 Okay, we're going to deal with PREA this morning, which is the Prison Rate Illumination Act. It's a federal law, federal act. We implement it on the state level as well. And in order for us, the thinking is, in order for us to really understand what transpired in the process at the Chittman Facility, as all the other facilities. I really don't want us to forget that there is four other facilities, four or five other facilities. So this is for the whole correctional system. We really need to understand what we have on the books here in Vermont for PREA, for sexual assaults, inmate, inmate, staff to staff, staff to inmate. We also need to understand with DOC their directives and policies, because a lot of our statutes get carried out in DOC through their directives. And that's different than the administrative rules process. It's more of an internal process. There is public input on those directives, but it's very different than our administrative rules process. So we need to know what's in place now in terms of PREA, and that's what I want to spend time. First, with Eric to go through what's in state statute that pertains to this. And then we'll transition to DOC to work more internally with our policies and practices. Does that make sense for folks? Yeah, all right. Welcome, Eric. Thank you. New year. Yes, good morning, everybody. Same issues, different issues. Yes, right. Well, it's nice to see everybody. Obviously, it's my first time in here this year. I'll be your last. I'm sure of that, but it's good to see everybody and happy new year. I know. Look at this. So which one do we want brought up here? I know that there's a lot of documents. I should point out as sort of a caveat that I literally had never read a word of this act before preparing for this testimony. I have no doubt that there will be many questions that the department's experts will be far more able to answer than I will, but I was able to review the act pretty thoroughly some of the other resources that are connected to the act. And I think come up with at least a good foundation for you folks to understand. You may all probably all are more familiar with it than I am, but it certainly was interesting since I've never read it before. I know some of it couldn't place. Pardon me? I know some of this couldn't place. It was originally passed in 2003. So the federal law was passed in 2003. It was signed by President George W. Bush September 4th of that year. So do we have anything on the books prior to that? Not that I'm aware of, but I didn't research that issue to what we have in Vermont. It would be interesting as I remember back when I was on the committee as Vice-Chair and it was back in the late 90s, I introduced a bill about sexual assault within correctional facilities for inmate correctional officers on inmates. That, we do have a specific statute on the books that prohibits. When was that put in, do you know? I want to say 2005, 2006, thank you. So I did this back in the late 90s. Oh, interesting. It passed completely. It passed out of here. Right. Obviously it took some time to get on the books, but it is now and has been 2006, I guess, right? Yeah, it was probably about 10 years later that I'm on the books. Right. So the federal statute was bipartisan. It was passed by unanimous consent of both the House and the Senate in July of 2003, signed by President George Bush a couple of months later. And according to the U.S. Department of Justice, sort of a big picture, the overarching goal of it is to eradicate prisoner rape in all types of correctional facilities in this country. Obviously an ambitious goal. That's what DOJ has set down as the goal. And if we look at the PREA itself, which the language is in one of the links that, I'm not sure how, they have their links on their iPads as well who got that work, so. Yeah, it's on our web page. Oh, great. And individually you can look at it and pull it up if you want to. Yeah, we'll have the same thing. Perfect. So within the act itself, it actually states quite explicitly what the purposes are in section 30,000-302, right there. Take a quick look at them. You'll see there's nine of them. And the first one is to establish a zero-tolerance standard for the incidence of prison rape in prisons in the United States. It's a zero-tolerance standard. Number two, make the prevention of prison rape a top priority in each prison system. Develop and implement national standards. And this phrase is crucial because you'll see it reappear throughout the act for the detection, prevention, reduction, and punishment of prison rape. So that seems to be a theme that recurs during the language of the act as well. Number four, increase the available data and information on the incidence of prison rape, consequently improving the management and administration of correction facilities. You'll see that theme come up as well. Standardized definitions used for collecting data. Increase accountability of prison officials who fail to detect, prevent, or use, and punish. There's that phrase again, prison rape. Protect the Eighth Amendment rights of federal, state, and local prisoners. You may recall the Eighth Amendment is in the federal constitution that is exactly cruel and unusual punishment. So again, concerned with that as well. Increase efficiency and effectiveness of expenditures through grant programs. You'll see that's one of the, say for a second what I think the four highlights of the act itself are, grant programs is one of them. And finally, reduce costs that prison rape imposes on interstate commerce. That's just sort of a shoehorn for the federal government to enact legislation when they say something that affects interstate commerce that provides a federal groundwork for a federal basis, I should say, for Congress to enact a law. So how did the PRAEA propose to accomplish this goal of eradicating prison rape? I think, and it will go to each one of these issues, but there's four that I saw, and fortunately, you'll see when we come to the standards on this, that the rules that were proposed are actually our final now from the Department of Justice and the Attorney General's on this. Because much of the substance of what the standards are, if not all of it, is in the rule as opposed to the statute itself, the federal rule. The federal rule is not state rules. Correct. Federal. That's where the substantive standard is. And that rule is 128 pages long, single space, three columns. It is huge. Here, visually it's interesting. And it was published originally in the federal register as, as... We have final rule. Yeah, there it is. See, there it is. And that's where federal rules are initially published. They're ultimately codified in what's known as CFR, the Code of Federal Regulations. But before that, they all get published in the federal register, that the first public appearance that they make. And this was the DOG's rule on the PREA. Lengthy, very dense. Fortunately, you'll see in the top right column there, DOG gave us an executive summary. That was pretty helpful. But before we get to the register real quick, I wanna touch on, because that is the substantive standards of what the PREA authorized and eventually implemented by rule. But there's a couple of other things that the PREA did, in addition to the standard, and the three of them are, I'll just say before I touch on each one individually, information, sorry. Hello. So that's information gathering and dissemination, number one, education and training. Oh, yes it is. Number two, distributing grants, number three, and these national standards, number four. So there's four things. Information, education and training, grants and standards. So as far as the information gathering goes, you'll see that the act basically says to the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, BJA, and they are right here. You see the second thing down here. This is their PREA page, and all these different federal agencies, interesting as it's obviously a significant act that brings in a lot of federal work as well as state work. There's all these federal agencies that have their own PREA pages with various resources. This one is the one from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and what they have to do under the act is they have to basically collect data for each calendar year. They have to come up with these comprehensive statistical review and analysis of the incidents and effects prison rate. So they have to collect all this data, and you'll see on the right hand side of this page and the column on the right there, you'll see the data, for example, from the last three years. There's PREA data collection 2019, 2018, 2017, kind of down the right side. So this federal agency is charged with collecting and disseminating all this data. And the idea is, well, if all this data, this accurate data is given out to the folks who actually work in facilities, then that will provide them with the ability to reduce prison rate. They have accurate data and how it happens. So just for clarification, this data that they're receiving is from all the states. It's not just federal prisons, the state, but it's only those facilities that the state owns and operates. Or is it all facilities? Like your county facilities, and is it your private prisons? Yes, all those things are free. It's really dependent in terms of how accurate the state is in collecting the data. Yep, certainly the data itself has to be accurate in order for the information they sort of conclude about from the data to be accurate as well, for sure. Is it voluntary or is it sending into the data? Is it voluntary? Well, that's an interesting point. The way it works is that the reason that states are subject to this federal law or can choose to be subject. Can choose to be subject? Yes, the way it works is that, and you've seen this in other areas, I think in this committee, we see it in the Judiciary Committee a lot, the feds will set up a law and say, okay, the way it works is you don't have to comply with this to the states, but if you don't comply, you're gonna lose 5% of your grant funding. What if you don't give them any grants? It could, that's right. And sometimes for just, I think of one example at the top of my head where the state, for example, has chosen not to comply with the federal law and has chosen to forego the money is the primary seatbelt enforcement, for example. There's some federal money associated with that that Vermont has chosen to forego because as a policy matter, at least so far, the legislature has chosen to not have primary enforcement seatbelts. However, other times, the legislature will make the different weighing with the benefits and the upside and the downside. And this, from my understanding, I think the DLC will be able to talk about this a lot more. It's how long they've chosen to get involved in this program, but it's not required. You could say 5%, I think the language that's used is money and I can quote you the language, but it's 5% of federal grant money they were otherwise received for prison purposes. And I think that's burn grant probably, and, right? My second chance at, no, my second chance at is not, the one here, SAMHSA grants. Thanks, Val, Val, Vernon, Jay, for sure. So how many states are not, did not incorporate grant? The last list, I couldn't find it. The last list I could see was 2017, and at that time, 20, the roughly 20 states had complied. So I'd say it was the most happened. But that was almost three years ago now. So I'm not. Not even half. At least then. It'll be interesting where geographically those states were, are. Yeah. Is it on the coast, east and west, is it north, is it Midwest, south? That's an interesting question. I don't have that list right here, but I'll track it down. I think the Midwest and the south probably did not comply. Valetia? Good question, stemming off of that. Do we know if the facility in Mississippi, where, of course, the town I have. Yeah, are they, you know, clients with Korea, anyone here, do they? Comply with Korea, where out of state, down in Mississippi, is part of their contract. It's part of their contract. So whether or not the state complies, they have a contract. And per the federal PREA standards, we cannot engage in a contract with someone who is not willing to be in compliance. So if they weren't, we would have to end the contract in order to be federally compliant. Kurt. Does AACA accreditation require a PREA? That's who? AACA accreditation. Association of Corrections. That's right. And you said yes. Or did somebody say yes? Yeah, it is a good portion of all of those AACA meetings or contractors' meetings, including assurances. Representative Evans, you were asking just to, also, you're getting at this question of whether, you know, what state, what facilities are actually encompassed by this? Is it county jails, you know, private companies, and that comes from the term, the definition of the term prison in the act, which you see definition number seven. For purposes of the act, prison means any confinement facility of a federal, state, or local government, so that captures county stuff as well, local government, whether administered by such government or by a private organization on behalf of such government and includes local jails, police lockups, juvenile facilities, et cetera. So it sweeps very broadly. Even on Woodside. Yeah? There's a whole thing in juvenile. Yeah. And sort of going off that definition, when you go back to the standards and the rule, you'll see when DOJ put the rule forward, they said some two very similar things. I'm on page 37107 of the rule. If you look at the top, third column to the right, very top, first paragraph, the standards contained in this final rule apply to facilities operated by or on behalf of state and local governments and the Department of Justice. Similar statement over in the first column, which is an interesting one, and this goes to the 5% point that I was just making about how states can choose to forego compliance with this if they also want to forego 5% of their grant money. There's this process that I don't think DOC will probably talk a little bit more about that I'm not that familiar with but if I understand it correctly, the governor or the executive branch amount has to certify annual compliance with the act. And so kind of going off that point, you'll see the second sentence in there in that first paragraph, a state whose governor does not certify full compliance with the standards is subject to the loss of 5% with any DOJ grant funds that it would otherwise receive for prison purposes unless the governor submits an assurance that this 5% will be used only for the purposes of enabling the state to achieve full compliance in the future. So you can sort of do it that way too. We'll do it now or we'll set 5% aside and we'll comply down the road. And that second sentence there, the final rule specifies that the governor's certification applies to all facilities in the state under the operational control of the state's executive branch including facilities operated by private entities on behalf of the state's executive branch. Want to see that? So it sweeps very broadly, includes really just about every conceivable facility. Oh Jess. So Eric, I'm wondering if PREA only applies to incarcerated individuals, not individuals under the control of the department of corrections. Like parolees and furloughs. Furloughies, probationers, so on and so forth. I, that's an interesting question. I don't want to answer it without knowing when 100% clearly, and the DOC might have a better answer for that than that. This says the standards contained in this final rule apply to facilities operated by. So if you're on furlough and parole, you're not in a facility. That was my thinking. But I'm not 100% sure. It definitely seems to be geared toward someone who is in a state. And I ask the question because of the situation we have going on now. Right, right. It doesn't apply and I'm sure you guys will talk about that on people that are on the outside. Then what protections to those folks have. Right. They were afforded while they were incarcerated. Right. Protections or requests or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, yeah. That same statute you were mentioning earlier, the Vermont statute that prohibits sexual conduct between certain DOC employees and inmates or people subject to their supervision. That does apply actually to not just within the facility. There's a piece of that that applies to, I think probationers, people on furlough. But it has to be somebody under the direct supervision of that person. So it can't just be someone who happens to work in DOC and someone who's not supervising that person. That's a big deal. Which one? That it's not the direct supervision. Direct supervision. Because if I'm a PMP person and I engage in a unlawful act with a former inmate, but they're not under my direct supervision, then what? If it's, you mean it's consensual? Let's assume it's consensual. Well, it may not be consensual. That was the point of the legislation that I introduced back then that if there is a offender inmate and there was a correctional officer staff, there is no consent. Right. It's not consensual because of the power divide. So that's what the legislation that I worked on looked at was that issue of consent. Because if you're under the control of someone else, consent doesn't really matter. Yes, that's exactly right. And that's what, that's the- That's the slight sender. But, and Alice, I ask a lot of these because I think pre is a good thing from what I've learned a bit over through my experience is us being part of that is a good thing to have happen. But I don't want to give us a feel good attitude when people leave the facility that we've done all we can do or people are still protected by PREA. So it gets to be into an area that we have to talk about now. Yeah, and you will try to pull up the statute, but I'm not having much to pull up with this, so we're gonna skip it for now. But I think it's Title 13, 3257 or something like that, which is the statute on prohibits sexual conduct between DOC employees and people who are subject to their supervision. But interestingly, as you mentioned, representative, if it's a person who's in the facility, I don't think the supervisory role, if I remember the language right, doesn't matter. So it's any sexual contact if they're in the facility. If it's only with respect to the probationers, furlough ease, payroll ease, those folks, that it has to be a person in a supervisory role before your situation where consent doesn't matter because, as you say, it's the power balance sort of behind that. So getting back to PREA for a moment, we talked about the information gathering, a couple other components of the act before we get