 This is a House Corrections and Institutions Committee on Friday and this morning we're going to be working with the Department of Corrections on a variety of issues. We have with us the Commissioner as well as the new Executive Director of our new contract for medical care, mental health care within our Department of Corrections Vital Corps. So I'd like to start this morning with the discussion of the new health care contract that will probably take close to half an hour, possibly not maybe not quite that long, and then transition into the Department of Corrections budget request for the FY21 budget. We are under a very short timeline to make our recommendations to House Appropriations Committee. We need to get our recommendations in there by the beginning of next week Monday or Tuesday. So we have the overall DOC budget that they're proposing and then we have some issues revolving around that which is our Justice Reinvestment 2 dollars that were appropriated during the regular session that was appropriated in June for the first quarter of FY21. And then we also have the CRF dollars that we appropriated for DOC for the remainder of this year trying to figure out how to continue to contain the COVID outbreak. So we need to get into those items too and that's why we scheduled time for tomorrow morning because we're not going to be able to deal with all of that today. So that's the thinking. Questions from the committee on any of this? Participant list here. Okay. Would you like me to start, Madam Chair? Sure. Yes, I was just going to say that. Commissioner, why don't you kick us off? Good morning to everyone. Commissioner Jim Baker, Department of Corrections. I'll say a few short words about VitalCorp. It introduced Viola Reagan to you, the CEO of VitalCorp. ViolaCorp's leadership team from my perspective is impressive. Viola, I'm going to introduce in a minute, has a long history of innovative work in the Correctional Health. She's a noted expert in Correctional Health Services. I found her to be very dynamic and she has a 30-year history of working in the healthcare field in corrections. I think what's unique about VitalCorp is that this is not a large corporation that's responding to a board of directors and looking at a bottom line. Certainly, Viola was in business to make money like any other business person, but she is the owner of the company and the CEO. And I have found her to be very open. We talk often. It's very different than previous providers that I think corrections has dealt with. And I know from all the testimony that I've had since I've been here around the healthcare contract and providing healthcare and the challenges we've had around that, I know that there's some folks that work around us with us, oversight of us. Their faith has been challenged in the past, but I have found Viola to be a real open partner. And just as an example, she's been on the ground here in Vermont since May, as the CEO, available to us. In this past week, we ran a three-day leadership school where we had staff from corrections at the leadership school with her leadership team. And I participated in some of that. And I'm very optimistic that we're at a different place than we were before. We still are going to struggle with breaking down the barriers of understanding how you deliver. I'm not talking about VitalCorp now. I'm talking about corrections, how you deliver community-based standard healthcare inside of correctional institutions. And I'm optimistic that the conversations are going in the right direction. So with that, Madam Chair, I'm going to introduce to you Viola Reagan, the owner slash CEO of VitalCorp. And I'm going to let Viola speak to the committee about herself and her company and what her vision for healthcare in the Vermont Department of Corrections is. Great. Thank you, Commissioner. Welcome, Viola. I know this may be a little difficult to see everyone and get a feel for a legislative committee on Zoom, but we'll do the best we can. And I want to welcome you aboard for Department of Corrections as well as to the State of Vermont. I'm sure we'll have many, many conversations as the legislature reconvenes in January and proceeds. So welcome. And if you could just introduce yourself for the record, that would be helpful. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Good. Thank you. Good morning. And thank you, Commissioner Baker. I'm Viola Reagan, and I'm the CEO and one of six owners of VitalCorp. So I first want to say before I go any further, the last three months in Vermont has been an absolute blessing to us, to our company and to me personally. I get to stare every day at your beautiful Mansfield Mountain. And that's where I did my COVID time here. So I've never had a more beautiful scenery in starting my time in any contract ever. So I'm going to give you five minutes of how I got here and how we got here. I started at 19 in Corrections and my way to the Health Authority for the Kansas Department of Corrections. And I oversaw all health care and correctional health care for the Kansas Department of Corrections. In about 2008, I went to work during the Obama Cabinet as the Health Authority for the U.S. while keeping that position and continued that time for about six months after that and then retired that out. I have still continued to work nationally and internationally. My husband was the chair of the Kansas Pro Board. He is a social worker by trade and he teaches at the Kansas University. So what we do has always been community-minded. In Kansas, I was responsible for the last five years of my role. And when I say responsible, that meant having Judy Hankins' job that works for the commissioner. I was the deputy commissioner for Kansas that also had a deputy secretarial role. And I was the head of the Forensics Medical Department for KU Medical Center. And we worked in collaboration. And that then started including that I was responsible for Workman's Comp. And I also then in the last five years took over all juvenile services for institutionalized persons and all the state hospitals once they became certified. I came in, took them over and got them recertified. So my whole career in the background of all of this was cleaning up systems that had started to fail or gotten themselves in trouble or ran afoul with the ACLU or the Department of Justice. And I was at a point in my career that while Kansas was only as good as I could make it, which was running really great when I left, I couldn't make even being the health authority for the U.S. for correctional healthcare. I couldn't make a difference. I couldn't impact or break the what I saw as dysfunction and almost pillaging of correctional environments and systems. So I asked my husband to retire from his chair of the pro board. And he and I decided it would be okay if we went broke, not that we were that rich to begin with. And we decided to stand up a company and had watched all of the companies. I've been, I'm a little long in the tooth. I've been around long enough to see from 1979 companies started forming in 1988. And when they first formed the companies that came into corrections, like you're familiar with, with correct care solutions and Centurion and other companies, those companies serve a great purpose. They do. They absolutely do. I remember corrections before there were those companies who helped us. And the service was not good. And at some times in Kansas at several times, the National Guard had to come in and help out. And so corrections has an expertise in providing quality correctional care. Healthcare is different, different, and it takes a different expertise. What happened as we developed the community was that correctional healthcare was developed by people who grew up in corrections when it first started and then was evolved to a for profit model that ended up becoming as important as the end of taking care of the inmates. And my husband and I decided that and Dr. Lorelei Ammons, who is a doctor of psychology, decided that we knew there would be a better way. So we purposely looked for four partners who have committed to staying with us. And when we retire out, over to the employees so that we have an employee run company. And we are a flat line leadership company. And our care is given at the front line. And all of us who work in management must be part of that frontline. We also different or unique and most companies, our profit model only has to be somewhere about four to 5%. If we break even, it's okay. We can't lose money, but we can break even. And I tell you that because we are also show you everything unique to our company than any other company in the industry is we don't believe anything we do is proprietary. If you want to see our financial books, we'll post them. If you want to see what we spend per patient, what we spend for our employees, our salary range, we know that every county and state employee, their salary is posted. So we post ours. We post exactly what we pay for what we pay for our benefits. We don't charge an extra administrative fee and pharmacy. All of those things, that transparency that we do, lets you know as a state government system exactly what your cost for healthcare is plus our four to 5%. And we still take the risk if we don't make it. We understand that. But we know that if there's a dialogue that shows you one, how we're doing healthcare. And two, why we're doing