 Good morning. You are with the Vermont House Government Operations Committee. We are meeting this morning to go through S-124, which came over to us from the Senate back towards the end of June. And so Betsy Ann has some documents that she has shared with Andrea that are posted on our website, and we're going to go through the bill and take some questions right now. So thank you, Betsy Ann. And I think that as we did yesterday, we will look at the bill language on our other devices so that we can all see each other. Oh, Betsy Ann, you're muted. Oh, sorry. Hello. I'll start over. Betsy Ann Rass Legislative Council. We are reviewing S-124 as past Senate, which is an act relating to governmental structures protecting the public health, safety, and welfare. Thank you to Andrea for posting these various documents for today. We've got the bill as past the Senate itself. We've got a summary that I maybe will be good to review this morning. Madam Chair, we can do more of a higher level, walk through, and then we can get down into the nitty-gritty at a later time. I did also, part of this bill addresses issues concerning law enforcement officer training certification and professional regulation. So there is also a document posted providing an overview of those topics. And then finally, there's just a legal reference guide of the different law enforcement structures that we have in the state. And it also addresses a few law enforcement related issues that seem to come up in the General Assembly as it has been discussing public safety issues in the last several bienniums. One of the bills that the General Assembly recently passed was S-273 from the 2017-18 biennium. That bill did get vetoed, and there was not any vote on override. So some of those provisions are repeated in S-124, and I'll try to highlight some of the repeat of the provisions. I think if members want to follow along, the two main documents we'll review this morning, unless you want to get into further details, will be that summary of S-124. And you can also have the bill pulled up if we want to look at language directly. But Madam Chair, if it seems to work, I can just do more of higher level walk through, and then we can get back into the language at a later date if that makes sense. So I am going to be looking mostly at the summary, but it does go through and provides the different topics of the bill and then points out the sections of the bill where you can find this in a language. But big picture, this bill covers law enforcement, dispatch, emergency medical services, and public safety planning. And it starts out with law enforcement, and specifically the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council. So overall, the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council is our state entity that provides training for and approves training for our law enforcement officers. It certifies officers, and all people have to be certified as a law enforcement officer in order to exercise law enforcement authority. And then it also professionally regulates our law enforcement officers. It's a group of appointees, and the membership of the council was addressed in this bill, and that was also addressed in S273 from last biennium. The bill starts out with a technical correction because in the statute that describes the purpose of the council, the purpose, one of the main purposes is to provide training to recruits, and those are people who are not yet certified as law enforcement officers, and then law enforcement officers themselves who have to get annual training to renew their certification. And so actually, statute got changed by mistake a couple of few years ago to say recruitment instead of recruits, when this is really supposed to be talking about law enforcement applicants. So as past the Senate, this bill would make a technical correction to change recruitment back to recruit. But as Senate GovOps was discussing this bill in a separate section, testimony from the council actually was that they're trying to move away from that term recruit, and instead use law enforcement applicant. So I just have flagged for you here a potential technical correction to the technical correction. If you will be sending back any amendments, there's an opportunity to update that language to use law enforcement applicant instead of recruit. But section two gets into a substantive issue, and that's the membership of the council. So right now the council is made up of 12 members. This section would amend the council membership and change who gets to a point and would change the membership from 12 to 20 people. And the membership of the council was something that was addressed in s 273. So the bill would provide that aside from 17 specific appointees with specific people you're either serving ex officio because of the office you hold or you get appointed. The governor would also be able to appoint three public members who don't have a law enforcement connection. Only the public members would get per diem compensation but all members could get reimbursement of expenses. Related to this section three permits existing members of the council to continue to serve out their existing terms if their membership got revised, but they'd still be serving. The bill then moves on to different training options for officers and contingent access to council training. Now different training options was a matter that was addressed in s 273. In big picture what the general assembly has discussed before and what senate gov ops was focusing on again in s 124 was the access to training, what training is appropriate and to how to get people trained up because I think you'll hear from the law enforcement community that they don't maybe have enough law enforcement officers. How to make it easier for law enforcement officers to get trained. Section four of this bill would require the criminal justice training council to adopt rules for alternate routes to certification aside from the training that's provided at the Vermont police academy. Our police academy if you've been there before is in southern Vermont and you'll see for some of our officers the highest level certified officers actually will have to go to the police academy and do I think it's a 16 or week residential training there at the academy. So that is one issue that this bill addresses and this section is requiring the council to consider and adopt rules on other ways to get trained up other than at the police academy. And also it says that the council shall strive to offer courses in different areas of the state and non overnight courses whenever possible. This is uh permissive as opposed to you shall. So the language is written in two different ways and we can if you want to look at the bill this is on get there real quick. Section four begins on page four and so the council would be required to adopt rules to identify and implement alternate routes to certification aside from training at the police academy. Now how many hours could be outside the police academy I think that under this language would be up to the council to decide but that is a requirement but then at the bottom of the page you'll see there it's council shall offer courses in different areas of the state so that is a requirement but then it's strive to offer non overnight courses whenever possible. So that's more permissive. Thank you. Section five I'm on going back to the summary I'm at the top of page two. Section five of the bill requires the council to restructure its programs so that on July 121 a level two officer can use portfolio experiential learning or CLEP testing that's college level examination program testing to transition from level two to level three without needing to restart the certification process. So what's going on here is right now we have three levels of law enforcement officer certification level one which is the most restrictive and it's uh limited to security, transport and a few other things but we'll get into the definition of that. I don't even think we have any level one officers right now certified but that certification level is available. Level two is the mid-level certification and that by statute allows a person who's level two certified to only investigate and handle a specified list of crimes and then level three is full law enforcement authority and what's going on now that this bill would address is right now the council's programs are not structured so you can go from level two to level three easily essentially a person who's level two and wants to get level three certified has to start the whole recertification process and so this would require the council to restructure its program so a person can transition from the experience they have now as level two and then work their way up to level three without having to go through level three training all over. Section six requires the council to report to the GovOps committee when Jason frozen. That's Ian can you start over um at section six because you froze for a moment. Yeah sorry about that uh section six requires the council to report to the GovOps committees at the in january about its progress on these requirements with a final rule adoption deadline of july 1 23. Section 6a was added the bill so the the council it's providing the training it's certifying officers you need the council to get certified and to get recertified. Section 6a provides that beginning on january 1 22 a law enforcement agency would be prohibited from having its officers trained at the police academy or otherwise using council services if the agency is not in compliance with the statutory requirements for collecting road stop data or the requirement to comply with any policy required on the council chapter like the taser policy for example so you have to be in compliance as an agency if you want to use the services