 So good afternoon, everybody. This is the Vermont Senate's Institutions Committee. Today is January 22nd, the year 2021. We are live on YouTube. My name is Joe Benning. I'm the chair of this committee. We also have with us Senator Mazza from Grand Isles, Senator McCormick from Windsor County, Senator Parrot from Franklin County, Senator Ingalls from Essex Orleans. I'm going to remind the public who may be watching. This is a YouTube channel that is family oriented. If you choose to make comments about what you hear, it would be greatly appreciated. If you keep in the back of your mind that your comments may be seen by those of tender age. So we would appreciate keeping everything civil. We're here to talk a little bit about corrections this afternoon. And for our witnesses, let me say that we have three new members of this committee and one brand spanking new senator. So basically, especially with respect to the secretary and the commissioner, we are looking for probably a 50,000 foot level view of your job descriptions. And we'll get into some conversation that goes a little more detailed into that. But the idea here for the new senators on this committee, as well as the public at large is to give us a basic description of who you are, how you fit into state government and how you might fit into the capital bill as we go forward. With that, if I'm taking in rank, it would begin this afternoon with secretary Mike Smith. Sorry, Jim, you've been outranked on that one score. But if we could get some basic introductory remarks, like we may end up asking a lot more detailed questions. But again, it's a 50,000 foot level of who you are, how you fit into this picture, and we'll take it from there. Sure, I'm trying to figure that out right now in terms of who I am and where I fit in. But I am Mike Smith for the record, secretary of the agency of human services. For those who are relatively new, the agency is quite expansive in its portfolio. It has the various departments, it has six departments, and I'll go through those in a minute. It has a budget of about $2.6 billion. All funds has about 3,500 employees and ranges from anything that touches Vermonters in many, many ways. For example, the Department of Vermont Health Access, the Medicaid department is within our purview, and also the health exchanges are run out of ADIVA. The Department of Health, and you've been reading a lot about the Department of Health or seeing a lot about the Department of Health during the pandemic led by Commissioner Mark Levine, the Department of Mental Health, making sure that the mental health of Vermonters is taken care of. And for those that need hospitalization, running facilities for those individuals, Sarah Squirrel is the commissioner there. DCF is another one, Children's and Families, and the commissioner, Sean Brown, a fairly large organization as well as Dale, the Department of Aging and Independent Living. And of course, we'll be talking today with the Department of Corrections, and that is a fairly significant operation as well. Just to give you some sense of the size, if you're looking, like I said, it's a $2.6 billion budget. The ADIVA is all funds, mostly federal funds, because of Medicaid. The size of it is about $972 million. The Department of Health is about $163 million. The Department of Mental Health is $277 million. Children and Families is $425 million in terms of their budget. The Department of Aging and Independent Living is $532 million. And then of course, the Department of Corrections, which is unusual in its way in many ways because it's $168 million budget. 153 of that is general fund. There isn't a lot of federal funds within the Department of Corrections budget. I'll just tell you a little bit about myself for the new, for the people that are new. This is my second rodeo. It's my second time around as the secretary here at the agency. I was once the secretary of administration and then secretary of human services and then back again to be secretary of administration. And then I told Senator Mazza that I'd never be back to state government. And here I am. But I've just got to say this. To sort of pinpoint what this agency does is we help Vermonters and we protect Vermonters as Jim will talk about. And that protection is, we're going to start talking about protection in terms of helping people that are in our custody as well as we move forward. But this, I've had a lot of jobs in my career, a lot of jobs. This is probably the best job I ever had or ever will have. I'm getting, as you can tell with the hair, I'm getting close to ending this run of jobs at some point, not real soon, but at some point. And this is a wonderful job because you help people. And that is something I think that's noble. We've all been in situations in our lives. In my younger years, when I was pretty much a troublemaker, always in trouble. And pretty much, there's been points in my life. And a lot of you have heard this before, but for those new members, I had a family that split apart when I was a teenager, primarily because my father was an alcoholic, couldn't control it, finally drank himself to death. So you have that aspect of your life. You have the aspect, I've been broke before, the aspect of being homeless, not in the sense of being out on the streets. I was never that, but going from couch to couch and being able to relate to that. And many of us have struggled in our lives at some point, but the one thing that's been different with me at least, than anybody else, I think, than other people, is the fact that I've always had people to turn to. I've always had friends, I've always had family that helped me out. Many of our owners don't have that. And the fact is this agency is that friend, is that family. And I take that job pretty seriously as we move forward. Now, speaking about corrections, we take that job pretty seriously too, as we move forward. And as we look at corrections, I think we're gonna be talking about a new women's facility in here. But as we look at corrections, we really have to figure out how do we keep people, keep her monitor safe from people that have done bad things, but also rehabilitate those that are in the facility to make sure they succeed once they leave. So I think I've given you way too much from perhaps my point of view, but is that what you wanted, Mr. Chair? That's a pretty good overview. And before I turn to the committee to ask what they want to ask, what is that over your right shoulder that picture seems to be a team of some kind? This is, in SEAL team, you have a thing called Bud's training. It was a SEAL, wasn't it? Yeah, you have a Bud's training. And we started out over the class of about 156, and we graduated 17, and that's the 17. So that's the picture. You seem to have left out that significant part of your life. Yeah, I don't know why, he always does that. Very modest. If you could just give us a really high overview of your department and how it is divided into different sections. Are you talking to me? Yes, we'll get into Jim's department as well. Well, like I just said, I have six departments in the agency and in the