the healthcare. And three, that you get to see our books and everything behind it, then we know that you can trust us and we can trust you that you want to provide good care to the patients and we want to provide good care to the patients. One of the best things about having to work in an environment where you can't expose yourself is you get to see all of our flaws and all of our great things. And we have flaws like any other organization, state or company, we do. We're human. Our patients are human. Our doctors are human. And people are going to make mistakes. And I want to say that again. Healthcare is an art and a science and people are going to make mistakes. They're going to not look or know what they're looking at sometimes because they're trying to look at a human factor. So if a patient is not a good historian, our patients can tend to be from their addiction and their past history, not great historians and not trustful. If the patient doesn't have the proper way to express themselves and can't find the words and our patients tend to have a fifth grade education, then it is very difficult to extract what they need from us. So if you can imagine how hard it is to go into your doctor and tell them what you need and how many times you've walked out from your doctor and thought, oh, I didn't articulate that correctly or the doctor didn't get what I was saying or, well, gosh, that's not what I thought I had at all. We've all had those minutes. That happens exponentially for our patient mode. So we have to work. Our correctional nurses that we work towards hiring and training have to be not only that good emergency room nurse, but then they have to have an understanding that you would find with someone who deals with special needs that can extrapolate that information, get it to paper, articulate it appropriately to paper, and not miss anything. That has to happen every single encounter for thousands of people a day with a staff of 100 and only 48 licensed staff. And I want you to think about what that really looks like. That is a one to 100 ratio for your patient population. And if every patient that you had needed service on the day, which 70% do, then that means the average touch point for one person working in our clinic could be 35 to 70 a day. So the potential for a risk is high for making a mistake. It is. It is in every natural environment and corrections. And I hope not only in Vermont, but in the industry to bring an awareness to two or three things. One, what it is that we're paid to do to become the voice for the patient and let them understand through us what their needs are. So we can identify on a national trend and a Vermont trend what the patients needs truly are so you can buy healthcare in a smarter, better way. And so by us opening our books to you, by us telling you whatever you want, and we're full disclosure, anything you want to talk about, we'll talk to you about it. We want to be able to tell you what you have bought, what you're responsible for, and what we do all day long. That's who vital core is. My goal in the next 10 years is to change the face of correctional healthcare. I want to make correctional healthcare engaged. I do not want the private healthcare companies to go away. I've seen it without them. I want to be able to help them understand the difference in where the line stops between making a dollar and taking care of a patient. And I know most of the people who work in our industry are great people. The system can get in the way. And so if I can find the barriers that are breaking that system and assist those other companies who are out there helping to do this work and change the way they practice, then I have accomplished what I need to do and I can go retire and sit on the beach somewhere with my husband. So I'm in Vermont. We are different in our philosophy. Our lead team comes in every single contract. We stay until we feel we've got it stood up. So for the first few months of every contract that I have, I come. I know every contractor personally. I know every sheriff, every warden, every superintendent. I know them all. And they can pick up the phone and call me. And they do. And my job is to make sure when something's not right at the top that every sheriff, every warden, every commissioner, every secretary has my number directly and they can pick up the phone and call me. And then they and I become responsible for that patient life. If there is something going on with that patient, it's okay. We will deal with it at that level that I believe is the key to finding a solution to bridging the correctional private correctional health care and providing that good quality care that you would get from your doctor's office. The last thing I want to say is over the last 12 years, the industry has gotten completely away from providing services that you would see in your physician's office. It runs more like the HMO. The HMO product was something that came up in the late 80s. We all saw it. We all lived through it. Not sure it worked really well. It did not work in corrections. And so I have stripped all of HMO components out of our company and make sure we run it exactly like a doctor's office that you would see an ambulatory care center of a first floor of a hospital or a doctor's office. So if our patient needs to go to the doctor, our physician works with that patient and sees the patient and writes the prescription and there's no one else overseeing to approve or deny it. That's between the two of them. We work as more as the insurance company to make sure that's not wasted. So if we see a doctor that's over prescribing offsite services, then we will talk to them about that we see a pattern but we don't relate it specific to the patient because we want to keep the autonomy between the physician and the patient. The second piece of that is we make sure we train our doctors to practice medicine like they were taught in medical school and go back to that education and look for that so they don't miss things. So in that we hire George Washington University to come in and provide us our education direct link to our physicians and they work as a third party internal oversight for us on any case and collective cases so that we are monitored at all times and we check ourselves. And I think one of the reasons we've done that is because I spent so many years as being a monitor and an auditor and I saw what went right and I saw what went wrong. I want someone to tell me what I do wrong. And then the second layer in our company that's very different than any other company is other than myself and I am in the weeds boots on the ground kind of person. Our top managers are all doctorate level positions, master level positions or board certified internal medicine positions and they work as internal monitors. They do not direct patient care. They direct patient services and they are monitoring constantly and they collectively grab a hold of any case that goes wrong and they hold on to it and manage that through until it goes right. So a very clinical team oriented one quick minute about my team. Dr. Lorelai Ammons is a society. She was a major in the military. She came from public health and the VA and worked in corrections for 20 years and she is known as the international expert on crisis intervention, restrictive housing and suicide prevention. So we've brought her into this program and she spent three days training with us. We have Dr. Deborah Schult and she's assigned for the next 18 months to Vermont. She ran the Federal Bureau of Prison's entire medical mental health and dental system and she retired from them and came to us. Dr. Deb is about 57 years old and has her kids are grown and she's been living in Vermont since May 18th. Dr. Schult has a PhD in psychology and was a warden for several years in a medical institution, a large vast medical institution. We have Dr. Kathleen Maurer for your state permanently full time as our medical director and Dr. Maurer won the international ATOD award for Matt and she is board certified. She is Yale trained board certified in internal medicine. She is trained in certified in Matt and I can't even give you the alphabet soup other than that except to know she has more degrees than I can ever say in this 30 minutes. So Dr. Maurer is an advocate, a patient advocate. She was responsible for running the Connecticut DOC's healthcare and she's a strong advocate for working with the patients. She left five years ago and went to work in Matt specifically for the Department of Corrections in Connecticut and she recognizes that Vermont is number one in caring and treatment of Matt and your opioid addicted patients. She's come here to help us make sure we streamline that program and get that program into fine tuning it from where it has been taken on and developed by Annie and Colleen and Judy and Max and the team and assisting Commissioner Baker and really refining that program so that it takes it that step further. She's also our medical director so she is going to oversee all healthcare as a board certified internal medicine which will be great for our state. Dr. Heather Ungauer is a doctor in nursing and I think if anything we need in the state is a really strong nurse educator and Dr. Ungauer is also a nurse practitioner so she is doing that guidance and she is here permanently. So we have brought in 83 new staff since we've started