 on House Government Operations Committee. We're jumping into this a few minutes late because floor went a bit longer than we had anticipated this morning. And we have a couple of witnesses with us this morning who have tight time constraints. And so what I'd like to do is welcome them to share their thoughts on S-124 first and then we'll go through some of the other folks who've got a little more time. Just for context here, S-124 contains a number of provisions that are related to dispatch and EMS services. And so that's kind of the areas of the bill that we're gonna focus on here. But of course, if witnesses have other thoughts that they'd like to share with us, we'd welcome them too. So I'm gonna start with Dan Batzi, the EMS director or chief at the Department of Health. If you would share your thoughts with us. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I'll be honest with you, I've had very little time to review the S-124. So I don't have a deep testimony to offer you here today. I've only done a very cursory review of it and I've apologized that it was sort of handed to me last minute. However, I don't see any major concerns from my desk anyway. I think probably my best role today here would be to answer any questions you might have or to respond to the concerns that you're bringing to the table. All right, committee, any questions from the Department of Health standpoint? It doesn't give us a lot of context to jump into here in terms of asking questions. So if you're able to hang around with us for a few more minutes, I would appreciate that. Thank you. So I understand that Chief Morano of Wilmington only has a bit more time to be with us this morning. So Chief, if you could unmute yourself and share with us the thoughts that you have on the bill. Well, thanks for hearing me today. You know, we have a little list of concerns about the dispatch component of this bill. And the invoicing of dispatch services to local communities from the state. We have a couple of concerns about the bill right out of the gate. We in Wilmington have our own dispatch. So we dispatch about half the time here. We do seven days a week, eight to five. And then at night, so to speak, we switch over to state police dispatch. You know, our concerns are with the two kind of notice of intent to invoice that we've got from DPS, they actually charge us for our own work we're doing, meaning the call structure that they're charging us for. Currently the way it's set up, we do about 57% of our own dispatch. They cover us about 43% if it's broken down by calls that generate incidents. And that's how DPS got that billing arrangement. My understanding is that they are gonna take this into account, but I notified them of that issue back in February, meaning we would actually double pay for work we're already doing here locally. We would also pay DPS for that. The other concern I have is that this was presented to us as a way to fairly distribute the cost of state dispatch to its users. However, looking through the invoice list, there's really a large number of municipalities that will not be invoiced. And it's interesting to note the ones that will be invoiced are mostly towns that have their own police departments. So the towns that are locally funding police departments which reduces the burden on the state police and the state budget are getting hit now with invoices for having police departments. Now I can speak kind of to Wilmington quickly. We're kind of in the middle of a rural area of Wilmington. I think out of the six or seven surrounding towns, only one other town has a police department down here. And none of those towns I noticed were being invoiced for their calls or the dispatch services that the state will provide them. And that is information that's readily available through our computer aided dispatch service program that we run, which is called Spillman. A lot of agencies including DPS are on it. So that information is readily available. But for some reason we're not seeing that. My other concern is. Thank you, Marissa. And we are very limited in police resources in Vermont and everybody shares resources and does agency assist and helps each other. One of the things I'll point out is that Wilmington PD kind of situated surrounded by rural areas does a lot of agency assist calls to the state. You know, on major events, we move to these calls to cover those calls until the state can get there on scene because we're a little bit shorter response time. So my concern is that we're going to get for a tit for tat kind of situation where do we start billing the state for those calls? The other thing I would point out is that Wilmington has large sections of two state highways, route nine and 100, route nine being the main East West corridor through Southern Vermont. And we cover a lot of collisions and issues on these state highways. Is that something, and this has already been brought to my attention locally, is that something that as part of this bill, we will start to invoice DPS for, for maintaining those roads, keeping them open, handling the collisions on it and those sort of things. So I really hate the idea that we're going to get into this kind of realm of how we can all invoice everybody else in public safety to try and recoup our budget. You know, we have to be able to work together in this state. There's just too few resources. Thank you. I don't know if you have this data available in front of you, but I'm just curious to understand from the perspective of a small rural police department, what kind of budget impact are you looking at relative to to what you're currently spending on your eight to five dispatch? So it's a graduated invoicing system they have set up. I think it for Wilmington, it ends around maybe 74,000 per year. But I can tell you that that will be a significant impact to our overall budget. I would estimate that somewhere at the top of my head, maybe a 15% impact, 12% impact. You know, maybe substantially more in there for our overall police budget here. Thank you. John Gannon, you're muted. Thank you. Thank you for testifying Chief Morano. You forwarded to me a letter did August 18, 2020 from Captain Burnham. And it attached dispatch, a dispatch fee work worksheet. And so the, the total for Wilmington is, I believe, 78,000 plus dollars. And so that included both calls that, that the Wilmington police department dispatched as well as Vermont state police. Is that correct? That is. And you've raised these concerns with the Vermont state police. The numbers are inaccurate or include. Wilmington police department dispatches. I have as early as in February of this year. And more recently with Captain Burnham from the state police. And that's, you know, I've been advised that we're going to look at it and, and try and make that more fair and equitable. But that, but that's only one portion of the concerns here. Yep. And chief, if you know, if you were to be charged the 78 plus thousand dollars a year. When the full fee is starting to be charged to Wilmington. You know, how will that impact how the Wilmington police department will be able to provide services. If you know. Well, wait, I mean, there's already been some suggestions about how we are going to try and come up with that money in our budget. You know what. What corners we could cut locally. But one of the suggestions would be that we end our on call time meeting. When the officer goes in at night Wilmington PD is a 24 hour agency. So they call us out to come back for complaints. But you know, one of the one, but again, if we do that, then it just pushes that burden back to the state police to