to the standard themselves. There's also education and training, and this is done by the National Institute of Corrections. You see, they also, we just looked at the Bureau of Justice Statistics webpage. This is the National Institute of Corrections. Also has a PREA webpage. You'll see here it is. They have all sorts of resources on the right. You see what their charge with doing under PREA is to establish a national clearinghouse. That's the language that's using national clearinghouse for the provision of information and assistance to federal, state, and local authorities responsible for the prevention, investigation, and punishment for prison rate. So this is one of their main webpage. You see this clearinghouse on the right. There's resources. There's educational materials, related resources, contact folks that sort of breaks it down by probation, prisons, jails, various topics. So again, the idea is with all this information available that hopefully the dissemination of accurate information will actually result in the reduction of the actual commission of these crimes. The second thing that NIC is tasked with doing is to conduct training and education. You see there was, you can't quite see the whole, I think we're on the top right there. That is far removed, I think that moved up. Well, anyway, within that box it does say education. So that's sort of the connection to their educational resources as well. And lastly, before we get to the standard, I just wanted to mention for a moment, the last member I mentioned there was education, information dissemination, and grants. So another federal department, which will be Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is responsible for giving out a lot of federal money in criminal justice areas, they are the folks who have the PREA grant program. They also have a PREA page and website that gives information about how states can get grants from them. They are charged with basically distributing federal money, a federal grant money in order to protect and safeguard inmates, particularly from prison rape and to safeguard the communities to which inmates return, as the language that's used in the statute. So those are the three other main points other than the standards themselves. We're talking about the big picture, what's this act doing? You know, it's giving money, providing education and assistance, it's trying to distribute information all through various federal agencies. And then lastly, perhaps most importantly, the, it establishes these standards. And if you look at the act itself, for a moment, under 307A, I believe it is, this basically says to the attorney general that they have to, it's gonna come back to the, to the phrase that I mentioned at the beginning. Let's see if we're right up there. So final rule, this is the standards. This is from the statute itself in A1. It didn't make the one year deadline, it actually took several years because it's a very complex project, I'm sure. But it does say that the attorney general shall publish a final rule adopting national standards for the detection, prevention, education and punishment of prison rape. So it charges the AG for developing this rule. And it established what's known, what it called the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. I think that was actually in the previous section. But the law also establishes this commission, National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. And the charge of that commission was to make recommendations on what these standards were gonna be. So the commission makes recommendations on the standards to the attorney general's office. They did that in 2009. And at that point, the commission disbanded because it had fulfilled its duty. And then this, as we saw in the beginning, this final rule became effective in 2012. So if you think about the timing of the act, that took a long time, right? The act passed in 2003. That commissions proposed their rules in 2009. And the rule was finalized to 2012. So obviously a lot of work and study went into this. I already mentioned earlier that the standards in this rule apply to states as well as the federal government, county, jail, private prisons that are connected with the state. And the point about the, in a sense, the state having the option to comply or not if they choose, they prefer to forego that 5% of federal funding. So that's kind of the background. The substance of the rule itself, there's a lot to it. As I mentioned, it's lengthy, very detailed. So I tried to, using the executive summary that the Department of Justice provided, kind of get some of the highlights of it for you. I'm sure I will probably miss some of that. I'm sure I'm happy to be supplemented on. But just to go through a few things that are within the rule. And I'll just sort of go through them in sort of the context of the time here. No, go ahead. No, you've got plenty of time. Once you have to be somewhere. No, I'm good, but I know that there's other folks. No, we're fine. Okay, so what are some of the highlights of the substantive pieces of what's in the actual rule? First one is general prevention plan. And under prevention planning, it says that a couple of general points here, each agency and facility has to designate a PREA point person. And I don't know if there's one in the room. I wouldn't be surprised. And it's interesting, it's in the statute itself that it requires a PREA point person that uses the language sufficient time and authority to coordinate compliance efforts. So that's in the statute. And again, it's an idea of prevention comes under the topic of prevention planning. Also under the prevention planning topic is a background checks issue, as well as hiring and promoting. So it says that facilities can't hire or promote people who have committed sexual abuse. That's a big point. Can't hire or promote people who have committed sexual abuse. And they have to perform background checks on perspective and current employees. So again, you think about that, that makes sense in a prevention planning concept because the idea is we're doing some prevention if you're not hiring people who have been convicted of this before, which you can find out by conducting a background check. Another, so that's prevention planning. Another one, supervision and monitoring. Another big point theme that comes out is supervision and monitoring. Each facility must have what they call a staffing plan. Staffing plan provides for adequate levels of staffing and where applicable video monitoring to protect inmates against sexual abuse. So staffing and where applicable video monitoring to protect inmates against sexual abuse. And all agencies have to do, this is also under the supervision monitoring, an annual assessment. So an annual assessment is required to determine whether they need to make any adjustments to their staffing plan or to the deployment of technologies to prevent sexual abuse. So we've got prevention planning, supervision, monitoring, third thing, training and education. Training and education. Standards require staff training. Staff training on key topics related to preventing, detecting, responding to sexual abuse. Screening, another big picture theme. Inmates have to be screened to determine who's at risk of being sexual abused or sexual abusive. No, sexual abuse or sexual abusive and that requires screening. Screening must be used also according to the rule. Screening information must be used to inform housing, bed, work, education and program assignments. Who does the screening? It says that the agencies and facilities, as far as who specifically, the DOC would probably be able to answer that question, but the rule says agencies and facilities have to do it. I don't know which individuals are assigned. Well, Felicia. Is the screening done more than once to kind of adjust with present population, length of sentence? Or is it done kind of on intake and then put in a roll? That's a very good question. I don't know the answer to it, but I didn't see anything in the rule about that specific point. This is federal rule, correct. This is all federal. Right. And the states have to comply with this. Right. So then it's up to the state, i.e. the Department of Corrections in their directives, I would assume, then carries out how they comply with this federal rule. That's my thinking at this point. Am I off base on that? So there is no administrative rules process that you have gone through for this. It's all internally within your directives. There are guidelines in the federal standards on some of those things that we have to be in compliance with. Right. So the federal PREA standards, which came from this, require that you do screening on intake within 72 hours and then again within 30 days. So there are- Can you carry that out through your directives? Yes, and every time an inmate moves, it's intake, so it's done repeatedly. So there are some, for some of this, that there are more expansive, the standards actually provide more guidance or directive that we would have to comply with. Where is the check and balance if they're not being complied with? Is there a check and balance? Is there a place? I mean, we can put all this down on paper and say we're doing it, but is there anything that you've come across, Eric, and we'll ask those two of DOC, where it's being done or not being done? How are we to know? Well, I didn't see anything about a specific administrative process. There may well be one. There's always, you know, it doesn't turn out how we say we can always go to court, but you could. You could, actually. Someone could bring a legal action, certainly saying that the state agency is out of compliance with a federal rule, but short of that, there probably is some internal way that perhaps the, I know there's obviously certification. So every year the state has to certify that they're in compliance. If someone else were to allege that they were not in compliance, I don't know, is there a process for that? I'm not sure. We get audited every three years. Oh, that's a good point. That's not it. Sorry, but there isn't, it's important, and Jen can talk about this, but we have an external auditor. Those auditors are trained through the National Resource Center. They come in, they conduct extensive reviews of our paperwork and our facilities. So it's the paperwork that they look at. They interview, there's a whole guideline. They must conduct interviews. There are specific interviews. The warden, the PREA coordinator, the PREA compliance manager, inmates, first responder staff, the medical staff, mental health staff, investigative staff, the commissioner. So they audit central office, as far as policies and procedures and how we handle things from the top. And then they audit each institution. And you have to do a third of your facilities each year. So the federal, this all came into effect in 2012. Correct. When did we become compliant with PREA? We first started our audits in 2013. Because that's when they were first required. And we were certified. And then we did it again in 2017 when we were certified. And we're getting ready to do them. So we're ready to know. Yeah, we're about to enter. Well, we're in our cycle now. And there was also a draft of the standards that came out in 2008. And we were actually at the time working with national consultants who wrote part of the act itself as well as we're on the prison rate commission. And so we were already working on using those strategies and we're a part of the federal scene in modifying some of the standards to make them work. Linda and then Carl. Did you hear anything, Carl? You said Kurt. Linda and then Carl. Carl. So are these auditors like SOX auditors, like PCAOB oversight auditors? Or are just there people who you hire who are accountants who do auditing? Or are they, what level of? The PREA Resource Center, which is the national kind of go-to for all of this, which includes the, because the standards are constantly in flux as audits occur, there is a certified training that they must go to. And it was just put in place, I believe, two years ago that you had to be certified officially and they mandated the training. So these are certified auditors that have gone through one training on how to be in compliance with the federal procedures. But these are specific trained audits to this certification versus auditors who actually are governed by an oversight board who go in and look at the internal controls. Well, there is specifically this organization that you use certified through this organization. They have a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Corrections. The oversight comes from DOJ. They're PREA specific audits by PREA trained specialists. The original audit trainings that happen were run by folks that who were on the original commission with the MAUS group who has one of the biggest cooperative agreements with NIC over the years in terms of training, as well as BJA staff, BJA staff, they bring in everyone that has their hands or responsibility or leverage into those PREA audit trainings because it covers everything from cameras to policy to accountability, prevention, education. They're a very big deal. You have to apply to get in. It's very hard to pass. And then the bidding process is also really aggressive. So they have to bid on these contracts and the PREA auditors are audited. Who oversees that? I think that's DOJ on the audits. Thank you. Curt. I think that answered my question. I'm good. I just pulled up some of the audit language from the summary. The third column on the right there, the sort of an italicized audits paragraph and that talks about some of what was just being discussed about some of the standards that apply to the auditors, but that they conducted by a member of a correctional monitoring body that is not part of the, or under the authority of the agency, see that last paragraph, the department, that means department of justice. And I think you were just referring to this. They have to develop and issue an audit instrument and all auditors must be certified by the department pursuant to procedures, including training requirements to be issued subsequently. Assume that those requirements have since been issued. I want to read that number one. A member of a correctional monitoring body that is not part of or under the authority of the agency, which is the federal agency, correct? No, I think that's the local. I think that's the local. So it is not under the authority of DOC or the agency of human services. And this part would be either one. Yeah, I would read it that way, since DOC is within AHS. Okay, but in parentheses, but maybe part of Roth rise by relevant state or local governments. So someone could be part of DOC or could be part of the agency. No, I think a different part. I think that means that, say you had a separate branch of state government, maybe you had an auditor department or something like that, but not within AHS or the agency. Can't be part of that agency. I think that's what it is. Okay, but you don't want the Fox guard in the head house. It's been changed in application. Originally when this came out, the intent was to be able to have, so for example, Woodside has, they have to be audited as well, the juvenile facilities do, so DCF does. So originally the thought was that you could have somebody from DCF audit DOC and somebody from DOC audit DCF. This was when all of the state's career coordinators were working with the Pre-Restaurant Center and then everyone realized that was not a good idea because nobody, it's not time, it's not a good practice, and so that isn't done. So we hire out. We've never used anyone that's connected with any department or agency in the state. So that hiring out piece, is that in one of your directives or is it just common practice for DOC? It's a regular bidding process. But it's just common practice. It's not something that you must do, but it's something you do. It's done as part of this, to comply with the standards and the law. So that comes through. Yeah. But you still have a little, seems like you still have a little wiggle room with the language that's in the federal. As Alice just read, maybe part of or authorized by a relevant state or local government. So you and your wisdom have decided that that's not a great idea. No, the Pre-Restaurant Center has actually provided guidance on some of the rule language that has been more specific. And so it would not be allowed under their guidance for the, they have a page called FAQs or frequently asked questions and that's where they provide the guidance and that's done through the prison, the PREA management office. So that's where that language comes from. So there's what it says and then there's what we're allowed to do. Oh, we'll talk about it later. This is the first time we've ever had a real in-depth testimony of PREA. It's sort of always been out there. So there's a lot of information we have to process. So we're gonna be looking at this for a while. Yes, ma'am. There's a lot of information there. Thank you, ma'am. Not have the advantage for anything. Yes, sir. Hang on there. Eric, I just have a question. Are there states that you know if this is probably something you may or may not know that would extend this law to anybody who is for DOC employees or staff to be prohibited from contact with formerly incarcerated folks? I mean, is there anything like that? I don't know if anything like that exists but certainly it's within the state's independent authority to go beyond what PREA says and to or to enact different standards for the interactions between folks from those groups that you just mentioned. So I don't know whether it's been done but it certainly could be. I'm just reading that second column. You know, discipline and I'm going down to the second paragraph and then it goes into medical and mental health. I'm just wondering how this is all played out in our facilities over time. Right. That is on my list. I'll go get to that shortly. But... I'm ahead of you, sir. That's okay. That's okay. So it's funny with three columns it's easy to get ahead like that. But we just talked about screening, right? We were just kind of where we were at and then we got into the auditing a little bit and then there were a couple other big points I wanted to make and one that I think is that I talked about response planning and investigations and now cross-gender... What's the next one? You're writing across some of the... Cross-gender training for... Oh, there it is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, I'm working more for the searches. The cross-gender searches and viewing. Is that something? Is it under responsible grant? The bliss tax? Yes. The download? That's my... I don't think so. Oh, anyway. That's true. Right, yeah, that's what I