July 1 and I know that's been a real question for the press and the public. We through transition we transitioned out as of today 38 people. We moved another 27 people to a position that their clinical skill could be used but they weren't in the position they were in. For an example Dr. Fisher is no longer our medical director. We have asked him to practice in MAT which he's licensed to do and his competent has we have had peer review of Dr. Fisher and that from an external source and that peer review assured us that he they believed he was competent to practice in in our MAT program and so we have moved him into the MAT program. He has a doctor licensed and part of your community and we've wanted to make sure that he was a valued position in our company and that we could trust the work that it was going on and that you could trust that we were monitoring that care and service. So we have done a lot of positions but I wanted to bring up Dr. Fisher specifically because he's been in the forefront and then we've replaced those positions with the some of the people that I told you about along with another 80 75 to 80 people in the field and then as Commissioner Baker said we spent three days giving them an extensive training on what we expected as a company and what we see quality medicine to look like and we can give you that three page agenda if you would like and any of the educational tools that go with it. In that closing I would just like to say thank you so much for the opportunity. You're going to allow us to prove your craft our craft here in your state. If you need anything we're all in and there's no tough question we won't take on. So I appreciate it and thank you. Thank you for that. It's very informative and I'm sure the committee is going to be having a lot of questions. One question that I do have. The staffing has been of concern that some folks were kept on and other folks have been let go or reassigned. How is the staff reacting to all of this change as well as to the change in practice? Are you hearing anything? Absolutely. Full disclosure half of what we did over the last three days was letting them know it was a safe place. The staff that we kept on we believe and we are still vetting out over the next two months. There may be other staff that don't continue with us but we we want to to make sure that they knew because they know everything they do is being looked at very strictly right now that it's a safe place to work that if they go to their basic nursing and clinical skills and behavioral health skills that it will remain a safe place for them to work and they were all in it together and that there's no skill. Some of the concerns that we have is that they may not have had the proper training or understood what they needed to do or that they worked in an environment where they did say adult care home or nursing home care for a long time and then they came into corrections thinking it was similar and they lost how to do an IV or how to start or how to use an ambu bag, right? They don't they don't know that because they didn't come from our field and correctional nursing is that emergency room and chronic care ambulatory care doctor office and you have to have be good enough to do mental health so we've got to train them and the long and short of it is they need new skill sets so we began that process yesterday. Questions from the committee? Carl. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Viola for your nice to meet you and thanks for your introduction. I am curious to know if you have any initial observations on the MAT program that you'd like to share with us and places that you think that can be improved in terms of what was happening with the previous contractor? So not so much related to the previous contractor but related to the philosophy of MAT in Vermont. You're one of the few states in the U.S. that fully embrace it and for that I applaud you completely. What we need to do now is hone the craft of what does that look like so now we know for sure that in the state of Vermont we have access to everyone who needs MAT but what happens in our system is that there are patients who need to have behavior modification training and treatment with that and without that piece of it then we deal with diversion and manipulation of the system and it becomes a clash between the cultures of with the officers and the inmates and the nurses become the the rub in trying to correct that. Our job is to make sure that if a patient diverts the medication that we have a place to to take that patient's concern and deal with that addictive behavior that's causing the diversion and not the criminal behavior of it and weed out if it's a criminal behavior or if it's an addictive behavior and make sure that we help them as much as possible with treating that part of the addiction which causes the want to divert the medication so specifically the patient population most of them do a great job in wanting their medication and take it. We do have some issues with some of them trying to divert the medication and so we are working on resolving that out. I don't want that to be a barrier to providing quality MAT because we are and so I'm making sure that we focus over the next six months on finding that balance and making sure we stand up some clinical treatment for diversion patients and educating the nursing and officer staff on what a diversion patient looks like because of addiction and what a diversion patient looks like because they also have a criminal element to them and there is a difference and both can be managed and that's where the next step we're going into to make sure we make that safe so we don't have medication errors we don't have patients doing that that's our next six months focus but like anything you do MAT is a program that's new to us all in the country and we're learning it and evolving so we're going to just take this next six months and make sure every patient's getting the right medication that we have a good relationship with the hubs and the spokes and that we look at ourselves in Vermont if the possibility of becoming a hub or a spoke because we you once you feel comfortable with us providing the quality of care and I give you strong board certified clinician board certified clinicians not having the officer transport back and forth into the community which is a danger every time we transport somebody um and a safety issue then if we can look at internalizing some of that and reducing some of that stress and structure in the system it's already the best system in the U.S. polishing that up is going to be a great job that I get to do when everybody else has already carried the hard water. Thank you um just one more question can you speak a little bit more about the behavioral side of that I know that um that was not much of a component uh in the MAT system previously and um I'm happy to hear you say that uh but that needs to change can you can you just speak a little bit more about how you how you plan to do that? Yes um each patient has the right to decide whether they want behavioral treatment and it's not a forced function but when they fail in their addiction to continue to give them medication that they continue to want to divert it's not a healthy choice either and it's not about a punitive it it becomes unhealthy for the patient and so we want to make sure that we treat the patient as a whole and we have changed our behavioral health manager to also who's a licensed master's level and it's supervised by a doctor at level to also oversee the MAT program so we treat the whole patient so if the patient has a grief episode in their life and they begin um having dysfunction with their MAT drugs we need to recognize that is that that grief episode may have triggered their their MAT episode diversion and we need to tackle that so it's not left to the officer the inmate to try to figure out we see that as our job and so we are hiring we put our MAT program and our behavioral health program together as one and we've stood now the MAT program up with licensed clinical behavioral health and we have opened and hiring five new positions throughout the state and they're going to include looking at MAT for behavioral health indications when things go wrong and we're going to offer clinical classes and individual treatment to prevent the failure of people coming off MAT or to determine if they no longer need MAT and they individually don't want the MAT but they were using it to self-medicate because of some strong grief and we get them through the process what we want to be able to do is focus towards a cure and if we can find a cure and they want to take themselves off MAT because they feel strong and can do it in the system then they have a right to do that too and we want to provide that service that's um I don't know that it's not been there we want to recognize being there strong that makes sense okay great thank you I I really appreciate that answer and I very much look forward to continuing this conversation as we as we move forward thanks nice to meet you we have one more question and then I'd like to start wrapping this up so that we can shift gears to discuss the DOC budget for FY 21 because we're almost a quarter after nine here uh Sarah sir good morning I'll keep my question relatively brief um good morningville it's really nice to meet you and I find this to