secretary's office, which has 61 people within the secretary's office. The secretary's office is divided into having health reform is within the secretary's office or director of health reform within the secretary's office. All the financial operations for the agency is in the secretary's office, as well as a deputy and several principal assistants that are in there. And some other stuff that deal with personnel and other things that are just in the secretary's office. Just to give you some scope, Diva has 376 employees, Department of Health has 529 employees, Department of Mental Health has 269 employees, DCF has 991 employees, Dale has 271 and the big gorilla is the Department of Corrections which has roughly 1,021 employees as we move forward. Now within DCF there's various departments or various divisions within DCF as well. There's for example, Economic Opportunity Division, there's the Family Services Division, there's various divisions within each department. So as you can tell, it's a fairly expansive agency. Many of the departments in the agency, most of the departments in the agency are as big as any other agency in state government. So it's good size. So I'm kind of curious, do you have like on a wall at home a really big kind of family tree diagram does it remind you of who all the players are? I can remember Jim Baker, so that's the commissioner Baker, so that's good. I do have an org chart that I have and we'll make sure you get an org chart because for the new members that's probably a pretty good thing to have. It would be actually. Yeah, we'll make sure you get an org chart. Thank you very much. Committee, do you have any questions, comments, snide remarks? Nope, Mike does a good job and he buckles down and does it and he's gonna keep around a long time. How are you handling the quarantine situation? My wife is loving it. I'm down in a basement sort of apartment like situations and I get a knock on the door and the food comes in and that's about it. What's wrong with that? You get to order it or you just get whatever comes. It's just whatever comes. I will say this and at the risk of being on YouTube, I understand, I really do understand what thousands of Vermonters have had to go through and in a way it's good to experience this so. Questions? Senator McCormick. Thanks, Mr. Secretary. I think one of the smartest things that your legislature has done in the last year is deciding to cooperate with the administration on COVID. I think you folks have done good leadership and I'm glad we've made that decision. I've worked really hard at not offering the benefit of my wisdom but I will be sending you a memo. I just wanna draw your attention to it on the using age as the sole criterion for getting the vaccine. I think that overlooks the fact that there are people with comorbidities. 75 is a cutoff. I've got a constituent who's 74 and a half with cancer and I think she's more vulnerable than someone over 75. I know you're not dealing directly with that. There's more Dr. Levine and the governor but it is ultimately in your shop so. Yeah. I do appreciate that and if I may I just, we went with the age bands and I wholeheartedly supported them so I'll be honest with you Senator. You know, we looked at this from a data point of view and over 70% of Vermont's COVID-19 deaths have been Vermonters over the age of 75 and more than 90% are over the age of 65 and hospitalizations have been by far of those that have been over the age of 65. So we just look at the data and I understand that there are other groups that want it and we just said, you know, vaccinating at, you know, given these facts and with the limited number of doses that we're receiving from the federal government, we just felt we had a moral obligation to take this age-based approach first and again, I think vaccinating at risk for monitors first also helps us to get out of this faster because we can concentrate on making sure that if we can slow down the death rate, slow down the hospitalization rate, slow down the complications, we'll make a further gain into this system. So I was a proponent of the age banding, I'll admit that and I'll look forward to your letter. Yeah, well I speak as a 73-year-old man with the body of a Greek god. I don't know if that age is that big of a problem. Something about that age where they start to hallucinate, it's just incredible to watch. Mr. Chair, don't go too far down there because I'm not that far behind Senator McCormick. Well, I'm actually glad that he asked the question because I'd like you to put something else into the back of your mind about this very subject and this morning we were in judiciary facing an incredible avalanche somewhere down the road when we finally get past the virus. But in the meantime, the judicial branch of government has come almost to a standstill. And there are so many cases now pending awaiting trials that it is really going to have a major impact on virtually every dollar we have in government. And I'm very much concerned that we start a process somehow to chip away at the iceberg that will be coming down in the not too distant future. So the thought that I had was if you're putting up a priority list of people who should get the vaccine, getting court staff vaccinated, including the lawyers, and I'm not speaking for myself at the moment, although I happen to be one, the upshot is we've got to start something by way of moving jury trials forward. And it's impacting right now our next speaker. How do we get this system to start to move and get some of the relief from the pressure it's feeling? So the upshot, we've got to start some place to get the judicial branch of government moving. I would submit and I would hope you'd consider that the judicial personnel who would be surrounding those jury trials get vaccinated. We then can look at the age cohort that has been vaccinated and take those people and put them into a jury pool. That's the easiest way to begin to take shots at getting that avalanche to decrease. And I don't know if I'm articulating it right because I've been talking a lot today, but there is a method of taking baby steps towards relieving the pressure on the judicial branch of government. When we can't have trials, all the leverage that we would normally use to settle cases is gone. Most cases where there's any question about the plea agreement that's being offered go right up to the door and day of a jury drawing. Without that there and both the criminal and the civil situations, they don't have any leverage to settle their cases. And that's what's going on right now. All of these cases have come to a stop. It doesn't matter only for those people who are incarcerated because of great many times when somebody is brought up on charges, they are issued conditions of release. They range from almost nothing all the way up to you're on a 24 hour curfew at home. So you've got a whole lot of people out there and they're looking at their cases thinking, I would really like to take this to trial. Normally when they get to the day of a jury drawing, they get cold feet, we settle cases. That leverage is not