respond to those calls. And pushes a larger portion of that onto their budget. So, you know, it's kind of a tip or tat here and I, and I, you know, there's no, no easy way for us to come up with $78,000 per year in our budget. It just isn't there. So one last question, just so the rest of the committee knows, there used to be a Vermont state police barracks in West Brattle Borough. And now it's in Westminster. How far is that from Wilmington? And how long does it take a call to be answered by the state police? It's about a half hour to 45 minutes, depending on traffic and weather conditions. Thank you. Committee, any other questions? All right. Chief Humphries, are you, are you prepared to, to speak about the dispatch fees so that we can stay on topic or should we come back to you at a different time? I can speak or I can take questions. However you want to do it. Well, I would love to hear what your, what the impact will be to, to your budget and, and how you're currently achieving dispatch in Fairhaven. We currently used a BSP out of Westminster prior to the consolidation. It was out of Rutland. I guess I'll start out with a direct quote from my select board as of yesterday. If we have to pay that, he will no longer support a local police department. He advised he wanted to local police, but at the fee that's being proposed to us, they would have to rethink that. The fee that we got quoted was $112,000. My total operating budget is right around 325 to 350. So that would be one third of my total budget. In that fee, it appears, I've talked to Captain Burnham and the commissioner at length. In that fee, it also includes our. In that fee. In that fee. In that fee. Cases that we start our own in our office. We've pushed over the last 16 years that I've been chief to. Document more and more to try to keep our data on. In check. And so I've actually even had the animal control officer now using our spillman system to document loose dogs. So if it resulted in a hearing in front of the. Select board, we would be better prepared. Because I don't have a full list of people who are in the space. So I can't say that's the case. But at least it doesn't take me away from the fact that I've been charged $18 a finger for employment. I have my clerk now enter them into the CAD system to keep track of everybody we fingerprinted. We also do overweight permits for our town. And I've had my clerk enter those a better tracking every year. If we look at one's ministry or not issued. So based on the number they gave us, we had 2115 calls times 53 was $112,000. just to out of business or to a two-man police department. I could see where we cover 16 hours a day, five days a week versus 20 hours a day, seven days a week. As a Wilmington, we also do on-call. Our towns is looking at a $6 million sewer bond. As you know, each $10,000 you add is a 1% tax increase. I see our budgets getting voted down or school budget went down this year. And ultimately, how can I argue with a select board if they say we're gonna cut staff? I've gone back and forth as simple as this morning I sent Captain Burnham an email. We had a 911 hang up at the grade school. Ended up being a medical call, not a police call. Under the scenario they're given, so fire or for EMS and police got a case started. Is that $106 for the day? In our case numbers, we do crosswalk. We list them as directed patrols twice a day. So again, is that $106 a day for us to do crosswalk to make sure our students get to school safely? It seems kind of absorbent to go by calls. I think there should be a better formula that needs to be looked at. Call volumes is arbitrary. We have cases where a dispatcher arbitrarily enters a case for our zone. It might be Castleton to echo Wilmington. And I said this to the commissioner was we go to Benson to back up a trooper and they start agency assist case. So now we're being charged $53 to go out of town and help you, not that we mined. I mean, we have a great working relationship with the state police and we will go anywhere in the state to help them. But it does come down to tit for tat. Do we charge a minimum of four hours at 67.50 an hour for going out of town? Our contract rate for other towns and we do law enforcement. And again, we don't want to get in a tit for tat but I just, from my standpoint, our department being as small as we are will be done. I mean, we won't be able to do what we do. And again, I've pushed for better reporting. We've pushed to take as much responsibility as possible off the state police to cover. My thoughts and my select board thoughts is we already pay taxes for that dispatch center. And then we created a police department to address our own problems instead of relying on somebody else. And I guess that's where we think it's unfair that Benson and West Ave and other towns outside pay that same tax rate, but they don't have a police department. This has been going on and on. I mean, Benson trained a constable. We trained them, we put them through an FTO program. The first time they use the radio, that constable got a call from the state police that you can't use our radio system. But they want better policing and they want to handle their own problems. And this was probably five or six years ago. But again, Benson pays to that dispatch center but then when they trained a constable they couldn't use them. It seems like it's top dollar. I know when I talked to the commissioner, he said that 43% of the time was under municipal time. So my thought would be if we have to pay, would there be a reduction in staff? If we all left and went to another agency for dispatch servicing, would you cut your services by 43%? I don't think that will happen. Our rescue squad currently is barely hanging on. They bill Medicaid approximately $240. Now, every time they go to the call, they're gonna have to give their dispatch center $53 of that. Our rescue squad is teetering on the edge of being done. And this is just a further tax or a further burden on our communities. Committee, do you have any questions for the Fairhaven police chief? Marsha Gardner, you're muted at the moment. Let's see if we can get you unmuted. Oh, I hear you. Okay. Sorry to jump on late. Thank you to the two chiefs that we just heard from. Richmond is in a very similar situation. We have our own police department. We have been told that we will be charged over $50 per call for dispatch. And our police force spends a significant amount of time up on I-89 dealing with issues there for no compensation. And I know we have a great relationship with the state police, but at the same time, it seems like we're being charged for one thing and we're offering assistance where we are not receiving any kind of compensation. Thank you. Jim Harrison. Yeah, thank you, Chief Humphries. Concerned about the incentive this might be placing on the town to either reduce your small staff or do without, and if the town chose to go that direction, what would happen to response time and coverage for incidences that you get called out for now? Any idea? Well, I mean, right now, if we were disbanded today, it would all fall to the state police or the town would have to make a decision on who that they would contract with another town, contract with the sheriffs. So I couldn't tell you what the town fathers would do. Ultimately, if you took our 2115 calls, it would be dumped right now back onto the state. I do have one more thing that I forgot that I wanted to point out if I have a second. Yes, absolutely. When I got the fee structure and I've asked and it's not been clarified, if you look at Brandon Police Department, they're proposed being charged $45,000 