be a very refreshing and reassuring conversation and I understand why the commissioner is excited about the change of contract um I have a quick question we know I appreciate you hearing so much about the training of the medical and health care staff I'm curious what your thoughts are about um training the the corrections officers if there's an opportunity for that we have heard of recent incidents um specifically with mr johnson is what the most recent one that is on my mind and um and we know that it was a medical care issue but also a a a a step staffing issue and and the staff's awareness of how to recognize some of this behavior so in the training is there is there room for that or in this might be a question for the commissioner I'm not sure but I'll answer that and then definitely turn it back over to the commissioner for closing it's a great question and an important question and I think it I'm not to speak to mr johnson's case because that was before our time but to say to you we in the contract we promised the state of vermont that we would provide restrictive housing training and certification through the american correctional association and the department of justice in collaboration with dr lori amont who I told you was the international expert on restrictive housing and suicide prevention and um behavioral health she teaches that at the international national level throughout the country so we're bringing that at no cost to vermont at a cost of vermont that is part of your contract it's not an additional cost to you all and to certify your officers unit managers and our nurses in collaboration in how to deal with an emergency how to deal with prices how to deal with day to day responding to inmates it is a two to three day training that will be performed statewide and when they're finished the state of vermont uh employees will have a certificate that they have been trained and certified that has to be kept up and retrained annually um to make sure that they keep their certification to recognize just those issues terrific thank you thank you so we had a question from butch and then your hand went down so you're good okay well it's it's going to take a long time problem for answers so we'll we'll do it another day alice okay are you sure okay thank you viola commissioner did you want to wrap anything up yeah so let me let me wrap let me wrap up the the medical piece and obviously viola could be a valid leader to follow um you know i met with her leadership team this week um for me it's pretty simple what might as commissioner expectation what i expect from viola and her staff and her staff heard me say this is pretty simple is that we provide the level of care inside our system that um someone would get in the community so a level of community care and you know that's delivered and timely efficient and we take it the in respect and um i think um i think from my conversations by all we we are on the same page and you just heard the level of expertise she's brought in and then the final piece for me is we have rearranged the structure inside corrections um uh deputy commissioner judy hankin is is the tip of the spear um part of her responsibility is the health care portfolio and you know it's a it's a significant portion of our budget our responsibility and um our exposure um to not not only negative negative coverage or blowback but it's also a huge piece of exposure to civil liability and that's not even to mention the fact that what i said earlier um my expectation is that that folks are getting um what what is the level of community care is expected in any community and they should be getting that inside our facilities and um i'm very very excited about you heard the way viola looks at this stuff and um her experience comes out from just listening to her answer a question um i remember one of my first conversations where it was about an hour and a half long was like going to school and to get someone to get jim baker to shut his mouth is it's a big event and she was able to do that an hour and a half so uh you know i we'll keep you updated as we move forward and then finally you know i've heard loud and clear uh you know we have in our budget the position for our medical director we've tried very hard since january to recruit for that and um going back to the drawing board on that um looking to up the salary i've got to work with uh hr to do that and um you know we're going to make a focused effort to go out and recruit because of the way viola's got her system set up it's more critical now than ever that we have a medical director on our side um that answers the deputy commissioner and drives the train on how healthcare is provided so i'll leave it at that um people got questions fine um if not i'm gonna move uh matt d is on the phone he's on and uh he's prepared to start walking you through the ups and downs of the budget and um i know it's gonna probably spill over until tomorrow morning so i'm gonna i'm gonna let matt come on and um talk to you about the budget okay thank you commissioner and viola um we're gonna transition so if you want to stay you're more than welcome if you need to sign off it was great meeting you and i'm sure we'll be having you back as as we continue our legislative work either this special session but definitely come january okay i appreciate it i'll let you get to your hard work and let the smart people do what they do and i'll get to it okay great i appreciate you all so where's phil if we can put up on the screen the doc document uh the budget document that we're working on um that would be helpful it's also if people go to the appropriations webpage and the doc documents within the agency of human services documents and it is on page starts on page 26 for that so this is a different world for us um in a way that we have always done our work to give recommendations to our counterparts in appropriations committee but i think this time it's a little trumpeted but it's also doing a little bit of a deeper dive to understand again i want to reemphasize that this budget proposal is based on the governor's fy 21 budget proposal back in january it does not encompass any changes that our house appropriations committee was working on and ready to pass out in march before we left and also it does not take into account um any changes that were done to the first quarter fy 21 budget and it does not take into account uh the crf dollars uh so there's a lot of moving pieces to this particular one more so than would be gs and and i would really um want to include representative hooper in these conversations and i don't know representative hooper if you want to say anything in terms at this point in terms of what the appropriate what your committee is really looking for direction from our committee in if you're able to give us a quick summary yeah thank you alice see you uh chair and then you you framed it very nicely so that what has been presented to us is a restatement they're referring to it as a restatement of the governor's original recommend the um so we need to work off of the original budget documents even though you may have made decisions um they will not be necessarily incorporated in this um the approach appropriations has taken has been if we made a decision back on march 13th we sat in that room and essentially walked through the entire budget and if we made decisions based on your recommendations we are considering those decisions still made and so the most significant piece and maybe let's just make your conversation easy the governor and the original recommend and he continues to recommend that we shift the payment for the community high school of vermont um from general funds back to the ed fund and you had already recommended that we not do that and so we have assumed that recommendation is still on the table so if you want you don't need to discuss that unless you want to revisit it um the other so that's the one big one um i had asked some questions earlier about crf i've got that straightened out in my mind and now really i i think you need to spend some deep time with the out of state beds um there's a lot of movement there and um some consideration should be given to how those savings that they're achieving with the movement and the out of states bed item and whether or not you want those savings to drop to the bottom line or do you want to reinvest them somewhere else um not allowing the money to drop to the bottom line creates a problem somewhere else in in the budget but i i just i know that that's an interest out there and i wanted to flag that the other two things are very small um the commissioner has um i believe made a commitment to try to find some additional money to hire a doc um for the issue that you all were just talking about um and whether or not you actually want to try to slot something in there i'll let the commissioner talk about that but you've tried if you can fill the position i think you've given a commitment to try to fill it and then you also have made a commitment to the department of public safety to help fund one so-called mental health clinician or service provider and so that's the money that may get shifted over to public safety those are the other two little things that have come to my attention um then the last thing because i know it was important to folks um was funding of the community justice centers and i know