there. The same thing is happening in civil trials where insurance companies are really desirous of not going to trial. So things get dragged on. And I'm only sending out this signal that whoever is in the process of making decisions about what cohort comes next in the vaccines, give some serious consideration to those court personnel and then we can start moving trials again. That's my rant for the- A lot of lawyers in Vermont, we'd have to vaccinate. Well, only the ones who are actually involved in the court system, that narrows it down considerably. But we're facing questions like, what buildings are HVAC satisfactory? And then we have to spend money to change the HVAC systems. That's not gonna solve the problem if you still can't develop the personnel to get the trials moving. So rather than concentrating on the physical plant, you've got to be able to put people in the current physical plants that are protected. And that's the whole philosophy behind my suggesting you might want to just roll that around and think about it. Mike, didn't you just get off the press conference? I did. Senator, I understand your position and I appreciate what you said. We've got hundreds of groups coming to us and saying, we're essential and we need to be vaccinated. And we just thought that this was the least divisive and most fairest way and sort of the moral way to go after those people that are likely to die. So we are going 75 and above, then 70 above, then 65 above. And then those with underlying conditions. I will say this, because the governor said this today. After that, I think there's room to talk about the various things that we can talk about, but we really have put a premium on keeping people alive in this regard and the numbers are the numbers. I do understand the logic. I'm not trying to criticize the logic. I'm watching with growing concern that the judicial branch of government is gonna have a major problem in front of it, already does now. But as you get those individual cohorts of people vaccinated, they then would become available to serve as jurors. The only remaining obstacle would be the personnel in the courthouse that would be required to deal with those jurors as they become available. And so trying to get from here to there, because we don't have a panacea or a magic brush to get from here to there quickly, we've gotta start chipping away. And if you get those people vaccinated, we can socially distance other people who come into the courtroom and do things like set up plastic barriers and require masks for them. But it's one way to start chipping away at a big problem that's coming down the pike. I've ranted long enough on this particular subject, so we probably should move on to the guy who's gonna be responsible for all of this. Tricia, good afternoon, and you're muted, sir. There you go. Good afternoon, Senator, how are you? Oh, peachy. For the record, my name is James Baker and I'm the Interim Commissioner of Corrections. And I'll give, the Secretary has touched on a lot of what corrections is about as far as the budget and staff. And I'll give a little bit about my background for the new committee members. You know, unfortunately, I've been around long enough that I've dealt with several of the senators here for a long period of time. And I've been working in Vermont since 1978, largest part of my career in state government was spent with the state police, where I spent 31 years. I retired in 2009 as the current director of the state police. And then it went on to do some work that I often refer to as clean up jobs. I was at the police academy for my criminal justice training council for about a year and a half, as a result of a suicide of a staff member there. And then I've done some consulting in between, spent three years as the police chief in Rutland. And then went on to work in the Washington DC area for three years on the executive staff of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. And was doing some consulting when my phone rang in December of 2019, and Secretary Smith was at the other end, when he asked me if I'd be interested in being the interim commissioner of corrections for 120 days. And I started on January 6th of 2020. And if all of you can do math, you'll know that's not 120 days. Did you read the small break, Jim? Did you read the small break? That's the problem center. I didn't sign a contract with him. You know how that goes with the secretary. But on all seriousness, we didn't expect to have a pandemic, the largest pandemic known to our life's times. And the fallout from that, and Senator, I'm listening to your point about the criminal justice system and the challenges. And you all know, many of you that are on the committee have heard me talk last year about the work that was being done early on in the pandemic. And, you know, I'm very proud to say that the employees of the Vermont Department of Corrections have worked so hard that we're seen as one of the cleanest systems in the country. You know, we have a positive test here and there, but it's aggressive testing. We test the suppress. And as soon as we get a positive, we have a rapid response team internally with the Vermont Department of Health. And I want to make this point about why it's so important where correction sits in the system in Vermont. So we've done a lot of hard work over the last year and we continue to do a lot of hard work. Again, just for a way of understanding corrections, we have six jails in the state of Vermont, six facilities located in St. Alvin's Newport, St. Johnsbury, South Burlington, Chittenden, which is the women's facility, which our colleagues from DRM they heard talk about today. We have a facility in Rutland and a facility in Springfield. And we also contract with a contractor, Core Civic, where we house inmates in Tallahatchee, Mississippi at a facility there. That's one side of our operation. The other side of our operation is we are a system unlike some states where we also have probation and parole. And so in the system right now, jailed as of today in the facilities are 1,288 individuals. And out of those, to Senator Benning's point, 364 of those individuals that are currently in custody in a facility are detained individuals. And out of that 364, somewhere around 60 plus or minus are federal detainee inmates that we have a relationship with the U.S. Marshals Service that detain federal detainees. On a probation and parole side of the house, we have 11 offices around the state where we supervise people that are on for parole and probation. And right now, I don't have the exact number, but we're somewhere around 5,900 plus or minus individuals that we supervise in the community. And when the secretary talked about our role in public safety, that's part of our role in public safety is the supervision of those individuals in communities. We do programming. We work with our partners. Vermont Corrections Department is one of the leaders in the country on restorative justice practices. We fund and support regional criminal justice centers where they do a lot of that restorative work. We have contracts with groups that