 So the recording's on, we have several areas of the budget adjustment that we've been digging into a little bit, so we'd love to open it up to you in any discussion. Jim, do you have some thoughts? I didn't say I wanted to talk. But you always go first. Interesting enough, I just saw the FNM commissioner in the hallway and he said, I'm headed to Appropriations to talk about the judicial transfer for, I said, well, you go ahead and tell him. You're waiting for Hauskopf to come up with a recommendation. Finance and management. So I don't know that he's going to say those words, but that was my advice to him. No, I think you went through that laundry list, most of it's pretty much that we would agree with except for that area, whether we make a recommendation. And the other area is whether or not we want to entertain with Mike Smith, Secretary Smith said he asked for yesterday. Is there anything else that we're loose? Well, there's four issues. Five issues that are flagged that we need to make sure this is done. And are you supposed to introduce the building because somebody just came in looking for it? Oh, yes, I am. Sorry, I said my piece. All right, sure. Ron was. Okay, good. Thank you. Is that your blend, though? I did that last week. Anyone else have burningly thoughts or concerns or statements they want to make about the budget adjustment conversation? Looking at. Yes. I remember a few years ago, and I had to check and see how many. I believe the workman's content section for state employees was primetime. So an outside company takes care of this. And I guess I would like to know how much involvement they have, what the oversight is into their accounting principles, or at least to issue some kind of statement from the committee saying that even if companies or sections of state government are outsourced, there is still a responsibility for overseeing their accounting principles. I would say it's really concerning to me that there was such a wide swing from surplus to deficit. And I don't feel like we've seen a full accounting of exactly where that came from. Somewhat ambiguous references to administrative costs not being accounted for doesn't really explain it. Well, that's the whole permitting part of the administration process over the course of three years. In addition to the reduction, kind of your response to the rate of the whole thing is unbelievable. So let's pause on this issue because Representative Gina miraculously appeared moments after we asked him to come and enjoy it. So we were just launching into a different discussion and we thought it might take a few minutes for you to get here, but we are glad that you're here and we're doing just a 15 minute on each of the bills that is on our wall. And I understand that you're the prime sponsor of H-464. Yeah, so I prepared a little presentation. It should be about seven minutes. So I don't know if anyone wants to tie me, but it's 150 for the record, so I will begin. So this is Brian Sheena. Oh, it's 151. Sorry, 151 for the record. This is Brian Sheena, State Representative from Burlington. I'm here today to talk about H-464, an act relating to law enforcement training on appropriate use of force, de-escalation tactics, and cross-cultural awareness. So the purpose of H-464, and this language is in the bill, it's to require the collection and distribution of data regarding the use of force used in a traffic stop. It requires the Criminal Justice Training Council to develop a model policy regarding the use of force, de-escalation, and cross-cultural awareness. And for law enforcement agencies to adopt a policy containing each component of the model policy. And it requires the Criminal Justice Training Council to report to the Executive Director of Racial Equity regarding trainings on the model policy and race-based data collection. So the rationale for this bill, that use of force along with race data collection, existing fair and impartial policing policy, and training implicit by us and otherwise, is another aspect of a broader discussion, the appropriate civilian oversight of law enforcement. This bill will ensure more robust oversight, enable us the ability to manage our progress, and provide a consistent approach to use of force statewide. Oversight and consistency are critical, particularly in police practices of use of force, and accurate, complete, consistent data are required to ensure fair government for all. So the context of this is that right now, use of force data is not currently collected across all state law enforcement agencies. During traffic stops, a host of other data is collected, but we're not documenting use of force consistently across all law enforcement agencies. Burlington, which I'll use an example of being a representative from Burlington, knowing that there's wide disparity around the state in these practices, Burlington has reported on use of force data twice in the last three years. The city council of Burlington passed a resolution that the police department has to collect use of force data annually. Collection of this data will provide insight into the magnitude of the problem and will allow us to measure our progress on the statewide level as well as on... So in other words, it's not enough that one municipality does it, because we need to be measuring the fairness across the whole state. And a model policy and training will provide consistent expectations for use of force practices across all state law enforcement agencies. So quickly, we're at two minutes, we're dealing with definition of use of force. I'm not going to read this whole thing, but this is a screenshot of Burlington police department. You can see that they have a sentence at