of the council the section requires the council to adopt procedures about how it's going to enforce this and those procedures could allow waivers for agencies under a plan to obtain compliance. Section seven so that's 6a oops pardon go Bob Hooper has a question. So thank you um Betsy and can you only at this point access the academy through an agency or can you do it sort of I don't know independent study or whatever the term might be. I believe we should hear testimony directly from the council I believe the practice is you have to be sponsored by an agency to be able to be trained up there okay well one of the things this bill is looking at is you know whether some of the um a person could obtain some of the educational requirements at one of our colleges for example that's something this bill is getting at. Thank you. So you referenced um the the requirement for collecting roadside stop data and other requirements um in this chapter but but then there's this sort of out that says you can as long as you're uh under a plan to become compliant you can still access. I'm not sure that it takes a whole lot of planning to become compliant with the roadside data stop and so I would um I would want to consider making that a firm requirement and that if there are other more complicated um requirements of this chapter that that would more reasonably require a compliance plan that that would be the only out and committee you can weigh in if you disagree with me on that but seems to me that since we've been trying to collect data for quite some time now um we shouldn't uh we shouldn't have agencies around the state who are not complying with that. Bob Hooper has a question. I don't disagree with you at all I just I wonder is the reporting requirement uh mechanically based in terms of how it has to be done is that a roadblock at any point? You know you have to have a special program or a special system or something that would prohibit the smaller towns from jumping right into it and I don't I don't know the answer. Yeah I think we heard some testimony um back when we were physically together in committee that that the data comes in in a variety of ways from back of the envelope to uh you know to uploading from a database kind of uh um Rob. Thank you madam chair um I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you the only concern that I have is it does seem to me that there is a couple different reporting systems out there and what would it take to well basically have everybody coalesce around one excuse me one system and then if I recall there's also variations of how that information is interpreted and therefore how it's input so um as much as I hear what you're saying and I don't necessarily disagree I'd like to know logistically what it would take to get from where we are to where we'd like to be. Yeah. In that regard. Yeah I think it would be a good idea for this committee to actually hear some testimony from some of the smaller agencies around the state and understand what their uh what their data collection and reporting challenges are. I know that we also heard from Commissioner Schirling that he would like to share his uh his um I forget what the name of the program is the platform that that Vermont State Police uses but he would like to be able to make that available to all law enforcement agencies um I don't recall whether that is in his budget plans for either this year or next. If anybody else has information about that feel free to jump in. And by pursuing it from this angle here aren't we addressing the statewide concern about having uniformity and consistency statewide in a variety of areas? That's the idea. Okay. All right back to you Betsy Ann. All right um so on the summary I'm in section seven on page two. This section would explicitly permit one law enforcement agency to seek certification from the council for any in-service training it provides to its own officers or officers of another agency it's really getting at providing training officers of another agency this is actually already happening in practice as I understand it so this is statute just catching up with reality and this was a correction that was proposed in s 273 also just to clarify that statutory authority. All right we're on to another topic now the potential hiring agency duty to contact an officer's current agency when an officer is trying to apply if is applying for a new position at that potential hiring agency. So this section eight would require a potential hiring law enforcement agency to contact the officer's current agency about the officer's performance there if the officer is still employed there and that current agency would be risk required to disclose its analysis of the officer's performance there. So it's essentially issue spotting um when a potential hiring agency is considering hiring an officer. So this is just an update to current statutory law the note here is that law already requires a potential hiring agency to contact an officer's former agency if the officer's no longer employed there and for that former agency to disclose why the officer's no longer employed there. Section nine is a transitional provision it was included in the same law that enacted that duty to contact the former agency it's it waves this requirement in the case of an existing non-disclosure agreement that prohibits this disclosure so in case there's any sort of labor agreement in effect a current agency would not be required to disclose if that language is included in their contract currently. The bill goes on to address body cameras. Section 9A provides that on January 1, 2022 each agency is required to adopt follow and enforce the LEAB's model body worn camera policy I provided a link to it there for you which the LEAB was required to establish via that 2016 act and each law enforcement officer is required to comply with the provisions of that policy so LEAB meaning the law enforcement advisory board um the bill requires the council to incorporate this requirement into its training and I just provided a note there that this policy applies when an agency actually authorizes an officer to use a body camera so I think that there's potential um clarification of the language just how it came through to make it clear that this only is required if the requirement to follow the policy is only a requirement for an officer if the officer is actually using a body camera so we can look at that language more closely when we do a more detailed walk through I'm at the top of page three now and the bill gets into unprofessional conduct so unprofessional conduct provisions were really beefed up pursuant to the 2017 act number 56 if you hear testimony about act 56 it refers to that 2017 act um big picture 2017 act number 56 really expanded the scope of authority for the council to professionally regulate officers before the provisions of act 56 took effect on July 1, 2018 the council only had the authority to decertify an officer and decertification was only allowed if the officer was convicted of a felony or failed to complete in-service training that's it so decertification or nothing and only on those two grounds felony conviction or failure to complete training act 56 established a variety of unprofessional conduct provisions and there are three categories category a which relates to crimes category b which I describe as gross professional misconduct and category c which relates to council processes and this could be falsifying documents to the council or um failing to comply with a training requirement for example what these sections of the bill are doing is really addressing a big focus is on category b so the first thing that's going on here is that it's making explicit right now what the law says is category b there's a list of them and right now the language in the law says that category b is gross misconduct such as and it provides a list of different conduct so it sounds more like examples rather than shall be category b conduct I'll read you some of them so if you want to look at the bill you can see them yourselves category b is listed as including I'm at the bottom page 11 of the bill sexual harassment involving physical contact or amuse misuse of position um misusing your position for personal or economic gain excessive use of force under color of authority second offense is what the law currently provides bias enforcement and using electronic criminal records database for personal political or economic gain so right now the statute says that those are examples it's like such as these lists of a through e the bill makes clear that category b means shall include that list and include means it's not an exhaustive list so that's more of a clarification jim has a question yeah thank thank you madam chair uh betzian so does this track um what we passed in 219 a few months ago oh betzian 19 yeah let's see I would have to look that up I think you were addressing some issues in there but I have to remind myself since I'm I didn't handle that bill I just need to find out what you did there I'm in the bill now yes so you did make that correction okay you did make that correction shall include okay so that's already there we can let's I'll make a note of that thank you representative harrison that shall include is in there um but then yes and then you did add on to the list of category b conduct okay thank you and you already made the change all right great so you already made the change for excessive use of force you change it from first the second offense to first offense so sorry about that I didn't realize you made that change so can some of this come out of this bill then yeah definitely okay and that would be good because s2 19 is already enacted in the law and that changing of s of uh excessive use of force from second offense to first offense it does have a