provide housing for us on transitional housing. And we do work around programming, around violence, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and substance abuse. And so that's in essence who we are. But also we run about a $20 million healthcare system. Our contract with our provider. So the secretary told you it's a $168 million contract, 20 million of that before we do anything else goes through a contract or roughly 20 million. I think this past year it was 19, somewhere in the ballpark at $20 million goes through a healthcare provider where we provide healthcare to individuals within our system. And we also operate a high school inside our system and we operate an industry. We do furniture, signs, and metalwork, print shop all within our system. So let me just, in a way, keep it at the 10,000 foot view and then I'll move on for folks to ask questions. It's important. I've spent 45 years in the justice system, I guess, longer than that if I do all the complete math. But I've always worked at the front end of the system in law enforcement. This is the first time I've ever worked at the back end of the system. Where we have individuals that we house that are by statute in my custody as the commissioner of corrections, but also that we supervise in the community. And I wanna back up something that the secretary said. These are folks that deserve a high level of respect and dignity and who some folks have done really bad things in their lives. Some of these other folks come from very traumatized backgrounds and our job in corrections is to move them from either being incarcerated to good citizens or help them in the community be good citizens and good neighbors and be productive. And the population we deal with is very, very challenging. And the reason why I say that is that's why it's important for us to be housed where we are. We depend on DVLI for healthcare coverage for folks that transition out. Mental health, a good chunk of our population have underlying mental health problems. The Department of Health, ADAP, substance abuse, a good number of our population suffer from substance abuse problems. And we have a lot of success stories and then we have a lot of heartbreaking stories. And I'll just leave you with this. Two weeks ago, we lost two people that we supervised in the community to overdoses. And I can tell you from talking to the staff that supervised them, how devastated they were. And I'll leave you with this because I didn't understand this until I became the commissioner. I'm very lucky to be where I am representing the folks that work in this system because what that lesson taught me was just how much our people invest in individuals that may not have had all the brace in life that some of us have had. And how hard it is when it doesn't work out. And so that population will deal with this very difficult. They have a lot of challenges in their lives and corrections is in place inside the human services for the sole purposes of being able to leverage the resources inside human services to try to bring the best level support we can to individuals that we supervised in order in our custody. So Senator Benning, I'll stop there and open it up for questions. And I know you have other guests that are part of the committee. Tim, I'm curious, the number 1200 you used for the overall population right now, how's that number been going over the past year? Yeah, it's 1288 Senator, it's going down. It's down substantially. In fact, staff that's been in crisis for a while just shaped their head at the numbers going down. And I think it's a combination of stuff. I'm glad you asked me this because I wanna touch on what you were talking about in the judicial system. I think the effect for us is not gonna be seen until the system opens up because I think the numbers are down. A big part of it is a lot of folks we transitioned out early on, not just us but other parts of the system, courts resettenced people, parole board moved people along but there's not a lot of people coming in the front end of the system on sentences. So we do have detainees but because the system is held up, there are people out probably on conditions or released or bail or whatever the case may be that could eventually be found guilty in the system and sentenced to jail. So we're in a very, it's worked out well for us that this number is well because of the way we operate the system to keep it clean from the virus. We have to have quarantine units in every one of our facilities around the state. We have to keep beds open for that because it takes up a lot of space but I think once the system opens up we may see some challenges as those numbers go up of detainees. Well, I'm just looking for a way to start chipping away at what inevitably will be a major problem for all of us starting at some places why I brought that rant up. Got it. Um, committee questions. Senator McCormick. Thanks. Could you talk to us about COVID hygiene? COVID hygiene for the folks in the facility held in the facility? Yes, yes. Look, we, our protocols change almost daily not of late but early on as, you know we all became, came to understand the virus better. It was remarkable to watch Senator as we took guidance from CDC, from Dr. Levine from the health department. And it was a lot of, you know, conversations early on that we weren't providing hygiene cleaning materials but I think we're over that now. We do occasionally get into a situation where we may have a positive test and as we do the contact tracing we don't know how much the facility is affected. So we'll lock it down. And when we lock it down that limits the ability for folks in our custody to get to take showers and so on. But I believe we're providing what we need right now to make sure that the hygiene of the facilities that the folks in our custody are able to maintain hygiene with the level of dignity that they deserve. I'm sorry, by hygiene I was referring to specifically the COVID hygiene. How are you doing it? It's just keeping, you know it's often said you couldn't ask for a worse, you couldn't ask for facilities. Yes, at the facility. You couldn't ask for a worse situation. You know, in terms of large numbers of people forced to be in close quarters with one another. So how are we handling that? Clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. Constantly clean, you know following the guidelines that were put out early on. The other thing is we've created, I'm fortunate to have a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Army that works for us who was a logistics person in the Army. We created our own supply line. And I kid, right down to a computerized if we know we're using gloves at a given location we know exactly how many gloves we got. We know what we have in supply. And I would put our supply line up against Walmart. The other thing I just wanted to add the testing regime that Jim and his crew have put in is not only have people looked at it from other states, people have looked at it from other countries. Jim, you wanna talk about the testing regime because it's quite extensive. Yeah, and there's a little