the Human Rights Commission that's why I mention those things because I saw a lot of things taken out of 281 from the Assistant Attorney General maybe it would be helpful after we hear from Jim and Jessica if Brent, if you could share with us if you had identified others among the six that had fixes as opposed to just assuming that they're unfixable so let's hear Jim and Jessica and then back to Brent I think John highlighted the two issues and I would totally agree I respect the work that the Human Rights Commission does and I think it has an important role and if we're looking for we got some problems, we got to fix them and not the collaborative but here's the sounding board and here's the investigation and I think Human Rights Commission needs to be beat up to be able to tackle that if we want to give a more collaborative approach a try it doesn't mean that the legislature can't come back and revisit this next year, year after and say how is our progress I thought I also heard from Beth yesterday some reference to they could do something by executive order in terms of setting up an advisory collaborative border commission did I hear that and she testified so maybe with another conversation with her or someone from the administration as to whether or not they are planning to do something whether they're willing to do something or whether they would rather have us put something in statute to if we're going to go the collaborative way she also spoke to as she checked my notes for another meeting I had yesterday on this she also said I don't recall what I'd have to think about the executive order concept but she did say she did speak to an interest in a model similar to as far as putting things together the model that we have for the secretary of education where in that instance it's the state board of education that comes up with a certain number of potential people to be the secretary of education and the governor picks from that list she did mention that kind of approach to setting up something similar to what's in 281 right I think we need to have some further conversation to find out what they might be willing to do in that area to hopefully get to a place where you know everybody's can live with the outcome it sounded to me it didn't like a person within state government that didn't report to ultimately in some line of authority with the chief executive and again that gets back to the way John articulated it do we want the investigative approach in which case we can do something and set up some kind of structure within human rights commission or do we want to try a collaborative approach in which case we need to work with the administration to make sure that that all works as long as we for sure as the legislature remember we have to do our due diligence at the end of the day we have to come to terms Jessica so I just want to go back to the what John said and what we heard from Karen earlier so we keep referring to the human rights commission as only investigative arm and I feel that one of the things that we really heard about was what is their mission their mission is much broader but unfortunately they don't have very much very many resources or staff in order to accomplish that broader mission yeah who does everything so my point is that I don't think we should just again totally cut off Dennis's idea of maybe really looking at the human rights commission as also a collaborative could possibly be a collaborative arm and except they need more resources and no matter where we do this resources are going to be a huge question and that brings me to the money again is that I'm just thinking that the nice thing about the human rights commission is it's already set up and so the resources the support it's obvious what's necessary because they're already doing a lot of the function and they understand what isn't being done so Ken speak to that I keep thinking about the poor guy from the ethics commission who came in and talked to us about what's happening for him and he's still scratching his head about how am I going to accomplish all this all by myself and also I like the idea I love the collaborative approach and but I liked what Karen from human rights commission said to us about the liaison role that she did establish with governor shumlin's administration whereas we have you know our current governor maybe just because he doesn't think of it but to reach out and so it would be nice that that was more in statute or in the law that says that this liaison role is very important and should be connected with the legal council for the governor and that would be that connection and I'm just not sure that the that the current human rights commission has would have the capacity as volunteers to take on yet another role so that I think we have a lot more talking to do about that but I do think that connecting it is important otherwise we end up with all these these um silos too many silos and then we all know how busy our days get how often we're able to really connect I think is about being able to walk down the hallway and connect and so um anyway those are a few things that I'm thinking Warren and Cindy I'm not confident that I remember Beth's words accurately from yesterday but I thought she said something about a lot of this the governor could do by executive order but if he did it that way it would confine the range of things that this panel could do to dealing only with the executive branch did I hear that right or is it not you found it so if we that would be a reason not to let it happen just by executive order I guess because we want the broadest range for this panel but isn't the charge in S281 really aimed at the executive branch with the exception of watching legislation you know it applies to the general assembly and the judiciary I forgot about the judiciary is that Warren and Cindy mine is similar how how does the woman's commission come into being is that an executive order that was created by executive order originally and then legislation was drafted later to change it so to change it to what what is it considered out there so it's a independent agency independent agency could so couldn't this be similar or it would have to start with an executive order seeing how we're the legislature can't we set it up as an independent agency similarly yes thank you Warren I remember some history on that when the commission was first created it was the governor's commission there was a appointed time where it then went to being the Vermont commission on women and that gave it much greater independence I think it went from executive order to a bill and then changed it from the governor's commission to the Vermont commission and that change was allowed only if we didn't let them have any per diems well that's yes did John hear that? it's when it was changed from the governor's commission on women to the Vermont commission on women they did gain quite a bit of independence but that was the moment when it was put into statute that the commissioners could not be paid a per diem that so we just fixed that hopefully it only took how many years okay wrong I have some major concerns over this commission and the way that it's being tailored in that I think it's way too independent and this person that would be named the chief or whatever we heard a couple different presentations yesterday that were very different in style and my concern would be if you get the wrong person in there that it becomes an activist as opposed to just really going through and trying to address issues that I think there's more general support that needs to work on and I'm very concerned that the way that this would be set up is that there's just no accountability you have a board that is elected by all sorts of different entities and this particular position is reportable just to that board so I'm very very concerned about that sort of setup that sort of brings us to the second issue sort of addresses that I was going to ask if we were all set to go back to the second so I think that the second point that attorney Thompson raised was about the separation of powers issue I would just remind the committee that separation of powers question is not whether one branch of government is exercising the certain powers belonging to another branch of government but whether that power exercise so encroaches on another branch of government as to usurp that branch from its constitutionally recognized functions so I would just point out that the jurisdiction of the chief is to identify systemic racism in government and it's not to administer control over other branches of government or exercise disciplinary authority there are multiple examples of agency level boards that you've created that are vested with regulatory or quasi-judicial functions such as the ethics commission and the transportation board those boards are structured similarly to this one the ethics commission for example has an executive director that serves as the pleasure of the commission so this is something that you have done before and I understand that there are some people who might not like it but it is something that you've done and I don't believe that there is a separation of powers issue I understand that there was might have been a misunderstanding about the whether or not this was a cabinet position but I would just draw your attention to page two which says that the chief civil rights officer should have the powers and duties of the cabinet but shall operate independently of the cabinet so it is not a cabinet position specifically the