the commissioner has tried to protect those but you you just may want to have a quick conversation with him about that those are kind of the things that i recall from my notes of being issues and so i just wanted to give to you sorry for talking so long no that's helpful that's helpful for us to frame it um because we are a money committee we're used to spreadsheets but these appropriations spreadsheets are just a little different than what we're used to working with so it takes some outside help to help us understand it um so i'll shift this to the commissioner and also to matt so it's up to you madam chair how you want to proceed if you want matt just to go into the spreadsheet or i can talk a little bit about what representative upper talked about from where where i sit as the commissioner do you want to start there and then go to why don't we start their commissioner and then we'll transition to matt to go to the spreadsheets so there there is obviously on on the high school piece there is um there is some concern about the the source of the funds i'm going to let matt talk about that uh about the way we see that where those funds start and how they end up in the ed fund but i also want to i also want to point out that um i see f y 21's budget um as um we we had we had to make things work to get through this year in an environment where it's very challenging as you all know i mean the original number that i was presented with um for for a budget cut would have been eight million dollars and as we work through this process of trying to find money to balance out this budget and still function in a safe manner um you know we ended up with working with the administration to get to this point so on i see the f y 21 budget as we we had to find a way to get through this year but it's also starting the conversation about f y 22 and where we need to really take a look at um programming and operations and stuff we've done in the past to include um the justice investment too and i'll get to that in a minute because i know there's concern in the senate and other places about not reinvesting the savings from from mississippi and i'll touch on that in a minute um i see this as opening up the discussion internally inside corrections about f y 22 and how we're going to find new ways of doing business um without losing our edge on what we're charged to do which is run a department of corrections so for example on the high school representative hooper had asked some questions about um ages and um and here's what i discover in a series of meetings this week is that you know vermont owes a high school education to anybody uh 21 and below well that's not our population anymore in fact there's a movement in the legislature as you all know um not to have people in jail under the age of 20 and so that population's completely changed the second piece of that is is that many of the folks that we have in our facilities that we try to provide education to um just don't have the skill set to do high school level work i mean that's a sad commentary but it's it's a reality so what we've started the conversation going back to what i just said f y 21 it's really uh about a conversation of what f y 22 is going to start looking like we started a conversation about alternative ways of looking at the way we provide wraparound inside the facility when it comes to therapy work you heard the conversation from from bio earlier uh how we provide programming mandatory programming such as violence reduction training uh or excuse me programming and mixing educational pieces in that now what that's going to end up looking like is going to be a conversation over the next several months uh i'll let matt talk a little bit about um the dollar figure um coming out of out of the ed fund um let me let me go to the last thing to represent a pooper talk because i remembered this and since our conversation with house appropriations matt and i've been trying to chase this down i know that commissioner touche had made a commitment to commissioner shirling about providing funds for um crisis workers in barracks um around the state um we're trying to find out what that original commitment was because i wasn't part of those conversations matt had left for a short period of time uh i originally thought they were positions but what i find out is that the plan now is to have contractors and looking for money to fill what i think is 750 thousand dollars to meet the 10 contractors to go to the barracks around the state commissioner shirling is on vacation this week so i couldn't finish the conversation with him it was a brief email exchange at the end of last week when we got done in house at senate appropriations and we need to chase that down a little bit to better understand that there's that was not budgeted in our budget um it's not a line item in there so we would have to that commitment is true and we honor our commitments um uh we're going to have to kind of float around and try to figure out how we're going to make that happen but i don't even know what that dollar figure commitment is because i haven't had a chance to talk to commissioner shirling yet um the beds out of state um we're looking for money to meet the target we had to meet um i know this caused some concern in the senate um about reinvestment that the idea that if you cut the beds here's we're supposed to reinvest that money as part of criminal justice reinvestment i understand that i appreciate that the fact that a matter is it's exactly what represented who who per se we looked at it as a bottom line reduction because we had to find that money to be able to make it work based upon what we faced in 21 as a result of the pandemic um there were some statements made through last week that we corrections were walking away from our commitment to reinvestment and i just got to say as loudly as i can say it that's just not true it's not factual it's not true um we're committed in fact i pretty much got two staff members working full-time on the implementation of s 338 so um i know there's that question as as represented who per framed it perfectly either it's reinvestment or it comes off the bottom line but if it's reinvestment then that dollar figure i don't have it right up here in front of me i don't see it's close to that a half million dollars it's got to come from somewhere because what we have in front of you is as tight as we can get to operate the department through fiscal year 21 um and i want to reemphasize my commitment to the justice centers they they are a critical piece of the future of how we're going to manage the changes under senate 338 reinvestment to and in particular will become a big part of the conversation when we move forward with designing um the programming with john j college have explained to you before on focus the terms uh the criminal justice centers will become a huge piece of that and i'll let matt i know we made some additional commitments to them as part of the covid funds but we have a big commitment we're not walking away from that commitment and that's important and then the final piece is the medical director we didn't we didn't cut that position we didn't cut the funding it's there the challenge has been as i testified last week enjoyed justice um we advertised the position um i personally made phone calls to the folks that i know that are in leadership roles in in uh healthcare in the state trying to find someone that was the right fit for this job when i first got into corrections in january i wasn't convinced that the medical director needed to be a doc um but i'm 110 convinced now that that position needs to be a medical doctor based upon the transition we did with vital core and what i now know about some of the challenges we've had around delivering healthcare inside corrections so i think i hit if i missed anything please tell me um based on what um representative pooper brought out as a result of our presentation at house appropriations but i think i hit those points and i'll open it up for questions or we can move to matt walking you through um to docu um i'm gonna say if committee members have any questions the way my screen is i can't go to the participant list with the blue hands so if you have a question just raise your physical hand that i can see on the screen so kerr uh yeah this is a question for either representative hooper or anybody else but i just want to make sure that originally in um s 338 there was 2 million that was going into justice reinvestment can you tell me probably representative hooper where that money is and whether in which budget or whether it's still there that's one of them thank you and based on the the recommendations your committee made it those there were funds for transitional housing and diversion um dropped into either the q1 budget or the the second baa and so they should continue to be there and available for spending um i believe that there may be some i so i don't know the story about the transitional housing and that's that's a good question for um the doc folk um i i think there may be some challenges with getting since that was all crf money there may be some challenges with getting some of the crf money out the door to diversion and to the cjc folks um um but that's what i know the money is still there and should be available for those expenditures um within the constraint constraints of crf and