 Diversity Executive Council, trying to create a culture where diversity is valued and it's certainly important to us as a readiness issue. Everything that we do is focused on readiness. We've made progress but there's certainly more to do so we have to move beyond having onlys in our organization. So there are bright spots. We have our first F-35 fighter pilot woman candidate. I have just last month we recruited our first female enlistment into a combat arms unit. There's a whole lot of subtleties to that. That's significant for us. We've really struggled to make that happen because of some of the obstacles that the Department of the Army has made in that process. Now I can talk a little more about that later. But to get up that we have to grow the next generation women as senior leaders. And you'll see in the gender report when Christina talks about it. We've got some again bright spots. We're making progress but in order to create more opportunities I need more women to join the party. And then we can start shaping careers and actually change the climate and the direction of the organization. Part of that requires mentorship and I talked to some of the members of the guard mail and female and I think we all agree that mentorship doesn't have a gender. So for us and I think that came out of the women's forum, the issues we face are soldier issues and airman issues. And probably less focusing on medical issues. Obviously we know that's part of the discussion but what I found healthy during the breakouts and a lot of the feedback I got was the discussion, not by me, directed by me, of its own accord became about soldiers and airmen. So it was a very service focused conversation which I thought was helpful. So we have the objective of an able opportunity program and that's to formulate, direct and sustain a comprehensive effort that ensures fair treatment of all members based on merit, fitness and capability that again supports readiness. So as part of this, one of the things I did when I was actually in the human resources office is to move towards competency based hiring. So that aligns with what the Office of Personnel Management directs. What we're working on next, that aligns with the technician workforce in essence you are interviewing based on conferences. All the questions are focused on conferences. It takes out, mitigates anyway. Some of the bias and it gets a different reception of colonialism because you're hiring based on what the person is best followed by today. So we've seen that work well for us on the technician side. I think the logical extension of that is to put that into the active garden reserve. So we'll continue to pursue that within the human resources realm. So we have a very robust sexual harassment assault response program and we know that that's significantly helped survivors. Policies have established accountability processes and safety networks are added to see. But what I've seen, and this is just my perspective, is the focus is not, it's all in response, not all in response. We need to focus more on prevention. And I looked at the DOE report and it's one of my takeaways from there and I can let any of my subject matter experts in here. When it comes to climate, what I learned in reading through the DOD reports is that the precursor for sexual assault is sexual harassment. So if we can fix the climate and eliminate the sexual harassment, I think they'll have a positive impact on preventing sexual assault from happening. So their issues related to combating sexism and improving our gender quality, they are a priority for the overall readiness. And again, for us, in my role in particular, we have to address anything that impacts us. I can't have any type of corrosive conduct in the organization. The damage it does is, it's hard to overcome. So here's what we have done. So within probably a week of being in the job, I published a command philosophy. And I have copies of that if you're interested to bottom line, this is how we do this. This is what I do. And the alignment my subordinate commanders should be the same. Providing expectations of conduct counseling to all members of the National Guard. And that includes me. My counseling came from the governor. I sent that down to him and he put whatever his spit on it. And that's fine. If I'm expecting it on my subordinates that it should at least be expected to be. We initiated the Joint Status of Discipline Briefing to review investigation and adjudication of disciplinary issues. So historically, a lot of these matters are retained at the senior level. And this is the best practice that I actually pose from the air guard. The air guard does it. Well, the air guard does it, why are we doing this as a joint venture? And I would like to take it a step further. And rather than retain the status of discipline, meaning they review the processes and adjudication of disciplinary matters, why are we sharing that? Why would I keep it to myself? Why would I not share that with the legislature and with our stakeholders? I would have to redact it, certainly. But I think there's an element here, a deterrent factor. If on active duty they held the blotter, then military police will publish a redacted report. A soldier from X organization was arrested for DUI. Stay off the blotter. So I think that will have some, it also informs the organization that we're not just sitting on our hands here. Somebody's paying attention. And then just today, very briefly, I was able to testify we're pursuing legislation to establish a provisional position within the National Guard that boils down. Each stage constructed a little bit different. For us, I view that as a compliance officer position. In the end, it becomes a level three certified state law enforcement officer and a state law enforcement certified non commissioned officer as the assistant provisional. We don't have that. Have not. We have a direct military support. But there's a linkage there that I don't believe we have. And that I think having somebody who has a rest authority and some investigative capability, and certainly when it comes to compliance and abiding by policy and regulation, that makes sense to me. And now you don't lose track of somebody or that investigative capability again becomes a deterrent. Because sometimes what happens on the civil side, we don't know about it. Even though we have a duty to report policies are great. Nobody abides and then somebody gets picked up for DUI in New York City. I don't know about it. Not too far down the road. So that I think will help. I just published a memorandum and I have a copy that I can certainly provide. Identifying our responsibility of preventing sexual assault and noting the results of this legislative report to the entire organization. Don't know that we've done that before. We published it in Christina. Have we actually sent that out to the force before? No, sir. So that's again, I'm going after the prevention and deterrence of this type of conduct. And lastly, I've asked an organizational assessment of the Vermont National Guard. Inclusive in this, the foundation element is an organization, climate assessment. We do climate assessments. We've asked the board and the commanders to do this as a matter of regulation. We've done climate assessments in the past. I think we've struggled with finding closure for some of the issues that were identified. So that's great. That's a foundation element. But this organizational assessment is done by National Guard Bureau or facilitated by National Guard Bureau. They bring in members from our sister states. And they basically focus on what I've asked them to focus on, which is hiring practices, policies, sexual harassment, sexual assault, our policies and regulations that drive that. But I think it's going to be very healthy for us. We've never done it before. So it's air, it's army. In addition to the climate assessment, it's individual interviews with every program, every command, every section, every staff director, at least elements thereof. In the end, it comes with findings, comes with recommendations, and the report is released with the public. And that's my intent. And when do you anticipate that? It should be completed in mayhem. So this is not a short term project. It's a significant one. So that final report, I will obviously give that to the governor for each review. But in the end, it's my intent is to release the public. This just makes sense to me. Anyway, I'd like to have any questions for me. Christina Lizelle is a subject matter expert. She's just wonderful for us as an organization. And I'll let her walk through the actual legislative report in the format. We might as we go, but but you suggested that you had your position paper, wasn't your position paper was a better thing to me on philosophy. Yes, your command philosophy. I'd like to have that in my family. But anyway, I would love to have you share that. Absolutely. Because you said what we have to do answers. Yes, we would. Because you set the tone for the whole operation. Yes, ma'am. That's the idea. Thank you. Thank you. Let's walk. Good afternoon. I was stated already. And Christine was on the state sexual assault response coordinator. I'll be covering both sexual assault and sexual harassment as well as the gender report. I also serve as an equal opportunity leader for my unit. And I'm EO counselor for the full time for so I can help federal technicians through the process of reporting EO complaints. And I also am the LGBT pride program manager for one of our special emphasis programs. So kind of my background is who I am. Do you have many hats? I do. We'll be turning them around. Yes. I also drill weekends. I am a behavioral health specialist for the Army National Guard. So good afternoon again. Thank you for having us here for annual report. Today I'll be talking you through the report, but please feel free to ask questions as we go. Same deal as in the past. This report is divided into four main chapters, which is first the executive summary and a little over some reports, our organizational assessment and the addendum. During this brief I plan to cover the first three chapters and then we can refer into the addendum as needed or if questions come up and there's answers in there. So this report looks at fiscal year 19, which goes from October 1st of 2018 through September 30th of 2019. And during that time the Vermont National Guard had approximately 3,300 members. Of those members about 920 of them were full timers and the rest were the traditional drill status guardsmen. In fiscal year 19, the sexual assault response coordinator tracked three reports of sexual assault which occurred within fiscal year 19 that also had members of the Vermont National Guard as the accused offender. One case we had was a civilian survivor and then the remaining six cases involved military members as survivors, but they occurred in previous fiscal years. In addition, the Equal Opportunity University Office received two sexually offensive incident reports that those are basically situations where they don't rise to the level of a sexual harassment or EO complaint, but they're sex-based in nature and the leadership handles it at the lowest level. And we received no reports of discrimination or bullying or hazing based on sexual orientation. So before I go into the report we wanted to review the definitions. That way when we go further in and we're having these conversations you can understand what I'm actually speaking about when we go. So there is a difference between the military and the state definition of sexual assault so it's important to