officers will not be attached to any state department or agency so I think there may have been some confusion about whether this was actually a cabinet level position that didn't report to the governor but it actually is an independent position in that regard that's it if I could Dennis and then sorry my note here and I can't remember now if it was the attorney general the assistant attorney general or it was HR it ties the state's obligation is to work with the panel and that was a concern I can't remember it was the assistant attorney general who made the comment that this would this puts a state obligation but it sounds more like that doesn't it HR but that was one of the notes I had that it requires them to work with the panel when the administration and you know they work with everybody I think the mandate was a concern and I don't know if that's page 2 or 3 I didn't page 2 should be on page 2 number 3 should be attached to the state department not be attached but somebody housed with them so I think it was C what she was referring to right so that is that would be a policy question whether or not you want to house the position within the agency there are other examples I think the commission on women was given funding to have its own support staff so that may have been a decision made in the senate to avoid that kind of funding for the position I'm not sure Jessica so for me being C both lead you to believe that it is part of the cabinet but not part of the cabinet and that I just think if nothing else if we continue to go with this bill we should re-write that or whatever just to make it really clear because I agree I agree what you're saying Bryn that that's not what it said and I realized that yesterday but I still feel like with all the language around cabinet we did not do that with the ethics group and I think that that's important to be clear and this isn't very clear it makes it seem like maybe all of these things administrative legal and technical support is going to be exactly the same as if you were a secretary of commerce and that you're going to have the same kind of support and so I understand why the Attorney General said what he said I think it's confusing and we need to be really careful because this is such an important spot did you have your I thought you were down here again no justice other thoughts with regard to the separation of powers which related to the panel you know for the separate panel the assistant AG came and asked to speak with the EDA about the ball that's who you're looking for yes thank you topic for the moment John I'm just looking at Beth Christie's testimony yes we saw a comment John I mean there's a number of ways we could structurally change both the panel and the chief civil rights officers before your functions and again I think it comes back to exactly what the heck we want this panel to do you know I personally believe in a collaborative approach with the administration and you know I think if that's the way we go you know the governor I think needs to have a little more say with respect to the chief officer and you know there's a couple models that we discussed I discussed with Bryn this morning that could do it you know and I think one's the agency of education model where you do have a board who makes recommendations to the governor three recommendations I believe and the governor chooses so he has one person he appoints one out of the five well that's how it's currently structured we could go to the state board of education which I believe is really appointed by the governor so there's different ways we have the ability to structure things in different ways to ensure that there's a collaborative approach between the officer and the administration so I think you know that that can be worked out I mean so I mean you know I'm very open to that and was there another model well there's the transportation board which I have we briefly touched on but I have not looked at it I mean Bryn you may have looked at it since the transportation board has been mentioned a couple of times we came out in discussions this morning but you know so we have the ability to figure that that out and you know so it again goes to the question which you know when I read 281 you know is it supposed to collaborate or is it supposed to you know conduct investigations and you know I would prefer given that we have like the Vermont State Police you know have really spent over a decade working on this problem that there are best practices out there and I'd rather see this panel identifying those best practices and ensuring that every state agency adopts a practice that's best suited for them rather than going after various state agencies to identify systemic racism and you know basically slap them on the wrist so John you see the police as investigating themselves in the other agencies the state police is a good model a best practice for how to address systemic well they do have internal affairs they do go to the AG if they find an issue absolutely but what they're doing is probably more serious than any other state agency if they arrest somebody and you know for criminal conduct that person could go to jail I mean whereas you know state agencies you know systemic racism may be more of an employment issue so maybe it doesn't get hired somebody doesn't stay as long but the lieutenant went through was their entire internalized program to move out implicit bias and that sort of right it was very proactive yes there is the internal affairs part of it if something goes wrong but the part I was more interested in was the number of proactive steps they're using to train you know senior management middle management and the officers who are on the road conducting traffic stops right and I thought that was very valuable could serve as a you know you can learn a lot from that best practice adopting those practices across the state in various agencies I think is a good thing to do so that's one of the questions we have to deal with is do we want to be proactive and use a collaborative model where do we want to use an investigative model where we sort of identify problems and if I could add in addition to the state police going back to Curtis Reed's testimony he cited not only the state police in terms of the department of public safety he also said that commerce transportation tourism and fishing the wildlife have best practices that they've been employing and stand down as models that could be used in terms of sharing best practices with other agencies you may want to look at the statement policy in the state police he must have a policy statement well I mean I think you know that's one thing this panel and chief officer can start doing is creating an inventory of best practices in the state because I think that's one of the things to do so I mean that too would go along with member Curtis Reed did suggest that if we stick with this bill that we have a new number one as to their tasks and it was because Mr. Reed was very upbeat he was the glasses already three quarters full he said in terms of this within the state agencies regarding rooting out systemic racism he said we should have a new number one that points out the good things that are going on which gets to an inventory of best practices already an inventory of best practices already being employed in these various state entities I think as Rob said if you have an officer chief officer who's an activist whose main function is to basically say got there to various state agencies this isn't going to be a collaborative approach it's really not going to resolve any systemic racism that exists among state agencies it could make things worse it could the table mentioned the test is it will see if we put the imprimatur on this and move forward this panel with the chief officer whatever name it would have that we there would be a time period in which it would be shown does it work or doesn't it work and it's built right into the bill frankly because of lack of funding it either lives or it doesn't not unlike the ethics commission unless it's unless proactive action is taken to maintain it down the road goes out of business but Bryn coming back to you is there other with regard to concerns raised by the AG's office I would just point out that nothing in terms of the confidentiality concerns regarding records that would be turned over to the chief there's nothing in S281 that would compel the disclosure of records that are subject to confidentiality requirements so for example private or personal health information subject to federal law have to be redacted prior to being turned over with that said I think that there it would be quite easy to put in some language that would require that would say that all the records disclosed to the chief or turned over to the chief would be exempt from the public records act that's easy to add but I think that first of all records because the bill contemplates an overview of institutionalized racism I think the idea was that personal because this chief wouldn't be targeting individuals that the records that would be turned over would not necessarily be personal records but also if records were personal they would be redacted prior to being turned over however it would be easy to do a belt and suspenders provision here to provide for confidentiality so can you explain to me if we're looking to give this person subpoena powers or this position subpoena powers break that down a little bit for me as far as what they would be able to get versus what they wouldn't I mean we heard testimony