thought it was. What are you looking for, Eric? Well, I'll just mention it. There should be a topic that is that are cross-gender searches and viewing. Yeah, I saw that earlier. Yeah, so it's on page five of this. And the very right... And the third column. Third column. That missed page? Near the audits or above it? A little bit. Keep going. Down? Down. Oh, see that's... Medical and mental health? Now on the right hand side. It's on the right hand side. Oh, yeah, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. Way on the right. Right. There's another cross-gender searching. That's the one I'm looking for. I know I got mixed up by those two. That's what I thought it was. Yeah, that's actually on page four. It's on page four? Yeah. About one of those. Oh, I see. Yep, there you go. Thank you. Time break and third column on the top, right? So this is a very specific. They were mentioning earlier, some of these rules get more specific than others. And this is quite specific. And the standards basically have a ban on cross-gender, pat-down searches of female inmates in adult prisons, absent exigent circumstances. So, but the rule is different for juvenile facilities. Juvenile facilities, cross-gender, pat-down searches, prohibited for both female and male residents. So, got a difference there depending on whether it's juvenile or an adult facility. So, in our male facility, we could have a female correctional officer do a pat-down of a male inmate. Unless it has to be in exigent circumstances. So, the general says the pat-down searches are prohibited unless there's exigent circumstances, which means generally some kind of emergency time-sensitive situation. Yeah, but if you have, this is only for female inmates in a male facility with a female correctional officer. A female correctional officer could do a pat-down of a male inmate. Yes. I mean, we have female correctional officers in the male facilities. Yeah. And there's also a difference between, as you see, a difference between a pat-down search and a strip search or a cavity search. So, those are also different. Those are prohibited, cross-gender strip searches and visual cavity searches are prohibited, generally. Not based on whether it's an adult facility or juvenile facility or whether it's based on the gender of the person doing the searching. Again, absent exigent circumstances. So, if you've got some kind of emergency time-sensitive situation, but in those cases, as far as the strip searches and the cavity searches, there's some specificity, excuse me, they have to be performed by medical practitioners and they have to be documented. So, it's interesting that it's, compared to some of the other rules, that was a pretty high level of detail. All right, so reporting will be the next one that I am doing here. And basically, when I say reporting, I don't mean the state reporting about the number of incidents in a given year. I'm referring to reporting after an incident has occurred and how the victim might actually make a report of what has happened, that sort of reporting. And what the rule says is that the agencies have to provide at least two internal reporting avenues. So, there's different ways for the victim to make a report. And the rule interestingly says that at least one way to report the abuse to a public or private entity or office that is not part of the agency. So, that's the ability to make a report that is outside the agency and that can allow inmates to remain anonymous. So, there has to be a way, the two internal reporting avenues, plus another way to report externally to someone outside the agency that allows the person to remain anonymous. What's happened? So, did you have a question? No, no. Well, they can report it. But they're, if they're reporting it, if it's not external, and they're reporting it internal, where is there a review that that report has been acted on? Yeah, I think what has to be done in response to the report will also come up next. But one last point about a report and a couple last points. There also has to be a way for third parties to report on behalf of somebody else. So, there has to be something maintained that allows somebody to report on behalf of a victim that doesn't want to report. So, that third party could be a family member? Could be an advocate group? No, it's actually a question I would say so. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it's limited to who it might be, right? So, that gets to something we've been grappling with just so the committee can kind of process this as we proceed along trying to find the facts and trying to find what's in place. One thing that Wich and I have said, and Wich mentioned this yesterday, with the article that came out, it covers a span of about eight to 10 years. It wasn't all at once. And over that period of time, we quite often hear through the advocate groups or parents or family members of what's occurring in our facilities. We haven't heard any of this, those, the allegations that were out there. So, I'm just keep going around in my mind what happened that we haven't heard any of this? Was it reported and then not acted on? Was it not reported? Did other folks that knew about it didn't report it? You know, it just doesn't connect because in our world, here as legislators, I'm sure many of you have gotten calls from constituents or parents or family members and saying, my son or my daughter, they're not getting services and corrections, they're failing, we hear about this. And that's where we come up, like why haven't we heard about this? Has it gone underground so much for a particular reason, whatever that reason is? I don't know. I don't know. Curt. The things that have happened previously were reported in newspaper work, right? That's the series. No, we're talking about the weight of this way back. Yeah, the article, there were no articles 10 years ago about these things? No. I get letters all the time from inmates. And we got one that came in from Mississippi, Monday before I left, I haven't opened it yet. I think an honest was coming. Senator Sears gets them all the time. We all get something. Yeah. They come into our office sometimes. Yeah, that's how we're trying to grapple. Is this an undercurrent that's happening? Underground, what's happening is a big, you know, we don't know and that's what we're trying to get to. And in order to get to that, we need to know, and this is why we're going through this, we need to know what's in place in statute and rules and directives and how that chain of command, I had to use that term, but how it works up through the system so we can find out where the break occurred if there was a break. Good. And Linda, and then we go to the bunch. Just on the online process, I just wanted to go back there. I just read through that 90 page requirement. Whoa, good. Thanks. It's a speaker. It's a speaker, you know. So, what type of water reports have been issued? There's a 30 day minimum. There has to be a corrective action. Like, are they, if the corrective action is done within the 180 days, what's done? What is the process and what kind of reports has everybody received and are they public? Yeah. Would you like us to answer? Yeah, that would be wonderful. Thank you. I can start and then you want to pick up. So that 180 day window for corrective action is an opportunity to fix mistakes. Sometimes there's small mistakes where we may have missed something or we are doing what we need to be doing, but it didn't get covered. The end of the audit cycle, which is, it's one third of the facilities as it will, so we're doing a couple. We're starting in February and we'll do two this year. Just to lead, Vermont was one of the first states in the country to pass all the audits. And I don't know that you were gonna cover that, but that's indeed important. But the corrective action period is a window where we can make changes or show proof of documentation where it may, maybe it slipped through the cracks in terms of what was at the facility. Sometimes it's a way to take a look at a directive or a policy that might be missing a component and Jen's gonna talk about that when she speaks to the rest of it, but we haven't gotten to the part where we haven't passed an audit or had to weren't able to provide the governor's assurance. The other piece of that too is, yeah. So the auditor issues a report and there's three levels. It's not a pass or fail. It's the meet the standards and so on and so on. And that's how the report comes out. It's not a pass or fail. And PREA pretty much established the fact that the auditor's going in there with the understanding that there's not going to be any meet all of the standards. And so that's where the auditor comes in and you have that window. So what type of report did the auditor actually issue is my first question. And then where are those reports that we could see? We can get you the reports. As far as if you don't meet a standard, then you don't pass. And so as far as we have to, every year we have to go to the governor and we have to say this is what we've done to be in compliance whether you are being audited or not. So we would not be able to say that we were in compliance if we weren't, if we were, if we had failed or if we didn't meet a standard. So if we are working on addressing a not met standard during our remediation period then we would be in compliance. But if we didn't meet the standard at the end of the remediation, remediation period we would then not be in compliance. So we would have to say to the governor we did not, we were not in compliance and then we're at the risk at that point of the governor would say we're not in compliance and we would lose the 5% of the grants would be set aside to fix the issues that we did not address. So regardless of what the perception is we would have to report to the governor we were not in compliance and then in that assurance letter they would say that we are not in compliance. So we get a report from the auditor. Yeah. Thank you. Bochum and Sarah and Marcia. You had your hand up. I did. So for the idea of her D.O.C. No, yeah. I had a sorry. She said, oh, I'm done. So yesterday we received secretaries from this memorandum concerning to pull all the issues around what we're talking about today. And one of the things that was highlighted in his report was a hotline for employees to report to an outside agency and D.O.C. But as I'm seeing here in the reporting standards by the PREA standards that inmates have to have that also. They have to have a hotline that goes somewhere outside of your agency. And then I'm looking at rereading his reading on in page four of his report. It sounds like for the interim D.O.C. is working in agreement with someone to provide an additional crisis support line for survivors. Am I making a correct incorrect assumption that that hotline as required by PREA is not currently in place? We're an inmate and call outside of D.O.C. So the PREA standards- I'm wondering if you folks should just introduce yourself. Oh, we should, because we're taking this and they're not gonna see your face. Sure, that sounds good. I'll start. I'm Monica Wieber. I'm the Administrative Services Director for the Department of Corrections. Gens Raffia, the Prisoner Ablimination Act Director. Heather Simons, Director of Training and Professional Development. Okay, thank you. So the standards require an outside mechanism, not specifically a hotline. The hotline that was referred to was originally part of the Marks McLaughlin Report that was originally supervised by the Agency of Human Services. Now it was way back in the early 2000s. Way back. So we were using that hotline at one point as a mechanism that did meet the standard of it being confidential. Once it started being answered by the department and the agency stopped answering it, that is not a mechanism that we've used to meet that standard. So all inmates are provided with brochures in which they have addresses for local advocacy groups so they could write to their community or the advocacy group where the facility is. And we have in directive that mail that goes out to any advocate is not to be read and it's to be treated as legal mail. So therefore it is not connected back to the inmates. So we would have no way of knowing what they wrote so it would therefore be confidential. So you're depending on the inmates writing a note to an advocacy group? That's one method. That's one method. Another is that we have another hotline that's set up with an email address so family members can reach out. That one is connected. There's one that's connected to Priya. So there's an email address, it's on our website, a phone number that goes, both of those go to Heather and myself. And then there's also the commissioner's hotline where the commissioner's admin answers that. Yeah, that's the commissioner's hotline or a hotline to you folks doesn't answer this reporting requirement that's outside the agency. It can if the individual that calls, the individual that calls can call on behalf of an inmate and they don't have to give their name. Well we ask them when they call if they wanna remain confidential. We don't care who they are if they call and say, so and so is being sexually assaulted and then taking information for the case. So Priya's determined that the group has really determined that the steps you've taken for this reporting piece is adequate. Yes. They have. Three years ago. Three years ago. Sarah and then Felicia. Which kind of asked my question because I had the same question of how the DOC giving what we heard from Secretary Smith and his update yesterday and about this reporting. I'm part of the women's caucus and we went to the Chittenden facility and we did hear from the women that and I know that there's complexity with how complaints are handled. They're not always made public. The people making the complaints don't always hear what the process is. I understand that dynamic but I don't understand how our department of corrections can pass an audit with this kind of lack of access to an outside entity. It seems to me completely inadequate that giving inmates a brochure for them to call an advocate that doesn't have standing within state government. Like it's not there. No. Inside group is not a solution. So I'm just. I do, just in recognition of what Chair Emond said earlier Chittenden is a unique facility that they actually have advocates in house. So the women at Chittenden have a very unique opportunity that the men do not have in that they have staff in the building during the daylight hours, well in the evening they do groups in the evening through Divas. So they have the access to advocates on site as long as they're in the room. Through Divas? Through Divas, yes. So could you explain what Divas is? Divas is a program that's offered to the women for domestic and sexual violence. Support and their statewide advocates. So therefore they, the contract with them through the agency, they are the only employees under the agency of human services that are not required to report sexual abuse. Cause obviously the PREA standards are very clear that all employees must. So we had to give them special permission through the agency to not report because they are protected by the statewide advocate law. So Chittenden actually has those advocates in house and they work for the network under Karen Tronsgard Scott. So there, we have a contract with them and the contract absolves them of having to report. So they actually have in house. So what, can you walk us through a process of one of the Divas and the advocates are working with an inmate? I mean, where does that go? How does it get processed and where does the Divas go? That is up to the advocate. I mean that's, so if a person, so if we had an incident of sexual assault in the facility we would refer them to Divas as a matter of protocol. There also is, within the organization, we also work with HopeWorks as well. So Divas would connect with HopeWorks to figure out whether an external advocate is better than internal because in some cases they might not want to talk to someone in the facility. And since they are advocates there's a protection in their communication. So we would refer them and then Divas would provide whatever services they provide. We don't ask for any information because then it wouldn't be confidential. So if we send them to a group or if they go meet with them individually then they would go do that. But there's no necessarily anything that goes to an employee's, one of the employee's supervisors or a result? It can't unless the advocate, if, so if an inmate went to the advocate and reported an incident they would have to allow the advocate to report it to us. So they'd have to give permission? Yes. Because the advocate is not a required reporter. Correct, correct. And that is the heart of the standard is to allow, I mean the reality is it's, I mean if you look at the for it, punishment is the last one on purpose because the reality is you're in a confinement setting where you don't have control. And it's about safety. And it's about people feeling as safe as they can in a controlled and confined environment. So we have to know, is that there are gonna be inmates that are not gonna want to come forward? Because it's vulnerable. Especially if you're talking about men. If they admit to being sexually assaulted then they are at risk of being sexually assaulted more so. So this is about providing them an advocate to get help, not to report. Because their wellbeing is what's most important. If they want to report it, they can. Same thing goes for a sane. If somebody has reports being sexually assaulted we send them out to be seen by a sexual assault nurse examiner. They don't have to pursue charges. That's up to them. And we tell them that. Whether you wish to work with VSP or not, that's up to you. But the point of going to be seen by a sexual assault nurse examiner is to get options of medical care and post-exposure prophylaxis because we want them to, this is a health safety issue. Because we know that the folks in our system are more likely to have sexually transmitted infections. And we want them to receive medical care. And if they go be seen by a sane then that evidence will be collected. And when they get released they can then pursue charges. If they don't go be seen by a sane then that evidence won't be there and then it's no longer an option. Because they might not want to pursue charges in there because they might have to face the individual for a minute or two. So, I know it was a very long answer to a very short question. So is that a nurse, a sexual assault nurse? Is that Trus and Chien? Or is that... No, no, that's the hospital. That's the hospital. Correct, we call, we do not use any. Well, it would be any hospital, any local