differentiate between what those are. The military's definition of sexual assault encompasses five categories which is rape, sexual assault, aggravated sexual contact, abusive sexual contact, and forceful sodomy, as well as attempts to commit these acts. So even if they didn't completely act if they were trying to we can also hold them accountable for that. There's further detail into that definition on page one and page 15 and then also the Vermont state statute includes felony crimes of sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, and other crimes which are related to sex-based offenses against minors. There is a newer statute Title 13, sexual 2601A, which established that misdemeanor, which is kind of similar to the military's definition of abusive sexual contact. So it helped to bring the state statute more in line with the Department of Defense definition but the DOD definition still provides a broader construct of language so it allows us to take action on a few more acts than under civilian law. So also when a survivor comes forward they're allowed the option to choose which type of report they make. We have a restricted report or an unrestricted report so regardless of which report they choose to make all survivors are they have the ability to access counseling, medical, legal, and advocacy services. So the main difference between those two types of reports is that an unrestricted report involves an investigation by local law enforcement or the Office of Complex Investigations, which is a group from National Guard Bureau of specially trained judge advocates or those that have a law enforcement background that are trained in sexual assault investigations specifically. So they're outside of the organization. And then a restricted report is the one that remains confidential. So my office or the wings are the only ones who have access to the names involved in those cases. There's also another subcategory of an unrestricted report which is called open with limited. That's the situation where it was a Vermont National Guard Service member who assaulted a civilian or the situation where there's a third party who becomes aware of an assault and they go to command to report it. So we don't have an actual victim signing the reporting statement but we are made aware that there was a report so we track it through the local law enforcement or through a command directed investigation. And then when we're talking about sexual harassment, that's a form of sex based discrimination that involves unwanted sexual advances, requests for sexual favors or other verbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature. And then more information on to the policy of the definition on that can be found on page 22 in the addendum. So another new definition that we included this year was that sexually offensive incidents that I talked about a little bit earlier that refers to the physical or verbal incidents that are perceived to be sexual in nature but they don't fall under the definition of sexual harassment. So it allows us to hold people accountable for those lower level offenses. Examples of this could be those comments or those jokes that have an undertone of sex based content or unwanted physical contact or gestures that don't rise to the level again. For more information on that call, please see page 25. So later in the report you will also see a reference to an informal and formal resolution request. Both of those are viewed by the National Guard Zero following an investigation of unlawful discrimination by an agreed party. But the primary difference between a formal and informal complaint just has to do with the timelines for administrative actions to be taken. And if the resolution request was made in writing or not an informal complaint, sorry, an informal complaint is not made in writing and a formal complaint is done in writing. So now we're going to go into chapter two which is the reports. It starts on page three and so just a little bit of a history is that the National Defense Authorization Act from FY 11 requires that the Secretary of Defense submits an annual report on sexual assaults that involve service members of the armed service during the preceding year. So this chart reflects the reporting information submitted by the Vermont National Guard through the Defense Sexual Assault Incident Database or DSET from FY 19. So the graph represents each of the reports that we received in FY 19. The color represents the report the type of assault that was reported and then each column is the type of report. So the first row is our restricted report. We had two examples of abusive sexual contact and one that was unknown or the survivor didn't report what type of assault it was. The other thing to note about this chart is that the red circles tell you if it was a Vermont National Guard Service member who committed the offense or is the accused offender and then if there is not a red circle it means that it was somebody outside of the Vermont National Guard as the offender. So it could be an active duty member or a civilian who committed the assault. So the sexual assault prevention and response program began in 2010. So the reports that we received in FY 19. One of those incidents occurred before FY 2010. So before the program was in place three of them occurred between 2010 and 2018 and then as I've stated three of them were within FY 19. So we're starting to close out all of those historical reports and get more to real-time reporting as an incident occurred that are reporting closer to the incident happening. Which brings us into page four. There's two graphs which were included to kind of address the request for information from last year to show our historical data so you can see what the trends are across the entire program's history rather than just a snapshot of this year. So the first graph shows you which report an incident or which fiscal year a report was made in. So we've received the seven reports in FY 19 and then back in 2010 when the program began we had only received one report. The second graph shows you which year the incident actually occurred in. So the assaults actually occurred in the years on the bottom chart but they were reported in the years in the top chart. So you can see we've had reports all the way back to 1981 which was way before the program was created. So the service member felt comfortable coming forward and reporting to us. Something happened to them and they were ready to get services. So then if we look over on the page here. So Christine, the 1981 report do you have a statute of limitations in the military? No ma'am. They can come forward. There's no statute if there's an assault that happened however long ago they can come forward whenever they feel ready. So then we'll move on to page 5 which is full of wonderful charts. The first two charts provide additional information into the restricted and unrestricted reports that we received in FY19. So for instance if we look at that first chart it's all of our restricted reports that we received. The first one is case 0012. You can see if you go along the incident year was 2017 and the survivor was a Vermont National Guard female who was an E4 for the fourth rank on the enlisted track and the accused defender at the time was also a Vermont National Guard service member. He was a male E8 at the time. The type of assault that was reported was an abusive sexual contact and then we have the LOD is the next line. LOD is a line of duty determination which is a formal process that affirms that the injury was incurred on a military staff is. It's most of the time used to determine the VA's eligibility for disability rating. So if you're Christina Christina Christina that's what I knew there. So the E4 and the E8 I assume that it begins at the bottom and you work your way up. So that we can assume as we look at those numbers that the power differential is each case. Yes ma'am. So you can see that the survivors tends to be lower ranking but that is not always the case. If you look through the unrestricted chart. So the second chart there you can see that there is a single case of equal. Yes. Right. Yes. And there's one where it also tends to be that it's enlisted on enlisted or officer on officer. Looking at the chart you can see that there was an incident where it was an officer as the victim and enlisted as the accused of him there. Sorry. Where does it tell you it's enlisted versus officer? So if you look the rank E dash and then a number it means that it was enlisted and the rank O dash a number is officer. Yes. So it is the same way where you start at E 101 and you go up to E 8 or 0607. So and then the last rank the last column there is about referrals. We always make referrals that are appropriate for the survivors coming forward whether that be the VA if they have deployed and they have that veteran status. The vet center will see members of the Vermont National Guard regardless of if they've deployed for MST military sexual trauma and we also work closely with all of the Vermont network programs. So we'll make referrals out to them as appropriate as well. So the first two charts are both listed out in that same fashion. It just medically separated me in the disposition on the second for the last one. So that means that the accused in that case went up for a medical separation prior to the separation from the guard. Yes. Oh, OK. Yes, ma'am. Oh, yeah. The two were medically separated. Yes. That's like separated at birth. So you were discharged with a military or with a medical. Yes. Yeah. OK. So I'll go over that third chart just trying to give you a little bit more of that information on because it is laid out differently just so that it makes more sense because if you look at it, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So it's all of the pending unrestricted cases or cases that have closed since the last report that we made to you all. So the first case is a carryover from 2017, which the case number is 00315. The incident happened in 2017. It was an unrestricted report with abusive sexual contact as the reported defense type. And so then the disposition for this case was that NGB had OCI come in and investigate. That was the survivor's preference. And the accused defender was issued. So the case was substantiated by OCI. And then the. I want to explain what OCI is. No. Office or something. It's the Office of Complex Investigations. It was that team of specially trained judge advocates or those with law enforcement background from NGB National Guard Bureau. So they substantiated it. They said that there was enough evidence to show that, yes, this happened. And then the, we were able to issue him the accused defender a general officer memorandum of reprimand, which is a. It just, I just, people are wondering what that ding dong is and the red light going off. That means the house is going into a roll call vote. That's all it means. It doesn't mean you have to. It is a red light. I didn't see the red light. I know. It's just, they're going into an infertile. It's all right. I just wanted to assure you that that's awesome. Okay. We're in books. And it's exciting that I didn't see it. It's okay. I, I seem that it's not that they deal with it. It's not you are rushing out. I didn't see the red light. It's good. You took your cue from us. So he was issued the GOMAR, which is general letter. General officer memorandum of recommend that stays in his personnel file. And then there was also a formal process called the withdrawal of federal recognition, which is a board of officers who sit and the decision to characterize their