ripple effect throughout the chapter and I just describe it here on page three we don't have to rehash it because you've already done it so you can take it off your list thank you so I am on the summary on page three let me just make sure this is not already addressed in your bill um so section 10 and 24 o 3 a 1 b is changing the language about when an agency has to report alleged category b conduct right now the language of the law says that the an agency has to report to the council alleged category b conduct if the agency receives a complaint against the officer that the agency deems credible as a result of a valid investigation then they report the category b allegation this revises this language to say that the agency is required to report credible allegations of category b conduct before the agency goes through the whole process of conducting its valid investigation so it's more of the agency doing a preliminary screen of the complaint if it does have credibility it's not just you know an officer did xyz yesterday but the officer is it was away on vacation for example um the agency would know that that's not a credible complaint um but if there is a credible complaint then the agency under the bill would be required to report it to the council so the council is more aware of the complaints of a complaint against an officer um and then the council would have more oversight as the agency itself conducts its investigation of that category b allegation so this is self-recording within an agency are there other channels through which a credible um complaint could be elevated to the training council yes complaints can be made directly to the council for example um then there's also language further in the bill that is going to request a recommendation on whether there should be other channels for people to make complaints of um allegations of officer unprofessional conduct but right now the two main ones are to the agency itself or to directly to the criminal justice training council do you know of any any place where we could see a listing of the different law enforcement agencies and the and the size of each of them because i know in my small community we have maybe two full-time and another part-time officer um and i you know it occurs to me that in the smaller the agency the harder it might be to uh for a credible complaint to to be handled within simply within the agency yeah let me look around to see if there's you know vlct might have a list um i will i'll do some research to see um if we can get a list of those agencies great in the state alexa yeah john gannon um i believe that remote state police has such a list which i would discuss when we get to dispatch these i would think the training council wouldn't do as well yeah i bet i bet somebody's watching right now on youtube and uh and our inbox um may actually uh receive one of these things one of these lists thank you yeah good call replica there that's probably the best best bet see if the what the council has um i'm on the summary top of page four um this language in 2403 b would require the council to provide a copy of any report it receives um from an agency about alleged unprofessional conduct and the relevant documents that the agency forwards on um to what is called the council advisory committee um and the council advisory committee would be required to recommend any appropriate action to take so the council advisory committee was created as part of act 56 um as a five member forward there's four public members and one retired officer um there are to be appointed by the governor to provide advice to the council on its duties in regard to professionally regulating officers so it's getting to more uh public oversight of allegations against officers on page four it's getting to those recommendations that i referenced so section 10 a would require specified entities in consultation with other entities that the bill specifies um to report to the gov ops committees by next january with recommendations on various issues in regard to law enforcement so the bill spells out who these reporting entities have to consult with but i've just provided here um who the final reporter has to be on who has to make these recommendations so the first subject covered is law enforcement officer qualifications and the law enforcement advisory board would need to provide recommendations on universal standards for interviewing and hiring officers and relatedly the council would need to make recommendations on cultural sensitivities in and overall appropriateness of exams that officers have to take another topic is law enforcement officer training um so the council would need to report back with recommendations as to whether the current officer training appropriately covers cultural awareness implicit bias de-escalation and recognition of and responding to people who have a mental health condition and whether that training is embedded into training on other policing policies such as traffic stops and searches after taking a look at that the council would also have to recommend any amendments to statutorily required training that might not be necessary for all officers so in that separate document that i provided that provides the list of training of officers it does go through what the statutory requirements are the council is given um authority to decide a lot of what the appropriate training should be but statute does control them on some of the topics and so this is a look at whether all of that statutorily required training is necessary for all officers then the council the leab and department of public safety jointly would need to make recommendations regarding the governmental oversight of the council right now the council really is it's not under any agency umbrella it is um an independent entity so they would have to recommend whether it should be put under a certain governmental umbrella in the state also make recommendations about the location of the police academy and the basic training requirements for applicants as i mentioned for level three the highest level officers they if you um just to point out on the overview of their training requirements it's on page four of that overview it is a 16 week residential basic training academy um and the classes run Monday through Friday during the week students are required to remain there at the academy um and so one of the things that uh report back when just need to analyze whether um that might be limiting the number of people who might want to have a career in law enforcement and whether a training can be provided in different ways back to the bill overview a third topic that needs to be recommended is models of civilian oversight where the attorney general's office would need to recommend some models for civilian oversight of law enforcement also a fourth topic reporting allegations of misconduct and this is going to what you were asking about madam chair um the agio attorney general's office would have to recommend and identify a central point to report allegations of officer misconduct and how to handle them so right now you can make your complaints to the agency or the council and the question would be whether there's other places that people could be able to make complaints a fifth topic is access to complaint information and here the council advisory committee would need to make recommendations on public access to records of alleged officer misconduct and any substantiations of that conduct a sixth topic is body cameras and the leab would need to recommend any necessary changes to it's a body worn camera policy before that requirement for agencies to comply with that takes effect and then also policies for responding to public record act requests for the footage also in regard to body cameras department of public safety would need to take a look at and recommend whether it's possible to have a statewide group purchasing contract for body cameras and central storage locations to address some of the financial issues related to obtaining body cameras and then finally a seventh topic is military equipment and the leab would need to recommend a statewide policy on officers use of military equipment some of the feedback was there's a variety of equipment that officers agencies can get military equipment and sometimes people think of you know armory and tanks but they're also getting snowmobiles and snowblowers so a policy on what is appropriate and what might not be appropriate Jim Harrison thank you Betsy and again back on 2019 you might want to check I thought we asked public safety to relook at the body camera policy but I there was a lot of things in and out so I may not I don't have the bill in front of me but if we did I just don't want to duplicate it in a slightly different way with a different console if we ask different people to review it yes thank you I'm looking at 2019 now act 147 I'm seeing the body camera section seven and eight it appears that it's focused on Department of Public Safety alone but I'll take another comb through I'll take a closer look at that act to make sure it's not being duplicated here so thanks for that reminder yeah no it was only state police but I thought we had asked them to update the policy but I again that I may be recalling that incorrectly okay I will look I'll look okay thank you thank you all right so that takes us through the real law enforcement specific council language and so on the summary I'm at the top of page five and the bill gets into the Vermont Crime Information Center aka the VCIC and so this section 11 would require VCIC to establish and provide training on a uniform list of definitions for officers to use when they enter their crime data into their system of records so there's two main systems of record keeping for agencies the they either use Spillman or Valkor are the two