this morning that the Human Rights Commission has got access to information that even the folks that that information is about don't have access to you know if we take the example that they used about the state hospital could you give me a rough idea what that would look like potentially well because the bill at the outset contemplates collaboration between the agencies and the position I think that it was contemplated that there would be some collaboration at the outset if an agency didn't comply with the request for information then the position could use its subpoena power to demand that the agency or department turned over information the scope of that information I think is not certainly not laid out precisely in the bill the way that subpoenas typically work is that the court exercises that the court's role is to sort of arbitrate the inquest that permits the state to investigate in a manner that doesn't infringe on the liberties of the witnesses so the court would you know if an agency were issued a subpoena and they wanted to quash the subpoena that would go to court and the court would decide whether or not that demand for records was appropriate so I I'm sorry go ahead just hit my head go ahead do you have to be a member of the buyer and attorney to issue a subpoena or a notary or something simple as just being a notary but it's normally an attorney or the court will issue itself okay thank you one of the issues that concerns me about the subpoena power in this bill is it just sort of sits there and you don't understand why it's there because I'm going to go to H868 which talks about the powers of the Human Rights Commission so okay they have a subpoena power too but then you go to the next section of the bill enforce conciliation agreements and prohibitions against discrimination temporary or permanent injector relief position of a civil penalty of not more than ten dollars on behalf of the agreed individuals and it goes on from there which is very much like an enforced action process which is what I did when I was at the SEC where is that one which doesn't exist in 281 so you know at least based on my experience there's something missing from the bill if we're going to go down that path I think we should take a collaborative approach and that's why I'm not exactly sure why that's in there why the senate put it in there and obviously we can't really address that question but it's something that I know I want to at least find out from the senate as to why that language got into the bill does that overreach is that what you're thinking? it's just like it's plumped into the middle of the bill and it's like okay you're showing subpoenas that's leading to some sort of legal action which is like bringing in criminal action bringing in civil action so that would normally come from the energy's office no it could come from this group sort of but you don't have the language in the bill to do any of those things but it is in 868 it's in 868 because it's part of the existing statutory language for the Human Rights Commission but that's why I'm saying I'm trying to compare the two is HRC has subpoena power but here's what they're going to do when they start subpoena people and I have the question I wanted to throw out there do we need to keep the subpoena piece in there if indeed it's contemplated that people are going to play nice together and any lawyer or notary could subpoena anyway well no if you pulled the language out of the out so it would take it away from that person wouldn't have the authority without and if you put it inside the Human Rights Commission well you would have it because it already exists and you would also have and this is one of the things I said to think about the HRC versus read the 868 and what they can do so it just depends on what type of model you want collaborative bottom page see I go back to the collaborative which you've spoken about some others have also in here having the subpoena thing in there seems to me to encounter like a battery ram to collaborative and that's what Beth Piste testified to she said community power is going in the wrong direction at least from the administration standpoint I'm just pointing that out not taking a position per se but if we keep it in we need in the event that some agency out there says talk to the hand we're not talking to you and one of the things that exactly because that's one of the things I talked with Brittany yesterday on it was just like it sort of just I just explained it's where it just sits there and it's like kind of a hammer it's a start of a hammer but the HRC powers that's the hammer when you can bring an injunctive action seek civil and punitive fines that's the hammer let me throw out this other possibility if we go back to the composition of the panel talking about the N model if for instance the people on the panel are appointed by the governor they provide names from which the governor has to choose the officer that head officer whatever he or she is called if there were an agency out there that wasn't behaving itself properly not responding well to the inquiries of this entity that had in and of itself been appointed by the governor theoretically can't the governor say agency such and such this is what's expected of you and have that kind of conversation which isn't an easy conversation people leave their jobs if they don't go along with what their boss says I'm just throwing that out there isn't that another possible another possible way of looking at this if we take Dan Wall's testimony about working on putting in performance measures if an agency is not meeting its performance goals yeah you would assume that the governor or someone in the administration brings that hammer down say something we've got lots to talk about and report to the doctor my grin's done with us for the moment yes or was there other did you have other pieces coming out of that conversation I think it's the only other piece was about the data collection thank you collecting the data operations operational priorities so the piece five and page four okay so the collection of data I think that was contemplated by managing oversee the state-wide collection of race-based data I think what was contemplated was organizing and managing overseeing the existing collection of race-based data data is being collected currently and I think that it's been the testimony probably in here and other committees that there's no centralized background for that data there's nobody overseeing to ensure that it's being collected there's no place to access it so my understanding the data that's being collected currently and not to branch out into new areas but I agree that if the intent were to collect additional data that would need to be made more clear about specifically what data that would be anything else before you need to run to your next I don't think so I'm sorry that I have to go it's been a joy it was we'll be back thank you committee other aspects of this that we've heard about so far that you want to touch on at this point understanding this is part of a much longer conversation we're making no decisions about anything we're just putting ideas out on the table there's fodder trying to do our due diligence to bring out the best bill we can so Jessica I think that last point that we just heard is another that we need to sort of talk about which is do we want a centralized platform and then balancing that with do we want a needs assessment that's done in the community and then of course what goes along with both of those conversations is funding so anyhow we keep kind of going between the two and I think that we're going to have to decide if we want both do we want a centralized platform for all the information that's already out there available to put in one place that's easier to digest that's the Act 54 data that's already been collected right I assume that's what it is right it's whatever's here in this little section which is 5003a it's whatever it's been referenced by the different witnesses that a whole bunch of data is already out there in the context of that or what was the other part or an and or like an and slash or the needs assessment a real needs assessment by talking with the community about what's going on taking that data what community are you talking about that's a good question it came up this morning two two folks who testified who talked about a community assessment and my thought is that this is similar to what the women's group did on the day's work day's pay which was a whole you know they went to a consultant who really did the research to see what is really going on with the women in the world of pay so it's that same sort of but it's still the community within state government I would say that it's talking to people who work in state government it's more of the what's the word non-objective more perception as well as reality for people the individuals how they're feeling what they're yes in state government you're not suggesting that we expand the scope of this bill to the whole state right now staying within which would be the three branches three branches because to be curious why is it that their turnover is so much higher among people of color than otherwise so how do you get at that I don't think you're going to see that in the regular data that's already out there I think you have to do more to figure that talk to them and Rob a couple trooper Scott I forget his official title lieutenant didn't indicate that there was only basically two sort of databases that law enforcement has with