discharge before they are separated from the military and if they're going to strip the officer of their rank before, of their commission before they are separated. In this case, the reported offender was separated with an under other than honorable discharge, which is the most significant response that we can have as a Vermont National Guard due to jurisdictional restraints. So separating somebody with an other than honorable is a pretty big deal. So just as that goes into his, his or her civilian life, that is the only trigger on his or her record that would indicate there had been some issue. Is that? I mean, it goes on a resume, right, Henry? People can ask about it. I mean, how do you, how does civilian employers know there's been an issue once they've been separated? Check. I'm not sure you're going to answer that. Yeah, yeah. It would be. Just identify yourself with that. I'm Kathy Cafferl on the state of the advocate. So as you indicated in normal circumstances that employer may ask, were you in the military what was the discharge characterization? And they have to report other than honorable. Other than that, the employer would have to go through their normal background check procedures where they would request the official information from the military. And just to follow up on that, they would only get that from the military. They, that there wouldn't be any other indication in a, in a background check that were be listed. Correct. So the action in them, it's basically like an employment action. Rather, it's not a criminal. We were not standing up for criminal courts. Right. So it wouldn't show on a NCIC hit. It wouldn't show up on anything like that. It's an employment action just as if they were fired by another government agency. They were a federal civilian employee and their standard form 50 or whatever the state equivalent would be, would show the negative employment action. Thanks. And then to kind of close out that section in FY 19 we did not receive any reports from our members serving in a federalized title and status. So nobody that was serving in an active duty status reported unsexual assaults during the FY 19. Just a question. What's the difference between discharged and dropped from roles? So dropped from roles is basically you come to the end of your time in service and it's kind of like just Not quite. Okay. It's a cabinet, a cabinet. So dropped from the roles is a very specific type of separation from the military for those who find themselves incarcerated for long periods of time. They are administratively on the enlisted and reduced he won the lowest grade and then they're kicked out with an unparacterized discharge. So they are those of the folks that are absent for us for a long period of time based on interactions with the civil authorities. That's even less good than being dishonorably discharged. No. So It's all bad. It's all bad. So other than honorable if someone is if an enlisted service member is separated other than honorable discharge they are also reduced to E1 grade for enlisted ranks. The regulations are different for officers. Dishonorable is a discharged characterization that can only be handed down by a court commercial. So that's why you don't see those and that's why Ms. Lizelle said that we have jurisdictional restraints because we don't have uniform code of military justice jurisdiction to bring them to a court martial to dishonorably discharge. Great. So less than other than honorable is very different than I've got a dishonorable. Correct. Yeah. So now we're going to move on to the sexual harassment portion of the report which is beginning on page six. During FY19 the Vermont National Guard received no sexual harassment cases. The Vermont National Guard did receive those two reports of sexually offensive incidents. Again, just as a reminder those are incidents that are sex based incidents that don't rise to the level of informal or formal resolution requests. And none of these cases included a formal discrimination resolution requests. The decision on how this is handled is based on the affected person and both incidents were handled through leadership inquiry. So both of the affected persons felt that the leadership intervention was enough they didn't need to go forward with any informal or formal complaints. So if you look on to page seven there's the graph depicting the number of incidents informal and formal resolution requests. That's okay. That's right. But you said there were no incidents in 2019 but we have a rate abuse of sexual contact and sexual assault. So I guess I'm not clear on the report. That's only when the reporter two of them occurred then in 19. So I guess I'm not fully understood. So those were the under the sexual assaults. Yeah. So if you look on on page seven yes. Yes. So those those three were under the sexual assault umbrella. And now we're moving on. Yes ma'am. So the first chart there shows you our incidents are informal and our formal resolution requests that we've received by the fiscal year in which they occurred in. You'll notice that the sexual harassment reports are a little bit different than sexual assault because they're not going to be historical reports due to the reporting nature and those timelines that are set in place by the EEOC the fact the federal EEOC mission. There's such short timeline that it's not going to cross back into historical reports. Maybe kind of a silly question. How do you unintentionally leave a voicemail? So he thought that he thought that he went up and put the phone in his pocket and hadn't actually hung up and kept talking after. Thank you. So yes that gets into the next chart on the second chart on page seven. It gives you more information on those two incidents that we received. They're laid out the same way as the sexual assault reports. So that first line is case 1901 which occurred in 2019. It was a female civilian with a male E5. The male E5 unintentionally left a voicemail with directed sexually offensive comments. And the way that this was handled was that the commander successfully facilitated a meeting between the affected person and to be accused and submitted that NGB form 333-1 which is how we track that there was a sex-based incident that occurred but it didn't rise to that level. So the commander fills it out and says this is how we handled it and the affected person was okay with the leader's intervention. And then in the next line you'll see that there is the students from the Connecticut Army National Guard and the New Jersey National Guard. That's because that occurred at the Regional Training Institute so our schoolhouse where we have students from all over the country who can come to attend those classes. So we'll handle it within our state before they go home. So during FY19 the Vermont National Guard received no reports of discrimination or bullying based on sexual orientation. And with that we'll move into Chapter 3 which starts on page 9. Can I, before you go there I didn't have to say I'm sure that there are incidents and things that go un-reported that people still feel uncomfortable about recording or they just don't. But I have to say for a group of 3,000 people 920 full-time and this is an amazingly low number of incidents. So I think it looks to me like there really is a cultural change going on. If we took a town of 3,000 people my guess is you'd have more complaints than this. We get at that hoping that trying to target at the lowest level early sexism and those comments and those jokes and we're trying to train the force to step up and intervene when those kinds of things are being said. So the hope is that those lower level leaders are hearing things and they're saying that's not how we behave here so it doesn't have the ability to grow and to become an actual reportable incident. But it also then impacts those 2,000 people who are not having been in their other lives because they I would assume because they are now getting told that that isn't appropriate behavior in the guard but it also isn't appropriate behavior in their communities. And so it's kind of being a ripple effect. I would think. We're making that when we do our annual mandatory training we're making that as a point for our advocates to speak about the fact that some people just don't have positive role models in their life where they've never seen what a healthy relationship is or what healthy consent is or what is okay in a sexual relationship. And so we're really trying to have that conversation to give our soldiers and airmen a safe space to come forward and hey come have that conversation with us. If you've never seen it or maybe you don't even realize that we'll say this is against policy and regulation and it's not okay to be doing this and you don't understand why come talk to me about why it's not okay. I am more than willing to come down and have coffee and let's have the conversation because this is the place to do it rather than having you do something that you don't realize is not okay. Do you have many of those informal conversations? I do. We make it so that there is more of a conversation based in that training because sitting there with a power point and me clicking this slide isn't going to get as much. Where if I ask, well how do you feel about this or what are your thoughts on this topic? You tend to get more engagement and if other people in the training are engaging they're going to remember it and then I do have people who ask to say after the training and just hey you mentioned this and I've never heard that before what is the deal with this and so I'll say after and just kind of talk through whatever they didn't know or whatever piece of information they'd like to hear. And your point is, this is Greg Knight. Ma'am your point is valid and it is a unreported, vastly underreported crime or in our case the violation of Discipline it's an aberrant act. Knowing that and again this comes back to having an organizational assessment and one of the underlying reasons here and it may be a byproduct of this assessment what they found in other states is that victims are more willing to come forward when there's somebody who's objective and not from their home state. So I expect that there may be unreported incidences of sexual harassment or sexual assault. We're good with that because I think if we bring that out and we can pursue given the timeline those perpetrators it again sends that message of prevention and provides us a deterrent. So moving into our organizational assessment the National Guard has developed an assessment strategy based on three measures of effectiveness that our program runs on so measures of effectiveness are kind of those lines of effort. So what are we doing to make a difference and they're pursued through measures of performance which is we look at our trainings or events that we put on. This is based on military information operations doctrine which is also similar to a public health initiative. So kind of think of the like the anti-smoking that the CDC put out it's targeted at specific individuals and there's different processes along the way that it's how they check to make sure that it's working. That's the same idea that we've applied to sexual assault and sexual harassment intervention and prevention. So these areas that we look at are designed specifically to target protective factors or risk factors for sexual violence that have been identified by the Center for Disease Control. We have the full list of those protective and risk factors on page 22 in the addendum. So if you're more curious about what that list is from the CDC it's listed there. So the