the top, the amount of effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject, and they get that from the International Association of Chiefs of Police. There's a citation at the bottom of the screen there. It's just to give you an idea of what we're talking about when we say use of force. And when we talk about training around escalation versus de-escalation, I wonder if this will work. Watch me screw the whole thing up. Thank you. So you can see here that escalation is when tensions rise and you go from no force using commands to maybe touching, having hands on. Less lethal would be like electronic weapons, spraying people, and then deadly force is shooting, you know, or beating someone until they die. Whether it's intentional, but that happens. Physical conflict leads to death, and I'll give you some examples. But the point of this is that what we're proposing is to train officers more in this piece. The more skills you have in de-escalation, the less likely you are to go up that pyramid in a situation. And then we have cross-cultural awareness. So cross-cultural awareness builds a greater understanding of cultural differences, including but not limited to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual preferences, gender identity, disabilities, age, socioeconomic class, socioeconomic class, and veteran status. These are a lot of protected classes. But the point is that people who have different experiences, they're subcultures in our culture. And if we don't understand those differences, sometimes we misunderstand people or we can't communicate well with people, and that escalates conflict. And to give our law enforcement officers more skills in this area, especially as they're dealing with more of a diverse population, that this training would improve decision-making through increased awareness of bias and prejudice that strengthens communication skills and emotional intelligence. And it increases the ability of an officer to build trust with others and have empathy. And so these three pieces of training would be giving law enforcement officers more skills to prevent some of the problems we've been seeing. So two minutes to do this. So this is just some numbers. We're not going to dig into this here, but perhaps you would take some testimony to dig into this. This is from the Burlington's 2016 report out. That's how the data looked. That's how it looked in 2019. So you can see there's an inconsistency in reporting from one agency. This we pulled from the census website, and there's links if people want to explore either of those sources. But what you see just as an example, let's look at this. This is raised from 2012 to 2018, where this is just one year, so there's a disparity in how they're reporting it. But if you look, black, all use of force incidents, 20.9%, but the general population estimated 2019, 5.3%. Almost four times higher rate of use of force of police against black people. Just one example of a disparity based on general population. White alone, 85%. And white with 72%. So you see it's not equal to the percentage in population in terms of use of force. We could dig into that another time with other witnesses who are experts in this area, but I just wanted to give you some numbers. Here's some qualitative examples. We had 15 minutes, right? So I guess I don't have to do it at 7. Okay, all right. Because I can take an extra minute, but here's some qualitative data. So we had three high profile use of force deaths in Vermont. These are Burlington examples from Burlington. We had Wayne Brunette, a person struggling with mental illness, shot by the police while holding a long handled shovel on his parents' lawn in 2013. And the city of Burlington ended up paying a $230,000 settlement to his estate in 2019 after to make amends for what happened. Phil Grennan, a person in mental health crisis, was shot by the police while wielding a knife in his apartment in 2016. His death led to the formation of the Mental Health Crisis Response Commission here in Vermont. Douglas Kilburn, a person living with disabilities, was punched in the head by a police officer in the emergency room parking lot of University of Vermont Medical Center. And he died two days later. His death was ruled by homicide. And so these are just some examples of how there were incidents with law enforcement involving use of force that led to death. In some of these cases, the law enforcement officers resigned. This is not, not only is this bad for the general public that people die because of our use of force policy, but it's not good for the workers either. And I, you know, we could dig into this more if you wish, but I bet we could find some examples of people, workers who have trauma, because of the interactions as well. Use of force injuries. So there are three lawsuits pending against the Burlington Police Department right now, all from in the last year or so, with allegations of excessive use of force. All of the plaintiffs are African-American. And there's body cam footage out there if you want to see what these incidents look like, you can find them on YouTube. The lawsuit alleges that the city failed to adequately discipline train or otherwise direct or supervise police officers concerning the rights of citizens and victims, thereby causing police, including defendants. This is all from an article, so this is public record. I was quoting it, so the article is down here, so I'm not trying to make this about the individuals. I'm just giving you a quote, so I'm not going to read their names. It includes defendants who are police officers to engage in the unlawful conduct described above. The lawsuit also alleges that despite the department's