it I think it was Velcor and one was still right so that data should already be there that they're collecting I would think that we should be able to compile the two and the other question that I have is my former life when I had employees leave my employee fortune 100 company we had to do what was called exit interviews and I'm curious to know if if those are being done as to why people are leaving and my sense of it is that we don't do those who do a good job of them we just look okay this is what our turnover is and this is who that number is comprised of but we never really find out why and maybe it wasn't so much about the job as it was something else that's it I'm sure anything else for the moment I understand we're coming back to this issue at 4 o'clock yes sir I just think one thing H68 does have is a better sentence with respect to data collection which is to create a strategy for implementing a centralized platform for race based data collection and manage the aggregation correlation public dissemination of data the other thing I want to raise is I have yet to hear any testimony as to what other data we need you know and she didn't have a quick answer for it and we heard from other people that there is data's there it just may be an issue of aggregating it so that it's useful to people and so we still need to resolve that Lieutenant Scott made a clear talk with him today that there is a lot more information that comes even off of this report that isn't on this report do you want to let this be for the time being we've got a mountain of issues within this bill to work our way through and we will do it we'll make our way through we always do just remember we all have to keep breathing deeply and remember we're family around this table okay so you got an extra 15 minutes for lunch just so that you're aware Trevor don't spend it all in one just so you know I had a message from Trevor our police chief in South Burlington and to call him at noon time he has something to share with us with regard to S192 that's the one that moves law enforcement certification licensing to OPR and the issues that are in that bill if you'll recall I had agreed to put off having S192 brought up again until this next week because everybody was trying to do a kumbaya thing not only within law enforcement but law enforcement with OPR I do have it on our schedule for next week because they said they'd be ready I hope to heaven Trevor's not pulling the rug out from underneath that there was something in the secretary this morning on that it sounded like they had some S192 law enforcement, various law enforcement folks have wavered on their support of moving this to OTR after being convinced the licensing piece is unnecessary they had their kumbaya moment in there it sounds like it's kind of falling apart so we're still going to take it up next week you said Trevor wanted to talk at noon okay I just wonder if maybe we don't need to not for the committee don't worry you should be here you might be there if you want us to hear it he didn't say the committee if it does turn out Dennis if it does turn out what I'm talking to him that's something the whole committee needs to hear arrange a different time I don't need to hear any more than I'm hearing all right okay we're a hot dog this is bill number one two three four five this is bill number 25 we have voted out of this committee this session 25 this session we did 20 before crossover not easy carrying this group it isn't we're a bunch of workers so the voice of doom so now we now we need to switch gears to S28 look at that it's the same numerals 182 turns into 281 I'm not easily entertained at this hour that's that's rare yes it is rare pretty observant there yes okay so we're back to systemic racism and we have two folks to provide testimony to us was Bren able to come back well maybe she will okay are you supposed to be down in a committee meeting yes okay chief do you mind okay Senator Brock thank you very much and thank you for coming up a second time thank you very much it's Senator Randy Brock and thank you very much for the opportunity to come in talk about S281 to build that as you know has gone through the other body with considerable debate about I do have some concerns about the bill and I had offered an amendment on one particular sexual bill which was not accepted by the senate but I do want to discuss that with you today I have concerns about a number of areas of the bill but probably the biggest concern that I have is related to the selection criteria for members of the board on one hand and in particular there is a certain number of people on that board be as defined persons of color now the terminology and I can think back my personal experience over the number of years that I've been around I've been called lots of things you know there was a point in time when being called colored was being polite and politically correct and then it became negro and then it became black and now persons of color and if I live a few more years I hesitate to think what I'm going to be called then we're now in an era of microaggressions in which now people who say little things that are considered politically incorrect and insensitive are ostracized and criticized and a great deal of hurt seems to emanate from it and to give you an example I was at the maple festival parade two years ago at St. Albans walking back to the beginning of the parade along the parade route because the parade was still in route a woman on the sideline called me over shaped my hand and she said I voted for you before I'm going to vote for you again and thank you and so on and so forth and elated and then as I walked away she called by the way you've got a really nice tan now to some that would be considered a microaggression for me I'm grateful I had a voter and who I know did not say anything that she intended to be offensive in any way nor did I take any offense to it sometimes I know this is a politically correct statement sometimes I think we have to lighten up and not be so concerned now it's not to say that there isn't real bias that there aren't really egregious examples of racism that we see from time to time there are and those are things that we do need as a state to react against and I think we've made a considerable amount of progress in doing that, is it perfect? No but you know people bully people people do offensive things people make offensive statements to people not just for race but for all kinds of reasons it could be for obesity it could be for intelligence it could be for disability all those things are often addressed through education through remediation through teachers saying the right thing for people speaking up when they need to speak up and sometimes it needs the heavy hand of government but not always but in particular what I found most objectionable about this particular bill is this defined reverse racism if you will that says that a board to deal with this can only be composed of people who are distinct advocates that we are using a methodology that really is a form of racism to create a board of anti-racist you have ironically on about the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's death I just remembered those words that we should select people for things based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin and to make an assumption that you have to have people of color defined on a board has the inherent assumption that they or we have some perspective or some unique commonality of view that is essential to be represented because again we're fungible and we all think alike and that's not the case at all I think it's ironic too that when you consider percentages if you talk about systemic racism if you take a look at the number of African-Americans in Vermont 1.2, 1.3 percent I'm pulling the number out but I know it was less than 2 percent based on the last census and you compare the number in the senate for example we represent approximately 6 percent of the senate so it's clear that either senator Brooks and myself are going to have to resign in order to get the numbers back to where they ought to be that's silly isn't it I think that we do have organizations in place within state that are discussing and I don't want to minimize the seriousness of the problem with the issue that needs to be addressed we have a human rights commission and one of the questions that has always been in the back of my mind as I've looked at this legislation is why can't the charter of that be amended and expanded accordingly to deal with that because the issue of collecting data and analyzing it, presenting it and reporting on it is really within the possibility of chartering the human rights commission to be able to do and it's also an organization that is already staffed perhaps inadequately but the notion of adding staff probably at a cost lower than that that's envisioned here is I think a very realistic idea I'm also concerned about the structure of the committee in terms of what it's supposed to do we've allocated from a cost standpoint about $75,000 in this bill to deal with the first year but if you just read the items that this committee is supposed to do this is going to be a significant cost going forward that we're legislating in law without understanding what the real cost of this is going to be and if they have to hire consultants and do other kinds of things to do these things clearly this is not a one time cost issue of a single staff person the separation of powers issues concerns me because what we're doing is we're