first measure of effectiveness that we have is to inform the Vermont National Guard Service members of how to create a climate where all members feel valued in order to promote well-being, connectedness, readiness, and lethality. So on the bottom of page nine you can see an example of the efforts the target audience and which to protect of our risk factors that we were targeting with that event. So when you're looking at the targeted and risk factor or the prevention and risk factors the prevention factors are marked with a plus sign and the risk factors are marked with a negative sign. So those negative behaviors that we don't want them to do or the positive behaviors that we do want to encourage our members to take part in. So this whole chart is laid out where the event in the first row is the annual mandatory training which I spoke about a little bit. That target is to hit every single service member that we have. And then what we looked at specifically picking up on in that event was to increase the empathy and concern that our service members have so having those conversations about how to intervene when you see something happening. And then some of the negative risk factors that we look at targeting are the institutional support. So having leaders step up and say yeah no that's not okay that's not what we do here making sure that it's not something that's culturally okay. And then the general tolerance for sexual violence and the weak community norms. So that's what our annual training tended to target this year. And then you can look through that list and see more of the events that we did throughout the entire fiscal year. So then the second measure of effectiveness is listed on page 10 and that was to protect survivors of sexual assault serving in the Vermont National Guard by providing a comment form response from initial report through resolution in order to promote survivor confidence and resilience. So this chart is laid out in the same way that the first measure of effective or it's laid out differently than the first measure of effectiveness. This one it shows you what the event was and then there's a description of the assessment or what that event actually looked like. So the first example is the lean-in campaigns. We did the lean-in circles in multiple locations at we tried to have them a monthly at the end of the month we sat down and you have a group of individuals come and there's a specific topic and you discuss that topic. And it's based on the book by Cheryl Sandberg. And so that's kind of what we used as our framework. And then our third measure or in that second measure of effectiveness there was one other effort that I wanted to specifically talk about and that was our staffer council. That's a group that we have of survivors who meet quarterly to provide input on program updates policy changes and other organizational improvements that could be helpful to survivors who are maybe haven't come forward yet or survivors who are currently going through the process from the people who've been there who have gone through it already. When I was interviewed for that organizational assessment that was something that I talked about and they were blown away at the fact that we were doing this. They had never heard of it before. It was an idea that we got from the Vermont network actually because they have survivors who come in and talk about what they're changing and we're like, it's a great idea. Why wouldn't we do that? And so we've been meeting for about a year now and it's gone very well. You know, what percent of survivors stay in the guard? I don't think we've had of the ones who report most of them will stay and through the end of their contract or for their full 20 years. And so the staffer council is mostly people who've stayed enlisted. Any civilians opportunity survivors who've been left and then would they be able to serve on that? So for an example of that is we have one survivor that sits on the council who I believe will be getting out of the military soon just because her life has changed. She's had a child and so things have just gotten a little bit more difficult. So she will still be welcome to come in. We also have a survivor who we've invited the mother of a soldier who had gotten out and committed suicide and after they were out and the mother was going through the things and found that there's paperwork about the fact that the soldier was sexually assaulted during the military service. So we've invited that mom to give that perspective to kind of remind us that it's not just the soldier who's assaulted who's affected by this. It's also the larger community and the family members as well. So it is not just soldiers and airmen. It's also parents and civilians. Yes ma'am. This trauma has a ripple effect. Yes ma'am. So we also conduct inspection programs and during those the units must demonstrate that they're meeting certain regulatory and state based standards. Let me go back. I realized I missed that third MOA for the measure of effectiveness and we'll go back to that. The third measure of effectiveness is to engage the Vermont National Guard sexual assault and legal systems to ensure that the program and offender accountability are in order and to promote justice, efficiency and effectiveness. So this chart is laid out the same way that the second measure of effectiveness was. But the first example on that is the Vermont Domestic Violence Council. So the victim advocate coordinator and I go down to actually right next to the civilian building building quarterly and sit on the domestic violence council and are able to kind of have that community relationship and learn more about how this is all connected. And now we'll move on to that inspection. So the inspection programs are set up to ensure that units are meeting certain regulatory and state based standards. In previous years, the Vermont National Guard struggled with maintaining the required number of victim advocates and that is still true this year. If you look at the charts on page 12 and 13, we as the army side are required to have 26 victim advocates. We currently have 19 credentialed advocates, but we also have 13 who are identified and are at different phases within the credentialing process. This credentialing process is the main reason that we have so much trouble with getting the soldiers into the spots that we are required because there's a local background check and then we submit it to National Guard Bureau for a national level background screening and then they have to attend an 80 hour course and then we have to wait for the next quarterly council to decide on if they're going to approve this person to be an advocate. So in that timeframe where we're credentialing somebody, they could take a position at a different unit. So now they're credentialed for a unit that we've already had four or five advocates at and we have a vacancy. So it's a problem that we've had. And it's a National Guard credentialing program as opposed to a state? So we are credentialed through the National Organization for Victims Assistance or NOVA. It's a civilian credentialing agency that also credentials the military victim advocates. I think we have some problems with that same credentialing in our civilians. I think that might be something we need to look at. Yes. It is. A problem with credentialing in lots of areas. Yeah. But we might have to look at that. That's taken huge. So the checklist that we follow for that inspection for the staffer program, the sexual assault program is listed on page 19 and then for the EO and diversity program listed on page 26. But that lays out all of the requirements that the units have to follow every year. Then we also have an organizational climate survey. It's what General Knight mentioned where commanders are expected to provide this opportunity to soldiers within the first six months of taking command and that every 24 months after that, it is mandatory for the commanders to give this survey. However, it is optional for soldiers to actually participate in the survey. The Air Force also does this survey. So even though we're providing this opportunity for them to provide feedback, a lot of people just don't do it. So it's there as an option. The assessment itself poses 56 questions that measure 21 different factors. And of those factors, nine of them relate to organizational effectiveness. Six of them relate to equal opportunity and fair treatment factors and then another six about potential assault. So it is a big survey. So sorry, what response rate do you actually have? I guess I'm not seeing that. I understand not everybody responds to it. What is your response rate? Am I just missing it? Oh, 60 percent. Is that right? Greater than that. From there. So that's the unit risk inventory, which is a different organizational assessment tool. Do you have them to know what the... I think they have it varied by unit. It does. This is kind of a little thumb and I was speaking to the folks at NGB. If you get north of 30 percent, you're doing really well for a survey. And one of our challenges I keep hearing at survey fatigue because there's going to be a lot of surveys. Unit risk inventory, we're ready for climate assessment and now I'm bringing up one that's going to be organization-wide. So we're going to encourage people to participate because for me, we want to make the organization better. I hope folks would want to be a part of that. If there's an issue down the road, you didn't vote. If you didn't do the survey. Chocolate always works. We could facilitate that. Walk around with chocolate. Please, would you take this? Yes. Just saying. And it's cheap after Halloween. So, yes. That one, I don't have the actual numbers, but we can definitely get that to you from the state and the climate. Before you go to the state, I can, I can speak for my battalion, which is between three and five hundred soldiers was over 70 percent response on the last survey that we talked about. You got that gold star. I didn't get the gold star, man, but our battalion commander did I think so. Great. So then the unit risk inventory, which is a different survey that is specifically for soldiers only given on the army side. The air doesn't take the same survey. It looks at soldiers risky behaviors such as alcohol and drug use or delinquencies, sexual risk taking and suicidal behaviors. That is, so that is completed at a higher than 60 percent rate because it's given that the soldiers medical readiness checks that they have to do every year. So before they can sign up from their medical readiness check, it's in their packet. They have to hand it in. That's quite 98 percent. Yes. I have never seen this word ideation. So it's ideation? Is that actually a word? Yes. So they're thinking about it. I don't even realize what it means. Yeah. Yeah. Good to you. I have never seen it. Oh my goodness. It's a new, you know, every day you learn new things. That's my new word. It's not quite as exciting as that one. No, I'm not quite as excited as that. But that's good for scrabble or ball. That's great. Yeah. It has a lot of love. Too long for scrabble. But all those vowels have like no value. So, you know, the length of the word counts. So in the unit risk inventory, there are the set of disease control has identified 12 risk factors associated with sexual violence. So if these risk factors are in place, there's a higher likelihood that a sexual assault or sexual violence in general will occur. Of those 12, the unit risk inventory just happens to measure four of them, which are listed out on the questions that relate to those risk factors are listed out on page 14. And we have the percentages of the response rate. So this year for FY19, 4% of our soldiers showed that they had some sort of alcohol disorder. 