 We are now live. Thank you, Alex. I see on the screen that we are back on YouTube. Good afternoon, once again, everybody. This is the Vermont State Senate Committee on Institutions. Our last witness of the day, Becky, just so you know, you're between us and supper. No pressure there. But I had originally asked you to come into a walkthrough of Representative McFawn's bill. Let me preface my remarks here by saying it has become obvious to me that we have a severe crisis in youth who are at risk in the juvenile system. We closed Woodside. We don't yet have a proper replacement. We have a crisis happening from the top to the bottom of the state. And this committee's responsibility is to come up with some kind of brick and mortar solution to that problem in the best set of circumstances we can in the quickest way possible. I am aware that Representative McFawn has made one offer and that is a subject of discussion on the other side of the building. I am curious to know, I asked you earlier today to do a little research on our past work in this subject and specifically to see if there was any language that we dealt with, I think it's about two years ago now when the Newbury facility was first proposed to us. I don't know whether you've been able to come up with anything in your research since then, but I'll start with that question. Unfortunately, I've been in committee pretty straight, so I have not dove into that yet, but I will continue to look into it after this meeting. Would that committee be the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions? No, I spent a lot of time in House Energy today. Oh, okay. I was gonna send Senator Mazza over to that other committee. God, yeah, get me over there. One more day on this, I don't know. I'll take any committee. Well, at this point, we seem to have a mutiny on going through the bill's particulars at this stage. We are gonna have to have this conversation when we see this, but do I understand correctly that the House Committee is actually taking this bill up? This is age 487. I think Representative McFawn was in there to do a walkthrough. I don't know if they're taking it up. I did wanna point you to the fact that there is actually a Senate companion to this bill. And I think at the time that I was scheduled, it wasn't approved by the printer yet, so I could not disclose that. But S-245 is a companion to Representative McFawn's bill. And I was just gonna see where that status is. So it looks like actually just today it was referred to your committee. And is that a bill that is mirrored in age 485? Yes, it's the same exact. It's a Senate companion to the House, age 47. Mr. Chair, is it gonna be our assignment to look for a new location prior to the settlement of this ongoing discussion now? Is that our assignment to look for a new location prior to the outcome of this new location now? I don't know what this particular bill says since we haven't had a walk through. Okay, okay. Do we know, Becky, who the lead sponsor is on the Senate bill? Senator Hooker was the sponsor. Okay. I'm happy because it's the end of the day to bring us back and have a conversation with that and invite Senator Hooker to explain. Let me answer the rest of your question, Dick. It is this committee's responsibility to have an understanding of what the problems are out there and to do something with the budget that we have in order to correct that problem. I am somewhat leery of the fact that I've been through this process 10 years ago with this committee when we were talking about mental health facilities and I watched with much dismay how facilities were being targeted in places where the population of clientele was not. I don't wanna see that happen again under my watch so I am absolutely committed to having a discussion that eventually leads to us being able to contribute to the conversation about getting facilities established. We have a long way to go in figuring that question out but I don't wanna be behind the eight ball after town meeting day trying to wrestle with whether we should or should not go in a given direction. Have we talked to the administration? I mean, because usually, have anything I've ever been involved in years or there's Windsor, St. Albans, or Brunnerkin, it's always, it comes down to the administration of they wanna locate a new facility or so that's why I'm kind of puzzled. The answer is I have spoken with the administration. There has been an interest on the administration to tamp down the level of heat, if you will, with respect to Newbury and I can understand that but getting a response on the question of plan B, we have not reached that conversation and I wanna reach that conversation. I think we have a responsibility to reach that conversation. The administration has been invited for next week. We are trying to confirm whether they are still coming or not, so the answer to that is yes. The administration has been approached and I do hope to have them in here to have that conversation. The other part of this is we obviously don't have the capital bill. I am about to do everything I can to mirror the testimony taking place in the house which may sound premature sometimes to this committee but by the time we get the bill I wanna be on top of what they have talked about so that we are not collectively stuck after town meeting day having to rehash all that same testimony. I think one of the reasons that we were able to get the bill through our committee last year in relatively short order was because we did just that and I'd like to be able to do that again. But if there's corrections involved, it does not come to us, doesn't it go to judiciary if there's correction issues involved? We