systems and testimony on the Senate side had been that not all agencies are using the same definitions so crimes are getting reported in different ways one crime might be reported in one way by one agency in a different way by another agency so there's not consistency in the data and so this would acquire VCIC to come up with a uniform list of definitions so that all agencies are talking in the same language whenever they do enter their criminal records into whatever system that they do use and officers would be required to use those definitions when they do enter their crime data then the bill goes on to the law enforcement advisory board the LAB and one of the things that it's doing is just putting the LAB in the right place in statute where it should go right now it's in title 24 which is our municipal law title and it really shouldn't be there because it's not a municipal law entity it is created as being within the Department of Public Safety so this would repeal where it currently lives in statute and put it in the chapter of title 20 which is our public safety title under the Department of Public Safety chapter and just recodify it there with the main changes while doing so is to add members to the LAB four new members Department of Fish and Wildlife would get a representative DMV would get a representative the chief of Capitol Police would be added and so would a VSEA appointed officer and so then updates the quorum and makes a few other technical corrections but no other changes to the duties of the LAB or what it's supposed to do in moving the statute over. In section 14 is a transitional provision just to say all right now says it's in title 24 now it's in title 20 all references to the old title 24 section are meant to be the new title 21 and ledge council would be required to update the statutes accordingly with the new cross-reference. If you could hold up just a moment I think Bob Hooper had his hand up for a moment before we before we transition to this section Bob did you have a question? Well a puzzle maybe that's the end is the Vermont equivalent of the NCIC does an NCIC use a standard reporting form that you would think would have filtered down? I don't know the answer to that I think it's Jeff Wayland Mr. Wayland I think is the director of the VCIC probably would be a good witness for providing testimony on the current definition and the issues that agencies are experiencing or the VCIC is experiencing with the different definitions. I know it was a concern on the Senate side but I just I can't give you all the details on why why there is an ongoing issue but it was there was an issue identified with the definitions being used. Thank you. Mike Marwicky. Thank you Madam Chair. Betsy are there civilians on this board? I don't believe so we can look at the LAB you can see the current members if you want to take a look at the bill they're all law enforcement related and the membership is set out on page 19 of the bill there I don't think there are public members so remember they're just adding the four law enforcement members to it that's what's going on here starting on page 19 of the bill there is a representative of the VLCT is there anything prohibiting us from adding civilians? No no you can you can do so if you choose yeah Defender General and otherwise it's all it's all law enforcement positions so the General Assembly did create it to be advisory but as I noted in the the legal reference guide although it was created as advisory it does have the General Assembly has given it certain substantive powers such as the authority to establish the required taser policy and then another example is that body camera policy but you may choose to add or revise the current membership if you want and I may do that thank you I'm back on the summary the bottom of page five and then just one other note about the LAB section 15 would require the LAB in its annual report in 2021 because it is required to do an annual report to specifically recommend ways that towns can increase access to law enforcement services and this was something addressed in s273 also now I'm on the summary at the top of page six and we're getting into dispatch in the Department of Public Safety so the first thing that's going on here there's some technical corrections to getting rid of some outdated language the first bit of outdated language that would be eliminated is a statutory requirement for the commissioner to be appointed for a term of six years that's not happening in practice because all appointees serve all governor appointees to serve at the pleasure of the governor and that six-year term relates to another provision I'll get to in a moment that's just been sitting dead in the law for over four decades that you could clean up while you have the chance in this bill but a substantive thing going on in section 16 is requiring the commissioner of public safety to adopt rules that provides the rates that department of public safety charges to perform dispatch functions so DPS already has a statutory authority to charge rates but there's no right now what the bill would do is say there needs to be rules that show how the rate making what the rates would be if DPS does charge for dispatch relatedly to this I'll just note in section 17 in regard to that rule making on dispatch rates those rules would need to be in place by July 121 but the bill requires the rules to provide a minimum of three years following adoption before the rates they contain are imposed so it'd be a three-year rollout as I understand it although DPS has the authority to do charge for dispatch it is not doing so that's my understanding this bill would say once you do adopt those rates in rule three years before they can take effect to allow municipalities for example to prepare for those getting charged those rates. Jim and then John. Thank you Betsy and I think you might have answered part of my question so it's your understanding currently that the Department of Public Safety does not charge any dispatch fees that's my understanding we should get confirmation from the commissioner but that was my understanding from the conversation and it seems to previous testimony from the prior commissioner that the state police did this service for something like 105 communities I may have that number wrong but it's a significant number of municipalities which probably tend to be very small very rural so this is a very significant this whole section is a very very significant change and could put a burden on many of those small rural communities even if you know it's based on a per call basis if there's any kind of minimum so I'm just concerned about this section without really knowing what it's going to mean in the end thank you thanks yeah I would say definitely have testimony from the commissioner on the commissioners how the commissioner envisions this happening John so I am sure the commissioner is very well aware of section 17 because I'm sure he testified about it in senate government operations but I'm concerned because I received a letter from my police chief yesterday from captain Lance Burnham who's with the Vermont state police telling all law enforcement agencies that they're going to start charging for dispatch in FY 22 which is inconsistent with this language and it concerns me more because they acknowledge that many local law enforcement agencies have raised concerns about the accuracy and the fairness of those fees yet they have not responded to that citing budgetary reasons for not responding there are yet again asking them to respond to the proposed fees when they haven't taken into an account local law enforcement agencies concerns in the first place so I do want to hear a lot of testimony with respect to what the state police are doing and why they're you know pushing out to towns information that's inconsistent with this this bill because it impacts a lot of towns including Bradford Richmond Killington Jitman Bennington sheriffs and Wilmington wow join the club thank you John I appreciate that we will we will certainly need to take some testimony on that both from the DPS perspective but also from the local perspective all right one other thing going on here that I'll mention in section 16 is a technical correction but it would repeal 20 vsa 1873 which right now in writing says the governor can only remove the commissioner public safety after charges a hearing if the commissioner requests one and only for specific grounds and that's it but the Vermont Supreme Court in a 1979 case held that that statute 20 vsa 1873 was superseded by a later enacted statute 3 vsa 2004 that says gubernatorial appointees hold office at the pleasure of the governor so this 20 vsa 1873 has just been essentially sitting in statute and writing wrong for over four decades so you have the chance right now to get it out of the law because it conflicts with judicial case law which controls so that's your technical cleanup there all right so the bill that's the end of our law enforcement topic then the bill goes into emergency medical services and I'm in the middle of page six of the summary so throughout this bill or throughout section 18 of the bill one thing would be substituting the department of health for the state board of health that divides the state into ems districts and issues licenses for ambulance services and first responders services and that was a proposal earlier this year this biennium by a department of health uh in regard to ambulance service license eligibility criteria in section 1824 vsa 2681 would require ambulance service license and renewal applicants to provide their services in a non-discriminatory manner similar to the requirement for home health services senate gov ops was referring to this as the anti cherry picking um uh provision so that there would need to be an analysis