hospital. Okay, so it's out of centering and out of centering. Correct. Okay. Correct. So the men don't have access to divas, in the men's facility. Correct. The contract for divas is only for the women's facility. Is there anything comparable to that in the men's facility? No. Okay. Thank you. Alicia and then Carl. Okay. So I have more than a couple questions but I'm going to try and pass them out so it's specific answers. How can the public access PRIA reports? Like just any member of the public rather than having you furnish it for us directly, if I'm a member of the public, if I'm a family member, how do I find a PRIA report? If you go to our state web page, the public one, there's a link for PRIA and all of our resources and reports are available there. I wanted to check that before I told you to go there and put it right on the computer. So it is on the web page so you can access it. So all of the audit reports are there. All of the reports that we, all the data as Eric talked about that we supply to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, those reports are there. Other information that we made available to inmates and to the public are all directly on our public website and PRIA page is there. I know we got a lot more questions. Alicia, Carl, and then Linda and then, oh, I forgot about you, Marshall. That's what I'm actually, we're after Sarah. What issues have been flagged as out of compliance that we're working on, but because we're working on them, we've been declared in compliance with PRIA. So what issues, okay, so you addressed earlier, sorry, I want to back it up just a bit, that if we are addressing an issue, PRIA sees that as being in compliance, correct? Within the 180 or 90 years or the remediation period. Yes, yes. What issues were flagged in our most recent report and have they been results to point to your confident in this upcoming PRIA audit, that they're not going to be flagged again? I don't want to sound like I'm not answering, the reality is you prepare for every audit and I, I mean, between every audit, there's more information that comes out, so each and every audit is more specific and better because we're constantly improving. And as far as I'm concerned for the department, when we view an audit, it's not a pass, fail. We are looking at how safe are we and I will expect to some regards that there will be standards that we haven't met because we can't know everything. And right now, off the top of my head, I do not know all of, because again, it's six facilities. I don't know all of the standards that we were, that we had to address in the remediation period to be able to comprehensively answer that question. I can do it, just not right here, right now. And then I think my last point is I think that it is incredibly exclusionary that we have a third party reporting system based on notes because you rely on literacy that is not there. And I just really want to make that clear that how incredibly presumptive it is that there is a standard of literacy and we are excluding our absolutely most vulnerable from reporting. And that is incredibly upsetting. So to clarify, can they report verbally or decide to be written? They can report verbally. I mean, any volunteer contractor that comes in the building, they can report to and then that person can bring it forward. So they, Prisoner's Rights is another option. They can report to Prisoner's Rights. We have posters in the units for Prisoner's Rights phone number, but they're not allowed through Prisoner's Rights to have that on their pin sheet, but they can write or talk to Prisoner's Rights when they come in. And we will do referrals. And again, what I want to be clear on is per the federal previous standards, if a person comes forward to make a report, no matter who it is, our responsibility is to follow through with that report regardless of whether an identity is given. So if somebody comes in and says there's an inmate that's being pressured and they don't want to give the name, the report was still given and we would have to do our best to investigate it. If we're able to figure out who the individual is or if they give us a date and time, we can check on that. I'm going to interact with you, Carl, and go to Marsha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just because I skipped over. I just had a quick question. What two facilities are being audited now? None currently, Chittenden and Northwest will be our first facilities to be audited the last week of February. Okay, you said that's next February? This February, yep. Okay, thank you. Carl and then Linda? I've got just a follow-up on Representative Coffey's question and you talked about it. So if someone comes forward and reports an assault, they then get whatever counseling and medical attention is necessary or if they want. You talked a little bit about an investigation that occurs internally, even if we don't know who that is. Can you talk a little bit more about what that investigation would entail and what that looks like? Yeah, we do everything we can. Review video footage, review reports. We will, if it's criminal in nature, we will report it to VSP and they will investigate as well. If it's a personnel-related matter, it gets referred to the Department of Human Resources and then the Agency of Human Services Investigations Unit determines whether or not they will accept the case to investigate or not. If they don't investigate, the previous standards are clear, we still have to conduct an investigation so then the department would have to investigate itself to make a determination about the staff member. Maybe I brought it. That's not good. It's been an issue as far as current employees. If a person resigns during an investigation, then DHR says they're not an employee, they won't investigate and the previous standards require us to investigate, which it's very hard. The person doesn't work for us anymore. We try to interview them as best we can. It is very complicated. Especially if we've referred to VSP, they try to meet with the person. Inmate victims sometimes do not view that they have been victims, even though because of the power imbalance, we are very clear. Sometimes they'll report that it's, they got what they needed from the individual, whether it was contraband or they were in a loving relationship. And so if they report that, then the Vermont State Police, it's not a crime. So they can't pursue criminal charges then. So we look at everything we have. We look at the staff schedule. We look at the inmates movement, review video footage, interview inmates, interview staff to try and make the best determination we can as to what occurred. And within each one of those investigations, the previous standards require a couple of things. One, it's preponderance of evidence. So if it's likely that it occurred, then it will be considered substantiated. And it defines that there's unsubstantiated, substantiated and unfounded. Unfounded is that you have to have proved it did not occur. So an allegation like that would be an inmate says that Heather sexually assaulted me on Sunday and Heather wasn't working on Sunday. The inmate had just come in so there's no way they got confused on the day. That would be an unfounded incident because Heather wasn't even working that day. Versus Heather was working that day. We're not able to get anything on video. That might be an incident that would be left as unsubstantiated. Again, you know, with a lot more nuances. So I want to interrupt here just a little bit and ask Eric a question. You said preponderance of the evidence. Is that a lower standard than probable cause? Do you need more evidence for preponderance of the evidence and probable cause? Well, probable cause is when you're talking about evidentiary standards for burden of proof, the tier usually is beyond a reasonable doubt, clear and convincing, and preponderance. So when the evidence is lower or higher? Lowest. It's the lowest. Correct. You usually call it more likely than not. Sometimes people will say, if you think of it as a percentage, it's 5149. You sort of believe something 51% one way, just a little bit more than 49% the other, then that's up in your Jewish preponderance whereas, you know, clear and convincing or beyond is more like a reasonable person could not possibly find the opposite to be true. It's usually the standard, I just pointed out, preponderance is usually the standard in civil proceedings in court. So if you bring a lawsuit against them. It's a lower standard. Yeah. Don't need to snuff proof. Carl and Linda. Thanks for walking us through that. That investigation would look like, let's say the inmate wants to press charges and decides to do so. What sort of protections are afforded to that inmate? Yeah, the PREA standard is required that we do retaliation monitoring. So as soon as an individual comes forward with a report, we start retaliation monitoring, which is assigned to their case management officer or the case worker who meets with them during regular meetings to determine just basic questions. Are you getting any pressures? Is anyone saying anything? Are you okay? And the staff person would be removed from that location, either assigned to a different post or potentially put on RFD, depending on the nature of the allegation. Oh, sorry, really from duty. I apologize, I'm sorry, we're so acronym. I apologize. We will move inmates with the intention being to move the alleged perpetrator, not the alleged victim, because that's bad business practice. Unless the victim wants to be moved. So if it's their roommate, then we would, again, depending on the allegation, that individual would be moved to segregation, pending the investigation, or just potentially moved to another unit. It would depend on whether it's a penetrating sexual act or sexual harassment, so verbal in nature. Okay, thank you. Linda, then push. So I'm looking through just one of your reports on the one that you meet, the standards. And so I just opened up the first one, thank you. The, on this particular one, did you, Northwest State Correctional Facility, did you have to go through the interimmediation process to get to the meaning of the standards? Do you remember? What date was that? This one is July 28, 2015. I don't know. Okay, so the males were in there. Yes. I just wanted to, yeah. The men were. So I don't know. So if you could, and also, you know, posting wise, I guess the remuniation reports are not posted. That status is not posted. You wait for the final PREA report to be issued. So that's the only reports that are posted, the audit final report. Correct. And it also says, and I just want to confirm, so you use the AHS as your investing interview then. I don't know specific, it depends on what you're talking about. So whenever there's an issue, you would go for investigations to the AHS that does that or the Vermont State. A staff case would go through both. An inmate case would just be internal or Vermont State Police. Thank you. Internal being agency of human services or? AHSIU, if it's staff misconduct. If it's staff misconduct. Correct. AHSIU does not investigate inmate and inmate allegations. No matter what the allegations. That would be DOC. Correct. But if it's staff, then it's CHR. It would be AHSIU or if they refuse to accept the case then the department would. All of the department. So thanks. So this is for DOC a little bit. I know a little bit about PREA just because of my exposure, Joint Justice Oversight and those type of things. But a lot of us know nothing about PREA. Oh, we are. Yeah, we are. Yeah, he does. But I think I know if we're PREA compliant in most areas it's a pretty good thing. So my questions and I'm sure I can't speak for the rest of the committee is to try to understand what's going on and learn what's going on and maybe we can spot a weakness that is within DOC that you may not be able to see because you're in DOC or you're in AHS. And maybe there are no weaknesses. But I'm not here to point fingers. I'm just here to try to learn. And we're having these investigations or whatever you want to these questions or whatever through because we have to. Because everything is now on the table. So we're learning and I'm not pointing fingers or don't want to point fingers and we just want to make sure that moving forward we're doing the best we can for our employees, our DOC customers, and for the state. And we're kind of forced in a good way to take a look at this so don't take a whole heck of a lot of umbrage to any questions you get or anything that I'm saying. Now maybe Carl will have a question you want to take. But it's just kind of a personal thing. And then Alice pointed that out yesterday to the secretary that we're going to have a lot of really hard questions because we're learning. And there's 11 sets of eyes and ears that haven't heard a lot of this stuff before. The guys live it every day. So maybe there's maybe something maybe some little thing that we see might help. We're not targeting anybody. We need, as I said yesterday, this is a really emotional issue. And it's incumbent on us as a committee as the policy committee for Department of Corrections to really look at the facts and understand all the moving pieces. And I appreciate what Eric said this morning when he first started his testimony. Your husband on the books, I haven't really looked at it. And I think that is true for all of us. We haven't really looked at it. We've heard from over time that we're compliant. OK, we're compliant. But we've never gone into the nitty gritty. So it's not, as Butch said, to point fingers. It's to be a partnership here to really figure out where it's breaking down, if it is breaking down, or where there are situations that we say, ooh, like we did a little while ago. Why is DOC reviewing this? To really go forward and really look at how we deliver our correctional policies in the future. And that's where we're coming from. And I think it's incumbent on us as a committee to provide that leadership. And in order to provide that leadership, we need to understand what's in place. And that's going to take more digging. And I don't want to mean more digging to point fingers at anybody. It's to understand. Just hearing what we're hearing today, I'm sitting here thinking, oh my god, we're going to have to include Judiciary Committee to help us on some of this. Because there's a lot of legal implications or other parts of statute in the criminal justice system that we don't work with. And we're going to need to bring to the table here. So this is not to point fingers, as Butch says. It's not to put anybody on the hotspot. It's to work as a team to figure out how we can do it better as a state. Kurt? I'm trying to get some sense of how busy you are in the sense of, are there ongoing investigations now? Do you have 20? Do you have two? Do you have 100 that you're now in incidents that you're looking into? Or how frequent are these things? If it's OK, can I just respond to the comments from earlier? From us too? Yes, please, yes. And then hand it over. Sure. We are very grateful that you said that because a lot of the questions that you're asking are concerns that we've had. And what's important to the three of us, particularly, I'm not saying it's not important to Monica, but Chen and I have been working on this for over a decade. And what we have is a unique perspective on what the challenges were in the last 10 years, where we were pushing up against either marketing issues because PREA wasn't always popular. It's very trendy now, but certainly trying to sell it back in the early 2000s. There were some challenges within our own administration in terms of the value of pushing a culture where we are now saying out loud that prison rape is not part of your sentence. And this was a national challenge that was very difficult. So there are people within our department that are still with us, including the two of us, that want you to know what that historical story was because it's going to help flesh out where some of the pain points have been. It's not just settling on directives, but things like literally working in the affective realm where convincing folks that this actually matters with a population that's not usually paid attention to. There is a story behind hotlines in reporting that we would like you to know if you're interested because that wasn't easy for us to get even what we have. You won't find that we are defending anything that we're doing, but more thanking you for asking some questions with regards to the challenges around how all of these tentacles go out and the various places that they touch. And we cannot pass the audits, audits the paperwork. Audits, the checks and balances with our staff. The audit is the pop quiz that the auditor delivers when they walk down the hallway of a facility and ask the staff person, do you understand what PREA is? Tell me what you think sexual safety is for an inmate. Tell me if you know how to report. Asking of transitioning superintendent, they have to go through an interview. If they're a new superintendent, in terms of the questions around 180 corrective action, if they've only been there for six weeks, they may not know all of PREA. Those are the sort of the lower level challenges that might happen in a corrective action period. But really, Jen Sprafki knows every single standard, every single one in and out. We know where we've fallen down in investigations in terms of transparency or wanting to be in the right meetings where we can connect the dots with staff sexual misconduct and preventive measures around training, neither of us or our current commissioner or past commissioner, incoming commissioner is gonna try to defend ourselves in terms of what we're doing. But really, we want you to know the story about how complicated this is because as a state, we all have to be in this. States attorneys need to buy in in order for us to prosecute criminal charges with staff that are committing felony sexual assault. We can't do this without judges. We can't do this without the education components with our partners and victims. The advocacy groups have been working with us for a long time, but believe it or not, that was a sell for us too. These are folks, the folks that are incarcerated have victims and so sometimes it's difficult to support the person who hurt the person you're working with in the community. I won't go on for too much longer other than to say again thank you for making those points about pointing fingers because we really have a story that's important and rich and substantive and we want you to know it. So we welcome all the questions. And I appreciate what you just said. And I think one thing that really stands out for me is prison rape should not be part of your sentence. And I think what people