and that tradition uh transitional housing 400 000 or so is separate from the i think there was another 300 000 or so that was put in before just to because the inmates were having to pay for their own um no i'm not not that's probably not transitional housing they were having to pay for their own programming and domestic violence representative yeah there we are um that change is that was not part of this uh two million was it no okay so i think it would be helpful for us and i don't know how to best um go about this i don't know if it's our joint fiscal office or you folks and approves mary but i think for us it would be really important to give us a refresher on the justice reinvestment money that we appropriated in the quarter budget as well as the budget adjustment and what that total is if it's actually two million or different and what it went to and then the source of funds how much of that is crf and how much is not crf and then we really need a schematic laying that out does that make sense i think the committee would understand it better because there's so many cases maybe there's a document and i can see if it's available um i know kathryn is listening in kathryn benham and maybe joint fiscal could help us put this together i know becky was here earlier um maybe the two of them could work together and just and yes this is the whole document kathryn this is this is kathryn we can we can work on it and kathryn stephanie may have done that from earlier but so you may want to check in with her on that i will do that then thanks yeah wouldn't any um crf money be a one-time expense yes so i assume i assume we want these programs to continue so we're gonna have we do we had to get them started yeah so for the one time and they were COVID related so that's where it gets confusing because we have investments of savings from some of the structures that we put in place and then the crf to really help that transition because some of it's COVID related um this is going to be a work in progress over the next couple fiscal years is my thinking okay represent and i was going to say you may want to hear from commissioner baker or from um matt de augustino in terms of their challenges of getting those monies out the door for the crf for the crf money yeah yeah i want to spend some time that's why we scheduled more for tomorrow because i have a feeling we're going to get into the crf issues more tomorrow so let me just um if i if i can i'm madame chair um and i don't i'm not trying to discount anything that was just said but as the commissioner as i sit here i'm i'm a little confused about the two million dollars because um we've been i i mean part of it is i think i'll let matt talk a little bit more about this but when that came up in senate appropriations um my last memory was that that two million had been pulled out of s 338 um and i don't know where that money is and we're trying to chase that down i think that that's valid because i think we're feeling the same thing we we know that the two we know the two million was pulled out of s 338 because the appropriations was we're going to deal with it within the fy 21 budget mary so yes it was removed from the the house passed it with it in the senate pulled it out it was left out in conference but funds were put in that amounted to i believe the two million dollars in either the baa two or the quarter one bill so the funding was put there um with the intention that it support 338 that way yeah it got really confusing at the very end right um and that's why i'm asking that's why we could have joint fiscal and becky and whatever could do a one sheet to see where the dollars are coming from and what that total amount is and so just to end that piece of it i do think we need to get it clear my understanding is that the 400 000 to help um the network with the battery intervention training was included in the two that was my memory of the conversation but i think once we get that cleared up with jfo we can we can then have that conversation so i'm gonna at this point i'm gonna have um the person that really understands the money piece that um come on and um walk you through the document if that if that works for you adam charl that works thank you matt it's all yours so if you could just identify yourself for the record thank you madam chair matt digicino financial director for corrections good morning everyone so would it be helpful to just do the walkthrough of the document we're looking at all the changes certainly so there are several appropriations in the doc budget there's only three that we'll need to look at in terms of the restated budget in terms of adjustments the first is and it's on the page we're all looking at on the screen under parole board there was a five percent base reduction and this is to uh related to travel expenses the last couple of years we've noticed that the parole board travel has been significantly reduced this this reduction the 21,865 is really um correcting the operational budget to get it in line with what actual expenditures have been the last couple fiscal years this is related to hotel stays and and and travel around the state for their parole board hearings and not many of that's not that the hearings have been reduced it's it's the travel related to it that there's there's been some cost savings there so matt do you think this might be an ongoing area that there'll be a decrease in funding because now that people are comfortable with zoom that the parole board may transition to doing more of that than the person to person travel can't speak specifically to the parole board perhaps the commissioner can i don't want to speak for them because i really i don't know but i do believe yes that at department doc overall and i i would i would imagine the parole board as well that we are i think committed through this through through their pandemic we've been using this technology it's been working very well for us and i think that going forward even the post pandemic world that will likely be the case they'll be reduced travel and expenses related to meetings in general because we will be able to take advantage of this this technology that's able to connect everyone without necessarily having to incur the cost of getting from point a to b to all be in the same physical location and i would think once the presumptive parole becomes effective we'll change that as well for the parole board that they may not have as many meetings to begin with we just don't know yeah madam sure i have not had any conversations with um mj or chair george about that but i can talk as matt said i can see significant savings in us spending time traveling um i personally missed the inner personal interaction an important piece of being in a leadership role but i'm amazed at how effective we've been in fact i think we've been more effective at breaking down some barriers inside corrections as a result of the ability to communicate like this okay great well let's move on here sure so that's that's it for this page the next is correctional education budget there's no specific changes in the restated budget of course we've talked about the the funding shift that was in the original f y 21 recommended so for the committee where you see the column j g f that's general fund and s f is special funds so the special funds is being referred to here is the ed fund so what this is saying that that 3.3 million is coming out of the ed fund and what decision was made back in march was that that 3.3 million will be coming out of the general fund okay next so under correctional services the the top two items are technical adjustments this is related to the 30 new correctional officer one positions that were created under the through the f y 20 budget bill um when the original f y 21 governors recommend was was presented we didn't have position numbers yet created for those positions so in the vantage budgeting system there was no way of actually adding the positions now of course the positions were added to doc without any without any funding attached to them the goal the the positions were created with the intent that those positions would save base funding that we have for overtime vacancy savings temporary officers and those positions would be self funded so this technical adjustment adds the value of those 30 new positions and then on the next line reduces that's by that same amount for the savings that we'll we'll see in the um in vacancy savings over time and the like related to those positions being added okay i have a question on that okay kurt um i i understand the tradeoff between the overtime and the new positions i'm and that kind of makes sense um but i am curious as to whether you have like 45 positions open now does that include those 30 30 it does include those 30 um we we uh those positions were created very shortly before we all moved into before the pandemic started um the the corrections academy is still has still been functional during this pandemic however the class size has been reduced significantly due to the need to socially distance and and the measure is to make sure that that all of the folks at the academy are safe as well getting getting their training so class sizes that when we've had vacancies in the past at doc that were in the in in this range for correctional officers we would hold either more frequent academy classes sometimes special