creating what essentially is a cabinet level position we're housing it in the agency of administration and then charging them with providing legal and logistical support with no budget to do that so the question is how's that going to be paid for and the bill is silent on that there are a number of other issues in particular about the subpoena power subpoena power that is given this position I think is unusually broad and unusually concerning if you take a look at the subpoena power granted to the human rights commission it's limited there are reasonable time frames for response their protection for the individuals being subpoena then none of that is contained in this particular law if you take a look at the rules in Vermont of civil procedure and criminal procedure again there are fences around subpoenas the use of subpoenas and the ability of people being subpoenaed to come back and have redress there's none of that in this bill this power at least as I read it has the ability to send you a certified letter and ask for your medical records ask for your personnel records ask for intimate things involving your family and you've got to respond to it within six days and there's no notice the period that you would have even if you want to challenge that court is unreasonably short and that is a concern to me as to whether an individual who is appointed by a board that's appointed by a bunch of folks that's not answerable to anybody who's in elected office has that kind of power I think that's very concerning and I think that should concern all of us I could go on about other things that concern me about the bill but in particular I would ask you think carefully that if you are going to go through with this that you use language regarding the appointment that is inclusive and that is non discriminatory in nature and that you make that clear I think otherwise I think you have a real constitutional issue and I understand the Attorney General's office has been in and spoken with you about it so I won't attempt to repeat because I know there were a number of things that they raised concerns about and I would just mention to you that I share those concerns it's not that we don't have a problem that needs to be dealt with I think we do have a problem that needs to be dealt with I think that this though is a very blunt instrument to deal with so thank you for coming in and giving your statement so when you presented the amendment on the floor of the Senate and that was voted down I guess 18 to 12 could you give me the gist of the argument for leaving it as it was was there not time to consider the amendment or did they just well I think that by the time the bill was up for consideration that the government operation committee in the Senate had had it and they had heard from all the advocates who were supporting that I don't know that they heard from anyone who did not support it or if they heard from the attorney general's office at all and as a result I think there was a very single view that this is something that they thought was important that they wanted to do and I think a number that I think it's interesting to note that the only two African-American members of the Senate both voted against it and that may be a clue thank you Senator I I appreciate your sense I mean you had multiple roles you've been state auditor so you've been part of you know the government structure and obviously you've served as a state senator for some time you you talk about yes we do have a problem and we need to work towards making it better we had some discussion earlier today is it do we try initially more of a collaborative approach to you know educate folks or do we need some enforcement mechanism which could involve the Human Rights Commission to have some teeth behind it if they needed to use that I think HRC tries very hard to do a collaborative approach as well or is it better to serve within state government as you know advising the governor on issues or concerns within state government and doing some of the data analysis to see you know if that's a way to measure well I think the issue of defining the problem and data and the collection of good data and the analysis of good data and I emphasize that good data is important because you know you can get all the data in the world but if you get it incorrectly or if the data gives you a bunch of numbers but it doesn't really answer questions that too is a problem and the one thing that I would emphasize about a lot of the data that I've seen is that correlation does not equal causation because you see a disparity it doesn't mean that it was caused by a particular set of conscious actions or discriminatory actions unless you go beneath the data and you ask yourself what other things are going on and of the data that I've seen thus far it begins to touch on it say some of the police stop studies begin to touch on it but there's an absence of some key data elements that would shed I think a lot more light on it if we look at the incarceration population again as an example and you ask yourself gee that number there's a tremendous disparity there but you gotta in my mind get beneath the numbers and ask well why is there disparity and if you say to yourself who are the people who are incarcerated and do they differ between groups of inmates who are incarcerated for example and to take as an example if you have a small group of people who have prior felony convictions and who grew up in an area that is high crime you would have an expectation that they have a higher likelihood of being incarcerated than someone who came up with a no criminal background and who came from an area that had a low crime rate and I'm not sure that any of our studies of incarceration rate have actually looked at that and broken down the other kinds of demographic clues that could explain things or at least raise issues racism may in fact be the issue systemic racism may absolutely be the issue but there also may be other issues and I don't think our data analysis has been sophisticated enough or focused enough to deal with that and that's why I think for example some of the kinds of the issue of data analysis I think is very important but that data analysis as I read the tone of the bill I get the distinct assumption that the conclusions are already drawn as opposed to a clear independent analysis and that I think again is something that concerns me when I look at the composition of the board as the way it's defined here people who have involved in racial justice program it strikes me that this limits the potential of the board to a small number of activists and I don't know that that is going to give us the kind of objectivity that we need to give us all comfort that the result and the advice being given is both independent and credible. Let's go to the assembly. Michael, one book first. OK, and then Rob. OK we've got quite a bit of concern about at least three members of the first one of color and what we've heard is that's pretty blatantly unconstitutional. I believe it's blatantly unconstitutional as well. Yeah, so we're trying to find we're trying to find a better way to say basically that whole paragraph We want people who understand the problem, maybe have lived with the problem, but we're somewhat at a loss, because we have, we heard that, who have had lived experience with systemic racism. Well, I guess that's the question, you know, of lived experience, of what that really means, because every person who is quote, person of color, unquote, has a different experience. The assumption I think here is that everybody has some common level of experience that causes folks to view it in a certain way, and I don't know that that's necessarily true. The language that I use in my amendment, I don't know if you've seen the amendment that I proposed, but the language basically takes that section out that relates to the appointment of the board and its composition and changes to read in order to promote vigorous debate and a full exploration of the issues. Panel membership shall reflect a variety of backgrounds, skills, experiences, and perspectives, be racially diverse, and represent geographically diverse areas of the state. All member appointments shall be made in a non-discriminatory manner. Now, that's a second version. I had a version earlier than that that didn't include the racially and geographically diverse piece. I added that in the item that I introduced because it was clear that the Senate Government Operations Committee wanted something racial in there, and this was probably the least offensive way of doing it, and probably reasonably constitutional, if you could argue, that there was some purpose of having diversity. The one issue that I would emphasize really in all of these discussions is that this is... I think we have to be careful about diversity and that our focus should be on inclusion, and sometimes those two things wind up being in conflict with each other. Thank you. Jessica? No, I'm good. I'm just... I thought Rob was... That's right, darling. Well... I'm sorry. Thank you, Dennis. I'm not gonna have so much... Really that sincere, actually. Randy, we've obviously taken a lot of testimony on this issue. Did you hear any testimony, or do you have an opinion as to how large is this problem? The scope of this... We've heard that we have some systemic racism, but yet nobody's been able to sort of quantify it. Well, we know that at least as far as African-Americans it doesn't affect more than 1.3% of the population. In point of fact, though, seriously, there