visualize or think is an officer on an inmate, but it's also inmate on inmate. It's all over. And it could be vice versa, inmate on officer. And it's women on men and we forget that as well, that in our minds it's male officers and female victims and the data does not show that. Women professionals, we're holding our own and pulling our weight in terms of allegations substantiated cases and it's not just officers, it's contractors, it's clinicians, it's doctors, it's everybody, there is not one profession that is not in the mix of the discussion of perpetrating and committing these acts. And that again shows what we see in our world, civil world, not our corrections world. Everything that we see and hear about in the outside is occurring within these facilities and it's behind closed doors. So we don't think it's happening, but everything that we experience in our news cycle and our experience is happening in the interactions and people don't want to acknowledge that. And there's a misconception within it. I mean, to drive Heather's point, we had a staff member, a female staff member at the Windsor facility, this was in the news, so I'm not sharing anything that's not public, who engaged in misconduct with a male inmate. She was impregnated. The DNA test confirmed that it was her baby, obviously, and his, and she was working at the time and the state's attorney did not charge her with staff sexual exploitation, which is the statute that Eric referred to earlier. Instead, she was charged with lute and lascivious behavior, she was given a year probation and all she had to do was go to counseling services and then her record would be cleared. And that's how the DOC sees it? That's out of our hands. What did you get the blame for? Well, not, you know, the blame is one, so we're used to that, that's in the news. My role at the time was I then have to work with a staff in that building who did the hard thing. It is hard to report your colleague, not because you want to protect them, but because you are each other's protection. When an incident occurs, you have to count on when Heather's coming, she's got my back. She's gonna do the right thing. And if she's willing to do that, engage in sex with an inmate, she's not willing to do the right thing. So it then comes into question where you have to wonder what's going on. And then when you see the world, you did the right thing. You reported your colleague, because you said that is not okay. And then to, I'm not crying, by the way, it's just because I'm sick. I could get that away from her, but I am not crying. You are that person. Oh, plus, yeah. I know, I know. That they're saying, and then what do I get? Because the world said she was the victim because he pursued her. That was what made the paper. That was what showed in the conviction. And they're left with that. And then what does that say for the offenders as well, as far as their value and their worth? So let's get back to Kurt's question. How busy have you been? Yeah, I'm sorry, you asked that question. Oh, that's great. I mean, it's fine. So we just reported on the 2018 data for the Bureau of Justice and Statistics. And I have to admit, I do not know all of that, but it is on the website. It is posted on that website as far as how many incidents occurred. And within a week, again, it depends on the week, but we can have 20 allegations come forward that does not mean, oh, yeah, that does not mean that they are all sexual abuse. And you might have an inmate that calls the hotline and says, I was sexually harassed. And then when the allegation comes forward, it's that the officer was looking at them and they had written them a DR and so they thought they were looking at him funny. And so that's a disciplinary report. And so that would not be tracked under sexual victimization because the federal previous standards give us very specific language on what meets the standard. But Vermont is also very unique in that because we've been doing this work for a long time, we actually started tracking low-level sexualized behavior. So for example, pancing or pulling someone's pants down. It might be making a comment that doesn't quite reach to the level of sexual harassment, but you know it's on the gateway. We train that in our advanced communication techniques at the academy so that staff know how to address it. Same thing with masturbation. How do you respond to that? Masturbation is a fantastic example in our advanced communication techniques because it's different levels. If somebody's under their covers, is that harassment? No, you don't actually know what they're doing and they're doing the best that they can to keep it private. If they're sitting in a chair in front of the cell door doing it for your benefit, that's a different story. That's an incident that would not be covered under the federal previous standards, but it matters if that's your roommate. And so we address those low-level behaviors and we spent a lot of time training staff because in the world, pancing is considered horse play, pulling someone's pants down. It's not, it's an assault in the correctional facility. You've put your hands on someone that you aren't allowed to do that with. So that's a culture shift to get folks to understand that. And so some of those things are, those are all tracked and identified as well. And from my shop, I work with the pre-coordinators of all the facilities, they track that behavior as well. So you're responding to, can I say this that you have to respond to? Yes. I mean, and you said 10 or 20 a week or something that's not, okay. That's not uncommon, but when you, at the end of that week or in a month, when you kind of whittle those all down, you might have five that were sexualized behavior. You might have one or two that were sexualized. Yeah, I'm just trying to get a feel of how this is something that happens once a month or once every six weeks. They're not, yeah, okay. And it's because there's a lot of behavior and you have to look into it to figure out what it is. Plus there's also the retaliation monitoring, ensuring that the screen tools are being done, ensuring that your referrals are done, following up with the investigators to make sure that they've met their part, keeping track of discipline to ensure that that was delivered if that was the case. So there's a lot of requirements as well as there's a lot to do and training is a huge part. Yeah, I'd like to make one comment because I may know I'm visiting prisons regularly just in my spare time. Yeah. So I also, in preparation for that or in response to it or for putting together the thing which we're gonna talk about this afternoon, we often go to other states' websites and try to find out how to get pictures of the things. Can I find out what they're? And Vermont's is incredibly transparent. It's very, it's easy to, it's a lot easier to find things in Vermont on all of Vermont's state websites than it is in most of the other states that I try to do research on. So I'm always surprised at how easy it is to get information just as a comment. That's very positive. Can I move forward? Felicia. So I'm looking at a couple of the most recent pre-reports, the one I have open is for the Chittman facility. And just so I can understand it properly when I'm going through it, I only need specific questions right now. When it lists the standards that you did not meet as five, and then two lines down it only lists three sections that were not met standards. And then in the actual text of the report, it's listing them as met. How much is this updated based on the remediation that was completed in 2017? And that's how I'm looking at it. It's really helpful if we could actually put that on the website. I'm looking at the time and we're gonna get more in depth and you'll have to come back, we're gonna schedule more time. But it might be good to schedule time that we look specifically at some of those previous reports and go through them as they're all committed. Yeah, because Linda's been looking at it, other folks have been looking at it, and we haven't even gone through what Eric, let's go through it with the federal rules yet, which is really important. So it's not to negate what you're talking about, but I think what we need to do is schedule a time. Sure. Next week, Friday morning, something to go through specifically what we have here for the audit significant on the report, so that we're all gonna say it. Does that make sense to the committee? Yeah, I think it was just a little difficult to understand having pulled it up and wanting to trust the audit, and then immediately seeing discrepancies. I really want to understand why that's there before I kind of start to take issues with the audit. Right? And we need to understand that as a whole committee and you folks need to see what committee members are referring to when they're talking about specific reports. So let's put that on our agenda for, we've got time Friday morning possibly, depending on their schedule, and then we have time next week, we'll figure that out for that. Does that make sense for folks? Yes. Thank you. Eric, why don't you continue? A little bit, Eric. You know, there isn't, you were just mentioning this, but the sort of the way this conversation has gone for the last 15 or 20 minutes or so, you kind of have, by the nature of the topics that you kind of brought into the discussion, there's not a heck of a lot left that I have to offer. Because you went through sort of the investigatory process through the planning response. We didn't talk much about discipline. That's only the last couple of things, at least a discipline of medical mental health care. I mean, I could mention those couple of things. Just so you sort of have a big picture understanding of at least what the standard and the rule said about this means employee discipline or discipline of somebody who's actually committed sexual abuse, but the general language of the standard is that staff, they have to be subject to discipline for violating agency policies regarding sexual abuse and essentially the termination is the presumptive discipline for engaging in sexual abuse. Now, that doesn't mean it's required, but it's presumptive. That means there's a presumption that could be rebutted. That's sort of the legal term, but the presumption can be rebutted by contrary evidence. So presumption is someone commits staff, person commits sexual abuse is going to be terminated. But if there's contrary evidence, you can overcome the presumption. Maybe there's extenuating circumstances that might have been other sort of facts that could be developed or that would suggest that termination wasn't the right response, but it is the presumptive response, essentially at least in the standard. Also, if there's a termination or a resignation, I think this kind of got out earlier as well, for violating the sexual abuse policies that's supposed to be reported to law enforcement, unless the conduct was clearly not criminal. Sure, I'll have to be, but I think that's what the standard said. And to relevant licensing bodies as well, if there's any. Another point about the discipline that I pulled out of the rule was that inmates can be subject to discipline or any action for committing sexual abuse as well. However, it's interesting that, I think, and the correct grammar on this, if I was reading this correctly, the inmate can be disciplined only where the staff member did not consent. Is that right? No, we don't. That's other states. Oh, really? If there's sex between staff and inmates, it's clear. There's no such thing as consent. Gotcha. So that's not enough. Right. Last couple of points to make then would be on the LGBTI lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, gender nonconforming inmates. There's some specificity with respect to the standards on that issue as well. It requires training in effective and professional communication with LGBTI and gender nonconforming inmates. And this is interesting. This is about the reviews after an incident happens. The post-incident review has to consider whether the incident might have been motivated by LGBTI identification status for both stats. That's something that has to go into the post-incident review process. And lastly, just medical and mental health care facilities have to provide timely, unimpeded access to emergency medical treatment and crisis intervention services. And then there's more detail that I'm sure folks from DOC will be able to talk about, but that was the big picture point that I wanted to at least make for tonight. And the audits was the last thing, which I think we spent quite a bit of time talking about already. One thing I hope, if I can add to the medical piece, the reason why that's there is in other states when inmates would be transported to the hospital, they were forced to pay for the exam with the sexual assault nurse examiner. We have never done that, but before we were even complying with standards, we would not have required that. And as far as, to your point, Mr. Taylor, the, we have actually had, I would say if you took a year, at least one incident a month at Chittenden where someone has come in from the streets reporting being a victim of sexual assault that we have, that either has seen a same before they came in with the Sheriff's or VSP or that we have been transported to the hospital to be seen. We treat those folks as well, even though it has nothing to do with an incident occurring at the institution. You used that, the same? A sexual assault nurse examiner. So they're the statewide certified examiners at each hospital that are certified to perform a sexual assault exam. So we would provide services to someone coming in even if they're incapacitated or they're a detainee that's going to court if they report it and they come in, we'll send them. So it's someone who comes in prior to being glory? Correct. We would send them to the hospital because you don't get more of that. So those would be tracked as well. They wouldn't be reported to the federal government, but we would track them. And some other states won't even do that. No. Correct. You know, I wish for folks who are sometimes so critical without corrections in our state. And this is broad for many people, our critical. We've done a lot of work over the years in our corrections policy. We're way ahead of other states. And as Kurt just said, even our website is much more transparent. I wish that people could really put that perspective and give credit to where credit is due. And acknowledge that, you know, considering corrections, we really have a department or agency, human services that's really in the forefront and way ahead of other states. It may not be, there are issues. Not to deny there are not issues in our DOC world, but I think we are way ahead with the comparison of other states. And I think folks need to pat ourselves on the back for that. And that'll always be so critical. One great example of that is our policy on condoms. We've had a directive in policy on condoms since the late 80s to address the HIV AIDS epidemic, where inmates can request through medical to have a condom. Because there's what's against the rules and then there's cue and behavior. And if they request it from medical, medical does not have to report it. It's considered part of medical care. So that a person can be in charge of their own safety. And I know when I went to training with all of the federal PREA coordinators, that came up and Morris Thakepen from the National Institute of Corrections turned around to his chair and said, you do what? And he said, how do you align that with PREA? Because if the Prison Regulation Elimination Act says there's no such thing as consent, how is that okay? And we said, we don't treat it as consensual. But if a person's going to be forced, and this is the ability for them to not contract a sexually transmitted infection, it's our responsibility to give them something they can use. As soon as we have reason to believe there's something going on, then we'll report it and we'll investigate it. But people need to have secure measures as best as they can. Did you have anything else, Eric? Nope, thank you. I'm so proud of you. We're going to take a break and move on to an easier topic. And Eric, I'm going to ask you for some help for our committee in terms of, we're getting also into other areas of judicial criminal justice. Are you seeing that as well? And that's what I'm feeling. Is that from what we've been hearing from DOC and it goes to HR, it goes to state police that can involve some state's attorney that's not prosecuting? Should we reach out to Judiciary Committee, to you folks for more help on this? I think as the, maybe note the specifics as they come along, whatever particular item she think would be helpful to have me or someone else from our team come in and help out, we're happy to do that. I think as you know better than anybody, there's always been some crossover between these committees, right? And the subject matter of what you deal with. And so maybe it kind of ebbs and flows a little bit, maybe more so with some issues than others. But at least as far as this act so far, the one thing in particular that I think maybe relevant to the Judiciary Committee is the language in 3258 or 3257, whatever that statute was, that's on the sexual conduct between DOC employees and inmates, people on probation, 3057. Is that right? That's pretty good, rough stuff in my head. Yeah. I know. That language about how it has to be a supervisory role when the person is on probation for a low, that sort of thing, that is very much a judiciary issue as well. I remember that that statute coming out of there. So you don't want to let them know, depending on what you want to do, you talk about it first, I suppose, right? What do you think about that? that qualification on whether someone can be charged when they're not in a facility. And if you have some thoughts on that, probably you would have talked to people across the hall about it. I had one question. I don't think there was an answer. Is there a definition of rape? It's not rape anymore. It's sexual assault, right? Rape elimination. It seems to me there should be some definition There is a definition when you went through Yeah, I thought it was in the definition section. I thought with the... Right. There it is, number nine. Kind of circular, I guess. But in states that our definition of sexual assault is not rape, correct? Correct, yes. And is our term, our definition of sexual assault broader than the federal definition of rape? I guess I'd want to compare the details of that before I immediately give an answer at the top of my head. I know we've expanded that definition of sexual assault over the years. Absolutely. So it might be worth it to see because the PREA