academies but typically the class sizes would be upwards of 40 sometimes i think even approaching 50 um staff uh being trained and they've been uh in the 15 to 18 uh per per academy class range the last several months so that's that's created a challenge in terms of when folks are leaving the department for any any reason there's there's a vacancy it's become more of a challenge to fill those positions in addition we had some vacancies when those 30 positions were created so there is there's a higher than typical vacancy right now but it is to your point it is related to those 30 new positions many of which and the and the 15 that are now or or 15 or so that are now uh enrolled is that those considered positions filled or are they part of the 30 also that that would be filled positions for the ones that are participating in the academy currently okay and you have i guess and not another class starting until maybe october that's correct so 14 graduate 14 graduated yesterday um as as matt said we had we have to shrink these classes down to keep the classroom safe right i'm i'm just trying to figure out whether really in this fiscal year 21 you would be able to fill those positions i mean i the 30 so that we're dealing with you know i i wish i could make a commitment to your representative that we could fill them it's very challenging hiring right now and part of it is the recruiters that we were using both of them got pulled and they've been part of our COVID response team because we needed their skill set and we're just getting back now to the being aggressive in recruiting the other pieces i i i took back what i what i had said to staff that there was going to be no more classes until we changed the hiring process i'm going to allow them to have a class in october under the current format but we have to change our hiring process it's got it's got to happen so folks are going to have to be patient as we make this transition the raising the bar on how we bring people into the organization because our problem i've come to this conclusion our problem is not hiring our problem is retention and we need to figure out why we're losing people quickly and sometimes it's very quickly less than a year into the job they're leaving and so we've got to get our arms around that and i think part of it's in our hiring process and we don't do a good job of X and interviews to capture data and we're focused on that right now good and and i'd like to hear more about that sometime i'm not i mean i'm curious as to what changes you're making in the training and hiring of of people but we don't need to go into that now thanks thank you that's going to be looked at more when we come back in january i mean we're in a real narrow special session here to really just work on the budget and also for these positions the 30 new positions before we know it in january we'll be doing the budget adjustment to the FY 21 budget so as soon as we get it in place we're going to start working on budget adjustment and then we can work on fiscal year 22 ma'am right it's not it's not very far away uh sarah i don't want to slow us down but i i did have a question about the community high school of vermont um i'm going to get there that oh wait a minute we already did that sorry yep so i um um this might be more of a macro question that alice you might want us to come back to but what i'm hearing from the commissioner um earlier is that we don't have a population whether we shift the cost to the ed fund or keep it within doc is on the table but my question is more about is that robust um number needed um given that we don't have people we're working towards not having people under the age of 21 in our correctional facilities um that seems to be like the meat of the matter here and is that a bigger that's probably a bigger topic but i mean big conversation i just but i just want to put the pin in that then because it just seems it's a it's a big topic that's represented by a really big number and seems to be a bit of a problem and if we have this robust you know center with no nobody taking advantage of it if if if we need to absorb this money back into doc's budget it seems like that money could go to some really you know to beef up programs that the folks who are in their need which is i think what we heard the commissioners say so i don't want to slow things down but i just wanted to comment on that but i don't i i don't want that thought to get too carried down the road because i would discourage you greatly from doing that right now because we are still serving people that's okay that's what i wanted to find out because i was hearing the point is we have to transition to a more effective model than we're doing now because we're still serving people so if if what you're thinking is we could find that money somewhere else and you pull that that means layoffs you're not saving a lot of money that's all in personnel costs so you're not going to catch that savings nine months into a fiscal year with the process you have to go through the way people off and pumping and then it leads us in the position of not having any staff to move us to that next generation of what this ought to look like inside the institutions so that makes sense that makes sense how many students typically i know the number fluctuates but how many students are we serving but matt has those numbers because he had them for representative and i don't have them right off the tip of my tongue but we'll get those to you uh butch thank you alice i don't want to go on my tirade about community high school over mod because it's a very very long conversation but for the folks that are newer here uh we will as older folks will remember when community high school of vermont was in the ed fund and it was that those funds and back then i i remember correctly it was about six to seven million dollars a year were transferred from the ed fund to help balance the ed fund into the department of corrections uh and uh at that time i can remember us having a long long conversation in our committee i had a fit sitting down on the other end of the table that it was happening because even though the high school of vermont's a charter school it's still a certified high school educational facility in the state of vermont and it's really long conversations and i don't know if we can even have that long conversation now where the time constraints were under uh so wow i guess that's my pet word lately as well yeah this is something we can start working on come january because it is a very very deep and complicated conversation and i think we'll be in a better position to really get deep into that conversation with this committee in january okay let's move on because we are a few minutes before 10 and we need to close up at 10 so we can pick this up tomorrow at 8 30 does that work for folks and mary mary just put you and i are sitting at the end of the table both having a fit i remember that good memories man let's go let's continue thank you so the next item down on the sheet is the savings from the health services contract and and to be clear this isn't this isn't a reduction to the health services that we just heard viola speak about the when the f y 21 governor's recommend was presented we did not yet have the financial information for what this fiscal year's contracted costs would be and the savings on the per inmate per month cost from the previous contract that ended june 30th to the contract with vital core that we now have that started on july 1st of this fiscal year was about $150 per inmate per month as a as a cost reduction that full cost is more than this 1.75 million that's being proposed as a reduction but we do have costs related to electronic health record system implementation with vital core and some other items that we we couldn't take the the full cost of that per inmate per month savings because there are other costs that we do have to consider but this this 1.75 million represents largely the savings that we have on the per inmate per month cost so that decrease of 1.75 million i clarify that for me is that reflective of the decreasing costs per inmate cost under the new contract or not it is yes it is okay okay okay let's keep going finish this sheet and then we've got a break we pick it up from tomorrow the the next line items at one time this is um covid 19 funds the the 4.95 million that we're requesting for largely this is similar to what we had an f y 20 costs associated with staffing for mitigation prevention of covid 19 the staff across doc art have been substantially dedicated to this effort since the beginning of course we also have had personal protective equipment expenses or operating items so there's this carers fund request this is not this was asked i think at both of the appropriations committees this was not something that was presented to the joint fiscal committee this is a separate request from from the those that they've received thus far for cares act funding so this is not reflective of the dollars that we have put in in our um crf legislation that we did last session this past session in june this is on and this would be reimbursed through another funding mechanism for crf dollars this this yes this you're correct this would be this would be additional to those funds that were that were put in for the specific allocations of of covid funding uh in the in the uh