a year versus our 112, they have eight full-time officers. And I just can't see where the difference is that we're that much busier than Brandon, which has a larger population and more staff. The only difference I can find is they're using the Valcor reporting system and we have stayed with the state police to mirror them for better information sharing, we believe would be the Spillman reporting system. And mostly all the Valcor numbers are entered by their own officers. So I don't know if there's a disparity between Valcor and Spillman. No, I haven't really gotten that answer. I don't know if Captain Burnham could answer that or not or commissioner. So chief, maybe a related but unrelated question. Obviously one option would be for the town just to increase its budget by 115,000 or whatever the number is and increase the local tax rate as a consequence. Now, but it seems to me, Fairhaven had a little difficulty passing a school budget this year. I'm just wondering if towns people in the area feel like they're at the breaking point with property taxes or would just be considered a different issue? I don't know the ins and outs of what happened with the school bowl but I think it took three times maybe. Well, some of their issue, some of their issues sir was the actual school bond they were trying to, the initial vote was a $60 million bond. The second time, I don't believe the bond wasn't in there and it still failed. So I guess I couldn't speak to why but I do think we're at a breaking point. We are one of the poorest communities in the county in the state. I think we have high water bills. We have an aging sewer system. Again, we just took out a $6 million bond to replace our sewer plant and then our water bills have gone up. We're looking at a local option tax at 1% that they're gonna be voting on and try to offset the sewer. If that fails, everybody's sewer bill will probably go up $60 a quarter. So if you add 112,000 on a $300,000 budget we're gonna be now pushing that, where 450 range for a four man department when you could go to the sheriff's and probably contract for three. I mean, where would you go? Our department will, I'm predicting drastic cuts to our department if this was to go through. Okay, thank you. Committee, any other questions for either of the chiefs who are with us right now? All right, I am going to invite Lieutenant Burnham to speak next. And unless he should feel like he's, the skunk who's being invited to the garden party. I just wanna acknowledge here for the assembled group that what we have right now currently in the way of providing dispatch services around the state is a complicated mosaic. And some communities are getting a good deal. Some communities are getting a really sweet deal. And some communities are paying for their own dispatch services because they have recognized that that's what they need to do to meet the needs of their communities. And so I think as we look at the issues around dispatch fees and the fairest way to assess the cost of dispatch, we just need to recognize that not only is there a difference between one community and another, but there's a difference within communities, whether they're paying for some dispatch, maybe they're paying for police dispatch and not paying for fire and EMS or they're paying for it with two different entities. And so it's a complicated system right now. And so thank you Lance Burnham for being with us and please share with us your information. Thank you, Madam Chair. You kinda stole my thunder there. That was a very accurate depiction of really what Vermont is facing with our dispatching service throughout the state. I wanna recognize that I've heard both chief's concerns and I've had conversations with both of them. And we are in the process right now of reviewing all those numbers that both chiefs have expressed. I'm meeting, I'm going to be meeting with hopefully most of these agencies in person to make sure that we have these right numbers. We understand that it's, there may be some discrepancies and we're certainly willing to work with those agencies to make that right. And that is starting. As a matter of fact, I'm meeting with two departments next week. But I think I wanna touch on base one thing as you said, Madam Chair, the biggest thing, this is not designed of Commissioner Sherling's destructors, not designed to be a revenue generating portion for the Vermont State Police. This is designed to cover our costs of doing business for our agencies to cover dispatching services for these local municipalities, local fire departments, fire and EMS. The fees that have been assessed or will be assessed is strictly to cover the incremental costs of our dispatchers. This does not include supervision. This does not include any overhead that the Vermont State Police currently does. And it does not include any administrative tasks that the ESP currently provides. So I think that's very important to note. This money that is being assessed is not necessarily a revenue generating service for the Vermont State Police. And as you noted, I live in LaMoyale County just to share some discrepancies as to where we are. I currently live in the town of Cambridge. We have a no law enforcement other than the Vermont State Police. We have a volunteer fire department and we have a volunteer EMS. We are dispatched through the LaMoyale County Sheriff's Department. Currently, our town of Cambridge pays $113,000 to LaMoyale County Sheriff's Department for dispatching services for no full-time agencies and only for volunteer agencies. I can look at my bedroom window and look over the mountain and my very next town is under hill. Very comparable to the town of Cambridge when it comes down to the fire calls, EMS calls and stuff like that. But because they are dispatched by us through the Vermont State Police, they receive that dispatching service for free. Now, that is the equity issue that we're trying to solve throughout the entire state. Why is it that one town pays nothing yet the very next town pays $113,000? And as you mentioned, Madam Chair, that's a statewide system. It is out there, LaMoyale County has a very complex way of charging. Berry City has a very minor way of charging. St. Almond's PD, who also dispatches for other agencies also has a very unique way of charging. So when we have actually started down this process, we wanted to be as transparent and equitable as we possibly could. I've been in this position for just about a year now. This is not new to the Vermont State Police. We have been talking about this for, I believe, almost 12 years. We have been going down this road. And Commissioner Sherling, as you may or may not be aware, has a very robust plan of modernizing the Vermont law enforcement. And this is in line with his fees. I don't know if the committee has the fee structure. Does everyone have access to that? And I'm happy to discuss all of that. But it wasn't the $53 that we had chosen was just not a number that we just randomly came up with. We came up with how much does it cost to run both of our PSAPs through the Williston and Westminster Barracks? We took the average number of calls for each agency that we do dispatch for. And that's where that final number came up from. I do not anticipate that to change. I've heard it a couple of times where people are worried that they're going to get charged $53 from here on out. The number that we have projected and the commissioner obviously has a right to change that. But that will be the flat fee that will be charged throughout the process. I think I'm here more for questions and I'm happy to answer those. But I understand the situation is we are more than willing to meet with any agency to make sure that this gets done as smoothly as processed or as smoothly as possible, but also as fair as possible. I'm happy to meet with anybody who thinks that their numbers are inaccurate and we will make sure that they get billed accordingly and accurate. Jim Harrison. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Lieutenant, for joining us this morning. A couple of quick questions you mentioned, the unfairness when you have neighboring towns that might be similar in some respects and are paying different services for dispatch, whether they're getting it free from state police or hiring a regional service to do it, which they might think is, perhaps, I mean, obviously it's a choice they made. So they might think they're getting more for their money. I don't really know. I'm wondering with all this duplication that we have going in, if we've looked at maybe the state police just doing all this not have these various places that are kind of duplicating services, especially in the same area. I think I understand your question and I don't know if it's my connection or yours. I think I only heard a little bit of it, but I think if you ask the Vermont State Police and please correct me if I'm wrong, are you asking if does it make sense for the Vermont State Police to take over all dispatching? Yes. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm trying to look at how can we do this efficiently? Paying for it's a different question, whether we pay for it with income taxes or what arguably we're doing now or whether we do something else, but have we looked at how do we do the service that we all agree needs to be done statewide and efficient as possible? And it sort of begs the question and your example, you got two neighboring towns using different services. Right, so there are communities out there and there are counties that are looking at countywide dispatching services. I know Chittenden County is aggressively going down that path, the biggest issue that they're running up against is the financial cost of that. That's going to be a tremendous amount of money just to get that up and running, either through hardware, through computer systems and through radio communications and things such as that. I like that idea to be honest with you because it keeps everything localized and you get people who know the area and are dispatching for that one particular area. But I do feel that that is a, to say it's a long-term goal would be, would say that it's potentially there. I think it's a very long-term goal if it's even doable financially. For the Vermont State Police to take over it, you would have to increase my staff by three times of what we would have. Currently, we dispatch for 101 agencies. That's fire, EMS, and police. I have a staff of 88 people and we cannot keep up with what we have right now. And that sounds like a lot, but you also have to take into consideration that my two PSAPs also does 911, which out of my Westminster barracks, I'm probably averaging 200 calls a day. Out of my Williston barracks, I'm probably averaging 200 to 250 calls a day. And that's above and beyond the dispatching services. Okay, thank you. I realize that there's not a simple answer. I just, we're 625,000 people. We're a small city and we have, and I agree having a local dispatch center certainly has advantages, but at what cost? If we were Greater Albany, we would have one dispatch center. Boston has one, I'm sure. There may be a backup, but so I just throw that out there. The other question I have more specifically to S-124, I'm a little bit confused. There's these proposals to implement fees right now to various towns or cities. And then there is a proposal in 124 to initiate something over three years or not begin for three years. So do you have existing authority to implement fees now? I mean, usually fees go through the legislature. That's why I ask. Yes, Title 20 allows for the commissioner of public safety to implement fees for the services that the dispatching provides. I believe it's Title 20, section 1871. Bob Hooper, are you waiting patiently? So do you have any specific comments? Oh, sorry, Jim, go ahead. No, no, I'm sorry. My connection is awful. So, Lieutenant, do you have any reaction to what's in 124 in regards to a three-year delay? I believe the three-year delay is in direct line to the regionalized dispatching services, not the fee structures that will be coming from the commission. Okay, thank you. Bob Hooper. Thank you again. Captain, if this fee structure change goes through, do you anticipate adding more positions? I would love to. I would see that I don't believe that's in the cards right now. We just added four positions last year. It was very difficult to get those positions. And I don't foresee a need right now for more positions. I mean, obviously, if you want to give them to me, I'll take them. I don't know. It's not where we're going with this. Right, so my thing is though, is that we, for a very long time, we were running a shortage of dispatchers just through hiring practices. It takes almost, I want to say six to nine months to get a dispatcher up from the time of hire to the time where they are effectively able to dispatch on their own. It takes a very long time. We are now in a position where by the end of this year, we will be very close to full staff and operating much more effectively. So then over time, it's not a problem. So the money that is going to come in, I got confused when you started to say that this was money that was going to come in was not going to basically offset anything. So this is basically just back funneling the department's budget. I don't know where that money will go. That's up to the commissioner representative. I don't know if it comes to DPS. That's above my pay grade. All I know is that the fees that were designed, were designed based solely on covering the fees of the dispatchers. That's again, that's an annual seller. I understand that. And to Jim's point about regional dispatching, your answer to that is exactly the argument was used to not go to the two central PSAP. The local dispatching was the way to serve the communities better because people that were sitting at the microphones knew the environment that they were dispatching to. Thank you, Madam Chair. John Gannon. Thank you. I'm first a question for Betsy Ann and then a question for Captain Burnham. Betsy Ann, could you please clarify section 17 of S-124 as to what it applies to? Sure, hello everyone. For the record, Betsy Ann Rask, legislative council. And if members have access to the current S-124 annotated strike all, you could see that current language about the authority for DPS to charge rates on page 23. And it is the statute that the captain site in 20VSA 1871 in that subsection I, which currently provides that and I'm quoting that the commissioner of public safety may enter into contractual arrangements to perform dispatching functions for state municipal or other emergency services establishing charges sufficient to recover the costs of dispatching. What S-124 would do is go on to say that the commissioner would be required to adopt rules that set forth the rates for dispatch functions performed under this subsection. So I think the idea was an overall setting of what rates would apply when the commissioner or the department charges for dispatch functions that the department performs. And it was that rule regarding the rates that has that three year rollout. I think if there wanted to be a, if the general assembly wanted to state explicitly that DPS shall not charge anything for dispatch