would have to... The PREA would, I would think, and maybe I'm wrong, at the minimum, use the rape definition that's on the federal level but we could go a little higher if we had to for sexual assault definition is broader or would we be limited to the rape definition in PREA? That's an interesting question. That sort of sets the floor, certainly. Right, sets the floor. Can we do more or not? Because I know in some environmental issues where we carry out the federal law we have to do the minimum. I mean, what the federal law requires is that we can go above that. In other places, we cannot. So how does that play in here? I don't know, that may be... I think if I'm understanding what you had said earlier, there are some ways you already go beyond what PREA requires. So I would think similar for this. PREA is what you have to stand to in order to get compliance, not to maintain compliance with the manual certification, not be in danger of losing the 5% funding, but I don't think there's anything in there that prohibits a state from doing more. Not the way I've read it so far. So could you just look and compare the two definitions, the federal definition of rape and our definition in the state of sexual assault and then that may give us just circle back with us on that. Yeah, definitely. One way or another you can go through Phil with sending in or coming back in committee or whatever. Okay, yeah, that's not good. We're talking to us in the hallway. Sure. Anything else? Thank you. So what I would recommend for DOC is while you're here connect with Phil. We have our new person, Phil Petty. In terms of what your schedule looks like, possibly I don't know, possibly Friday morning around 10 o'clock to noon and next week. What times are available for you. And as you can see from today, it would be a good hour and a half, two hours. And who would be the staff person for this? I mean, if we have some, if we're looking in depth here, when we need a legal point, do we need some of them which cancels to also be here for that? I've started, so I can certainly keep covering this. And I don't know that I would be about to bounce back and forth. When witnesses are testifying and I'm not in the chair, obviously we always sort of do our schedule based on where we've got to be testifying. But I will be happy to be here and keep in touch with you about it and keep an eye on whatever. And please let me know as things come up that you think we could help on this or that issue, whatever it may be. Okay, great. We'll figure this out. If you could connect and fill before you leave in terms of what you're, and then we're going to do a scheduling today so we can figure this out. Anything else before we take a very quick break? Thank you. Thank you. So, we're switching gears to something really easy. Oh, good. I hope. I was asked by Jeff Spalding about our capital funding that goes towards UVM and state colleges that it goes to their major maintenance that they can use towards a building construction of a specific building or their major maintenance. Back when I first came on this committee eons ago in 1993 the chair at the time was Bob Wood represent Bob Wood from Brandon. I was vice chair. We in the capital bill for UVM and state colleges have alternated because we only did one year budget spend here. The money was targeted towards a specific construction project at the specific building. We're building a library or building a science hall a science building or a liberal arts building. It was the academic piece. And the money that we appropriated in that capital bill one year the money would go towards Lincoln State Library or Johnson State Library or Castleton State Library. The next year it would go to UVM to the Davis Center or to a new science building and then the third year we'd go back to the state college and continue funding for that specific building. We always had language in those capital bills that those dollars were not to go towards dormant dining. And then I think it was in the late 90s it was maybe early 2000s it got to the point that those dollar amounts that we were appropriating individual construction projects we're not going very far because the projects are getting so expensive. So we worked with UVM and state colleges to say okay let's not target those state dollars in the capital budget towards those specific buildings. Let's see if we can do major maintenance and then you folks can decide do you want that to go towards a specific construction project building or your major maintenance. And we made this agreement that say it was 4 million total that we would allocate the capital bill in the year one year state colleges might get 3 million UVM would get a million the next year that would be flipped. But it would be up to the individual facility the individual college to decide major maintenance or target it towards a specific building. We still carry I believe the language at that point that said money is not to be used for dormant dining. And then I constantly have said this when we've put together the capital budget these dollars are not for dormant dining. Eventually that language never got put in the capital bill all the time. So Chancellor of the state college system was falling came to me in the fall and said you know we have some real issues with our major maintenance within our dormant dining buildings and we can't use any of this capital dollars for this. And we've done some research and can't find any place that limits these capital dollars to the other buildings and not for dormant dining. Doesn't say any place now that we can't use that for dormant dining but you keep saying it with committees so I went to Becky and said can we do some digging and some research here because I was always under the assumption based from when I first came on the committee in the mid early 90s Bob would always said this at the beginning of the committee these dollars are not for dormant dining. So I carried that and it may have been erroneous it may not have been Becky did some real digging between our bad history we've kind of come to a conclusion and I said well I'm not making a unilateral decision I want to bring it before the committee so we can be really clear how to appropriate our capital dollars going forward so that's what Becky's going to bring us up to speak on. It's going to be easy I hope he's going to agree. So Becky Watson and the legislative council it's a simple thing so I think in some I could also not find anything that limited the state funding state capital funding to things other than dorms and dining I did look into the legislative history and I think I see where things started to change and maybe there was a move from having to specifically authorize the general assembly having to specifically authorize capital improvements at the Vermont state colleges and EVM to being more of a general authority but I just wanted to go over what the law says so in statute for the colleges there's 16 BSA 2171 E which is the section that sets out the powers of the colleges and in that section that colleges can make expenditures for capital improvements and this is that shall be applied solely to cost of reconstruction rehabilitation or improvement of existing facilities at the colleges so there's a little bit of a restriction there but again that's not to what the type of building it's just it seems to be towards not building a new building a new construction similarly so EVM does not have that similar section that the colleges do the 2171 on making expenditures for capital improvements they do have a similar section on reserve funds and it's the same language interestingly I heard that this was added in the 2008 capital bill I I don't know why this is the case I talked to our education attorney but the UVM section is divided into sub chapters and for some reason this is under sub chapter 3 for the college of medicine but it does not seem to be specific to that college but I just note that there seems to be some sort of inconsistency there that this seems to be applying to UVM but is in the College of Medicine sub chapter was there any in the capital bill 2008 was there any things specific to the college of medicine? No I think maybe what happened was that it was just added in the capital bill not added as a section in the capital bill not realizing that there had been sub chapter designations of whoever drafted it at the time just probably wasn't aware of that but I just point that out as I'm reading this to be general it is in that sub chapter so they have the same restriction here in F about if they receive state funds for debt service it can be used for new construction and then I because a lot of this is not just a statutory law which was in session of the capital bill which is sometimes much more difficult to track because you have to go through green books. Yeah you have to do a lot more digging into past capital bills so I just wanted to give an example for the colleges of last year's bill where it says the appropriation is it says construction renovation and major maintenance so again here it's not it's actually not restricted to any building it's very general to those three types of uses construction renovation and major maintenance if you go back to 2007 I put another I put I think this is where some some changes started to be made so the way it was in 2007 was that you have the appropriation section like you do here in section 9 like in the money part of the bill and then in the policy part of the bill this language about the spending and bonding authorization in section 40 that's something that you could find going back to the early 90s as you said that said pursuant to subsection 2171 E of title 16 so just as a refresher that's this this section up here so they're saying pursuant to that the general assembly is authorizing the colleges to expend up to a certain amount of its self-generated revenues for the purpose of capital improvements so when you read that now and look at the statute now it seems like why would you need to do that but then also in that bill you can see that there was a change to this section of law and then it used to say which is now struck out that in order for the colleges to make expenditures for capital improvements the general they need to get prior approval from the general assembly so I'm thinking this is where that language originated from and why that was always in the capital bill that sort of authorizing the colleges their self-generated revenues for capital improvements because it used to say that they had to get that approval from the general assembly and that was taken out and I think that's why in 2008 you see the shift of no longer having that authorization and I don't know why I guess you all decided that maybe you didn't want them to have to come back all the time to ask for that approvals and and so again I just gave another example 2005 where there was authorization again and it was in the policy section of the bill it was that similar language and it specifically says they can use their self-generated revenues on housing, dining, and general purpose facilities and then I went all the way back to 1993 and this spending authorization of looking back at 2016 2171 E was actually in the money section of the bill so I don't know it seems like there over time there was a shift from keeping everything in the money section and appropriating specifically for certain buildings to more general appropriations to then not requiring any authorization for spending on capital improvements but all that being said I could not find anything that restricted it I mean this language does restrict it over time we've let go of the language right so the question before us is the state colleges have requested not UBM at this point for the money that's in the capital for major maintenance for them to have the ability to use that for their dorm and dining facilities as well that's the issue what do they do with their dorm money obviously they don't maintain well that's why they want to make a unilateral decision I mean you know they've looked I said there's nothing that prohibits those capital dollars to be used for dorm and dining facilities except what I've been saying for how many years whatever what Bob Woodford said and I carried it through so that's why I went to backing and said can we do some digging here because I was under that impression you know that's the digging that she's done and it really comes to a point that looks like well maybe but I'm not making that decision in the library so we've got to bring it back to the committee Sarah I just have a question what do you think the rationale was behind limiting it in that way do you because they were getting general fund dollars and I think it was connected the money was targeted towards a specific building historically like the Davis Center or like Johnson State Library or the Linden Library it went to that project and not to something else and then the project wouldn't get done well we wanted to make sure it went to that project and those were academic builders and that was the feeling it's part of our state system they were academic builders it wasn't a living building it wasn't a dining room dining room and I think that because our money was going to those at the time our capital dollars were not going to those buildings they were going to the academic buildings like the science building or the nursing building or the library I don't even think it went to a gym I'm not sure if it even went to a gym I might have but I'm not sure on that and then we gradually made that shift to be used and then the college and university system could determine whether that amount that we appropriated went towards their major maintenance but only limited for those academic buildings not the dormant dining room or they could put it towards a specific building if they wanted to such as a library or an academic building but not dormant dining room and gradually we let go of the language about dormant dining room so the question is can money be used for their dormant dining facility as well? Could it have been when that language was initially included restricting dormant dining that they wanted to fund like college existence academia in that space but not the optional housing and meals for students who chose to be residential on campus I think that's less applicable to some of the state colleges like Johnson state college or major now but those campuses are much more closed for residential oriented UDM wasn't but that has been the premise is that now following what you're saying what am I missing here? Could the restriction have been born of a desire to only academic buildings that were necessary to the college's operation rather than what could have been perceived as optional buildings that the college chose to have for students that opted into residential halls and dining halls and that goes back to Marsha's question the paying room and board yeah and do we have a duty to fund the college's operation and does a non-residential requirement residence hall fall into that operation because I know some colleges the one I went to it was mandatory that you stay on campus UDM is not that way I don't think any of our colleges are that way are our state colleges that work are freshmen and sophomore I moved off campus my sophomore year at Johnson I believe it's for freshmen freshmen that's required but for Johnson I mean CCV is a completely different model right not CCV I'm talking about those in Castleton because when I was in Johnson years ago I was on campus for my freshman year and one semester in my sophomore year I moved off campus a lot of people moved off campus yeah so was it because if there's not a requirement to stay on campus then that is not integral to the operation of the college technically in some perspectives and the follow-up question to that is do we need to look at the language surrounding our obligation to fund our state colleges and see if there was an exemption there will that ever be in your general front or the other and you didn't find anything I mean I was looking more for capital funding I didn't I didn't look at the because these are the question I think was more specific to capital improvements is that correct so I didn't look at the general fund obligation like the funding the operating costs I don't know if there's like something specific in our obligation to fund the colleges that exempt those buildings because of their non necessity but why are meant to go to students if that makes any sense it was kind of where it came from and why we did it thought question you might want to do some digging on the general fund side in terms of the monies that we appropriate there for operating if they have any limitations what language that might I don't know yeah although I think I mean isn't the question more of is that that wouldn't be in the general fund right right but if there's language as it connected somehow to the general fund dollars that go there for operating if there's any linkage to other dollars that are appropriate elsewhere via the capital I don't know I just want to cover the basis I'm going to look under every stone and say yeah go ahead I feel like if it was such a prevalent no dormant dining for such a long time had to come from somewhere concrete it's like it might be there not necessarily well it's somewhat connected I think it really is connected because we used to target those dollars towards a specific building and we didn't want those dollars to go to another building at that time I think that's where it's more connected I can see how you bought into it because I know Bob you know Bob he was he was he was pretty sharp on this so you want to just carry it through so it's all your fault Bob I did I did connect with our education attorney on it I can maybe touch a JFO if they've ever heard anything for the budget bill I didn't see anything I looked at the state colleges section of law and I did not see any other even about operating expenses I didn't see anything in statute so I can see if the budget bill has historically ever had anything would be able to help you a little bit yeah I can talk to her about it and Stephanie Barrett maybe do you any insight from state colleges here just how Jennifer is Jonathan Wolfe from Premier Piper on behalf of the Vermont State Colleges and if you're looking back to the general fund and the law going back to the 1960s basically says that the Vermont State College Shops supported in whole or in part and you'll hear this a lot say in whole or in part 50% for the general fund operations of course we're at less than 20% now so when we talk about the funding for the state college system from the general fund side of things from our perspective we would like to see that actually increase even more and help cost