previous in the first quarter budget and in the supplemental budget adjustment last year okay okay okay mary to be clear they they are they are proposing to put it in in this budget you see it in the line item there where it says crf right yeah but that doesn't include those dollars that we have put in right no not through the jfc or the q1 or b a a these are new dollars we'll flag that to come back to okay let's keep going sure so the next travel reductions of 75 000 very similar to what we talked about with parole board um we didn't want to be too aggressive with with this there is more money to be found i think in travel potentially um this is not all of the doc correctional services travel but we have had of course significant reductions during the pandemic as we discussed earlier i think the intent would be moving forward as the commissioner said it it is important to to be in person to have these meetings but not all of the meeting is going forward even post pandemic um would be in person necessarily so there will be perhaps additional savings but this is related to cost savings that we've seen for for fleet cars travel reimbursements out of state travel and the like over the last several months and anticipate through fy 21 at least the next five items are all of the reflect the internal service fund reductions fee for space vision the ads charges i don't know if you'd like me to go through each of these individually we typically in the appropriations committees it's acknowledged as an understood expense but i could go through each if you'd prefer that i think the the one that really stands out more for us is the bgs fee for space which is with the ones of correctional facility the 236 000 that doc is no longer paying that correct that's what this reflects correct correct though this this is this is separate from that that moth though there was a reduction of mothballing costs for Windsor and really i think we discussed this last week that the facility is not mothballed it's being repurposed but doc's financial obligation was transferred by by virtue of that reduction this this line item you're seeing on the internal service fund bgs fee for space is unit not unit it's it's separate from the Windsor this is the overall fee for space for all of the state buildings both correctional facilities and the probation parole offices um this is a i don't have it right in front of me approximately a four and a half million dollar per year fee for space cost and this is a reduction to that base expense for fee for space and part of that is because of the repurposing of the Windsor facility to other state departments or not not not specific to this line item no there there was a there was there was a much larger fee for space cost in that four and a half million that i believe in the f y i think the f y 19 budget our fee for space was adjusted it would have been in the five or six hundred thousand dollar range for the one facility it would that would have reduced that year's cost of that that money was already removed from the fee for space charges the last couple fiscal years it was just those mothballing costs the the basic keeping the not keeping the lights on but paying for electricity paying for the building to be heated to at least the minimum required temperatures that was the mothballing that we reduced through the f y 21 original recommended okay anything else on this sheet man the only other one is this last item under grants the adjustment for Medicaid earnings the it's an offsetting this is an up upward pressure for general funds so this was an item that was reduced in the f y 21 original and we're now effectively undoing that that original proposal this is the community habilitative care Medicaid investment that we have it's for it's for services offered in the community by field staff and when the budget was originally submitted the idea was that we could implement sorry that we could shift the cost of what's been paid out of general fund traditionally to to Medicaid costs unfortunately we were we were working on this pre pandemic and the pandemic has kind of slowed these efforts this isn't something that goes away forever the initiative we're looking we're working on this and we do anticipate that this is something we'll be able to start the likelihood of it starting f y 21 is very low so to have a $525,000 base reduction to general funds with the with the idea that we'd be able to pick up that cost with Medicaid global commitment funds it's very unlikely that any of that would happen in f y 21 and certainly if it does it wouldn't be anywhere near the 525,000 okay so this is a good uh breaking point for us today because we're scheduled only to 10 o'clock what I would recommend is we start from this point tomorrow at 8 30 we have from 8 30 to 10 tomorrow and then we can finish this up and start working on our recommendations and trying to clarify we need to also clarify those c r f dollars that we put in in our c f c r f legislation in june and we also need to clarify the justice reinvestment to those dollars so kurt you have a question uh just uh something that I would like to cover tomorrow if at all possible would be um if it if it can be found I would like to know um the amount of money that we're spending especially if it could be compared with f y 20 the amount we're spending on um outside programs like substance abuse domestic violence workforce training just a lump sum of how much that is and sometime I'd like to discuss the metrics used to measure the success of those um particular programs to seek because I'd like to start being able to get a baseline so we can track changes over the next coming years as we um implement a justice reinvestment so we can see whether it's succeeding and how much we're uh moving money around that's something that I'd like to discuss either tomorrow or later on this I think under the circumstances that we're involved in right now to make recommendations to the appropriations committee on their but on this budget request I think that conversation needs to occur after we make our recommendations to appropriations because that's a deep conversation and we're on a very very short timeline for our committee to recommend to approach on the f y 21 budget appropriations needs to get this budget out of their committee a week from tomorrow but we'll still be meeting then after we make our recommendation yes good okay very good my internet is unstable here but our goal right now is to work off these documents and make our recommendations to appropriations so they can get the f y 21 budget in place and pass and pass out of their committee next Friday uh I agree but some of that has to do with how that out of state money gets allocated if we might want to move that into some of these programs if they seem low but anyway we can talk about that we have budget adjustment in january so Alice yes yeah so we we have yet to answer the question to mary and to peter fagan about um middle sex right so we'll have to do that I think fairly soon mary yeah you're hearing wood side is it today tomorrow when you've been hearing it uh we've already health our human services is dealing with wood side questions that's a dcf budget we don't have to answer the question today um about middle sex wood side but if you're looking for language in the budget that needs to be part of your recommendation so tomorrow i'll be fine so we know we heard testimony at the justice uh oversight committee about how uh the proposal from dcf to contract out with becket and it would be providing those services through a contract with them and they have a facility here in vermont that might need some renovations no movement can be made unless the legislature decides to close wood side completely so that's within our policy committees as well as the appropriations committees the justice oversight is sending a letter out to really look at this proposal and also to make to look at the programs that would be offered uh wood side versus the private contractor as well as comparing your operational cost and your construction renovation costs between uh keeping wood side or going with um a contractor to provide services so that was the recommend of the justice oversight committee to the general assembly and the letter was being sent i'm not sure if it was yesterday or today becky's been working on that that's so we need to have that conversation mary and the existing language controlling what happens at wood side is that it may not be closed until there is a plan submitted for how to proceed and so this issue can be rolled into that right and what the beck what the commissioner dcf was saying was come october first they're planning on closing wood side but yes submit a plan first well that that's what was testified to justice oversight yeah so we reminded him the legislature decides for that so that has impact on our replacement of the secure residential for us too anything else here before we finish up on youtube live and finish up our committee meeting and we are on the floor this afternoon from two to four and then we're back here in committee from at 8 30 tomorrow morning to pick up where we've left off here and to take care of these other dangling issues that makes sense so are you waving goodbye mary yeah okay so let's go off youtube thank you folks for listening in and watching and we'll see you again tomorrow