are gonna have to decide whether or not a brick and mortar facility can be targeted and how much money to spend on it. That's not gonna be within the jurisdiction of judiciary. Judiciary is certainly involved in the policy discussions. There may be some joint committee time again to have to deal with this issue but I can't let it go at this point either because this is a crisis that needs to be dealt with and right now we are the only committee with any available time to talk about it. We don't even know what we want for a facility. How are we gonna talk about something whether we want a 40 bed or 10 bed or I just don't, how do we make that decision? That's why we're talking about bills like representative McFawn's bill. That's a conversation that has to breach committee walls and I'm trying to facilitate that to the best of my ability right now. I don't wanna stand back and say, well, somebody else has a responsibility to do X. Well, we're taking on corrections work yet. That's what you're telling us. We never did it before, why are we doing it now? Senator Karmic. Thanks. I think Senator Mazza that you're seeing a vivid clear distinction between program and on the one hand and bricks and mortar on the other hand as to completely separate things. If we're responsible for bricks and mortar, certainly we're responsible for bricks and mortar that is suitable to the program, at least in my view. And so that and that would include that part of being suitable to the program is that it'd be welcome or at least tolerable to the community it's going into. And so, but I respect that I think you're maybe more being stricter on the distinction than I am. But I think that I didn't just imagine the overlap here. I think that the function whether or not the building is suitable to its mission is part of a bricks and mortar analysis which is our jurisdiction. But no one has told us what we need for a facility which we can then decide where we're gonna locate or the cost of the building. We're assuming we need a building where we don't assume we don't know what the size, shape, description. So we're into the other part of the judiciary committee which they handle corrections. That's all I'm saying we've separated from where we used to be. So we do know that the state and the administration with the approval of the legislative committees or jurisdiction has something in mind at least broadly similar to what's planned for Newberry. One of the problems that we have is we went along with the decision to close Woodside which left a vacuum. I think we have a responsibility to keep the pressure on to find out what is gonna happen in order to replace that. We know one thing, the one plan that was presented is in litigation and litigation, you've heard the problems with the court system that's not gonna be solved overnight. While we have a crisis going on, I think it's within our jurisdiction to get an understanding of what is plan B. And so I'm very anxious to hear what plan B is all about. Well, we listened for two days, a plan, I don't know what the plan was the last two days and the criticism about the police departments and the criticism about everything else. And I still don't know what we had to do with that issue. We know it was turned down by the community, that's fine. They followed the rules and regulations of the zoning. But maybe they thought by coming before us they would get some reprieve or something that we changed the law. And that's an uncomfortable feeling to think that we had no jurisdiction of saying anything about that issue because it's in the courts. And we know that people are against it because the town turned it down. So I just hope we get back on a track where we can talk about something that we're, we can do something about. But it just seems. Well, that's plan B, Dick. All right, okay, we'll see. You can't get to plan B without understanding why plan A isn't working after we have agreed to close Woodside. And this committee in my humble opinion has adequate jurisdiction over the question since we ourselves are the ones that opened that door by agreeing to go along with closing Woodside. And at this stage, plan B has yet to be presented any place. So I'm gonna get to that conversation but all of us need to be educated on what the rationale was behind plan A failing before we get to plan B to determine whether plan B is a good idea. It wasn't hard to figure out, Mr. Chair, that the people that testified were against it because they already proved that at the town. The town said no. So. All right, I hear you. I hear what you're saying. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I'm not a lawyer. I just play one in the Senate. But I would ask you as a lawyer, my understanding of the ongoing court case is that the question is, can we or can we not? And if the court were to rule that we cannot, then that would be settled. If the court ruled that we can, the question still remains, should we? And that's our call, having nothing to do with the court. We decide if we should or not. Yeah, that's a fair description. And part of that question is, how much more money is it going to take to get there if that issue is placed in front of us? So having a clear understanding of what the hurdles are, and then when you're faced with the question of how much are we willing to devote to plan X, whatever that is, personally, I think that's very important information to have under our belts before we try to make that decision. So with that, I'm going to call it a day. Bec, thanks for coming along. And I hope you have a fun time over there and the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions. For the rest of you, we'll see you tomorrow.