and drive down the tuition on the back end on this side of things I think you're actually correct as we were looking into it as well on this side of things I mean the dorm dining questions specifically we were looking into it and we currently actually do use some of we have way more than $2 million worth of maintenance on our campuses and we prioritize them from priority one and we look at life safety we look at security we look at compliance and when we looked at the dorms and dining we were using some of that money for the roof or the exterior stuff that needed to be addressed the bigger ticket items but we also were looking at so electrical and plumbing inside bathrooms and we fixed up with some of this money that we have identified as a priority within the system to address on that first million to be split up and we kept coming back that well we can't necessarily do this because I said so she said so so that was where the clarity whether we could have tried to address some of these concerns as far as dorms and dining fees my understanding some of that does go back into capital projects to pay more than $2 million with the projects that need to be addressed as far as maintenance and upgrades and so forth that we're looking at so that was kind of could we use some of this as we're focusing our campus and prioritize the level of need and looking at the dorm and the dining if we could go there you know and thinking this through I think it was connected because dining because there's room and board charge yeah that's because there was a revenue source there buildings and there isn't for the other buildings but in my conversation with Jim he was talking to me about this and we might have been sitting at a table in two is today when the modern student goes to look at a college the first thing they look at is the dorms the second thing they look at is the dining and student what I would call the student you know they go to oh yeah there's classroom and what's the gym look like so I think my take away on the thing was that you know we really like to use some of this money to fix up the facilities that prospective students see first and something kind of as a recruiting tool to stay competitive with other privates that are going out business but yeah but the history in which certainly wouldn't want to tread on any statutory requirements so my question to you is if it's in the capital bill is that just good for one just for the year of that capital bill so anything that's in the capital bill we wouldn't have to fix if necessary yes and I guess I would say there's nothing otherwise saying you can't do it so it would be good for that to clarify yeah it would be good for that specific appropriation but there's also I don't see anything in statute that says there's a con that that would create a conflict otherwise I mean if you wanted to change statute to clarify it but I just I don't think that I don't think it's something that is screaming to be clarified I guess the decision here yes the capital dollars could be used for dormant dining for both UVM and state colleges we would not have to change any statute and we wouldn't have to say anything in the capital bill either I think it might be helpful just to because it seems like this has been done based on sort of tradition and precedent so if it might be helpful 10 years from now when I am asked why did you why did you change to go to dorms and dining I can look back and I can say well this is the year that the committee decided to do that so it might be helpful to just say somewhere you know that it could be used for that just to have it out there in case there's any confusion about it but I guess what I'm saying is I don't think that it needs to be statutorily clarified I think maybe the capital bill is unique in how it's based on session law so you know if you wanted to start making appropriations more general to include dorms and dining you know it might be helpful to make that clear in this specific appropriation if you wise not to have to call out I mean just make the language clear like you just said for all facilities facilities on campus yeah nevermind so where are we as a committee are we meaning to go in that direction or not I don't mind doing it as long as they don't come back and say you know we put all our money into dorms and dining now we need help with other things because you know there's a limit other folks I would also like to see that we use it for academic and dorm and dining rather than administrative buildings as a personal preference I just wanted to express that but I don't really want to go restricting more buildings well I remember at Johnson State when I was first here the dorm I was in the administrative floor was below the dorms I was in the same building top two floors were dorm and the bottom floor were administrative I have a nice it's going to Johnson right now and when it's going to stay right now so I don't know if that building in town is still used for both Kirk did you have something so one thing I'd like to do is have you work with joint fiscal to come in and see if there's anything in the general fund if we're so inclined to do this I think we really need to work on the language to figure out how we want to structure it and then what I would then lead to is to take a specific committee roll call vote on that language so that at least we have a record of legislative intent and then we have an actual roll call vote so that there's something to go back to that's my thinking what that'll be the taking Alice off the football take Bob what are you talking about I thought I saw the shoes shoes moving careful be careful that your shoes may land on your head here might done does that make sense Becky maybe you can find the general fund thing maybe start working language maybe we can start working on can we get that done by next week should be able to then just circle back we'll schedule you in when we have a time I'm not sure what we're doing on the floor and so I'm taking that to mean to be similar to what like for example what subsection A is here 9A some of money is appropriated to the colleges for construction renovation and major maintenance and then you just want to add something that's general about facilities just to clarify that it is not excluding any buildings right but it has a concern that it's going to be shifted too much to dormant at the expense of the academic and we have construction in there and I thought that could make the word construction out because it's mainly for renovation and major maintenance it depends how you define construction this gets weedy we've got to start with some language towards so we can address concerns by saying that academic buildings are a priority but money may be used for all of the buildings when necessary so that we don't see the shift over we're still kind of giving that money its availability so like you said we're trying to see the problem with that could be they really may need the infusion in the next few years in dormant dining and then it's going to look like it's more weighted and the priority is your academics where does that leave that and I'm wondering if we do something like a report back in the next few years to see the proportion and maybe we get into proportion we do this with BHCB Housing Conservation Board for housing and land conservation over time to meet this certain percentage so some years it may be it's over a sort of three year cycle or something that some years attire more money is going to land conservation than the housing in other years there's more front housing than land but over time it meets what we've put in statute I don't know if that's a way to do it I just one other thought is that I think the testimony was that there is a lot more that needs to be done than there is an appropriation for and so it might be helpful just to get testimony on like practically speaking I mean if you put in some percentage or weighting you know what does that actually mean I'm I don't know if the needs of those buildings are more than other buildings I mean I don't know if there's like a list of sort of the maintenance products that need to be done so it might be helpful to inform that discussion to hear what the actual needs are We'll have to Madam Chair I'm just peeing back on what Becky had said there's the capital appropriation that comes in it's divvied up between the four campuses equally addressed at priority so if you think about all of that you're thinking if there's 2 million in this year that's 500,000 per campus or a little bit less probably so you're not talking about a large amount of money here to be portioned out or split up or prioritized within a weighting system I'd be really cautious on that and limiting the language that we currently have now to address the concern about and we can work on language together maybe it's just for all construction and renovation majors you're talking 500,000 is not going to build you a brand new dorm it's not going to build you a brand new it's going to address the needs of the interior stuff as far as what we're looking at right now those things that we've kind of been hesitant to put up on the priority list but a report pack that might be the way to kind of think about it first few years actually we realize that for the commitment every other year the capital will request and then we require them now to come back and come in with a list I think it was submitted testimony from the Chancellor after the list of all the deferred maintenance projects and I do have a list of where this year's language is going so let's see if we can, next week schedule, if you can noodle some language and then if we can schedule it's going to be harder to get UPM down here maybe, but what's her name? I know Wendy we can connect with Wendy what's her last name? Coleman and if you could let me just have to have here if possible see if we can schedule some time next week with Becky and UPM and Stapologist and really work through the wordsmithing trying to figure it out because I think it was an agreement concept that the money could go to dorm and dining correct I know Kurt has a big question mark on his forehead I would just say there's nothing in statute that says they can't let them do it move on to something else I have a visual eye on it I realize so we're all in agreement it's just how we get there it just seems like a policy decision of the committee of how restrictive you want the language to be you know do you want to allow it only under certain circumstances or do you want to just say here's the money go with it so do you have enough direction in terms of figuring out the language actually I can't put JFO about if there's anybody else with general knowledge if you can get back I don't know you or Phil somebody worked with Jeb I never come in here Phil she had a she had a doctor's coming this morning so she couldn't get it she messed up her shoulder pretty good what happened did she fall off she's got a great story about a vacation trip and she fell off a she based the film fell off a boat fell off a wagon dropped her on it was the end of last session she fell off a boat so she needed to get that looked at cause I want UVM to be in the room as well you had the contact right Phil of the people we've connected at UVM from Danielle I don't recall but I will check the list check the list because we've had UVM in here we don't need the president he is planning on coming I know he is but that's a different story but we don't need the president for this I saw him up from up this week though he has a certainly different yeah I've heard I saw him from up this week I was pretty impressed I was going to turn it off but I'm not interested yeah way better didn't like that can I say one thing that's slightly different next Wednesday from 7.30 to 8.30 in the morning all the presidents will be over at the Capitol Plaza for a light breakfast that you were all invited for so if you want to I put it in your mailbox this morning but they're doing that and since I was here I figured I'd take the opportunity to read about that and then the following week on the 22nd it is CCB's 50th anniversary and they'll be having cake so that's something new 50th birthday what were yours 50th was in 1970 that was Peter Smith was he going to be here don't know I don't think so because President Judy hadn't noted that but we've got there'll be a resolution on the floor I know we have Dylan Dylan we're going to try to keep it there's going to be some students in the building and there'll be some more thank you so we'll circle back sometime next week come again put it in somewhere take an hour's discussion I'm hopeful I don't know what to do thank you thank you okay you don't over there Eric well it's that committee discussion and the schedule that's like catnip to me you should have been here this morning I can't get over how they can have 60 million dollars in deferred maintenance I mean do you take care of your own house I don't I look around my house I don't have a lot of deferring I mean deferring deferring I mean deferring that's true things I really would like to do I was at a meeting well Northern University whatever you want to call it and Dylan was there and they were having a meeting about having more online courses instead of coming to school courses well I went to that thing and I'll tell you those kids they were in that meeting what do you do with the all the money we give you for tuition we pay you $33,000 a year we live here and now we want to dump on us and that meeting got so out of hand it was unreal and Jeb just kind of sat there going well I think all of our campuses are expensive I don't think any of our colleges whether state colleges or private or new to the pressure today declining enrollment and either funding I mean three in southern Vermont there's been a lot of them and they're having they're actually having to give higher discount rates to get the students because it's so much more competition to which is a point our colleges are under extreme duress it's interesting that we haven't done a tuition reset so we don't have to give such extreme discounts which it's been on our bail out yeah so so I'm at committee discussion time just to kind of check in on you know it's the second day of the session it feels like seems like a month see where we are as committee members on the topics we have quite a discussion this morning we have an update on the capitol bill on the commissioner in yesterday what else do we do secretary smith I just wanted a time to check in and see what people are thinking what's come to the surface for some of the committee what what we should be looking at oh Mary it's for you no it's for butch no it's for butch no it's for butch no it's for butch no it's for butch it's from the ACLU it says all is forgiven it says you're right on it I see it I see it why'd you screw up at my house what would you tell I was gonna say it's John saying you told who I hope it's not from it's for you it's for you even if I was breathing would you like to do that from a secret admirer saying no don't do it oh there's a card oh it's all the card maybe it's for the committee you okay maybe it's from a committee member I'll turn away while you're reading the card very nice you must be happy you told us Eric's out of the loop he doesn't know yet I'm out of the loop on a lot of stuff yeah you can tell what's next I mean muzzletop what are you gonna put up with her no I don't know that's the first thing I tell the husband when I go home I'll take your picture I'll email it to you and you can send it to John oh yeah I was this time no his first question was so John must be feeling good I'm gonna say okay get in the game I don't want to be lost smile you're in you should be in the picture be in the picture it makes you more interesting his happiness Alice we need a picture of you the flowers. Yes, we do. So, John, can I have one? Why can't you have another one just like it? This is called committee feedback. No, she said to John, I'm number one, don't forget. It's so embarrassing. Well, no, it's not. It's just starting. It's just starting. But I don't want it to be like this. Well, you don't have a choice right now. You're not in control. You know that? You're not in control. It's all good. Yeah, it's really good. We're out of here. I got it all over here. There you go. She's gonna put it right in your face. Alice. Alice, I'm pretty. Be haze. Those are pretty. Kurt has got the right attitude. He's wearing a strong face. Kurt's not looking. They're bigger than me. They're pretty beautiful. How bad did that picture come out? Lovely. She's not got it all in place for now. I didn't get a lovely one there else. Oh, I got a good one there. That's not good. I can't believe it. Oh, that's great. See, that's great. Alice, that will mean the world to me. And you've done a lot of captain's deeds as Chris did upon that scaffolding. These are gonna be a serial. Let's get to the numbers in the end, don't you? Yeah. That could be it. Yeah, that is it. I said you went for it. Oh, my God. Tell us how it goes. Put these back up for the note in your face. But I think there's some of the scaffolding on my head. That was just so embarrassing. You didn't have to do that. They were gonna mess with you. I know, I've been out on a plank before. I don't like it. I've been to that little bucket here about somewhere. That's great. You should take that up for my buddy, Dash. I am not gonna be out now. I just... Are you crazy? Are you crazy? I'll be careful. No! You start to shake and then it starts to shake. Don't you dare. I would start to shake. Oh, there we go. What? I can go straight on. No! I'm only access to you. No! We want your announcement in ahead of Lieutenant Governor... I've got that longer than he has. Those mirrors? No, I guess somebody's gonna stand up and say something. Just in there. He's about 20. Jesus. You've got a refrigerator. Did you see that page on the ground? No, I didn't. Oh, my God. He was bringing me here. I just wanted to see him and all the sounds out in China. I wonder if so. I thought I'd turn it all in. No, you know. What? Just emails. That's a 400-year-old. Thanks. The sound was on just now. If you weren't getting married, how old were you? 65. Maybe we ought to send him some kendo. You guys want to send him flowers and kendo? You know what you got to put up with? No. I think he knows what he's getting into. If we don't buy now, we will. I love Eric's reaction. What? What's Chris's reaction? I should probably save that information. You probably want to see his face. Yes. It's lovely news. It's not what I was expecting this morning. March 7th. March 7th. Is it really March? No, I know. We're inviting 180-plus. No. And we're all very small. And we're all going to come up and