in for three years. I think that language could be strengthened regarding the transitional provision that has the three year rollout which you can find in that section 17 that you reference representative Gannon that starts on page 25 of the strike all because the rulemaking is in regard to the dispatch rates themselves, which I understood to be how DPS charges for the dispatch functions that it performs. But I think, so I just think there should be clear there could be clarity in the language about whether there should be a complete there should be no charging of dispatch rates for three years. Betsy and just a follow up question. Doesn't typically the legislature set fees? It typically does. Here was, you can see on that bottom of page 23 though is that existing statutory authority to charge for dispatch function it performs. So if you did want to stop that completely from happening until the general assembly was able to set the own it's the rates itself, for example, how DPS would charge, you could do that in law. Okay. Thank you. Now I have a couple of questions for Captain Burnham. First of all, thank you for indicating that you would reach out to the various police departments that have concerns and get back to them. But I also had a question based on a question that chief raised, which is Brandon's numbers odd and I'm looking at the chart. I mean, Middlebury has 16 staff. I don't know if they're all law enforcement officers, but 16, they have a very small number of calls based on that 484 in their charge would only be a little over $25,000. So you're also going to look at towns that seem to be outliers with respect to low costs to make sure that there isn't some discrepancy there. Yeah. So if you're looking at the dispatch worksheet Middlebury also has their dispatchers, they have their own dispatchers. And these are calls that were generated through Spillman alone that were generated by our agency. So that's why those numbers are lower. But so if we... Has already testified that the Wilmington numbers include both Vermont state police dispatches as well as Wilmington dispatches. I mean, we're a much smaller community than... I'm sorry, can you repeat your question, sir? Sure, but, you know, Chief Morano has already testified that the numbers for Wilmington include both Vermont state police as well as Wilmington police department dispatch. Right, and we can correct that. I plan to meet with Chief about that. We are only, the intent here is to charge on the agents on the cases that came through our PSAPs and were started and generated through our PSAP. If there was a case that was generated while the chief had staff, and I don't wanna speak for the commissioner, but I'm in line, I believe I'm in line with what his thoughts are. If it was generated by their dispatch, we should not be charging for that. I mean, we have two, as I said this week, next week I'm meeting with two agencies just based on that fact alone. Okay, and I know you've sent a letter to all law enforcement agencies around the state. Are you gonna follow up just to make sure that you've corrected any discrepancies that may exist in the data as you learn more from various people you have one-on-one meetings with? Yes, absolutely, and I'm also, and as I said, we have, we dispatch for 101 agencies. If you look at my letter, I've asked the agencies to look at the data, review the data against their own, and if they feel there's a discrepancy, please reach out to me and I will do that. I appreciate that, but you also note in your letter that some people would already be shared concerns and you didn't get back to them because of budgetary constraints and staffing levels. So I'm just concerned about whether that's gonna become a problem with respect to this second effort. That was a meeting that was set up by the agent, by myself and commissioner Sherling to meet with the agencies that had issues. The reason that meeting did not have is because of COVID-19 restrictions. We were not allowed to get together during that time. So we continued to do this work of reviewing this data, hence why we sent the letter out. And one more question is, towns that don't have police departments, they're not gonna get charged at all. Is that correct? Correct, because they're being charged, they're being covered by the Vermont State Police. Can you explain that? I mean, why wouldn't they be charged? I mean, you're dispatching that. We would be charging our own agency. The towns that do not have their own law enforcement agency would be covered by the Vermont State Police. So we respond to those calls, we dispatch for ourselves and we would be essentially charging our own agency. Well, you could charge the town. I mean, you're charging Wilmington and we already pay for a police department and dispatch services. Well, the fees are for dispatching. They're not necessarily because of the incident, the fee is to cover the dispatching work that comes out of that. But there's dispatching work that comes out of every town. Correct, but through statute, we have to cover those towns. So when the Vermont State Police responds to those towns, the dispatchers are currently paid through the state of Vermont and those are covered through the Vermont statute. We are responding to those calls. With the work that comes from the local municipalities that do not have their own services, that is what is being charged as the fee. So, as a Slack board member for Wilmington, what I'm hearing you say is, perhaps we should just get rid of our police department because we'll save a lot of money and have Vermont State Police do it. But I just, I don't think that will be good for my community. I mean, I agree with you and I can't say that any town that wants to get rid of their police department is not good for the community. But then you're making a decision based on financial respects alone. If that might be financial feasible for your town, but to put that pressure back on the Vermont State Police, I would say that the service that that town would get would be severely diminished. I would agree, but it seems your fee structure is pushing towns to at least consider that option. The fee structure comes to you? The fee structure is designed, as I said in my opening statement, is designed for equality throughout the entire state. Okay, thank you. So I wanna ask a question just following onto what you just said. And I understand and respect the idea of trying to achieve equality across the state. But I think that raising revenue on the property tax is not a very equitable landscape across the state. And I'm wondering if you considered just doing this through your normal funding streams as opposed to putting it on the back of a local property tax payer who may or may not already be paying for local police services. Are you asking if we've looked at, I guess I don't understand, did we look at keeping operations the way we're doing them right now? I'm just saying if we collectively decide as a state that it's important to provide dispatch in a central way through the Vermont State Police, why would we not pay for that through general fund appropriation as opposed to putting it on the backs of local property tax payers in this really unequitable mosaic of impact? Because for the very reason that we have right now is that we have certain communities that have, and again, I'll use the model just cause I'm so familiar with it. They have a very trigonomic filing fee to be charging which was set by legislature out of a lawsuit many years ago because there are other agencies out there that are already charging. We are not the only, excuse me, we are not the only agencies that are dispatching for everything. As I said, we have probably off the top of my head, 15 agencies out there that currently dispatch from multiple agencies and they have their own set of fees. To set something statewide would set all the work to the Vermont State Police. Bob Hooper has his hand up patiently. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm actually kind of asking maybe the same thing that you just asked, but it seems like this is an elaborate dance which just essentially is a tax shift because you collect the money from the facility, the towns that want to service. It goes into this telecommunication fund. You're then authorized to use telecommunication fund to support the activities of the department and then you send in a budget request for running the department, which has to be diminished by the amount that you took in from other sources. Doesn't seem like you're walking very far down the road here, it's probably above your pay grade but it doesn't kind of make sense to me at this point. Well, I think the design around here is also the amount of work that goes along with these dispatching services is there. And if you look at the average numbers, if you have the fee structure there, sir, it costs the state of Vermont to run both dispatching and I'm talking just the dispatchers. I'm not talking about over time, I'm not talking just their basic salary. It costs the state of Vermont roughly $2,266,000. The revenue that we will be generating through these fees just through their agencies covers maybe a third of that. It is not designed to pay completely our overhead to run the center. It is designed to assess a fee to those agencies that use our services for that period of time. Do we, I don't know this, maybe Alexa does, but as a town council person, when the snowplow drives down route X that happens to go through Wilmington, do you get a charge back for plowing that road? Public service sort of thing. Getting more and more puzzled by this. Thank you, Madam Chair. Kim Harrison. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, captain, I apologize if I called you Lieutenant. I was confused on titles this morning. So I'm curious, you may not know the answer to this, but are this anticipation of dispatch fees built into your budget that we're about to probably pass this week for the last three quarters of the fiscal year? No, it is not. Okay. So this might be something you would consider for building next year's budget, but which hasn't been built yet. Correct. And this fee, this has been sent to the community saying that the commissioner intends to send this out in fiscal year 22. In a tiered phase. Okay, thank you. When you say tiered, you mean, I think so, but what do we mean by tiered? So what we mean by tiered, we understand that for me to go to say Wilmington PD and say, hey, you now owe us a hundred and some a thousand dollars, especially during these times is not, is not probably the, it is not the best thing to do. So what the commissioner has proposed is that year one, we will collect 25% of the overall value. In year two, we will collect 50%, year three, 75. And then after the final four year, we will collect the whole 100%. Okay. Thank you, sir. Marsha Gardner, we need to get you unmuted. Good. We had you for a moment. Can you hear me? Now we can hear you. Thank you. I am sorry for any technical issues I'm having. For towns that have the state police as their primary source of policing enforcement and do not have their own police force, do they get charged a fee from your department for policing those towns? Do they pay anything? No, no. If they have a fire department and or an EMS, then yes, they will be charged a fee through them. So this is, I'm sorry. And not for policing the town. Correct. They will not get a, they will not get a assessed a fee for the policing. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other questions from committee members? Great. We have in the room with us this morning, Dan Dickerson from the joint fiscal office. And I'm going to ask Dan to help us understand a bit more the complicated mosaic of how we achieve dispatch across the state and its fiscal impacts. Hi everyone. Dan Dickerson from joint fiscal. I will say to you today that I'm coming into this discussion without a whole lot of background knowledge. So I think I can answer a few of your questions or I can, I can give some information, but I don't want to muddy the water or I don't want to risk muddying the water. So I don't want to say too much and then step on the toes of public safety. You know, I'll just say that when I was told about this bill, I quickly sent off some questions to commissioner Sherling as far as, you know, is the department already charging some sort of dispatch fee? And if so, you know, are they actually let me, let me look at the questions specifically. Yeah, I asked if they were loving any sort of charge already and if not, does DPS have an estimate for the aggregate cost to provide the service? I got a big answer that they're not charging the fee currently, which I think you've already heard. And what they're looking or what the costs are currently, it's about half of the operating costs of the PSAPs. And I did receive that in FY 20, the cost of the operating PSAPs was 7.2 million. 6.4 of that was general fund and 850,000 was interdepartmental transfer, I think primarily from the universal service fund. And I've seen the spreadsheet that I think they've been working from as far as the four year phase in of the fees. But, you know, one question that I have and I don't know that it's been answered since I've been listening this morning is, you know, if they're to start charging these dispatch fees, are they looking to replace general fund or are they looking to add additional revenue? And that's not clear to me at this point. But, you know, as far as their calculations, I mean, I've seen what they're doing, I guess, you know, structurally it makes sense. But I, you know, I don't wanna speak to, I guess the policy decisions that they're making, you know, I'll just speak to the numbers and, you know, it looks like their calculations are, I mean, you know, they look reasonable to me. I guess that's all I'll say right off the bat and I'm happy to try to answer questions. Many members, any questions? All right, thank you, Dan. It's an interesting learning curve here trying to understand the complicated patchwork of dispatching around the state. So I'm gonna appreciate you diving into this with us. Actually, I do have one other little thing I just thought about that I'll add. I know somebody raised the question of, you know, whether it's common for the General Assembly to delegate authority to raise fees. And there are some instances of that, it's pretty rare, but a couple of examples I can think of are the Department of Forest Parts and Rec can raise state parks fees through rule. And then there is billback authority granted to, I believe the Public Service Department and our, and it's billback authority for, I wanna say some projects that they review, gosh, like solar projects and renewable energy projects. If they spend time reviewing them, they have some authority to bill back, which it sounds like this is somewhat comparable to that. I mean, it sounds like what the department is looking to do is bill back, but those are just a few instances that I thought of where state agencies can levy, I guess, a fee or a charge without the General Assembly setting that charge, but that's all I have. Thank you, that's helpful. I'm interested in the perspective of the League of Cities and Towns. I see that we have Gwen