6% drove the driver who's under the influence and it goes down from there. And so you can see the trend from FY16 through FY19 on the responses from those questions. Didn't these, did these surprise you at all? I think I was happy to see that they've gone down. That was the thing. Except for the songs that have stayed the same. But not practicing safe sex is interesting that that's basically stayed the same. So that's the questions that relate to that are if they have one sexual partner where a condom or use birth control, that's what that question asks. So they're saying no. So that's again, that they just don't really have that other place where they've learned about these things. So we've kind of tried in that annual training to give some of that basic knowledge. Good work. That's great. So finally our program also provides regular updates to the senior leaders and key stakeholders to provide statistical data as well as identify best practices or anticipated initiatives that the program would like to take. So these briefings serve as an opportunity for us to ensure that there's a shared understanding between you as a program manager and General Knight and the other senior leaders leadership for the whole National Guard. And it also holds me accountable to make sure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So we do that on a quarterly basis. And then if we move on to page 15 that brings us to the addendum. So in the addendum there's more detail on the history, definitions, evolution, and focus of our program. It's here for your reference, but if there's no further questions then that completes this portion of the report. This is great. It is great. One point because I never, they're never. Where does your name actually appear as the author of this report? I don't, because I can't find it anywhere. I was going to say, I don't think I actually put my name in it. And how many years have you been working for the Guard or in this capacity? So I was the victim advocate coordinator from 2016 until this past September. I was officially selected as a sexual assault response coordinator. I've been a member of the Vermont National Guard since 2011. I enlisted at 17 as a junior in high school. Correct. But you've been the sexual assault response coordinator since September. Correct. Because Captain Deweiler has been to the state people employment role and then I moved into this role. I did not, so I got on the conversation. My recruiter came to speak to me at the Wynnum Regional Career Center in Bratibara. And he said, anything you want to do when you get out of high school, you can do in the National Guard. And I was like, well, what about psychology? Got a job for that. So I went home that day and said, hey, Mom, I think I want to join the Guard. Well, battalions of people who are ready for your help. Exactly. It's great. So that was, and then it's been a wonderful ride ever since then. So then I do have the gender report. That's very exciting to see this. So it's a little different than last year. We changed the layout to make it so it actually accurately represented the numbers that we have. So it's the paper stapled one. So this is our 2020 gender brief. If we look at right into it, the first chart on page two, for overall representation of women within both the Army and the Air National Guard, it compares our numbers to the numbers of the National Guard as a whole. So if you look at the blue and the red are the Vermont National Guard and the gray and the yellow are the whole National Guard. So we have maintained about an 8 to 2 ratio of men to women since 2015. This ratio is common to all job types, aside from combat roles, which were just recently opened up to women and the admin type positions have a higher ratio of females than men's. Thank you, sir. Nander Seth, do you, Greg, do you have an objective of growing that? I mean, is that one of your priorities? Is your one of your goals to improve that ratio? It is. The challenge man is just getting people into the Guard. So having the education entitlement has been very beneficial. We found that 60% of women miskeeds, for example, joined the Army National Guard, citing that as a primary reason for joining. We also know that young women joined the Guard because of that at a greater rate than the young men. Similarly in the Air Guard, I believe the number I saw yesterday was 30% site that is a primary reason for joining. But the challenge is getting more women to join. And then I think we have a lot of goodness organization overcoming some of the stigma that's attached to it. It's probably the biggest challenge. Tackling the right things. Climate and culture. So if we look at that next chart, that is our senior leader representation. This page breaks out the Army and the Air separately because the rate of leadership is different in both branches. There is about a two to one ratio of men to women and senior leader positions in both the Army and the Air National Guard, however. And there is the note that when somebody retires, we're still working on drawing that force. However, we do have a really robust number of female lieutenants right now. So there is a good hope that we'll be able to have a really robust group of female leaders in the future. But we do go for the best qualified, not necessarily based on their gender. And then the next page, the chart lays out the rate of losses of both men and women. And then this chart is also broken out by Army and Air separately. So you can see that it's not necessarily the women aren't leaving at a higher rate than their male counterparts currently. So losses can be taken a couple of ways. This is losses choice to leave, not death. Right. So they're well, that's how it's the ones who ETS, they retire or they come to the end of their contract and they've gotten what they wanted to receive from the National Guard and decide that they're done with their time in service. And there are a number of considerations. The list goes on as there are many of our people in the Guard. It could be the operational tempo, education, job, family, any number of stressors impact on folks. And there are reasons for deciding to not continue service with the organization. Is there an average number of years that the Vermont National Guard's people serve? I think we're seeing a change. I don't have that, the short answer that I don't know. Manicdotally I can tell you, I believe there's a change generationally. My generation, you're in it for the long haul, for a lot of folks. If you look at the age demographic, if you look at kids now, we have what we call crossroads every six months. We will meet with soldiers who are separating and the Air Guard has a similar program. You talk to everybody who's separated from the service and in a number of instances, I got my educational benefits, thanks for the experience. I'm done. And they may come back later and that's fine, but that's their choice. And you have a requirement to serve for four years after they are educated? Work with the education entitlement? Yes, ma'am. So it's two years of service for one year of college. So at the end, you have a four-year education, you owe the Guard four years here or another state. It's a transferable entitlement. So on the next page, we felt that it was important to highlight our 2019 Military Women's Workshop. So because the event was in November of 2019, that's actually fiscal year 20. So in the larger legislative report, it'll be included next year in those tables with measures of effectiveness and measures of performance. But in the gender report, we thought it was a really important event to highlight. So this event hosted about 200 women from both the Air and the Army National Guard. It has civilians, which are the Title V Federal Technicians, Title 32, which means that they are serving as well as being a technician. So the technicians that tend to wear their uniforms full-time, we have state employees and also contractors who attended. So it was a wide array of individuals. During the event, we followed the appreciative inquiry model, which allows us to begin with a focus on what is your ideal organization, what is the best possible Vermont National Guard that we could have, and then you work your way backwards from there. So what are some attainable and targeted steps that we can take to get to that ideal? And the result came with these 12 main recommendations that are listed on the bottom of the page. And you'll notice that it's not gender-based, as he was saying, it's just as an organization how can we be better. And then on the last page of the report, we included our conclusions, which we thought were important to lay out. So 85 to 15 percent ratio is consistent between the Vermont Air National Guard and the Vermont Army National Guard when comparing the specific rank structures. There is room for improvement as if there isn't any organization. So we opened the combat roles to females with some exceptions based on the leader-first policy where you have to have somebody that's mid-grade in that unit before you can actually have somebody out the street and listen to the organization. So it's asking females who already got their career path set to put their career on hold and change their whole career path. Also targeted recruiting campaigns strive to assess 16 percent or more women each year in order to begin to increase the overall representation. And then recommendations for senior leaders were to set specific benchmarks for annual recruiting and overall representation and support those benchmarks by implementation and resourcing those 12 recommendations. So we've got them. Now let's actually do something about it. Great. Good start. And then pending any of your other questions that's our 2020 gender report. Thank you. Any... So I guess you did point this out. That's probably my question is are we doing better than we were before? And it seems like for that one graph that the answer is yes. Yes. Are you doing as good as you wanted to do? I think that I'm always one of those let's strive for the next level. I'm not settled for where we're at. Let's keep getting better. I think every organization should be that way so you don't stagnate. And I saw the other in general. Thank you. We're not who we want to be. We're not there yet. We're making great strides but we're not there yet. Yes. And some of it's simply institutional challenges as Christina was referring to. The Army has given us what they call the leaders first program. So to flesh that out a little bit that we historically have not we're probably half of our force structure is an infantry brigade combat team. The predominant specialties within that organization were open only to men. So it's only probably two and a half years ago that changed. But instead of saying it's open to women and deferring to commanders and senior non commissioned officers to take care of the integration they gave us a structure. And the structure was you need an E5 or above a sergeant or above two of them in the organization that were women before you can recruit off the street and put somebody into that organization. So we're doing this now one company at a time. So if you look at a platoon a company of battalion up our gate it's a very user level. It's incremental and it's excruciating because I know we can do better. But having that to be like Lieutenants nine went to school for how many weeks to become wardens for 16 weeks. So 16 weeks of school to establish