are... You certainly see anecdotally the claims of problems that have occurred in the criminal justice system. You see the issue of the disproportionate number of stops, which is yet unexplained, although better data may help explain some of it. You see the incarceration rate, and again there may be explanations, but the percentage difference is so great that it's got to be of concern. You hear of the incidents in the state hospital and the complaints of employees. We've had a number of cases, law enforcement cases, of people who claim to have been assaulted or otherwise. So those dosage, you hear obviously anecdotally, and much of this is anecdotal of people who say that their kids have not been treated equitably in the school system. It's a higher disciplinary rate, and that's an issue that exists all over the country. So all of that is there are enough things there that say we should be looking at them, and we should be analyzing, we should be understanding them. We know that education about what is and is not offensive is an important issue, but that also is a charge that's already given to the Human Rights Commission, and so to the extent that it's contained here, frankly it's duplicative. And that again is another question, because we have a body that perhaps has a capability of doing and certainly may need additional resources to do it, but shouldn't we be using that and yet creating another body that appears to potentially be in conflict with it? So I hope that answers. Thank you. He begins to answer your question. Thank you. Any other questions? And I would add, and I know that Chief's going to talk about it as well, is that when we talk about people who are largely the folks who come have been African-American, but there are other people of color in Vermont. We certainly have a disparate rate of stops regarding Hispanic individuals. We have certainly the Native American folks who have different issues, and we certainly have Asian-Americans who, and I remember there was a point in time, I don't know if it was back in the 70s or what, in which African-Americans actually earned more than white Americans in Vermont, so times can change. I just was curious what you thought about. We heard from, and I can't, Curtis, I can't remember his name tonight. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that was interesting about his testimony was that this could really help us with our economic issues around attracting folks to work here and vacation here and so forth. I'm just curious what you think about that. I think if we are able to do a good job with what we do, then people would feel more comfortable being here. There's certainly a market to attract people to Vermont for a variety of reasons. I think it's one that we should try to exploit and by setting that good example and having good progress in these areas is important. I think the progress, for example, that we've made between the state police in particular, who I think have done a very, very good job of addressing this problem head on instead of fighting it, which you see in some law enforcement agencies throughout the state, I think is a very positive thing. And the agency of transportation has recognized that there may be some problems and they've dealt with them openly. And it's doing that throughout state government without being forced to. That's the thing that's just most positive about all of this and I don't want to subsume the good things that have been done and are being done with a cloud that we've got to impose this rigid regime that is made up of people who are activists in the area and it appears quite heavy-handed and unnecessary. Other questions for the Senator? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Senator, thank you. You know me. Thank you. Thank you. Chief Stevens. Yes. Formal welcome to you. Thank you. Thank you. And just relax until Dennis gets his skin. Okay, we're all good. So if you could identify yourself for the record. Yes, I'm Chief Stevens. I'm, well, Don Stevens, Chief of the Nalhegan Band of the Kusak Avanaki Nation. And I'm coming here not as a victim but as a proud representative of our nation, our Indian nation, because too many times people are always trying to pursue themselves as a victim of something and always blaming problems on somebody else or why somebody else is oppressing them. And we don't kind of take that view. Not to say that, you know, we haven't had our land taken and we didn't survive the eugenics survey and we didn't become legally extinct by the Judiciary Committee a long time ago by the AG, but legally extinct because in order to be an Indian, you have to be a recognized citizen of a recognized tribe. So we can't just self-declare. So that's some of the concerns that I have here is that we have been in Vermont since before Vermont was Vermont and we've had a lot of issues and we are disadvantaged. Even myself, I've lost jobs because of when they found out that I'm Native just because of some of the conflicts other Native people have had in the past trying to promote their identity like the fish ends and the other, you know, the license plates that Homer used to drive around with. But what I'm saying is so, you know, we've always taken a different tack that we'd rather be a partner with the state of Vermont than trying to be an adversary. And it's kind of, I want to touch on a little bit of what Randy was saying, but in a way, the word color, like you were saying, we get lateral racism because of the lack of color because we mix with French. People don't realize, would you think of me as a minority if you were looking at me or you were talking about Abenaki people? You wouldn't, right? But in 2006, you passed a law identifying us as an ethnic minority in the state of Vermont which is protected as a minority. So part of the issue of what I'm finding with this whole there should be so many people of color is that the way business works is the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And we don't have a national, we don't have national organizations like the WACP and all these things that can pay for us to consistently lobby you to be able to put us in a position where we can push our agenda, right? I'm not saying there's not problems, but I'm saying is the Abenaki people often get lost in the crowd and that's very frustrating. I've had a bill in the House for three years to create a position in state government to deal with Native American affairs outside of the commission, but where we can have the Department of Education teach about us is ignorance is formed on not being educated about something, right? So if somebody is educated about something then they're not as fearful and they're more apt to accept you, right? So we want to be in the school's teaching. We want social, economic relief for our citizens. We do want Indian Health Services which is due to federal government that we don't tap into as a state of Vermont. There are a lot of funds and stuff out there that the state does not look at. So in 2011, you guys took the bold step of recognizing us as Indian tribes. And when you did that, you created a government-to-government relationship with our tribes because Indians have a special status when it comes to minorities is that if you look at any federal or state governments, we have a government-to-government relationship with the state of Vermont by recognizing us. Federal tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the federal government. So we are considered sovereign in the state of Vermont even though whatever you put in the bill that we don't afford any other opportunities with other citizens in Vermont. That is, there's still a fiduciary responsibility to have a government-to-government relationship. That's why you created the Commission on the American Affairs. And that's why to deal with the same thing as this bill. And you know where that's gone? Nowhere. Because we haven't had funding. We haven't had the people to actually, you guys could come and say, I wonder how the Native people feel about this. And then it would give you a place to go to talk to someone, right? So I'm saying is that creating this bill, there's a lot of issues that I have. One, I'm afraid that the same thing's going to happen because there is a sunset date on this. So somebody that works for a living would be able to apply for this job because it's only maybe guaranteed to be five years if you're lucky if you weren't removed by the board. So one, unless you're independently wealthy you couldn't apply for this position and know that you would have a job after five years. So that eliminates a whole bunch of people that might be, that have a lot of input. The other thing is putting a certain number of people on the board who's that going to be, the people of color. I know I want a representation for our citizens because like I said, we can't promote to have our race come to Vermont. We're in Vermont. We're distinct here, right? We can't add people to Vermont unless they're given birth to them. So my big issue is frustration that you guys really did a great thing to promote us, accept us as a minority, but then you dropped off the face of the earth and we've been out in the wings doing stuff on our own. And all of these committees, like I'm on the state police, fair and diversity thing, it's on my own time. I don't have anybody paying me to go to these committees and commissions. I took vacation time today to come here because we don't have a representative that can be here for our interests. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are... I know my history. I know about me. Part of this thing I see about this bill is how are you going to ensure that you're going to teach about me accurately and you're going to assess the needs of my community accurately because you don't know us. You don't know our issues and you don't know our history. We do. That's the same thing with maybe an African-American community, Vietnamese, Chinese. How is this one officer going to be doing this? Because policies and laws don't mean a thing when it comes to disadvantaged people. You have so many federal laws on the books to protect against anti-discrimination. You have a lot of policies, an EEO of non-discrimination. Do they work? Do some. They're helpful, but really it's the mindset that you have to change and the education piece because nobody's going to tell you I discriminated against this guy and didn't hire him because he was native. They're going to say, oh he wasn't qualified. So what you really need to do is I know one native person in the state government here that is a native person and he's a citizen of a tribe and you probably know him as Jim Maslin. He's an Abinaki person that's part of the co-sut tribe. You know that. Well that's what I'm saying, because the lack of color, so we have our citizens have two issues. We either can blend in because of the lack of color of our skin and go about our way and not worry about disadvantaged but then we lose our heritage and we go extinct and then you become discriminated against. And laterally discriminated against too because people say you don't look at him. I'm like where does an Indian look like? Or those kind of things or your fake fraud one of them said you go through a process in the legislator and see if you can prove yourself to the house senate, the governor, AG, and see if you get passed a law passed saying who you are. I've proven myself, right? I got a card in my wallet to prove it. But I'm saying that that's how ridiculous how far down that road that you can go where you can get about trying to protect people of disadvantage, right? We actually have to go through a process. So I guess I'm frustrated that our bills have gone nowhere and that we have no representation in the state and city and any of the governments unless we do it ourselves. That you guys could maybe make a change so that maybe we can. Maybe you charge the state departments to actually try to hire people that are qualified and then track on that. Saying look, you guys have nobody in the department of education teaching native studies that are of native descent, right? Okay, you hire two people. That's two more than we had before. Right? The same thing with you know market it. And I hate the term saying oh maybe we could market this to outside so people can come here. Okay. People will see a 10% increase when native people do events and activities at Echo Center. Or you know, okay, we can market that. Let's call the tourism department saying they have a necky people open for business. I'm just saying see how it's kind of like let's not use it as a marketing tool. Let's do it because it's the right thing to do instead of a specific purpose because it's a tough thing. And I'm coming here with an honest heart and I've seen this happen with us in 2006 when you passed the bill as a minority and then in 2011 when you passed our recognition, which was the happiest thing in the world for us that we were no longer extinct legally. You know, let's build on those and partner. We're doing a lot of great things and we don't need to distract because I look at these things as bandaid fixes. You know, it's like the mural issue that I'm dealing with in Burlington, right? No, I'm saying is you don't have to tear something down to build something up. We're looking at it. We're just saying look, we want equal representation. It's a beautiful piece of art. Fine. Make it be a beautiful piece of art, but we want equal representation to get our culture out so people know who we are. And I'm not laying this all lightly because it is a serious issue, right? But don't create another policies. Don't create more laws. Don't create, use the tools like some of what Randy was saying, work with the communities who are disadvantaged in the state, hire those people to help guide to make the change. That's what I'm trying to put. You don't need you can throw all kinds of laws you want on it but it's not going to change people's mindsets or make them hire more people or okay, what is this data supposed to do? Where do they get in the data? I mean how many people actually work with the census department to actually get an actual headcount on how many native people in Vermont? I mean we have some but you know, look at where the demographics are. Look at look at where you can put resources. I mean I can tell you where my citizens are. They may not always declare it you know because you lose jobs and you do get disadvantaged. We've got a child right now that got beat up and put in a hospital because he was he was native and they were some slurs right before that happened. Now this is teenagers but you know they're still after effects of that but we're out there promoting our culture as best we can without help and we all we ask is a hand up you know not a hand out but just to just help us and I think any ethnic when I say ethnic minority or any people of disadvantage that's all they want they just want a shot. They just want not to have the doors closed on us you know but when you're forcing I don't want this to become a campaign where somebody forces somebody to find something wrong or they can use it as a sledge hammer to make it being distasteful to people in Vermont because if you're charging them to find something and they don't come up with anything you're going to say they fail but if they find something then there's going to be a reason to continue it and to keep pushing and to keep. Does that make sense because you're forcing this bill is forcing them to find something wrong or else you're going to say nothing wrong so they're going to be squeezing a lot of departments to do this and I think there's a better way to partner or a better way to do it if that makes sense. I hope I've expressed myself in that way and please if you do pass this bill and you do something don't leave us behind because our people are important too it's not just people who have a lot of lobbying and can be here all the time and push for it I'll use nothing against Black Lives Matter but how many Abenaki flags have you seen flying at the schools? We have one, the Missis Boy but that was just because that was volunteer it wasn't kind of you know what I mean there are more there are a lot of disadvantaged people here that need to be made sure that they're they're not forgotten Any questions? Yes. Do you know what the numbers might be? Do you have an estimate how many folks are Abenaki in Vermont? Yes, it depends on how you do it if you want legal or unlegal when I don't say illegal immigration I'm talking about legal as an Indian on our tribal roles we have 1500 citizens in our roles. That's only ours Missis Boy probably has similar and then you've got Elnu and Koas-Ukwer less those are people actually subscribed on the roles that are citizens there could be more just there's a lot of people that still don't want to because there's still a lot of issues out there like I'll use my mother they have 12 brothers and sisters probably 5 of them are on the roles and the other one said that's okay we'll have family events you know because they don't want to deal with once you stick your hand out then my grandmother was on the eugenics roles I mean she died in 94 you want to talk about people being disadvantaged that's why I say you know our people were taken from here and brought to Europe maybe not from Africa to here but I'm not doing that in a disparaging way I'm just saying there was reverse issues we all have issues but I'm just saying there's a lot more people if you have a family that's been in New England for a long time you probably got native blood somewhere and there's a lot more people that can come in and it's not Abinacky there's Inuit, there's Lakota there's that's why I was talking about Indian Health Services you guys really miss the boat when it comes to pulling in federal funds I got Indian Title VII Indian Education Funds and Orleans and North Country Supervisor Union that helps all students not just native people we get an X amount of money per native student in the school and it goes to after school programs the Cisquois got them up in Franklin County we can go statewide with that if we had the people in a time Indian Health Services separate pool of money that specifically for Indians you got a lot of people even if not you can't get it for state but people from aquasocene come to UVM that's a trauma center that's the closest one you have Lakota you have people that you have natives that are federally recognized that could pull in Indian Health Service funds you have Health and Human Services I got a grant for community service block grants I have USDA grants that we pull in I'm just saying the state doesn't look at us as a partner to help pull in funds for the state who's always complaining they have none well that's because if they partnered with some of us we're a little unique than it is for race I mean that's not always afforded to other races but we're kind of unique in that way that they are a special program set up for native people and native tribes that we could partner with people if we only had full time staff that could