written policies, the police administration allowed a pattern of behavior to form within the ranks of the police department, which encourages the unlawful use of force against minorities. And a response to the newspaper article by the assistant deputy chief of police, a person who had committed a crime, who was known to be a person who has been involved in many crimes in our city, fled from police, was pursued, tried to evade, and was unsuccessful in doing so and ended up being apprehended. That's good police work. So I think what this shows you is that our policy has shaped the culture that's leading to a problem. And so if we want to change this, it's not about holding individuals accountable, we need to change the system that's generating the problem. And so just some closing thoughts, police have a challenging job, and it's getting worse for them. And they're going to have to deal with increasingly complex and stressful scenarios. They're currently being trained to use force. They're currently being trained to use it in a certain way. In a neighborhood planning assembly meeting last week, one of my constituents asked a police lieutenant, why do you shoot to kill? And the police officer said, we don't shoot to kill, we shoot to control the situation. And the room gasped. Like what? Like how's that? So just putting it out there, that's not an individual saying that. That's training, that's policy, that's shaping these responses we get. And so it's not good for anyone. And so by changing policy, we can change training, that will change the skills our workers have, and that will ultimately change our practices, and then that changes culture. And then ultimately that culture change hopefully will make things better for everyone. In addition to that data must be collected, reviewed and shared in a meaningful, transparent way to increase accountability of the government to the people who we represent. There should be some standards about how that's done. And the state government must diligently review data to make informed decisions that take better care of our law enforcement workforce and the general public who they protect and serve. So I'm hoping you'd be interested in taking up some testimony on this bill. We do have about four minutes left for questions. I just want to put this screen up. I see some of these people might be in the room right now. I don't know if you know you're on this slide, but we have some recommended witnesses from different stakeholders who might be affected. You can see law enforcement in terms of the Attorney General, public safety, the state police, the Burlington Police Department. We have the Racial Equity Director, the Human Rights Commission, ACLU, as well as activists and advocates. And I also think it would be good maybe public hearings or some way to engage the public. Family members of people killed, people hurt by the police advocates. And you know, something I didn't put here because we have administration, but actually maybe the police union and the workers. I didn't put it up there, but as I'm going through the presentation, I'm recognizing that maybe we should have put the police union, not just their management. Because workers have input into this and understand it better. I think we'll have a vet buy-in and they know best the job. So I think there's a place for them, an important place for them at the table in helping us to provide them with the skills they need to do the best possible job for Vermont. So last but not least, we have questions. And I have Abenaki here and the dog, Mao Geno. This is just a demonstration of cross-cultural awareness. I figured let's put the final slide, I'm going to make it bilingual English and the Indigenous language of Vermont. So that being said, do we have any Nadad Moe Wagonal? I'm still learning English. I have a question because I couldn't quite read your list because I'm not very good at this, but... This one? Yes. Do you have recommendations on people who could represent the community of folks who are in the mental health crisis? Since the examples that you gave were, and I think the examples that many of us can think of in our own communities are people who are in the mental health crisis. Yes. I would suggest that we ask the members of the Mental Health Crisis Commission if they can. I don't know if it's a conflict for them to be reviewing cases and talking with us, but I would ask Vermont Psychiatric Survivors, NAMI, the National Association of Mental Illness. That's for family of people with mental illness. We could also ask designated agencies if perhaps they had a way to ask clients or if they wanted to weigh in. I do think that there's disability rights organizations. We have so many government groups that sometimes I can't remember the name, but it's like a council, a disability rights council. I might be getting the names wrong, but I think those are some groups you can go to to get the perspective of people who struggle with mental illness. Another thing we don't... I didn't mention it in my presentation, but people living with homelessness, we might want to go to some of the housing organizations too and see if maybe they can get some people living with homelessness to talk about their experience. As you heard today on the floor, when the person gave the devotional, he mentioned wanting to be able to sleep without fear of violence, and that's violence not just from other people who are homeless or people drunk walking by. It's also police violence, honestly, sometimes. So that's some more examples. I don't know if you were taking notes, if anyone was taking notes, but... I appreciate that. Yeah. Questions, committee? So you want them to