your career path. And if we reach in say the needs of the service within a study of the skill set we want you to become an infantry or cavalry or armor officer. We're going to send you back to school for 17 weeks. What do you think of that? It's it's hard. So once we get those open I think we're going to start seeing a little better traction in improving our numbers into combat arms. Anybody else want to make some comments? Thank you. Yeah. Really good. I have one question which is the gender report. Are we embedding that? I hope in the sexual harassment report particularly with all these areas you're going to be tracking to continue to improve. It would be really helpful to have a chapter. Well it's a separate report but it is required. Okay so it's ongoing. Actually it's not required by legislation but I think if I remember correctly there's it may become part of this. I would hope it would just become part of it so there was I mean it's both pieces of culture it sort of it almost may be able to take on a different name now that we. I would differ with you. I think that it should be that there should be a gender report every year but I don't think it should be part of the sexual harassment report because sexual harassment is different than gender equality and I don't think they should be combined into one report I think that they and that's just my personal opinion you can do with it as you want but I agree with that. Yeah if we include the gender report it makes it sound like we're saying that sexual assault and sexual harassment are a women's issue. Yeah they're not. So but I'm glad to hear we're continuing to to do it because I think it's very helpful and informs the culture change discussion because we're still the 8-2 ratio is still not too great but kudos I think to all of you it's a good improvement and thank you for establishing such clear priorities and culture and leadership. When on Friday when you looked at this and I put it on the agenda here because I thought we could really look at there were a few things that suggestions that of tweaks that could be made I think we the decision I think was that we didn't have time to actually develop a code of ethics this year but that there were some just tweaks that could be made and oh sorry here's what it was. Oh I thought we did make it it's mine what I would remember as from last Friday is there seemed to be a growing consensus that we would look at S198 which is the bill that instructs the ethics commission to go back with the enforceable code of ethics which is different than the other bill which gives them more and all the more powers right away and that's what Paul Burns testified to that and Lee Burr and Larry Novitz testified to that I think everybody else spoke if anybody else spoke what was your understanding what was your understanding oh my I guess I'm not just as clear as the two of you are I thought my understanding was that we didn't need another year and that we were that Larry did enough work so that we could look at what his proposal was and that we were actually think about doing more this year I thought differently I'm not saying you're wrong it's not that you're right or wrong it's not what I remember okay right I concur with Senator Plena I was just living in Paul but there were some things that Paul Burns and Lee Burr put on the table right I don't know where the do you have any idea Paul is going to come to you Paul is scheduled to be testifying in house go box I was over at the communications band at the same time so he's unfortunate he chose house go box for us he finally took up the bill after quite a lot of time he was just waiting after two years or something yes good and then say you have to be gone that's where I have to go to do a lot and I'm going to wait for the email and it will be in a few minutes okay okay so Anthony I was also asked to go to do the introduce the bill to the house committee but I prefer to stay here I mean if I can do that I'd rather wrap this up they don't need me to introduce the corporate contribution bill to the house that's pretty and Sarah Copeland-Hanses and I had a conversation about it at noon today told her that Betsy is the brain behind it so I did somebody from the progressive party who's helped develop the bill to show up in house go box in case they have one of his opinions questions because I would rather work on this and resolve this could I just let you know whether he's remembering the same conversation yeah yeah my memory from last Friday was that there was not a pressing concern to adopt a code at this time that the focus of the conversation would be s198 and should we pass s198 asking the ethics commission to submit a code to you in the fall and we support that and I should identify myself with the record Larry Novins from the Ethics Commission and we Julie Holberg yeah and that's your understanding yes we'd be very happy to move forward I think we're all saying this with a tiny bit of regret yeah you know I guess maybe I'm just with channel you work right you know it's taken a while to get to this point and I think we'd all like it to be faster but as we all experienced a year or two ago we brought the stronger bill out and we really got taken apart just by the Senate so it makes more sense I think to step back and take this step by step I would really hate to bring something to the floor that could that would not really do it and have it get taken apart I agree with you because I think that we need to whatever we come up with whatever you present and that we kind of agree on here we need to be so clear in our understanding of exactly what it means that or it will just we need to be really and I don't know whether we have the time before because we have one, two, three weeks left before crossover I don't think we can do this in three weeks because I think what it would mean is developing a code of ethics along with other parts of the bill that gives the extended hours but we bring a code of ethics up to the Senate floor people start going through it I have a feeling there would be a lot of questions to be raised about different parts of it even if we felt pretty good about it so we need to really I think we need to give people more time to understand what we're doing so given that did were there changes to this the way it was written that you talked about and did VPurg have you said he Paul had some very specific suggestions yeah he to strengthen 198 he had four suggestions and Larry had some of that suggestions too in general one thing we talked about was the intent that the Ethics Commission would develop a code of ethics along with some input from stakeholders as well I don't we say that in the bill whether it's just assumed so when we do come back with the code of ethics there would be something that advocates that agree though I don't see any reason why we would be shouldn't I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be vetting this as broadly as we can as Senator Clarkson said last week and I agree I think it really is up to the General Assembly to have ownership over the bill and we'd be most happy to provide whatever opportunity anyone within the General Assembly or outside the General Assembly wants to input and assist in drafting this I think what we have is a good beginning I'm sure there will be areas where people feel that it's too weak or maybe areas where it's too specific and we can deal with those and at the very least at the very end of it we can present a good draft and if there are differences of opinion there may be there will be plenty of people who I'm sure will be willing to step forward and say you need a more specific point here my hope is that we're all on the same page and realizing the state of Vermont needs a statutory code of ethics because what we have now just does not work the problem with the code of ethics that was adopted by the Commission is it doesn't have the force of law when we are asked to give advice or to render another advisory opinion it would be based on what we have now which doesn't have the force of law which means that anybody could take our advice and say fine thanks for your advice but I'm not going to follow it so that's one problem another problem as I've testified before I think the first time I came here this year was January 10th and one of the problems we have is that the code of ethics provisions as they deal with government employees are somewhat broader and different from the provisions that the Department of Human Resources has in its personnel and annual policies what the professional responsibility had or it has for lawyers so things that would normally be considered improper conduct for people in state government don't have a remedy anywhere else because they don't have a equivalent provisions within their codes and as we know also the Department of Personnel as we said Department of Human Resources personnel manual it also doesn't have the force of law the executive order which governs executive branch employees and personnel doesn't have the force of law so we should join the vast over 40 other states who do have a statutory basis for judging governmental conduct the advantages of it would be I think more trust in government if they believe that we are all serious and take ethics seriously I think that breeds trust in government and along with dealing with code of ethics is the whole idea of transparency about what we're doing and this statewide code of ethics at least as we've envisioned as we have envisioned it so far is fairly general it's not radically different from the code that the commission has adopted although it's getting better with each look that we give it we had a meeting this morning and talked about a couple of things that following the draft that I gave you last week and the early one I gave you in January would be improvements so it is definitely a work in progress and there are a couple of various that I've identified that I believe we can really provide better work not better work but better language for you to consider and then that does things as broadly as possible so I absolutely support the notion that we should have a code of ethics one of the things whether it's passed in this form or in a different form would be the question of exactly how far who should it apply to right now as drafted it applies to executive branch and legislative non-core functions and that makes perfect sense I don't know and there may be room to include judicial branch employees not judges but clerks people who work you know like anyone else does and administrative excuse me of positions non-policy making decisions that there may be a way to include them I don't think that will affect this in any way at this time and it's a conversation we could have later on it's quite possible that judiciary imagining a scenario where somebody in a courthouse somewhere did something unethical they scheduled their friend's trial ahead of someone else's trial something like that which would be I think by anyone's definition an ethical violation the question would be okay well where should that be dealt with should it be the ethics commission or someone else and it may be that judicial branch will take that and deal with it and if that's the way it is that's fine it may be that judicial branch would say hey I think commission we have no objection to you're doing a hearing on that and reaching some conclusions and either taking action if there's authority to do that or referring it back to the judiciary where they could do that so that we've got the options are all over the place and I think we should keep all those doors open