story that goes with that Secretary, right? When I didn't agree with you that we should be doing mandatory testing and we had a conversation about that, but yeah, we right now are testing all our staff every two weeks and we test every facility every six weeks. If we get a positive test and I'll use St. Johnsbury as an example. We had an inmate positive which after working with the health department we're not really sure if it was a positive or not but it doesn't matter. We execute a protocol with the rapid response team where we do contact tracing, figure out who the individual had contact with. They quarantine immediately much like the Secretary is doing right now. Many times that's our staff. It drives our staff numbers down which has put pressure on the system. But then we start following the protocol of testing 7, 14 and 21 days to make sure that those folks are coming back and the spread didn't happen any further in the facility. And so we get a lot of inquiries not only nationally but we also get a lot of inquiries internationally working with several organizations about the protocols we put in place to keep the facilities clean. And I could spend a couple of hours telling you the process. We meet every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at nine o'clock. Early on we're meeting every day at nine o'clock and every day at noon time just to keep our arms around the process. And so that's how we keep in the facilities clean Senator. And the quarantining anybody that comes into our system if we get a new arrest and it comes into our system they're tested and quarantined for 14 days. Now there's a downside of that because of how they get isolated in the system but we're also working through that right now as far as working with mental health folks about the isolation of individuals there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Senator Mazen. Many years ago the governor had proposed building more facilities to reduce our out of state prisoners and I was very supportive of that. And there was some opposition at that time and I just wonder what your thoughts are because we deal with bricks and mortar. Is the long range future trying to get our folks back to the state where they can have the programs and they're all gonna be eventually let out of the community, well, most of them. And it would be nice if they're all in Vermont but so I didn't know what your thought was about thinking in the long range. Is it a desire to continue that movement of trying to get our facility back located in Vermont and eliminate the out of state population? You know, the short answer to that Senator, yes it is. You know, we've also dwindled the numbers in Mississippi. I think we still hold me exactly to this number but I think we're at 184 right now. When I first got here, we were almost at 300. Nothing I've done. It's simply because the system has been, you know, the natural churn of the system, people believe we've been able to bring people back. I believe there's a trip scheduled for the first week in February for three more to come back. Most of the folks coming back right now are either ending sentences or they're coming back with program. So the goal would be in the long term to be thinking about a system in Vermont where you don't have to go back to having out of state population again. You know, I think in 2011, the number of sticks in my head was there was almost 600 people out of state. Right, right, right. And you know, I often get calls from families and I talk to them. And when I talk to the families that have family members in Mississippi, it is a burden. We know that people are successful on re-entry when they have a support system. And they're successful inside the facility when they have support systems. So that's a big piece of it. Along those lines, you know, I've been pretty open about this with the support of the secretary and the governor's office, you know, we need to have a conversation about the South Bloomington Facility sooner than later. We cannot wait any longer to have this conversation. Right, that's what they've grown on, yeah. It's a whole facility, very old, yeah. And it's not meant to be what it is. No, no. We've got the ability to do programming and get women, the women, the female population is much different than the male population. And to get those folks to a place where we can do quality programming, there's a lot of good work going on inside that facility. But the building itself is not conducive to the kind of work we need to do. It's not going to be an office building that wasn't designed to do office work. It's not designed to do what we need to do. It's in terrible shape. And I do think the feasibility study will be coming your way pretty soon here in Senate institutions. We're working in partnership with BGS now on that. If you remember, there was $250,000 given for a feasibility study, we've been working on that. And I've seen an early draft of that and it's not done yet, but there's some unbelievable work being done to really lay out what's out there for deferred maintenance on that building in South Burlington, but also deferred maintenance throughout the system is in the millions of dollars. And so you'll be seeing that soon. And that plays into this piece about what do you do? You get population back, better program to women at the facility. And what's the deal with the delayed maintenance on facilities around the state? How many women there now? Senator, I believe we're somewhere in the 90 range. Yeah, because that's the 90 to 90. It was in the 40s, which was pretty, you know, not bad all of a sudden, now it's up to 100. And that does, there's no way you can accommodate 100 women ever. Remember, Senator, at one point it was pushing 200. That's right. It was just not long ago. And the facility, you know, like it's hard, you know, so I suspect we'll be having more of that conversation here as we move forward. Thank you. So you're doing a pretty good job at dovetailing into our next witnesses. But before we get there, any other committee questions? We will also have you back to talk more about that report when it's completed. And I'm sure we'll get into a lot more substance. Two observations before you go. The facilities that you have now, I was listening to the secretary talking about his being at home in quarantine and what they had to have, the door opening and the meal gets shoved in. Is there a place for him in case she boots him out at the end of the day? I think, sir, I can find him a room with a view. Okay. The other thing is committee members, you may remember Rachel Feldman from way back when Phil Scott was actually the lieutenant governor. Is she still working for you? Yeah, she's my principal assistant, but I refer to her as my babysitter senator. She keeps me, she's actually texting me right now, sending me out. Senator Mazad is 81 women at the facility now. This is why I need a principal assistant. Well, no, I knew it was high. I can't keep it all straight, sir. Normally I would make some kind of a snarky remark like giving you my condolences, but she's got me on speed dial too and I