be trained through the criminal justice training council? We want them to have a model policy of what training looks like and then requiring every agency to adopt policy that meets those requirements. I think how the mechanics of it work, I would suggest we bring them in and share with them the concern and see what they suggest. Because it may fit into some of their existing work. It might be an extension of existing work that we're asked that they do with police. We already do offer training. Yeah. So it might be just enhancement of the training that they're doing and taking it further. I think this is where it's good to have witnesses come in and testify what the pros and cons are because then it can make the idea better. Questions, committee? I think this kind of policy change is important and critical. But how do we hold these agencies accountable to lift it out? Well, in this bill, it talks about two processes that would help keep the agencies accountable. That collecting data is a way of keeping people accountable because if we update a collection and reporting, then the public is seeing it, elected officials are seeing it and workers and people in the agency have something to measure progress by but right now that's inconsistent throughout the state in this area. Even though there's other areas where my understanding is there is greater consistency of that, the other piece of accountability built into here is the number three, which is we have a new executive director of racial equity who's looking at how systemic racism and looking at disparities in our criminal justice and schools, you know, in our systems of government. And so there would be a report to her regarding the trainings and the data collection. So we'd have someone in government also checking on that. I will say the Racial Justice Alliance, who I'm working with on this bill and a few others, has created their own data sharing page that I can, if you all haven't gotten it already from them, we can send it to the committee. It's like a data dashboard that they created to demonstrate what the state should do. Like they took state data, they made a dashboard. It's not everything we're looking for, but it's an example. That's another way that there could be accountability is perhaps with the data collection is a way to make it available to the public in an interface in a way that's meaningful and that's like people could click on things and it's like easy to access. And the reason I think that creates greater accountability is that public awareness makes a difference and then we as elected officials are accountable and the people can hold us accountable if things aren't getting better. I mean it's elected officials who appoint people often into certain positions who then hire people and so I don't know if that covers some of it of what you were saying like in addition to the trainings. Other questions committee? Well thank you for your very thorough bill walkthrough that you did more homework than many folks who introduced bills. Well and I tried to keep it to 15 I think we went a little over but... You can't control how many questions we ask. You can ask more of you. This is a lot more engaging than sitting in an auditorium. Did you give that to our committee assistant? Yes, it's posted. I'm actually accessing it through, I'll shut it, I'm accessing it through, see I clicked on it there. That's wonderful so we can go and look at those links if we want to. I don't know if the camera, I don't know if that's Orca but I mean part of that too is that the general public if people want to review, they can go read the articles, look at these data sites, see what's out there and be educated about what's going on. Thank you. Do you always have donuts? I think we should thank you. I'm going to do a short form university and access them. In case we're resisting. Never from very town is gracious to be the sponsor of this morning's donuts. Thanks for having me. I'm going to run back to my committee. Thank you. Thanks a lot. All right. Come on, it's 34. So folks, we're going to do a quick walkthrough of age 634 state ethics commission and then we need to switch again to go back to our budget adjustments. No. Before you get started, John, I'm going to need to scoot out to have a conversation with down in the speaker's office. So if I'm not here, I will let you go ahead and navigate the budget adjustment memo. Okay. I trust these guys will put all of their best efforts into that. This is your chance. Okay. For the record, I'm a representative John Gannon from Bloomington and I'm here to talk to you about age 634, which is a bill of co-sponsoring with a member from... It's a great bill. This came... I was asked to introduce this bill by the state ethics commission's executive director, Larry Novins. A lot of the bill is basically cleanup of some things. But there are two real substantive changes, which I'll go over in detail, but one is to actually have the state ethics commission propose an enforceable state code of ethics, which would then go to the general assembly for final approval. So there'd be a two-step process. State ethics commission would create. We would have to approve. That would be enforceable. So that's one of the big changes and the other change before is changing the sunset. The state ethics commission is going to sunset at the end of this fiscal year and so that's moving it up, adding another year so that it continues in place for another year. So those are two big substantive changes. So now I'll go through each change that's in the bill. The first change is with respect to financial disclosures of executive officers in the state government is changing their