that ambulance services um are providing their services in a non-discriminatory manner and one witness that was crucial on the senate side there are many for ems but i'd say um drew hazelton um was a big resource for senate gov ops um he's one of our ems providers and he would probably be a good um one witness that he could speak to about the because that this request came from um him he serves on the ems advisory committee so that's one possible witness on this issue to address uh to discuss some of the issues with that discriminatory services that are alleged right now i'm at the top of page seven and the section 19 would require the green mountain care board to identify priorities regarding ems resources and needs in the state's health resource allocation plan that it puts together so it's just an analysis of the health care needs in the state and so this would require the h-rap to also address ems resources and needs and related to this section 20 of the bill would require the ems advisory committee to identify those resources and needs and report them to the green mountain care board for uh the care board to consider that and put that in the h-rap but it should have set up front well i'm sure you all know it but um the ems system is also under stress and getting people to be able to get uh licensed as ems providers and so what part of what this bill is doing is trying to address the um ems uh resources that we need in the state um on page seven there is also a technical correction um in section 20 to address a change that was made in 2020 act number 100 that was the gov ops public safety bill in response to covid in that bill that um eliminated the requirement for ems personnel to be credentialed by their affiliated agencies because it was just one other thing that the ems personnel had to do ems personnel still have to be licensed and licensure requires you to be certified nationally um but act 100 removed the additional credentialing requirement by an ems professionals affiliated agency which is their ambulance service or first responder service so but in doing eliminating that credentialing requirement there was some elimination of language that um seemed to delete language about a requirement to still be affiliated with an affiliated agency big picture you have to to be able to practice as an ems personnel you have to be affiliated with either an ambulance service or a first responder service i couldn't get licensed and just start going out holding myself out as an ems as a paramedic for example i have to actually be working for an affiliated agency and so section 20 would just ensure that there's still a requirement to be affiliated with an affiliate agency as a follow-up to the act 100 changes and there are a few other technical corrections in there to use the appropriate defined terms another thing the bill does is um would require three levels of ems instructors right now by ems rule there's one license level for to be an ems instructor it's called the ems instructor slash coordinator and this would require the department of health to establish by rule at least three license levels again this is just addressing um the lack of um training for example that's available to um people who want to get licensed as ems personnel another concern that ems personnel uh we're discussing on the senate side is some of the testing necessary to get licensed so there's a requirement right now in doh rule to get um nremt psychomotor skills testing the national i think registry of emergency medical technicians um there was concern about whether the psychomotor testing by an nremt was always appropriate so this section 20 would allow for demonstration of skills competencies as part of approved education to test psychomotor skills of emergency medical responders and emergency medical technicians as an alternative to the current rule requirement to take that nremt psychomotor skills exam so again i'd recommend um the witnesses ems witnesses to talk about some of the limitations on that psychomotor skills testing that they currently have to get um again related to the stress on the ems system and the availability of responders section 20 would also uh create a new entry level um certification which would be called the vermont ems first responder so be a more entry level um person who could be there one of the first on the scene in case of emergency now the bottom page seven this bill would require a sunset review for doh um very it's based on s233 you did those sunset reviews once every five years for professional regulatory entities to continue to analyze whether all of the continuing competencies are necessary to get to renew your license and so this would require the same thing for department of health top of page eight the ems advisory council um it has an annual report to do and one of the things by their request as i recall would be to report on the annual number of mutual aid calls to the ems area that come from outside that area to address you know how many ems services are having to go beyond their normal area to address calls elsewhere uh related to that h-rap provision for the green mountain care board again it just added to their statute the ems advisory committee statute that they have to address ems resources and needs and submit that information to the green mountain care board for green mountain care board to include in the h-rap and then finally for ems advisory committee they would need to establish an ems education council from among its members for them to sponsor ems training or education programs um consistent with what doh requires for education to be and then also to provide advice to department of health regarding the standards for licensure uh section 21 updates the current list of ems professionals who may be um who may be able to obtain funding so there's a statutory funding source for ems and this would just add to it um licensed ems are current emergency medical responders because they just weren't on the list ems and paramedics are so they would add ems to it and then also add that new certified entry level ems first responder level as well so that the people who want to get training that could potentially get funding for that section 22 provides transitional provisions to implement these changes there's a rulemaking deadline of july 121 that non-discriminatory qualification for ambulance license types would begin on july 121 or whenever doh adopts the rules to implement it um in subsection c in regard to those three levels of ems instructors um that would need to uh there's language in there to say that the current ems instructors would be deemed to be at the correct level consistent with their scope of practice for whenever there's the three new license levels that are created so wherever person fits now they'd go into the correct one once there's three instead of the current one instructor level um subsection d requires that establishment of that new entry level certification vermont ems first responder to be established by july 121 and then finally subsection e says that department of health would need to conduct its first sunset review um when it has to go through the rulemaking required by this bill finally we get to our last topic in the bill which is public safety planning um and big picture what's going on in this uh section is a requirement for each town to have a public safety plan did somebody have a question sorry yeah i hooper has to sort of do so if i'm reading this correctly somebody that lives in like burlington like i do or south burlington that wanted to do the emt training at some point in time i would have to pledge my allegiance to say howl and wanouski or colchester or someplace else before i would be able to do that because we have professional fire departments in burlington and south burlington i think that don't take volunteers is that exclusionary and is there a particular reason for it you need to be licensed as an ems professional yeah that requirement for affiliated agency yes essentially it means you have to be working for either an ambulance service or a first responder service so that it's not permissible under the law for a person to just call themselves a paramedic and hang out a shingle and be a solo paramedic you just can't drive around you have to actually work for an ambulance company or a first responder service that's what that affiliated agency requirement is you can't hold yourself out as rep hooper's emergency service provider okay seems like it doesn't facilitate a lot of people getting to the point of being that but maybe i'm missing something thanks and rob look there um but that wouldn't prevent you or or preclude you from going through getting the training and getting somewhat certified it's just that you wouldn't be able to practice yeah it's the same a same um you can liken it to the requirement that you to be a law enforcement officer you have to be employed a law enforcement agency and i you know for example i just can't go out and say get licensed and i'm going to start enforcing the law on my own i actually have to work for a law enforcement agency so it's the same thing for ems personnel and that's the current law and this bill would just ensure that that's still reflected in the law um when credentialing got removed um there were just some uh places where it wasn't as clear that you still had to be affiliated with an affiliated agency jp and i also think that um and that you're not affiliated with any agency you you are not eligible for any funding that might be available for the specific ems type training because there are some available funding there is some available funding out there but it does require the affiliations yes that's correct and that's that is the way that the the law is currently structured you can't hold yourself out as um a paramedic for