premiere buses. Yes. I'm not dead yet. Oh, my God. Oh, no. That was so overwhelming. I know. I was thinking that on the way in this one, how overwhelming it was. I saw those buses turn in. I just knew it was hard. And it was pretty teary. I saw that. Where are you getting married? We're looking at a restaurant down in Rockingham. It's a small venue. We can always pour a wall of the dorm and dining all at once. It's got a really nice kitchen. There you go. And now Snick is going to be the justice. Wow. That's great. Poor Phil is so new to this. Why is it scary? Holy cow. Yeah, now what? Family wants to donate 2 million pounds to me. We all get that. Yeah. I've already spent a million of it. That's great. We used to get those all the time. My relative has passed away. Are you going to bring this money? No, I haven't heard of text yet. Oh, you texted me, right? Yeah. I need your help. Thank you so much. Great. Okay. Phil, did you get a question? That was really helpful. Can you answer me a question? Oh, um, how are we going to... What just arrived? Maybe you should go back and read it. Maybe it's from another job. Where do you go? What just arrived? I took a picture and I wrote to him, just arrived, and then he writes back, what just arrived? I love grand. Are you kidding me? Maybe you forgot. Is it another boyfriend? The sensory room in Springfield is being built out in the case worker office. You tell me that that's not... Okay, so it's not in A. It's not in A, it's just outside A. Do you know where the one is in CRCF? No, I don't know. Huh, okay. Is there another job? Dear? He was juggling it. I think there's another job. Did he not get the picture at the same time? He did. I know. Is it just arrived? What just arrived? And then I just sent him the other picture and he's holding it. Anyway, let's get back to the joint decision. It's hers. It's mine. What's the status with Woodside? We don't know, but we're not going to know. What's going to happen with Woodside? Is it a secret? No, it's going to be a long process to figure it out. It's beyond this committee. It's going to be what? Beyond this committee. It's a policy decision in terms of juveniles and where they're going to be held. And it's an issue that... I said the flowers are pretty cool. But it's some juvenile detention part of DOC. Isn't that our policy? Well, no, it's DCF. Woodside is under DCF, not DOC. And then this ties in to juvenile going points and it ties into youthful offenders. So there is a little bit that we're going to get involved in, I think. I don't know. On the house side, Women's Services Committee is going to be the hub of Woodside issues. And they're going to... Judiciary will be working on it as well because you're going to be dealing with youthful offenders. And then everything... Of course, the juvenile delinquents come through the courts. And, you know... You've got to figure out if your census is going to be four or five kids at any point in time, where are they going to be held? So they're going to be in a hotel room with somebody in somebody's office. I mean, all of these kids are going to have... They need to be placed somewhere. What's that somewhere going to be? The decision is made. Also, appropriations will be involved in this because the budget address from the governor will include zero for Woodside. The fact of July 1st. Well, we went through this with the Windsor correctional. So, you know, they zeroed it out in fact of July 1st. But then it got extended six more months before the facility was closed. Same dynamics could happen here in Woodside. The other piece that we'll play in, we don't know we'll have to start in the house because it will really be a decision in the budget. And they do the general fund budget for FY 21. I think I'll put any money in Woodside. That's another piece working with the Human Services Committee. So some of that is out of our daily work. And then you've got Senator Sears who's really involved in this too. So there's forces out there in the building that we're not going to stay in control of. So we're not going to know. We're in a way to seek. Which then impacts if you look at Woodside for Secure Residential. That's in terms of policy but in terms of institutions and construction and things like that. We can't reallocate the money until we know what we're doing. We can't go forward with Secure Residential if that's going to be one of the sites to know. And we're not going to know that until May. We're not going to know that until May term. Because what's going to happen is we'll have a proposal from our Patients Committee upstairs for how much money from Woodside for FY 21. It could be for 3 months. It could be for 6 months. It could be for 9 months. Then you've got the policy piece in terms of where they're going to go. How many do they have in there now? I don't know if we have today. Do you have any changes? So those are policy questions that are out of our purview. Because when I talk to Ken Schatzman over here in December and he says that only happened one day. So I just wondered about how many were in there. Well, if there was a situation there in December where there was a juvenile two juveniles what, 15 and 16? Yeah. They entered into a grandmother's house and they were being charged as an adult. And they were housed at Woodside depending on it. They're charged as an adult. So then where we come in on a situation like that what they're thinking is well maybe they could house that juvenile rotten correctional facility that would be separated by sound and separation. Sound and sight separation. So my question is do we really want our juveniles to be driven to a correctional facility? Yeah. Look at that one from St. John's Rary that was at Woodside. They raised so much havoc. They put it in I think rather than I mean that's maybe where we get involved in something like that if they're going to be housed in a correctional facility. Maybe where we get involved. But we don't have a decision. We're not part of that policy decision per se about Woodside and whose house there. But those decisions are going to have real ramifications on how we move forward. So we don't know. So it's really important to pay attention to what happens in the hallways. A lot of thoughts. I don't want to put them out right now. Does that make sense Kirk? Yes. So it's a big we don't know. Just say it when we close to answer. Is here today gone a month? Basically. So I had a different question. Are we done with Woodside? No. You know I noticed the JFO presentations this December. That there was some special remarks made about DOC's budget. And so what about the special remarks? They always and I remember last session Kirk had said looking at DOC budget. We got to see a little bit of that. I don't know. I know there's a lot on this committee's plate. But I noticed it just because you know there's a talking about that how that budget is and with justice reinvestment and some of the policy stuff that's probably going to be recommended and seeing some of the preliminary recommendations that some of them are around finances and budgeting. Would it be helpful? I would, if we're going to tackle that it would be helpful to better understand DOC's budget. We can try. It would be good to do. I will just every time we have really gone into detail because they don't have a great way to present it. They present it in the world of appropriations and we don't understand that presentation. You know when Stephanie Barron comes in here it's a different world who can't follow it. He can't follow it. And Matt is gone. Matt he's gone. I moved to a private job. They're in turmoil. I know they are in turmoil. This is not to add to the turmoil it's really just to be able to be a step ahead of some of the decisions that we're going to be faced with under funding. And put it down. I mean JFO, I don't know if JFO can put it in simple terms because what we've had in the past they just give us the documents they give upstairs. I don't know if it would be worth it to have Mary come in. Mary Hooper, who's our Mary? I am. It's me and Mary. I wonder Mary is an appropriation she knows how to I wonder if you two sat down and Mary you're talking Mary Morsy and you you're talking Mary Hooper? No it's Mary Hooper and maybe me and Felicia. Maybe if you two and Mary Hooper sat down. Could we ask Mary to give us a presentation on the DOC budget in a way that we can understand? That may be tough for her to have that amount of time to do that. That's why I'm thinking if you two reached out to Mary Hooper and said hey we really want to understand DOC's budget can you help us figure out how we can do this. I've also got to reconnect with energy and technology to make sure I'm not missing anything on the integrated eligibility because I was a liaison up there as well. We're going to be looking. Dan Smith is coming in this afternoon. Maybe you could let Tim Bricklin know that we're taking testimony from Dan Smith. I think that's Thursday afternoon. That's tomorrow afternoon. Let Tim Bricklin know that. That's committee assistant. I do. I can't hear that. Who? Steve Whitaker. Oh Steve Whitaker? That's right. You know he mostly sits outside of this restroom. Wait. What are we doing with him? Nothing. Dan Yale's notes as committee assistant for energy and technology and technology. He's trying to track. I don't know if he's caught anybody else yet but he wanted to track down our committee to discuss why we hadn't done the sound renovations yet. We're going to get into that. We're going to get into that. You ought to have a better idea. You let us know yesterday. You let us know yesterday. We're working on it. He was in the chamber right after I got there yesterday morning on 7.38. Pulling out microphones. He was? Yes, claiming for the world to hear that we weren't doing our job. Good. We'll be able to find out if we're doing our job or not from the outside. So what else are folks here inside? The inside. This afternoon after the floor, Kurt's going to give us a present today. If we get off the floor? I think we are today. Tomorrow maybe, I don't know. I tell you so far we've been annoyed to pay female lead behind us and then we'll have a better feel. I don't know if she's ready for the senate to go and be a little variety. Medical monitoring? Just to have some leverage. Was he doing that? No, my feeling that I got yesterday from folks is it's going to be a little while. On the medical monitor? On the area of the folks. Kurt's going to go over this afternoon with us about all the story that he did. How much time do I have? Five minutes. Where are you? What was the feeling? Because we weren't sure how long we were going to go on the floor. If we're off the floor quickly and we come in, we'll start with you. And then, this isn't on the schedule, but it just came into my mind. Phil and I, and I think which we got an email this morning from the government operations about reports, maybe we could just quickly go through that. That doesn't involve, that's where do we still need these reports and do we repeal them? And we can do that this afternoon. So if you can get that document posted to our webpage and then we can quickly just go through that. Because that doesn't take too much because we have to report back. I think that's by the 15th of 17th. Just get that off our plate. The other thing too, I haven't heard of anything yet. If there's anything in budget adjustment upstairs in appropriation that impacts our world, we might be receiving something from approves. Out of state, that's, we'll have to schedule that in real quick. The retreat? They're upstairs right now in health care. They said they wanted to close a quarter of the beds. Well, that's why we need to ask at least Sarah and somebody else. Sarah. There's somebody to talk about this. Yeah, we had just for information of the process. Nothing we can do. Well, if we start taking out the commissioner, we're going to need somebody here for the retreat. Absolutely. He's upstairs. He's upstairs. So, what did folks feel about this morning's testimony? There's a lot of loopholes and in those loopholes some of our inmates are definitely falling into them. I should also think it will be important to hear from other than DOC. The advocates who work here. Yeah, they work here on Friday at 10. Friday at 10. Where are we? Yeah, we just work that through from all the way. From whom? The women's network, whatever it's called. It would also be good to, you know, you talked about the sort of the kind of notification network that you alluded to that broke down. It might be good to hear from some of those folks, too. There's no rights. Well, I think one thing, too, that was interesting was the culture. You know, what they said is the culture of sexual abuse and sexual offenses is very different than if you get assaulted in the face. And that's how I have to report it. And that's true outside of a correctional facility. So, when you're dealing within a correctional facility it's even worse because you've got somebody who's got power and control over it. You're being, you know, but I think it is important to find out. And I keep saying we need the balance here. Are those sexual offenses that occur within the male facilities being reported to the advocates to process rights or whatever? Is that also being reported or not? And to understand what happens when that is reported? What's their standing and how does it look like? Would we be able to hear from the prisons of Bungsman not talking about kind of a general take of her or his you know, what's coming to him or her? The who? Priam Bungsman. Bungsman. I believe there is, I think, in reading some of this that I think there was there's supposed to be there's supposed to be specifically Priam Bungsman. I believe so. I haven't had a chance to read some of that. Was it in the rules document? It was this morning. Now the federal rules. Was it the federal rule piece? It's got to be. I believe so. And then, you know what, that may be the gal that I was talking to this morning. Here? No, she's with the moderation. Right, but they may be acting as a general. They actually, it's a creation of one. But who does it go to now? It could be someone like someone in the DOC period because I was thinking when Bungsman would be a step back from, yes, which is important to hear. So the conversation that occurred in the hall at our break with the DOC folks and Phil and myself was when the DOC was saying, you know, there's so many different parts of the Priam that it would be really good to break down those different parts. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to do a bigger overview with DOC and then break it down. I said, let's start with the auditing because there's many members that are looking in those reports and I said, let's start with that. And I've asked them to send to Phil, Butch and me those breakdown topics that they deal with are part of the Priam and the start was just having them do that broad overview and then get into the auditing. And we can do that next week. But on Friday at 10 when I have the Women's Network in it because they're the advocates the diva, the domestic violence folks who are going into the women's facility, they are not going into the male facility. People are just thinking it's only the women. And it's not. There's a lot of male, male inmate who goes on sex is powerful particularly for folks who are males who are sex offenders particularly pedophiles. I mean they are preyed upon in the correctional facilities by other inmates. I mean let's be honest about it. I think it's also disproportionate that they're party reporting how much attention they're giving to children and not looking at the severe laps at some other facilities. You know, my point is if this thing happens in a male facility maybe it's focused. Yeah. It is happening. It is happening. I'm not going to deny it. I don't know the specifics by any means that's happening. Look what happened down in Windsor with the male that was fraternizing with an inmate and it was in the papers you didn't see anybody sitting in a commuting room screaming and yelling I don't remember anybody doing that. And that was pretty serious. So, any other thoughts? I'd like to look at the training of corrections officers. Can I say something to that? So I've been sitting here for a long time wondering why every time that I say you ought to be training corrections officers at our state training facility and not off on the boondocks somewhere. And I get this bunch of bull crap saying well we can't, they won't accept us it's too difficult it's out of the way but now they're where St. John'sburg Linda and they were down in Waterbury and whatever so they're up there training under their own supervision without looking nobody else oversight of and they're on the criminal justice training council they're on the government's committee they had their well Heather is I think Vice Chair which is in Pittsburgh and I'm not advocating this for Pittsburgh but it's a statewide training facility that has capacity and we've heard, I've heard we don't have a cell down there big deal they built an indoor shooting range they built a takedown facility in a Pittsburgh and they built that takedown facility they did it under me so those kind of excuses don't cut it and they're living in rented facilities in London, they don't have on-site housing so all those arguments are out the window other than we just want to do it ourselves well they were also when we moved close down the Dale facility in Waterbury and moved the women to Windsor they took over that space complex for training and then when Irene happened they moved out training is definitely an issue but I think hiring and recruitment is a huge issue too and then when I did my little summer study program this summer all I heard from over and over and over from the CEO was we're just getting killed by overtime and they don't have the time to see their families and they know who wants to do that and then you can't really this afternoon this is short notice but we've got we're probably going to have more time this afternoon than we had initially thought maybe you and Kurt could also talk about that because Kurt you did some shadowing of correction officers so you know just in the same with you Carl because you did some real work would you see this and we can have those conversations this afternoon talking about shadowing Sandy Hoskin you should go shadow for a day and I won't wait in that Sandy look at you and me nobody's ever going to think that I'm going to be a correction officer you're going to be a correction officer so maybe shadowing is not the term she's but it was a good thought but the house so I'm sure you were way more convincing than I may have been I don't think anybody was so is it lunchtime? yes what was it?