financial disclosures from a biannual process to an annual process. So every year, instead of every other year, they would be required to file financial disclosures. They would also, with respect to that disclosure, have to certify that the information on the pages is true to the best of their knowledge information and belief. So that would be in addition to what they have to do. You know, many of the disclosure documents we all fill out require you to sign the statement very similar to that. And so those are changes. It would also require commission members to annually file financial disclosure. So that's the ethics commission would have to do that. And then there is a minor change to who appoints members to the state ethics commission. One of the members was appointed by the Vermont Human Resources Association. That entity really doesn't exist. It should be the Society of Human Resources Management, or SHIRM. SHIRM is actually a national organization with state councils. So the Vermont State Council would appoint one of the members to the State Ethics Commission instead of the Vermont Human Resources Association. So I think that's a fairly straightforward one. It also changes that if you're an elected judicial officer, you should not serve on the State Ethics Commission. For Pete, a little bit of history with respect to that. The former chair of the State Ethics Commission became an assistant judge. Well, she was still, I believe, serving on the Ethics Commission. So I think that's why that change was made. We want to change the term from three to five years for State Ethics Commission members. Class C. Okay, it gives them authority to employ people if so, but obviously that's a budgeting issue. I mean, there's no budget, there's no preparation requests in this bill. Procedures for handling complaints, I don't think. Okay, so here is the start of the thing. The Department of Human Resources does not have a code of ethics. It has certain sections of its personnel manual that refer to ethics issues. So what this is proposing to do is just clarify that the Department of Human Resources does have some ethical things, but they're in their personnel policy and procedure manual. And it is my understanding that those procedures are not necessarily enforceable. So this changes advisory opinions. As I think we all know, there are some challenges with respect to advisory opinions, or at least the first advisory opinion that was issued by the Ethics Council. It just, this changes the language that says as a person who is subject to the provisions of this chapter may request it. So it can't be an entity that is not subject to the provisions of this chapter. So it would have to be a state employee, a state officer, or a member of the legislature, or judiciary, who is subject to the State Ethics Commission. So it can't be the program, for example, that can ask for an advisory opinion. Nor a candidate. Nor a candidate. They can ask for, you know, written requests for opinions. New change, the executive director can seek comment from person's interest in the subject of an advisory opinion under consideration. This is to sort of bring in, if they need expert with respect to an issue, that they can talk to those people. And so here is the big change. Honor before November 15, 2020, the State Ethics Commission saw some into the House and Senate committees and gave us the proposed state code of ethics for the general assembly to consider enacting into law. So this is the most significant change in the bill. So right now, there is no enforceable state code of ethics. And, you know, having recently done a training on ethics, you know, we in the House and Senate don't have a lot of ethics rules. So I think it's important as a state that we actually have an enforceable state code of ethics. Even if somebody violates it, there's some action that can be taken. It's also a way to educate people about what is, you know, what is ethical conduct and what is not. I mean, we don't want to trap people. But right now, with other enforceable state code of ethics or even House or Senate rules that really deal with a lot of different ethics issues, people don't know what's necessarily ethical. They more have to go by their own more compass in the state right now. And so I think this is an important step to help guide people to know what is ethical and what's not. Jim, did you want to jump in with it? Yeah, no, my understanding is a number of states have this currently. But this section of the bill is just pushing the question. You know, we're going to have to come back and talk about it next year. So nothing changes until next year if we and others decide to move that forward or we like what the recommendation is or want to tweak the recommendation from the ethics director. That's my understanding. Is that correct? With respect to code conduct? Yeah. That's all the purpose of bringing it to the General Assembly. Is the General Assembly to take a look at it? A couple questions. Sure, sir. Why the change in the disclosure as far as from bi-annual technical, but what's the motivation behind that? I just think to have more current disclosure with respect to a person's financial circumstances and things do change on a basis. I think many other states in the federal government require annual disclosure so it would be more consistent with what other states in the federal government does. And then how about the change of term from the three or five years why that? That's a good question. Let's see. So they were concerned about people leaving the commission and staggered terms and just making sure they had more institutional knowledge. So I think that's the reason for that change. Does