example without working for an ambulance service yeah so you can't be a licensed paramedic without that affiliation so madam chair if i might i'm still puzzled so the difference between this and um what happens with the pittsford is that you have to be employed before you can go to pittsford if rob is correct you can do all the coursework and get certified but not be employed or hang your shingle until you're employed is that right or you're not even certified until you get the job i'd have to look back at the ems rules a lot of this is set out in rule how it works i think i think that you can get the training as an ems uh to become licensed but you you do have to have that affiliation before you can actually practice but i'd have to confirm or else our um ems witnesses can confirm but the rules i'd have to real i pour through the rules there's a lot of detail in there i know it's addressed in there somewhere but i i just can't tell you with certainty exactly how it's phrased um but it could it may be that you could get training before you actually get your affiliation i just i forget exactly how it works okay thank you back and look at it sure all right all right last topic um page nine of the summary it's the public safety planning um so this would be a requirement for each town to have a public safety plan um that would address the regular um law enforcement fire ems and dispatch resources that the town will use and how how it's going to address those um needs for the town so it's built off the current law requirement for each town um to analyze its capabilities to respond to all hazards incidents like emergency issues like a weather disaster and so every town is already having to review its capacity um to perform emergency functions in response to an all hazard incident and so what this would be doing is piggybacking off of that annual requirement where the law already requires each town's local organization to analyze its capacity to perform emergency functions in all hazards incident and that local organization would have to while it's doing that annual analysis look at what regular resources it has to respond to its law enforcement fire ems and dispatch resources to respond to just everyday regular needs and so it would pass that information on to the legislative body and the legislative body would um come up with a town public safety plan which might include partnering with one or more other municipalities or entities to address its regular law enforcement fire ems or dispatch needs and so the legislative body would be required to solicit public comment and then propose the town safety plan hold at least one public hearing on it and then finally adopt the plan and the process would be repeated for any revisions that are necessary to it there's a deadline in the bill in section 24 for each town to have one in place by july 1 23 so it does build out some time for towns to go through this process and just noted it there was a section 25 that also related to public safety planning it was in regard to accd public safety planning grants i think that was also included in s 273 or proposed there um but that got removed on the senate side um during the appropriations review process um the final thing is the effective date it's july 1 2020 so that would need to change um if you will pursue this bill great marcia gardener thank you madam chair uh under the public safety planning section is there anything there that requires the towns to submit their plans to a statewide entity so that that statewide entity can be looking at plans to offer coverage all over the state rather than just in by town by town there is not but there is there's not a requirement to submit the town public safety plan to a statewide entity but the language does um does provide that the legislative body of the town can consult with municipal and regional planning commissions neighboring local organizations or any other law enforcement fire ems service entities um in order to determine how those services may be provided and shared on a regional basis um that has been a focus of senate gov ops um is looking at you know instead of maybe every town town's not addressing this town's not needing to address their regular public safety needs on a town by town basis but how those services might be shared regionally so it does at least have an eye to regional um but not a statewide oversight thank you great any other questions from committee members there's a lot going on there and so i appreciate um uh guiding us through the summary since that's um that is a very helpful document i appreciate that and uh again committee if there are other supporting documents that that sian has put on our committee page for um for us to take a look at if we want to put some of this in the larger context so um before we switch gears last chance any other thoughts questions comments suggestions on 124 we have been given um a fair amount of committee time um as the uh as the speaker's office has um has been helping to schedule committees uh for this remote meeting time and so you will see us coming back in more depth to a lot of these issues next week um particularly after we finish our work on 220 then we will be solely focused on this bill for a while um so any other any other questions before we move forward all right i don't see anybody diving for their hand um so what the other thing that we need to accomplish today and i think we probably have enough time to have this committee discussion um is that we need to review a couple of requests from the appropriations committee um with respect to the remainder of this budget year there were a few decisions that we had made back in march when the house first considered a full year budget um we uh we didn't necessarily have to reaffirm all of them when we passed the q1 budget in june um but now that we're looking at the remainder of the year's budget uh we do need to come back and take a look at some of these and so i'm going to ask john gannon if he wants to run us through some of the questions that we've been asked by different members of the appropriations committee and i know that uh some members of the committee sat in on some joint testimony with appropriations and so we can have a committee discussion about each of the questions they've asked go ahead john thanks um so i'll start with the the easy budget request first which is the sergeant of arms office um so uh the appropriation has asked us a couple of questions um one is um there is a body camera request for the sergeant of arms office um in their budget um in march uh we did not support that 21 000 um dollar item and so the question being posed to us by appropriation is that still our position and rob you unmuted do you want to want to weigh in sure yeah thank you madam chair um i i would my preference would be that would not be our position i think that we should support that and if you take a look at other legislation that's being proposed out there an awful lot of it about is body cam um usage and it seems like that our capital police there's more and more being asked of them as they're having to interact with people inside the state house and outside and personally i think it would be a an appropriate way to help address some of the issues and concerns that that are out there i know that part of their request over time has been additional staff which i realize is kind of a heavy lift but to me this i think would be an appropriate tool to help them uh jim harrison so i would just um had i mean it sounds like assuming we passed s 124 um at some point in the next couple weeks um we're going to require it anyhow because it says all law enforcement agencies so there is some something to be said that whether we do it now or we whether we do it next year we're going to do it so i think we should consider that the other point i i would think that we should consider is um as as the member from barry town said their role has changed um and certainly we saw in the several occasions where uh they had to escort out protesters um and i think at some point someone's going to accuse somebody of something uh in terms of you know undue force or whatever in terms of removing somebody and body cams might be um a good way to get some clear uh information in video footage as opposed to someone taking something on a cell phone that we see not always tell the full story in situation so i think it protects me if it's not a budget breaker um we should certainly encourage them to move forward uh in this direction with body cams because it's going to happen anyhow uh at some time in the next few years that's the end can you please clarify s 124 i don't believe it as a requirement for body cams for all law enforcement agencies yes i i noted that in the summary at the bottom of page two i i do think the language could be clarified um my understanding of the uh language was to say that if an agency uses body cams then it shall follow the policy i think it would be helpful to clarify that in the in the language because right now it just says agencies shall follow the body cam policy and officers need to follow it but the body cam policy itself says if author if officers are authorized to use body cams they need to use them in this way so i don't think s 124 s 124 does not currently mandate all officers to use body cams and so i think that language would be helpful to clarify in section 9a if you will pursue that language or want to keep it as thank you um marcia gardener non do we know how many units they're asking for oh we do not thank you we just know the cost which is $21,000 jp thank you madam chair and uh betsey and thank you for your comment just a minute ago here that was part of two part two questions of or two comments i was going to make i would it was my interpret or my uh interpretation of the section that