as we move forward but the basic notion of the need for a code I hope is incontrovertible so we don't need to put any of that in here like about and working with human resources and all that kind of stuff because that's what you're going to do to develop the code anyway absolutely I want to bring something to you in the fall that has been well vetted and if there are arguments against it you know what they are and they're well articulated and then you're in a position making the decision Larry can you just talk a little bit about the intersection of the legislative branch and the ethics commission I mean we have kind of a different setup if you will than the judicial or the executive yeah as I understand it right now well as the the current logs is if we get a complaint against a legislator we refer it to the center to the House ethics panels and they follow their procedure as I understand this draft and as I imagine an ethics code in my mind court legislative policy making decisions would not be included in that what would be included would be the things like you know use you know stealing from the state you know fraudulently filling out expense forms things like that and I haven't gone through the entire list of things that people could do wrong but I see it as is two separate things and and within an ethics code and even the draft that I gave you already is a provision that any department anybody the Senate the House or any agency or division is free and should be encouraged to adopt their own ethics codes and if they're more stringent great they should be and so as we envision an ethics code it really is sort of a bottom line most general baseline code of conduct we need to have something and if individual parts of state government want to have something that's more robust they're encouraged and free to do so yeah I think it's really incumbent upon us to come up with a unified code of ethics for the entire state and I agree I mean it's like the way we have the difference between state law and municipal overlay each area could have more but not less and that we would establish a unified state code of ethics I guess my sort of notion on Friday is that yes we'd go to 198 and build off 198 but that we would add substantively to 198 with Larry's memo from the 30th and Paul Burns memo I don't see Larry's Larry's is dated if they look the same but the dates are different the January 30th that was my draft what did you want to add from this it's it's not in draft built draft form well it's not in the form that Vitzinger asked we put it in if she was still here right but it is it that is roughly the form that I think it would look like what we and what I have in there is sort of footnotes so you can see where these things came from but some of the language is it's all open to discussion I need to go back a minute here I don't understand what was just said because 198 says develop a code of ethics this says this is a draft of the code of ethics but we don't want to put that in because right no we don't want to put this into the bill because this is a draft of the code of ethics I thought you had the polls or recommendations to add I'm talking about Larry's right now right Larry's had some specific recommendations so I have a strength in 198 I'm sorry oh no no no no no this is a okay so this is a preview of what he went to yes right got it okay so okay so now then what I would like to do is go to the recommendations that Paul made to add to 198 and see what we make of those because that this his recommendations here are additions to and it looks like this yeah I gave mine to Andrew oh do you need another one maybe well I could just share this or take Chris's so does it make sense to start going through these I don't have a copy of the house okay let's make copies Gail is it possible to print out two more copies of Paul's testimony from Friday the 31st thank you yeah I think that would be good because if we went through them because so while we're waiting for those I have we have a sexual harassment panel and have you heard that from them could I ask Paul about the timeline on it is that okay do you want me to wait Larry oh Larry I'm sorry Paul prints on my mind I think it's November 30th did that get you on the time oh yes November 15th 15th okay oh yeah and we talked it and just Paul this is getting printed out we when Larry referred to the ownership the legislative ownership which goes back to your point about how challenging this may be in the legislature I do think we have to build in some form of sort of legislative ownership in some of this work during the course of the summer fall and I don't quite know how we would do that but because it's not always a great year for a but it would be interesting for our committee for example maybe or somebody to do either a road trip or you know have some public hearings with some of the draft recommendations that you might be you know that you'd have that we could take on the road and listen to the public on on this issue and really build some legislative ownership so that in maybe we only did four but to do four legislators in their districts come and listen and and really build more broad ownership in our doing this and that would be great is that what you were referring to in terms of the legislative ownership what no I was quoting you what did that mean I thought you meant that this bill needs to be not the ethics commission's bill the legislature so my question is how do we make it that if you're going off and creating this proposal and bringing it back to us how do we then own it I guess we own it by taking by coming to whoever the five people are that are sitting around this room next year that they will review it in depth and and if it passes out of here there's legislative ownership I don't know how else you do it well I think the additional opportunity we may have is doing a couple public hearings on it in November or something before before but there won't be a draft there will well I mean I'm supposed to give you a draft in November 15th but that doesn't mean that I can't give you something that looks very similar to what I gave you last week a working draft as a discussion starter and so it would be interesting for us to do that and here because when people have been emailing me you know we've been inundated with emails about this and I've been asking them back but they're all it's two it's only two emails really it's one from Beepard and one from Paine for Vermont right but I've had about 30 right so look they press the button right no I get that but that's not it's right I can't just press the button I have to do a couple other things I know but I have responded to them and one of the questions I ask at the end of my email is what has your experience been with ethical you know have you had the issues with with a breach of ethics in the state what's your experience been and sort of putting it back on them is do you care so much about this what's your experience on it and I'm getting some interesting answers Chris um one challenge though with mid-November will be though just been an election we not want to make it here could be significant turnover right so my thought would be I'm for the if engaging our colleagues and the public but if that report there was a joint meeting in room 11 and you write in the public in in early January there could be a public way to engage the public but there could be a lot of new people I mean the last cycle there were 40 new house members another to be four or five six people in the Senate that's a lot we know there will be at least two new people right also they right but you know we also were committed to this bill this five some and we could at least advance it's just something to think about we could advance the conversation at least hold one or two public hearings or if we wanted and anyway it's just one piece of trying to build ownership in it that's all well I don't see a vision where we I'm sure I think Anthony no I was just going to say I have hard times kind of visualizing how public hearing work on something like this I think many people would support it but I don't know if they're going to read the document and sort of talk to the document I think they would talk more to their lack of trust in government I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have them express but it's just it's not like a bill where you look at a bill and say well I have a problem in section four I don't think people will read it that way I think they'll just say yeah we want a code of ethics we want a strong ethics commission but I have a hard time just visualizing how the conversation would go well so to a point you know I mean I suppose besides publishing that draft we could also develop you know questions we would ask to try to steer to steer the conference for instance your good question have you had have you run into instances that made you question ethics or conflict of interest whatever it was so that we would help people provide more on target concrete feedback that could be helpful as we evaluate or whoever the next team is right one of the things that I've done is in preparing the draft that you have already is to look at the experience of the other states and the federal government and what we have here tracks very closely that we have and there's nothing different in this from what doesn't exist somewhere else the language may be a little bit different we need to steal everything per meter but we took a lot of it pretty darn close well the plagiarism of ethics may not try it well here the thing about conflicts of interest in ethics is disclosure if you disclose it you're halfway home so I like the idea that Wisconsin is modified yeah by me so my thoughts were I would be very happy to work with I mean I'm happy to continue my work and do what I do and I put it on our website and write comment I don't know what we'll get I'd be more than happy to work with anyone in the House or the Senate who wishes to have any input on this or discusses or obviously by council as well and I'm happy to do that I don't know how productive it would be to open it up I mean I have no objection opening it up to the public but I think your point is well taken people are going to be more concerned about do we have a code than the actual specifics I think that kind of nuts and bolts part of the discussions more likely to happen here than anywhere else so I don't know how I can give you Digger could do a survey I can give you a preview of the next draft but we're working on one section I had a conversation yesterday with somebody pointed something out to me that I hadn't thought of and I said oh that's great I can't wait to work this through and I'm about a third of the way there but in another few days I'll have it and then I'll be happy to give you I'm happy to update you at any time as to where we are and if wow 198 is working its way through you have any questions about what we're working on for proposed code on all the years the more input I get the better product will all have I like the way you've broken it down by subject area I think that's very you can really wrap your arms around that can I suggest that you're going to be doing this we're going to be getting a draft with this whoever's on this committee will grapple with next year I don't want to there are some very specific suggestions here and I would like to get to them before we run out of time before we run out of time yes I would like to I'm happy to address this so what I would like to do is address them and see if we want them to be included in S198 or not because instead of talking