that make sense? Yes. When it got established towards the term to set up a staggered that you did? Yeah, they are staggered. But we have five members so five year term we ensure that there's some institutional knowledge on the board. Thank you. And finally, there's one other thing is the sunset this section was to be repealed on June 30th of 2020 this year so it extends it out to July 1st of 2021. We give the efforts commission a year of life but they would have to come back here again next year to see how they're doing. Obviously, okay, so what's not in the bill? Okay, we created an enforceable state code of ethics. There still isn't a true enforcement mechanism for that except with respect to like the House and Senate, we do have ethics panels that can enforce rules against members of the legislature. There's still not really an enforcement mechanism for state employees, especially statewide officers such as the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and the state treasurer. Those complaints, if somebody files an ethics complaint against them they go to the Department of Human Resources and as I understand from the executive director of the ethics council go nowhere. That's an issue that's not touched on in this but I think we've just started down the road with respect to standing up in ethics commission. I think having an enforceable code of conduct is a way to start training people about what is and what is not good ethical behavior and I think that's an important step to take before we start our aggressively enforcement. In my opinion. Jim? So, representative Gannon if we were to adopt this bill, especially putting into motion adopting a code of ethics next year we want to argue that this is removing a little bit of the thickly that some have been quoted in the press lately. Yes. Thank you. Questions for John? We'll have plenty of opportunity to ask more questions. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Nice job, representative. I'm sorry I did not have a power point. We were just talking about you. Thank you. Okay. So I think we just want to go through the outstanding issues that we had in the budget adjustment act and I think that the first one we had relates to the workers compensation fund and the state liability fund. So we started talking about that and Marcia started talking about that. She has concerns about the contractor that is now doing the workers problem. And the oversight of the contractor. Definitely. Jim. I don't know how we would know that. I want to think that F&M is if they're noticing a trend of increased expenses then are there more injuries or do we have a workplace safety issue or are the admin fees too high? I mean I don't know that we're in a position to asset but I guess I just look at this there's a deficit in that fund we ought to try to put the money back in and be honest with our accounting and that's what it sounds like they're asking for. I mean if you think there should be a minor to say give us more information sometime about the trend of the fund in terms of costs or administrative charges we can do that. The weird thing to me is that in demulking with the rates they effectively back funded departments in order than the original appropriations. So there's two things that are sort of weird. One, they're not watching a cookie cabinet and two, money that we effectively didn't appropriate to go someplace and apparently they've got spent. So this is I don't remember what they said about how far in debt they were now four to five million so we're talking 20 million bucks here over the course of three years in consequential in terms of budget but in terms of public policy it seems weird. Well he was loose on that he didn't have about five years I don't think he had all the he said four to five. He did but whatever I mean it's an unhealthy trend obviously we're not budgeting enough up front. Apparently they're not managing the finances. Well it may be. You could have just a few planes they have swayed the other way. Specifically said it was because they reduced the rates and they did so they didn't give the administration the administrative fees associated with it. No that's the testimony I mean you were right Bob. There's two causes for it. So I mean all right so let's just do concisely sir are we okay with the appropriations? The person I think they're necessary and there's a deficit. So what if any guidance do we want to provide to appropriations around this issue? I mean I for one am concerned that because they were using a surplus this year if we run into a recession next year or the year after that we'll be unable to fund the deficits in workers' comp and state liability and so that's my concern because I guess I'm concerned about their plan going forward. I have no idea what they provide appropriations each year when they go through like next year's budget but would it be appropriate here to add a sentence to ask them to I don't know if it's us or if it's or if it's commerce whoever looks at the details on working comp expenses but give us some background maybe there's no increase in workers' comp each year and they're just not budgeting enough. It sort of just jumps to my mind that this is a self-funded pool similar to the health plan and sometimes regularly it used to be what they would do with the health plan was declare a premium holiday which saved the employees 20% that saved the administration 80% or whatever and it's not like this is an isolated incident and it's something that happens sort of maybe the thing to look at is that from a management standpoint we say we can't put anything in the deficit situation and there's a reasonable customary amount that you