don't want to have to answer the call. We'll just say that we all miss her and leave it at that. How's that? She's a big support to me, sir. Yes, Mr. Chair. I have to go to another meeting, but I think Commissioner Baker is staying for the presentation, but I have to move on. I apologize. No, that's quite all right. Just don't leave the room. Yes, I know. You wait, just say what's Mike. Stop it, I'll feed you, okay? I can't. I can't stop it. See you later. Let me take out. Thank you. Commissioner, you're welcome to stay or leave as you choose. You're going to move on to some more conversation, especially about the women's prison. I'll say that, Senator, just in case folks have questions as a result of Timmy's presentation. Very good. Jen McDonald, Tom Doherty. Tom, is that how you pronounce your last name? It is, Senator. It's Tim Doherty, but you got the last name perfect. Yeah, I just didn't write down the I instead of an O on my piece of paper here. You are both part and parcel of a recent report that was sent to us regarding the women's facility. And I'm going to go back to the original introductions this afternoon. We are really at a high level of trying to introduce new committee members, a new senator. And for that matter, anybody from the public who may be watching this. So we're talking initially at least from a very high level on how you've been involved in this discussion, what's going on at the facility. And this committee happens to deal with brick and mortar as opposed to policy decisions. So if you have brick and mortar conversation involved in this report, we'd very much like to hear that part, especially with respect to the policy decisions that may be involved. You can touch on that a little bit, but I'll just keep in mind for everybody. This is Friday afternoon. I'm sure some folks want to get on the road for the weekend. So I'm not sure who wanted to go first. Tim, was that you or was that you, Jen? I can lead off. I want to thank you senators for having us today. It's good to meet everyone. I regret that it's not in person every day now. I get more and more weary of seeing faces on Zoom and not having the usual interactions. So again, I appreciate you having us. I have kind of an overview of the report that I can go through. One of the things that Denise had asked is if I could share my screen if folks don't have a copy of the report. So I'll ask what's easiest for you folks. Do you want me to share my screen? I don't plan to go through necessarily page for page, but if you don't have it in front of me, I'll put that up right now. I know that I do not have it in front of me because I'm at home and I left it at the office. So if you can do that, that would be great. And you can speed through it to touch on the highlights. How's that? So I will need Denise to enable my screen sharing, I believe. I just tried to do it. Can everyone see? Let me scroll to the top. Yes. Investigation? Yes. OK. It is also, I understand, on the DOC website. And I believe that it's on the committee's page as well. But if at some point people want me to email this around, I can do that. I will say that primarily this report has to do with the policy decisions and policy issues that the brick and mortar section in particular is relatively brief. So we can skip to that. And at some point I think Tim will address that. But I'll give a high level overview of what we were engaged to do and who we are. I'm Jen McDonald. Again, it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm an attorney at Downs-Rackland-Martin. I work out of the Burlington office. And today, as you can see, I happen to be here. Although, like everybody else, we're moving between our homes and offices at this time. The investigation team was led by my partner, Tris Poppin, who many of you know is the former US attorney for Vermont. Tris regrets that he wasn't able to be here today. And Tim and I are here in his place. What the three of us made up the investigation team from DRM, my practice. And Tim can touch on his practice. My law practice has to do with solicitation in state and federal courts, primarily commercial, health care, fraud. And then I do investigations with this team here. And this has been a privilege to work on. I believe Secretary Smith talked about the noble work that he gets to do on a daily basis. And having a role in doing this certainly felt that way. It's an important work. We hope will provide meaningful discussions and change to better the people living in particular who live in these facilities. Jen, before you continue, I just want to point out for the benefit of Senator Ingalls, as well as anybody from the public that may be watching, it is not unusual that this committee and virtually every other committee in the building will be faced with an issue or a question or a problem that has to be dealt with by an outside source of some kind. And we ask for reports to be done to address the issues that are in front of us so that we can digest it a whole lot more with some expertise from the outside. And in this particular situation, we asked this group of folks who came from Downs, Racklin, and Martin to investigate the women's prison situation. And it is not unusual for this committee to bring people back in and give us a full report on what they actually found when they did it. And that's a common form of what we do in the government, the legislature that is, to ask for these reports to come back. And this committee will from time to time take more substantive conversation, but based on the report that's presented to us, we may end up having you folks come back at a later time as we dive into bigger questions about, OK, now we understand with the scope of the problem, what are the proposals that are in front of us to do something about it? Thanks. No, thank you for that clarification. And I was going to touch on that because it's a really important feature here. As this, obviously, Tim and I and Tress, we worked for the law firm Downs, Racklin, Martin. We were hired by the state to do an independent investigation. We came at that from this angle. Our goal here was get to the bottom of the issues that were flagged by the media. Prior to that, I know that the Vermont Women's Legislative Caucus had made it a preeminent issue for them, I believe, starting in 2018. And our job was to take a look and see if we could really get to the bottom of these issues to determine are they systemic, what else is out there. Identify not only the things that were flagged by the media, but issues around culture, training. And primarily at the facility level, we looked at the Chittenden County facility. But obviously, many of the issues that we discussed in our report, aside from the specific issues related to the women, have implications across the board for corrections in Vermont. We had complete cooperation from the agency and the facility, the agency being Agency of Human Services. We had cooperation when we requested documents from the Department of Human Services. We had complete cooperation from everyone at the facility level from management to staff and everywhere in between. We