Zachoff with us today and would invite you to share your thoughts on this or other sections of the bill. Can you hear me now? Yes, thank you. Hey, sorry. Gwen Zachoff for the record, Vermont League of Cities and Towns. The League has no position on the dispatch portion of the bill, so we really don't have much to add. I think a lot of the narrative has already been expressed from the prior, by prior testimony. The reason we don't have a position is because we have half of our towns that sort of pay double and half that don't pay at all and some pay some more in between. So we have a lot of members who feel very strongly about the system not being equitable and not being fair. And so therefore, we can't really choose sides on this. We love all of our children equally. I think the most important part of this from the League's perspective in terms of dispatch is having transparency in the fee structure and having there be time for communities to adjust their budgets to adapt. I think that the three-year, having three years in and having it be ramped up sort of in a tier structure sort of makes the most sense if it were to go into place. But beyond that, we don't really have much of a position other than the timing and transparency aspect of it. Great. Committee members, any questions for Gwen? All right. I think I'd like to hear next from Drew Hazelton, the EMS Advisory Committee Chair and help us understand not only the position on dispatch, but any other thoughts or concerns you have with the bell? Great. Can you hear me? Yes. So as far as the dispatch component that you've been discussing, we've heard a lot about the effect on law enforcement, but there is a significant financial effect on some of your local first response squads and ambulance services. So as this fee structure goes into effect, some of the people that will be assessed are nonprofit organizations that are raising all of their money through fundraising dollars. So our first response squads, those people in your towns that are getting to your houses first, are volunteer and most of the time are fundraising the majority of those dollars and are gonna be hit with some pre-sizable fees compared to their total annual operating budgets. Some of the first response squads are reporting 25 to 50% of what they use annually to keep their services running would be going through these dispatch fees. So just keep in mind as you have that discussion that there are first response squads that are gonna, and ambulance services are gonna be negatively affected by the dispatch fee structure. As far as the rest of the kind of the EMS bill, the EMS advisory committee has been looking at workforce development and the challenges that are facing EMS in great detail over the last couple of years in our quest to put out a thorough and accurate report to the legislature and found some concerning trends with our workforce and turnover in our workforce, which is what started our quest for additional education funds and building a more robust EMS education system as well as creating a system where we can bring people into these first response squads a little easier. So components of the bill, trying to remove administrative burden from small services. We talked about making licensing easier for services we looked at increasing the instructor to work later positions, the people that are actually hosting and holding classes as a way to create a better education structure. So we're glad to see that's in the bill. The Vermont responder was in response to our smallest first response squads creating a level that would get more first responders on the road. So the licensing language and cleanup language that are in the bill are things that we were supportive of and certainly worked with the Senate to get kind of the language right. So after reviewing what you guys have in this version, I think the advisory committee is pretty pleased with what's in front of you. Great, thank you. Committee, any questions for Mr. Hazelton? All right. Next, I'd like to invite Patrick Malone to share thoughts on S124. Okay, am I on? Yes, you are. Okay, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to comment on this bill and also my apologies for not having a video link. And what I wanted to comment on was to kind of reinforce several of the specific issues regarding EMS education that Chief Hazelton just previously mentioned. I'm the director of the initiative for rural emergency medical services at the University of Vermont and I'm a member of the State EMS Advisory Committee. I think one of the most significant issues we're addressing globally here is some of the crisis in EMS regarding personnel. And in my view, and I think the bill reflects this, several of the solutions surround educational issues. So I'll list the four that I think this bill will really, really address. And please keep in mind that this bill was developed before COVID-19 and the stresses on the system that it has caused. The first one I think that's important is to formally structure the EMS Education Council. This bill in other sections address law enforcement training and fire service training. Up until now, until this proposal, EMS has not had a similar entity to promote and support education of EMS providers. So that is key, I think, for the other three points I'm gonna mention. The next is EMS instructor levels. Our instructor levels were established back in the early 70s when the EMS system was formally established, actually the one instructor level. EMS, like everything in the world, is increasingly sophisticated. Probably the most recent example from kind of a clinical standpoint would be learning more about an emerging infection like COVID-19. The other is dealing with changes in education and educational technology. Let me tell you, I've been an EMS education for 34 years and trying to do things online with Zoom and everything else. It's just about killing me. So I think the idea of instructor levels would be to enhance the instructor or educational cadre by providing additional training and experience and recognizing individuals as they gain that experience with higher levels of responsibility. So the establishing the instructor levels is critical. The next is the section that addresses the alternative to psychomotor skills testing. The issue there is the logistical and administrative burden that evaluating people in a subjective way on their psychomotor skills, the effects it has on all aspects of the educational system. Many other states have alternatives to this and this particular language coming up with a method of it being evaluated during the program by the licensed course instructor would help solve that. It also would put EMS in line with other professions where the evaluation of skills are important. For instance, athletic trainers and nurses here at the University of Vermont have their skills evaluated during their course of study. At the completion of their course of study is where they sit for their written certification or licensure exam. So it would put it in line with that. Finally, and Chief Hazelton mentioned this specifically an entry level certification for emerging medical services in Vermont, which in my view of this, it would be specific to Vermont only. It doesn't mean to anyhow subvert or change the national registry of EMTs, which is kind of the national, more or less the national standard and one that I believe is fundamentally sound. But it would give us a chance to take advantage of other training programs that individuals in Vermont participate in. And probably the most obvious of those are the folks that work on ski patrols and have their