work on those issues so I will kind of drop my soap box sorry do you know if any of your folks ever use the Human Rights Commission or see that as a resource for concerns no we talked to them twice when Robert used to be the head of Robert Appel used to be the head of it he came to the commission I spent two years on the commission when it was formed and I was the chair of the commission on Native American Affairs so I have a pretty good grasp on things so no they came twice and like I said they really don't look at us as a, people don't look at us as a minor like even when I asked do you look at us as people of color and tell me you guys are like no or a minority because that's inherent bias because we don't look that way so people often exclude us and that's why I'm coming today because we don't want to be excluded again we would love to partner with them but we partner with anybody that's coming with a good heart that's willing to help our people if we have the time, money and resources obviously and I find it interesting that when I used the word Indian one day at dinner at our house my kids immediately said Mom you're not supposed to say that we're Native Americans like I had created and I was like well when I was growing up it's not true just to correct a record because you can call me almost anything if you come with a good heart because people don't know we are legally an Indian because and federal statute and laws under the Bureau of Indian Affairs in order to be a legal Indian you have to be a citizen of a federal so that is a legal term we are Indians according to the federal government people try to be politically correct and say Native to the Americas or Native American or Canada First Nations people or we're not really Aboriginal those are Australian really what does all that mean it just means that we have a distinct race we have a distinct culture and heritage so just call me Don or Chief Stevens or whatever all that other stuff is noise it's noise so when you get the recognition in 2011 I think that opportunities for your group to maybe there was some federal money some grant money, some opportunities I hadn't been there before what it did was it established the Vermont Commission of the American Affairs in charge of dealing with issues relating to Native people including healthcare, housing education the same thing that's in this bill but it was an unfunded commission that only had to meet three times a year and now they finally got at least a stipend before they didn't even have that when I was on the commission they didn't even have a stipend you just came what can you do, that's like sending your kid to the movies and say you gotta come up with 20 bucks for a popcorn and buy the ticket he's gonna stand outside and go oh man anybody got a five bucks I need five bucks so realistically the great intent was there and I can tell you we have done a lot on our own I was able to secure from the federal government a permit to carry eagle feathers which no other state tried or allowed to do other than the Lopana patching I worked two and a half years on that and changed the law in Vermont to be able to get a cultural permit in order to carry those things with the Fish and Wildlife Department and in turn the Fish and Wildlife Department just named a new wildlife management area after our language the new one in Lake Bombay that's called Botswana so you guys have an inception on eagle feathers because I know it's a federal event so I can show you my permit not for us so that was a huge feat with no money and we got some pro bono attorneys to help us with that but it's just to practice our culture so and we're showing over at the gallery the T.W. Wood Gallery we're having our avanaque artist exhibit and we had it at the Flynn this is the good stuff you guys can hear about that after you do something that something positive has come out of it and by doing that it opened the doors up for people so we didn't have to be bedded in here I work with the Confederacy the Wabanaki Confederacy I work with the Mohawks I work with the Big Mom the Ponom Scots and we all do we had the Wabanaki Confederacy in Shelburne in 2015 we brought all the nations from New England there so I mean and it's opened up the ability to sell as Native American which brings the price up it allows us to apply for these grants we have one kid right now that's going to full scholarship at Dartmouth College because they are now a legal Indian and Dartmouth was founded on educating Native people so those have opened it up but we've all done the scratch and the clawing to make that happen on our own without any support and that's what I'm saying is if you're going to support this bill support us we've been here well I don't say begging but we've been here asking for a long time and we finally achieved it so don't drop us off in a black hole because somebody else has a louder voice but what you guys do are important and it does affect an entire race of people and it was positive for us I don't know if this will be positive because it could leave some bad taste in people's mouths if you start shoving it down the throat with a subpoena what you're saying with a subpoena is enforcing them to comply well, when you force somebody to do something a lot of times people try or they make you do it it's like a kid you're telling them to do something and you'll grudgingly do it but it doesn't make a good working relationship later on so there'll be backlash even if it's unconsequential that you may not be aware of and make it measurable in other words say, look, we care about diversity I want to work with the Department of Labor let's see that we've hired so many Native people let's see that we've hired so many people of color let's see, okay, that's what the State Police is doing a great job I mean they recognize the issue that we just had a meeting at the Vermont Law School that their numbers this year are better than they were last year in 2017 that they actually had less profiling and they've had you know, it's been a positive thing because they've been educated about, but there's also responsibility on minorities including ours not to perpetrate that stereotype, we got to work a little extra hard not to think people that all we care about is gambling and booze right, just like they got to make sure that other races don't say well, they're all running drugs and we have a responsibility ourselves not to perpetuate that stereotype but the Vermont State Police is doing a great job and that's partnering with our communities to make that change in a positive way Other questions from the Chief? All set? Thank you very much. Well thank you and I hope I was a help You've given us a lot to think about trying to figure out in the context of the bill Yes, and I know you guys have a tough job and you do your best but like I said, we know what we need if people partner with us we just need the resources to do it Thank you Good chance, go look at our exhibit over here It's for a month Yeah, I made this It's bear claws and bone So this is part of our artistry that we can now sell as Native women can make That was one of them that came A very small school in Maine called Unity and one of her professors had the largest collection of Abnaki baskets ever I'd like to know Yeah, I'd like to know where you're at I just had to sign now I mean, this is how serious the legislative people in Maine have legislative positions that are strictly for Native people to weigh in on Native issues Not that we would ever do that here but I'm just saying is that they've gone, you can't tell me there's not open positions in state government or department within the state government that they couldn't hire somebody to help I'm reminded that the 2011 recognition allowed us to start selling to start selling things and it was the biggest misconception though was that the Lenape they get the biggest grant, their state recognized tribal they get the biggest amount of funds from the federal government from HUD for housing bigger than federal, tribe, state they concentrated on just getting HUD money because it's eligible and they're the biggest receiver of federal funds for housing and there's opportunities we just don't have the resources to apply for I got three small grants but I can only manage some you know what I mean it's hard to manage a grant plus when you work I spend probably another 40 hours after work dealing with Native issues because you have to understand every federal project that has federal money requires section 106 sign off American tribes for the the Native American protection every hydroelectric plan that's being re-licensed in the state of Vermont the Northern Pass project the burn in nuclear power every federal project that has federal money has to come across my computer to say are you interested we don't have time for every single it's like if you find a body let us know you know I mean seriously I mean it sounds bad but I mean it's true it does slow a project down yeah it does well we have to leave on a late note right thank you thank you very much thank you coach were you wanting to talk with us as a committee in between this and the next hearing we have a hearing in 530 oh that's right you've got been in the way yeah sure happy to talk to you what did you just say thank you very much likewise back at you that was awesome very much so how do we we've got a figure we've got to remember that as we continue working on this one of the big pushers in 2011 I think it was the general he spoke to it on the house floor he was responsible