came at this from the perspective of we want to get all the documents that we can get, review all of that information, look at the policy issues, and prepare a comprehensive report that can be used to assist the state, the legislature, the public in understanding what was going on. We retained the Moss Group, who this committee may know. It's a national firm that is an expert in corrections. Andy Moss is very familiar with the Department of Corrections here in Vermont and has done trainings and other independent investigations throughout the, I'm going to say, past 15 years. She has periodically come into Vermont, and I believe is now again consulting with DOC. Their cooperation was just phenomenal to have that type of expertise in looking at the facility and going into the facility and structuring in a way that we could ensure that we were getting comprehensive information. We had the goal throughout of being available to anyone who wanted to communicate with this investigation. That took careful strategic planning on our part in making sure that we were accessible to both the public. We had COVID was obviously a challenge because we wanted to make sure that we can meet with people in person and get a great cross-section of the people who are living in the facility so that we could really identify the issues. I believe investigation officially started last January. So a year ago, and unfortunately because of the pandemic, there was some delay in that and starting again this fall with testing and again the cooperation of everyone in the facility who were able to get in there, principally Tim Doherty with the Moss Group was able to have focus groups and meet with whoever staff residents wanted to meet with this investigation. Jen, I'm going to have to interrupt you again and ask my committee assistant, Denise, to let Commissioner Baker back into the room. He's apparently in the waiting room. Thanks. Sure, so again, we really were looking at this from the policy standpoint. I want to make sure that it's clear it is in our report. Our role was not to re-adjudicate individual instances of sexual assault, harassment, and misconduct. However, we did and you'll see this in the report and I can show you some examples and how it's laid out. At page 35, we start with some exemplary allegations. So we did look at specific instances but our role was not to serve as with independent adjudicator of those instances. In the situations that we did come to learn about situations that have not been previously reported to DOC or the Vermont State Police, we made sure to make those appropriate referrals. The report is organized in a way that hopefully it's easy for the public to read it if they don't choose. There is a section on our findings and then a section on our recommendations. I want to make sure again that I'm using everyone's time in the most efficient manner possible. So I'm going to skip to the findings starting specifically at page 47 with respect to the physical facility and who was in that physical facility. He's been there prior to our investigation and was there as part of the focus groups can speak to what Commissioner Baker was just discussing. And so I'll let Tim jump into our proper findings with respect to that physical plan. Thanks, Jen. And Chairperson Benning and senators on the committee and Commissioner Baker. My name is Tim Doherty. I'm also a lawyer at DRM and a partner of Jim McDonald's and Tris Coffin. Been here since 2017 prior to joining the law firm for 10 years. I was a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice at the U.S. Attorney's Office here in Burlington. And let me just echo what Jen said. It was a tremendous privilege to work on this investigation and it's a real privilege to testify in front of your committee here today. As Jen said, the focus of our investigation was on policy ramifications of sexual abuse, sexual misconduct at the RCF. And as a result, we did not be encouraged with doing a comprehensive assessment of the facility itself. But in exploring those policy issues arising from the sexual misconduct allegations, we explored issues regarding morale at the facility in great detail. As I'm sure senators can imagine, having spoken to as many people as we did, views differ greatly depending upon who you talk to. But I will say this, that from high level DOC management folks down to newly minted COs, to the women who live in the facilities, to the non-governmental service providers who provide such vital services at CRCF, there was near unanimity on the need to explore a new facility given the age, given the physical limitations of the facility. Commissioner Baker said it earlier, CRCF was not designed to be a prison in the way it's being used now. And so from virtually everyone, if not everyone, we heard that message. The physical plant affects morale and that has a ripple effect. The physical plant affects the rehabilitative services that DOC can provide, although they do make heroic efforts to work with what they have. And we're happy to answer questions about that. It was not the focus of our report, but it was a commonly articulated theme throughout our investigation. And I think Jen mentioned I, myself, three days this fall in the facility, facilitating some aspects of our investigation and was able to experience the facility for myself firsthand. Another thing that I'll add to that in addition to the facility, the other crossover section that relates to both policy considerations and also possibly what this committee is charged with is the surveillance system that we encountered. It's not technically brick and mortar, but it is certainly a feature that contributes to the policy implications. Not too long ago, there was only something on the number of maybe 63 cameras that has now been significantly expanded, but there are still technological issues that exist in a way that impacts the ability of the cameras to function at all times necessarily to record what's going on in that facility. Another component of that, and this is in the PREA reports, not specifically our report, but obviously we had to refer to the PREA, PREA for the purpose of the committee and then also those who may be watching on YouTube is the Prison Regulation Act, which is just critical to everything that the policy implications here of the law regulated what happens. So with respect to that, many, many instances of sexual misconduct happen within the individual cells that they're living in reside in. There oftentimes are not cameras in those locations. And so that creates a situation where if reported, it is a resident's word against a staff's word, creating all sorts of implications, including their retaliation from both that staff and then other staffers who we saw with the United People. Another issue with the cameras, this is not brick and mortar, but obviously relates to our recommendations for the body cameras on the individual. People that do account for the staff, that doesn't account for the inability possibly to put a camera in every single location, on the brick and mortar facility. And then the issues that would arise from