certification through the National Ski Patrol Association. Other things like Wilderness First Responder, other training programs that we use and lots of aspects of life in Vermont to kind of pick and develop a program from those things to have a simple entry level for especially for a community member that has limited time for training and education. And maybe they just they're seeing if this is a compatible endeavor for them. That's all the comments I have. I don't know if anybody has any questions. Thank you for helping us put that in context. Committee members, any questions for Patrick Malone? All right. Any words that folks didn't get in at the time we were on a topic that they wanna come back to because we have just a few minutes left here in our committee discussion today. And I wanted to invite anyone else who had a last question or statement to share that with us. All right. In the interest of using this time well, I would like to open this up to a little bit of committee discussion. I think we spent a fair amount of our time this morning talking about the dispatch sections of the bill. And I wonder if we could open that up for committee discussion about how we move forward in a way that seems fair and equitable to our communities. Jim Harrison. Yeah. Thank you. Last week, we heard that there were some interest in the commission. Can you hear me? We can now. Okay. Sorry. Is this an issue that ways and means should look at and amend or should we do this section on the dispatch fees? I suspect if we don't, they will but if we want to accomplish this in a way that achieves a policy objective, such as predictability, fairness, equity, then this is certainly a good discussion to have in the policy committee. Okay. Thank you. John Gannon. Thank you. I guess one of my concerns about the dispatch fees is even though they had heard concerns before, they still put out a spreadsheet which had inaccuracies in it. And my concern is even if they do what they say, which is reach out to towns and try to fix some of those problems, there may be other towns that don't have it. I wish there was a more collaborative approach of setting these fees and figuring out this problem without the Vermont State Police dictating what apparently the fees will be for each town and fire department and rescue squad. And I do think that the General Assembly should have some input into this process. I mean, just to make sure that towns and communities are being charged accurate fees. And I really do also worry about the fees being charged rescue. I mean, they can't just go to town, necessarily and increase the property tax. So they're gonna have to eat this in their budget somehow. And we already know that rescue squads across the state are struggling as it is. So, I mean, I just have a lot of concerns about this and worry about moving too quickly to setting fees for FY 22. Thanks John, Mike Merwicky. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanna follow with the thread that Representative Gannon just shared with some concerns about increasing the pressures on rescue squads. I'm not aware of across the state how they're doing, except from what we hear from Drew Hazelton who heads rescue in Wyndham County. And I know the challenges are formidable and we have talked with Drew since the start of COVID over various ways we could help just to help them keep the doors open. And I'm concerned that if we're gonna add pressure onto that, there's not gonna be good outcomes there. So I'd like us to take a little bit different look at that. Thanks, Mike. Dan Batsy, did you have something you wanted to share on that? Yes, thank you. I just wanted to add and concur with the testimony that was just delivered and with Representative Merwicky as well. The challenge of rescue is that we have no means to generate tax revenue. Most agencies bill on a fixed structure. They're paid a fixed revenue from Medicare and Medicaid and anything else is really not returned. So they have no flexibility. They have no capability to go out there and say, we're gonna raise more taxes. There are some agencies of course that have that relationship with the town but by and large across the state, most of the agencies that we see are dealing with simple insurance revenues and those are fixed. But this is a big challenge. And as Drew Hazelton mentioned a moment ago, it's in a time when these agencies are in a very precarious place. Can I appreciate that? Rob LeClaire. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I have to say I agree that this is absolutely an issue that we need to take a look at. I'm concerned that the timeline may be a little quick, although some people would feel that we're trying to kick the can down the road here. Along with volunteer EMS, we got volunteer fire departments as well that most communities have. And having been a member of one of those for many years out there doing boot drops just to raise the revenues that you need. But now also representing a community. I mean, Berrytown, our dispatch costs are I think somewhere north of $232,000 a year. I recognize we're probably a large user of that but there really is a fairness and an equity issue to this that I think we really need to take a look at. I would certainly be in favor of us looking at something maybe a little broader because there are communities that don't have EMS or law enforcement but still get coverage whether it be through state police or some other entity that if I understand this formula correctly may not end up being required to contribute. So I would certainly support a little broader look at this not strictly just from VSP but also recognizing that we need to at least next session, I suspect way into this more. Thanks, Rob. Any other comments from committee members? Go ahead, Hal. Thank you, Madam Chair. I like the idea that Representative Harrison proposed about how do we look at ourselves as a large city as a state and we come up with a 21st century funding process and center. So we have the efficiency should have with one center. I think that's something to seriously look into as we move forward. All right, any other questions, comments from committee members? All right, I wanna thank all of you for joining us this morning. And I believe you will wanna take a peek at the committee page. There are a few folks who have submitted written testimony not necessarily on these sections of the bill but on others, take a peek at those in the little bit of bonus time that you have right now, hardworking committee members. And we will be back in committee tomorrow morning at 8.30. So do feel free to reach out to me if you need me between now and tomorrow morning. Mike Marwicky. Madam Chair, just to give the committee a little update on what Representative Colston and I have been doing to try and usher the OPR bill. We did meet with Ways and Means this morning and they approved the bill that we brought to them 11-0. After this committee, I think at 2 p.m. we're going to appropriations. So hopefully we can keep this moving and get it back to our committee so we can send it to the floor. I don't know if Hal wants to add something to that but we worked hard this morning. Lots of moral support for sure. Great work. Thank you committee for your great work on that. And hopefully we can get that shepherded to the floor pretty quickly. Jim Harrison. Yeah, just as a FYI, the Senate concurred with S233 as we sent it back to them. So that bill should be on the way to the governor. Excellent. Good news. All right, if there's nothing else, committee have a wonderful rest of your day and Hal and Mike, good luck in appropriations this afternoon.