body cameras are not required for any all police officers and it's my understanding that only that the current bills only require vermont state troopers to wear the body cams i believe i'm going to request clarification on that from you in the second part is whether or not it's required or not for municipal and or including the capitol police department i agree 100 000 with with the representative harrison's comments that we times are changing and body cams they provide a very very valuable resource to everything and and i think for that amount of money that representative gandy mentioned i mean i think that's money well worth spent and i highly support the expenditure of funds to equip our capital police with body cams and so betsey and if you could just on that and when you get it when you get a spare second thank you madam chair sure thank you thank you um yes i'm looking at your act number 147 which was your s2 19 and that addressed body cameras in sections seven and eight and that that required as you were saying represent plastic that was the requirement for department of public safety to ensure that all of its law enforcement officers are equipped with body cameras or otherwise a video recording device so that was specifically a requirement on department of public safety to use body cameras but otherwise s124 just says if another agency uses body cams it has to comply with the leab policy but it does not have a requirement for all officers to wear body cameras and use them it's only if they're provided with one they have to follow the policy the leab policy so um just to continue on this thing i i believe we heard testimony at some point or it is come into my mind that we did and i apologize for not remembering that there are many members that are concerned about having cameras inside the state house um because it could capture private conversations um and so i just i understand um the need for for body cameras for law enforcement but i think there's also been concerns raised uh capturing members having conversations with various people inside the building and i don't want people to lose sight of that i agree with you on that and um you know interestingly our our state capital building doesn't have um very many places where a member could have a private conversation if one needed to given that we don't have our own offices we don't have our own dedicated staff um and many of the transactional conversations we have happen quietly in uh in a hallway conversation or around a cafeteria table and so i do i do recall that for a number of years uh spanning back to when chap smith was uh speaker of the house there have been a number of members who are uncomfortable with the idea of um video taping uh you know putting up video surveillance around the building um and i understand that we have made exceptions for that um during the uh during the big public events when we have uh joint assemblies to hear the governor's state of the state address um and probably uh you know some other joint assemblies as well um but i would feel uncomfortable making this uh making this recommendation without including uh input from a broader swath of the the body the house and the senate for that matter um rob um i actually share some of the same concerns especially from the member from wilmington but i'm fairly confident that those concerns could be and would be addressed in some sort of uh you know police protocol or whatever because even now my understanding is uh vsp they have some very strict guidelines about body cameras are used and when they're not um and i agree madam chair there's a lot of conversations that happen very casually down there at the state house and that's a lot of what makes it function and we wouldn't necessarily want to have everything on camera uh jp thank you madam chair and and that's exactly what i was going to say is i think the um capital police department uh could and should have a policy directing when the body cams would be used such as when it appeared there there would be some sort of a confrontation um with with a pacific person or groups and you know things of that nature that the body cam footage would prove instrumental in but i i also agree that see it's it's very hard to find a place to have a conversation a private conversation in the state house with all the reporters and cameras from media and everything there as it is but with a good policy and due diligence on the officers of the capital police department i think that would be i think the benefit would be substantial to to them to have those and to be privacy could still be reasonably protected just my opinion so that's your question um so if the capital police were to get body cams they would have to comply with the statewide policy um which might not take into considerations um some of the issues that are that we face at the state house um so we may need to figure out how to solve that if we if we decide that they should have body cameras we mean may need to to this to have some carve out language for the capital police with respect to body cam policy yeah that makes sense to folks i mean yeah um marcia gardener john do we know if video storage is included in this 21 000 or deployment or training um we do not thank you good question marcia i can find that out probably all right so how do we want to leave that um i think we should chew on that a little bit i really feel like uh i don't feel comfortable making a call one way or the other without um running it by some other uh members of the house you know chairs of other committees you know i know that that there has been a hard no on cameras in the past and um and without without having a clear understanding and and vetting among uh among the house and senate i i'm particularly around what the policy is with uh you know with how the data is stored and is it publicly um accessible you know could could for instance the you know some political operative make a request for that public record uh and use it for political purposes you know i mean these are all these are all questions that we should consider before we move forward i think so let's put a hold on that idea and um you can run through the the next question so the next question involves funding for a new officer position um there was funding within the capital police budget in in its january recommend but the sergeant of arms withdrew that request for funding so the question um is does gov ops feel how does gov ops feel about not funding um this officer position it would take 84 000 to restore that position and i believe if we were to recommend restoring that position it would the appropriations committee would then have to figure out where to where to find that money right that's a tough one i would feel uncomfortable on that until we hear from the capital police but yeah for the sergeant yeah definitely jim harrison yeah i agree i'm uncomfortable with a new position even though we are putting more demands on them without knowing more and that may be a more appropriate conversation for january um and it could be looked at in terms of the any budget adjustment act if need be good point we're going to get right into budget adjustment pretty quickly um somebody else had a hand up but i it disappeared rob go ahead um i i would agree i think it's one of those things that we should potentially go back and take a look at obviously uh without having any more of crystal ball anybody else says i suspect we're gonna have a very hybrid sort of legislative session in the next biennium and who knows what the demands of capital police are going to be from a staff and perspective it could be significantly less it could be quite a bit more depending on what we end up coming up with so i would agree i think we need to talk a bit more about that and understand what the needs are yeah and not unlike the um the impact to our staff more generally legislative council staff as well as committee support staff and it staff this um this year has been a roller coaster of um of new intensities and different intensities and more continuous um more continuous work than a typical year where you know the the building is used more by by tourists and tour buses in the summertime um in a normal year and this year the building has been relatively quiet but of course when the challenges of a hybrid or remote meeting um come together in january it's going to put a different set of uh challenges in front of our capital police and just want to acknowledge that and be sensitive to uh to them and to all of the people who make our legislative work happen um it's it's complicated but we should definitely keep the communication lines open jp thank you and and i agree with what you just said madam chair um i have always thought that the number of capital police officers has been less than desirable and needed to provide for the protection of everybody that uses the people's house um the the current situation with the with the pandemic i think probably has put a little less demand on the capital police but when and i'm really hoping that is very soon obviously that we go back to normal operations um i really think that even adding or excuse me adding even only one officer to the force would um be really beneficial to everybody's personal safety and on a personal end if it was the budgetary requirements and trying to find the money i would uh much rather give up that uh john did you say that was 17,000 for body cam for the body how much was 21,000 21,000 okay uh i would rather give up the body cam than add a police officer i just think that's the personal safety issues of everybody in that building and coding and you know everybody it's it's it's not just the legislators and and the uh the staff it's later staff everybody it's the public as well and again sooner or the better if we could add somebody once