about the potential draft is that okay I'm happy to do that so the first one is about giving the commission a capacity to investigate I think that's premature until we have a code it really doesn't make any sense to be doing investigations actually before she left I fancy looked at this but she read the first one she said she didn't think it was possible to constitutionally oh it's also premature so you and I so okay number two open the proceedings once there's a determination problem cut that would be when we get to an enforcement phase that's also premature when the commission is determined that a violation is conserved occurred is finding sanctions should be publicly available I agree with that but again premature we don't need to put it in this bill and an opportunity to request an advisory opinion to be opened again we've stated our position our clear understanding of legislative intent after the first advisory opinion was that that was not considered and we had no desire to go down that that road again and the bill that's in the House H634 has language to make very clear what in the language of the statute what was apparently the original legislative intent so that will be rendered by that so those I think are the only no there's one that I'm not I don't know about see more doable to then a limit on the time that agencies have to consider and respond to a complaint forwarded by the Ethics Commission seems appropriate I don't know there is a premature and not necessarily consistent with the S198 talking about an ethics code this really goes to enforcement complaints so I think it's a separate matter when an agency determines that a violation is occurred it must share its findings with the Ethics Commission I don't have a position on that I think there may be personnel issues and union issues that I'm unaware of again I think this is premature requiring that the agency of human services take immediate steps to make it possible for members of the public to locate sections of its personnel policy procedure the parts of their personnel procedure manual that referred to ethics and are on our web page I don't see why the HR couldn't just make it more easily find it I don't think it needs a law for that and any clarification that may be necessary to ensure that statewide office holders are considered employees for the purposes of this law I think the language of each of S192 talks about branches of government and executive and legislative so I don't know why that specific definition would be necessary you mean 198? yeah 198 I'm sorry find this book and the proposed draft if you see it talks to all state employees except for judges if we exclude other judiciary employees it would be everybody from the snow power driver to the whoever to the governor so some of these may or may not be good ideas I don't think they're necessary to the efficacy of S198 I agree it almost gets to the point where it's so prescriptive that it just we're asking you to do a lot of work and yet then we're going to tell you bing bing bing I think if we just let you do your work and pretty much leave it the way it is we're in better shape yeah I I think that you're right that some of these might be good ideas but they're pretty mature that I mean the whole first page certainly is on the second page the only one that I would have thought made some sense would be the time and I don't know what the time is and it might be different for different types of inquiries are different so I'm I'm fine leaving that alone too for the time being yes Allison so the one thing 198 doesn't address that is that you're continued funding yes it does does it repeals it those phones the sunset yes it both phones into 21 that's right sorry and we were at house appropriations last week and went through our 2021 budget and they were happy to see we weren't asking yet for more money okay great and your total budget for 2020 for I don't remember the exact number it's it's a team bit less than this year's budget and the reason it's less is because my predecessor had his family on the insurance right so we just have Archer I don't have those people that I have to depend so our requirements are just somewhat diminished but I give you an idea of how small a budget we have that that can make a difference your budget is less than half a 90 we're about 120 I think it's 150 or something yeah I think it's close to 120 yeah and here's the part-time position yeah and I'm over my arrows for this week so so how what are you are you half or two-thirds I'm 20 hours a week that's it jeez I also want to just back up for a minute because we're talking about developing enforceable coded ethics etc but you've already thought that something a statement of principles I mean there's something that you're working on I'm sure you've already adopted some kind of statement of principles or some yeah we have to go toward the code we have I mean the ethics commission was charged by the existing statute by Act 79 with coming up for a code of ethics and they've done that and it's available on it's on our website we have little pamphlets I can bring it to you we're always looking at that since I've begun my work on a legislative code of ethics I've seen that there are parts of our adopted code that we should change as well but we can do that easily enough and we talked about it at today's meeting maybe by next month we'll have something else we might make a revision to I think it's important to the one thing that people that I hear all the time is about this advisory opinion and I think it's important to to say that if we had a if we had a a statutory code of ethics and there was you you at that point you might be able to to take complaints from people and advise them that this is a valid complaint or it's not but that's not what we meant by advisory opinions it was very clear that an advisory opinion that was to be given by the ethics commission was when you get I call you for and say would this be a violation and you've you say oh my god that's a 17th person that's called me about that I'm going to give an advisory opinion because people who are covered that this could be considered a violation of a code of ethics I mean that that's what it was it was advisory to the people who were covered and and I think that's that was always the intent and if we had a statutory statutory code and we had and the ethics commission has more authority or responsibility or anything then maybe maybe that's where you can then take those it's either a complainer it's not a complaint it's not an advice it's a complaint the language that's in the house now will clarify that so that what I think your understanding has been and what our certainly is now is that anyone who is subject to the ethics yes can ask for advice or opinion about their conduct their own conduct not someone else's and not you know to play gotcha or not to weaponize it as a tool against an opponent and I think that the they thought was that you could give me advice but when you when you put out an advisory opinion it was because there were concerns by a lot of people around a particular area and so instead of taking the 18th call from somebody you could put out this to all those people who are covered this could be a conflict or this could be so we're advising you that you might want to stay away from it Chris but so I I hadn't really thought of it that way I mean I I get the whole thing of getting advice like oh this wouldn't be something you should go ahead and do but I thought it was even going to be in a year you were saying like 18 people but I thought it was also they will you know for the first person like someone who's in office has some sort of opportunity and they wonder should I accept a job like that or is it too closely good that any could do an advice or opinion it was very precisely advice to one person as the statute reads now it's supposed to be general so if you were if you had a question you could contact me and I could give you what the difference in the statute is guidance guidance guidance I could give you that and without regard to anybody else it would be just between you and me if you wanted an advisory opinion you could you could request one and then I could open up and if I wanted at that point one of the things we're asking over in the house is when we do advisory opinions is that we'd be allowed to say hey the ethics commission is considering whether you know owning a racetrack is consistent with meeting the state treasurers or you know doing something in and in government and we might open up to take public comment you know it shouldn't be the executive director sitting in a room by himself thinking about these things why not if it's if the opinion is supposed to be based on the law and something that people can rely on rely on why shouldn't we hear the arguments chrome con right ultimately it would still be my responsibility to author the opinion but I'm gonna make sure that I have a well informed fact you know big database before I work on this because you know that the problem is if you ask me for an advisory opinion that's going to apply to everyone else someone else may say well I don't see it that way at all and I'd want to know what the facts are before I issue an opinion so that's process so that's is for an individual one on advisory opinions are for classes or two more general yeah but I but you wouldn't offer an advisory opinion just on your own yeah it would be as a result of inquiries I would that's what I think we you know I think it's the way yeah and that's and that's what that's what I think so there's guidance I ask you for guidance I'm not asking you for advice I'm asking you for guidance right is it wrong for me to to reserve a seat up there for the symphony orchestra for my family of 17 right and you say I don't know but if 17 people ask you that same question and you might say you know I don't think there's anything wrong with it or that you better be careful or a you 17 and how do you like an advisory opinion that's or it can be general at that point because it's not related to a specific right individual I think guidance could be an earned income opportunity for the ethics commission which Larry goes into a little booth and provides guidance on the it's right in the blue glass ball right yeah for like 50 bucks a pop so I'm thinking of another example and I don't know whether anyone's called you but for instance I was the road commissioner of a very small town and my brother in law ran a plowing company and there were two other companies that also did and his bid came in lowest is it is that is that the kind of thing that would you know that you would be able to say well you could do what you want but here's what I think well my initial response our jurisdiction is only for state government so I wouldn't even go there okay then that was a bad example well but I get the point yeah um what could be you know and the other the other thing is on advice or guidance I may I don't have to I could say you know that's an area that we just don't have any laws that address that and I'm reluctant to even give advice about that I see you might talk to these people are these people or here are the things you might consider but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna yeah yeah I would do that but I'm not sure there were some circumstances I think be wrong for me to tell somebody to do something Gail so I just want to do a check in here we're going to lose one of our members I mean she's just going to leave for a little while but well don't be back it's a pleasure I don't believe that was a little bit of pleasure