those surveillance cameras only operating if there was sufficient motion to trigger the motion detector. So again, we didn't get so into the weeds to know how much motion is required to trigger those surveillance cameras, but what we were able to determine is it's clear that that does not pick up every interaction between the staff and the residents, even if there is a camera in that facility. Excuse me. So, Jen, just for your edification, this committee would be responsible for facility cameras. Body cameras, I wouldn't normally think would fall within our jurisdiction, but if the plan is to bring them about, it may very welcome within our jurisdiction somewhere down the road. I didn't, Tim, I don't know if you have anything more to tell us at this 10,000 foot level, however many thousand feet you wanna call it. Senator, we're really here for you and the committee, and I know Jen and I are happy to answer whatever questions you have, and we wanna make the best use to your time as possible. So please. So the initial question that I have with respect to cameras is, are you making a recommendation that all officers wear body cameras and that those cameras are on at all times? Yes, that's a strong recommendation and a really important one. Something that we encountered repeatedly was issues, situations being reported and being able to either substantiate, unsubstantiate or determine that they were unfounded. We have seen, and this would not be a first, the first time that it's ever happened where staff within a facility would be required to wear body cameras. So we're seeing that in other jurisdictions. I think the most recent one that we saw was prison that was being prepared to do with California. That takes many of the issues away. It allows people to feel secure in the facility. It allows residents and to be confident that what they are saying can validate it. It allows staff to be confident that if a report is made against them and is unfounded that can also be determined with a level of clarity that does not currently exist. So assuming that we follow through with that suggestion does that relieve some of the need to have for instance, a camera in every cell? I think it would because again, and that allows for some privacy at much needed times. Obviously a camera in every cell is problematic for having that autonomy that people should have even within a correctional situation. But if they are involved in an interaction, if a resident is involved in any interaction with a staff, that would be a reported interaction. And so I think your point is really well taken care of. Yeah, I thought when you were talking initially about cameras in every cell that part of the anxiety, I guess, if you will, of people who are actually incarcerated is the concept that they don't have any privacy. So I was getting a little nervous about the idea of planting a camera in every room that just exacerbates the emotions and the anxiety of the people that are working in the building. That's a great point. Committee, questions. I can't see Senator Corey parent on my screen. Can we take down the screen sharing? Sorry, Joe, my internet's been cutting in and out so I've been putting the video off to save it. No, you just, your block Corey wasn't on my screen at all. I mean, I know you're there, but I'm looking at the, my screen only has one, two, three, four, five, six people on it. There's more than that in this conversation. There we go. Okay, Senator McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to comment on the efficacy of the body cameras. By way of an analogy, 25 years ago, I was on the judiciary committee when we first started considering a DNA bank. And my civil libertarian instincts said, this is a bad idea. This is big brother. This is just, you know, and one of the people advocating for the DNA bank said, well, this will not just catch the bad guys, this will help exonerate the innocent. And at the time I thought, well, that's a smoke screen. This is big brother. But in fact, we have this very big, very effective innocence project where the DNA is used to prove innocence. I would think the same thing with the body cameras is that on the one hand, we have seen episodes where the body cameras have provided the proof that the law enforcement officer behaved badly. And it's good that we have that proof. But on the other hand, I know the people, because I get my constituent mail, there are people who worry about corrections officers going to work doing their job and having someone make a false accusation. And this would provide exoneration as well as proof of guilt. Basically, the overarching term being the truth. You get to know what actually happened. So I think that's an encouraging development. I think we agree with that Senator. I also think it's important for the committee to understand that our recommendation with respect to the use of cameras is only part and parcel of a greater suite of recommendations regarding policy changes, training changes, and other recommendations that we make in our report. Talk about those to the extent that committee wants to today, but we are not advocating the cameras are a panacea just as they aren't for law enforcement officers out on the street, they have to be part and parcel of a much more holistic approach to be sure. By way of brick and mortar, do you have any other recommendations that we should be putting in the back of our heads for consideration? Again, the new facility, I understand that there are reports coming out. Again, we look at varying by level as the facility is the only other component of the report that I would draw your attention to is the work being done between UBM, specifically Dr. Fox and Superintendent Nessler, looking at what's being done in the main of the seven-year section. So we interviewed many people, not just Dr. Fox and Superintendent Nessler, who talked about the main facility as a model, which should be a guiding model for Vermont. And again, I don't profess to know what's being the facilities that are being discussed other than what is being discussed by the unit. But that main model is something that they aspire to. Okay. Well, I appreciate the conversation about the cameras. That's something we're all gonna have to be thinking about at some point on the committee moving forward. Committee, any other questions? I don't see any hands. I see a lot of people who want to get their weekends started. Jen, Tim, I appreciate you guys coming out. Don't be surprised if we call you back at some point for some more clarification, but I appreciate you coming and spending some time with us today. Thank you, Senator. We appreciate it. Thank you to the committee and thank you, Commissioner Baker. Commissioner Baker, I was probably five seconds after your conversation left, I got texted from you know who. I got thrown off. I don't know. I had a problem with my internet, so I lost connections. We didn't do it. We didn't do it. I think Senator Mazum is second to none. All right, I'm gonna call the live version of this committee. You're welcome to leave us. Denise, I'd like to have you stay on the line.