we go back to opera the normal operations that would be great thank you so i guess what i'm hearing is that we should postpone this until january um especially when given rob's comments when we have better idea of how we're coming back right you know what type of hybrid model um will exist and what will be the demands on the capitol police given that model is that a fair statement of our position that that would be my position i agree with the esteemed member from barry town but we are talking just about the additional law enforcement position we're going to go back and revisit the body camps yes we're going to get more information and i think sarah said she was going to reach out um to others um to get a larger idea of the position on that great yeah this is just with respect to the officer okay thank you all right so so that's the sergeant of barmer's budget now we move on to the department of public safety which i know a number of us sat in on the appropriations hearing um on that issue so there's a couple issues there um as i think you know those who sat in on the the testimony they heard commissioner shirling comment with respect to um 219 s2 19 um that it that the language needed to be tweaked um because it required all vermont state police officers um regardless if they were in the field or not um to wear body camps uh so and so made at towns and has suggested that and and commissioners suggest that we tweak that language um and she has or legislative council has suggested just putting in the words in the field so it would look you know limit body cams to officers vermont state police troopers who are in the field and i think my only concern about that is i think we've heard testimony from the vermont state police that if there's an emergency everyone including the colonel colonel birmingham goes out if necessary so i do realize that there's probably you know limited times that he's out in the field but i just raised that as a question whether just in the field is sufficient language when i read this proposal i thought it seemed a little too simple to be um to be complete in terms of achieving what we had hoped to achieve so i would like to see us dig into this a little bit more and understand what that means in practice uh rob well how about if we reverse engineer this instead okay so what what do we want the body cams to capture what do we want them to do is it law enforcement's interaction just with the general public um i mean it would seem to me if we could figure out what we wanted to do then we could figure out how we want to say it yeah i mean yeah i mean there's a broad range of of activities that the vermont state police might engage in um through the course of their work week some of them being traffic stops some of them being called to domestics some of them um you know there there may be other um there may be other activities that that the vermont state police do that we wouldn't want to necessarily see captured on uh on a body cam uh and so i think we need to understand a better way of delineating not not this blanket in the field statement so uh jp your hand is up sorry about that no question okay so right lingering question here well what what i can do is is i think um what i recall and jim and marcia who and who else was was in appropriations at that time is that the the commissioner scherling did give specific examples of types of vermont state police troopers that that were not in the field so i could reach out to him and just see if he has some ideas about better characterizing or categorizing the types of of vermont state police staff that would never be in the field yeah that acceptable acceptable everyone okay i will so i will do that and i will reach back out to meida and just let her know that we're we're doing that yeah okay so we're not gonna um bob hooper i think has a question hold on well john it is i mean it is how deep you want to dig i when i worked in waterbury living in burlington i got pulled over one day on boat and flats and the guy that walked up to the car was colonel sinclair who just happened to be following me so any of the uniform troopers of any rank i mean they're obligated to do what they need to do when they need to do so it's it's a deeper hole than i mean we do need to dig into it a little bit more i think all right well at least reach out to the commissioner and see see what his response is and then you know share it with everybody and then we can decide what we'll do okay does that make sense because that is no and i agree with you bob i mean you know most uniform officers could be in the field at any point if there's a crisis an emergency or they happen to be following you yeah i want to know what you did no you don't yeah you can't just leave us hanging on that one bob um he pulled me over because i was going a little too fast but unlike our dean at the time i wasn't reading a newspaper or you know anything um and because i was driving a van and it had double doors in the back with a pillar in the middle you can't see on an unmarked car when the little light is on the dashboard so i'm just happily motoring along with him back there it was interesting moving on okay so so moving on as folks that are in appropriations will recall i believe the department of public safety had in their budget an additional and i think it was seven positions for mental health workers so trying to you know they have mental health workers or social workers and i think two barracks right now so they wanted to increase that by seven i didn't see a problem with that when i was in appropriations i thought that was a great idea but house health care has raised some concerns about it um so uh they're concerned about the proposed model um will will not increase rather than decrease disparity in treatment among residents by law enforcement so what they proposed is setting up is setting up a meeting between health care appropriations and mean rob to discuss this um their concerns will rob rob you and i are the department of public safety people on gov office yes right just it was the first i'd heard the proposed meeting thank you for volunteering well we made a proposed it uh yesterday at um 7 10 p.m okay uh so there's a reason you haven't that was a that was a volatile they think all those in favor yeah okay thank you gentlemen i appreciate the uh the extra work you're putting in on that so those are those are the two issues um on the department of public safety so we'll get back once we meet with health care and approach on the um health care uh the social the social workers and i will reach out to commissioner shirling about um body camps great what else i have to do something else too oh and i'll reach out to uh i don't know either approach i'll reach out to diane first and see if she has data if the the budget includes training at storage for the capital police body camps jim has his hand up patiently yeah it's not a question on what john has covered but um i was copied on the spreadsheet for the secretary of state's uh restatement it was only uh $37,000 decrease um i've talked to representative townsen who does that section of the budget she also shared that in addition to that reduction which was like a less than one percent um she said the the appropriations uh finance budget is um taken additional transfer of i think she said $340,000 i may have that number wrong so um she was very happy with it so i don't think they were looking for any recommendation from us but i just wanted to share that they've at least tried to keep us in the loop thank you rob um i do you anticipate madam chair other parts of this proposed budget coming into us i understand it um for instance there might be um some monies out there floating around for mail-in balloting for school budgets and things like that are you aware or feeling there may be other parts that will be coming to us in the next week or so so that uh what i understand about that is that it was a discrete um proposal that was put into the governor's budget recommend uh right at the sort of the last minute before it was presented to the legislature and um the secretary state's office is aware that the administration is putting money in um to be used for uh mailing ballots if it is necessary in march um and i'm happy to happy to have that conversation if um if the committee would like to just knowing that we have we have a big lift ahead of us in s124 and 220 um so we don't have endless amounts of time to to take a bunch of testimony on um on the budget issues but happy to happy to hear a little more about that i'm sure around voting it'd be non-controversial right we can have another set of conversations around mailing ballots that would be great uh anything else john that you want to put on our radar um i know i got an email on the state auditor's budget i have to i have to take a look at that um i have not yet been sort of wrapped up in cannabis um which hopefully will resolve itself on monday not one way or the other don't you have 24 hours in a day like everybody else to get stuff done i don't know sure thing all right bethiana is there anything that you can think of that you want to put on our radar before we sign off for the weekend no i'm good just have a happy weekend thank you uh so we will uh we'll do some work on assembling our committee agenda for next week uh so that we can come back to some of these questions and um so stay tuned we we have our we have our time slots for next week and i don't know if i can put my hands on those immediately at the moment but um but i will try to work with andrea uh this afternoon early and we can get an agenda finalized and and posted so that members of the public can know which of these scintillating conversations they want to join us for all right holler if you need me and i think that's all we have for work today