should keep in mind that provides for that type of self-funding sort of mechanism. It seems to me when this whole thing transpired underneath the show of administration that there was some language in there I thought that you had to look back and there had to be a certain level of savings for to continue right? I do find it a little odd that somebody is trying to form it out or well in the context of farming it out that there had to be a justification there had to be a significant I forget what the savings was 20% there was some number associated but somebody should be looking at this I thought every year to verify that it's doing what it was intended to do and I do agree it does seem a little odd to have that much of a hole okay firstly we're talking about administrative costs not being allocated can we have, can I add on to that we have to sign a new contract with them which I think is, is that every two years two year contracts for services like that and then at that point the performance is supposed to there are performance measures in the contract and they are supposed to be looked at I don't know what your cycle is on that yeah it's the same, I wasn't sure if I was after something yeah yeah yeah at least 10% but the point is how often it gets reviewed I mean Adam did testify that they are now reviewing on a monthly basis not the case prior yeah I really don't think it's the fund manager responsible for making the payments and so this administration doing something but then he basically said that I'm responsible for so are those are those costs just attributed to administration or it just seems, no they're also they reduce the premiums to all that's right yes they weren't counting for the administrative costs and they reduced the premiums when they had a surplus but the concern is how do they get such a large deficit because it doesn't appear they were looking at what was happening to these two funds so I guess we could encourage the administration to continue on a month to month basis monitoring these two funds does anybody have John or all agency across the state government build the same percentage of payroll or does transportation get a higher land because that's a very good question we didn't hear testimony on that and I think in talking to Marsha there's some county issues here that we may want to look into as a committee rather than dealing with this in the budget adjustment act about what really happened here and exactly are these funds distributed evenly from agency to agency or can F&M decide oh we're going to help AHS out more because their budgets really tight this year I don't at least on the testimony we heard from the judiciary was it no and even from Adam yesterday he said that they can decide who they're going to help and I'm not sure that's I agree I mean we manage the budget so I sort of understand it so I think we can talk to Sarah about what we want to take more testimony outside of the budget adjustment act with respect to this issue Tom was just here maybe wouldn't that be human there's no office that might oversee some of that yeah I mean what kinds are we going to provide to appropriations maybe it's too complicated and if we want to we need to get this on to that again but I'd be happy to look into this more I mean outside of the budget adjustment so do you have enough yeah it's not re-applying our report back but you're just encouraging the administration to continue to monitor mostly as they have been doing now that they have realized that there's an issue got it so the next issue that I have flagged is the 27 slash 53 reserve and as admin progressions testify this morning what they're trying to do this year is prepay this is your next fiscal year does anybody have concerns with that what reserve is this when you have an extra pay period so when you have 53 weeks instead of 52 weeks got it is everybody fine with that one now okay I am fine with it it's necessary but rather than having it come in at budget adjustment is it better to bring plan for it yeah I think what happened is that when they did their mid-year review they found out they had more money and so they decided to take care of it this year as a prepayment next year budget next year I like that which is going to our next issue with respect to the Secretary of State's office the $450,000 in the testimony we heard from Adam Greshin was that that was the same reason the only thing that's a little puzzling there is that Secretary of State's office did not request it but I think it's a budget issue of just prepaying does anybody have any concerns about that not just one of the elections it's for pre-battle other elections costs as I understand because it's a one-time expense it's not every year although it's every other I mean the danger when you prepay stuff is you've made next year's budget a little easier to make but the base of the budget is really higher than what you're showing on paper that's the danger and I'm all for prepaying and staying out of debt it's a danger because you're fooling yourself you go back to following here if these weren't one-time expenses and you say so we're already a couple million dollars in a hole it's the argument that was used on education of using one-time money to keep education rates whole that next year you don't have that one-time money it's the same argument I'm not disagreeing with it it should be sensitive to it though I do want to better the prepay than spend it on something frivolous so we're okay with that as your memo do you want to make reference that you're okay with it do you want to provide commentary on your understanding that these are pre-payments listen to our tape if you want to commentary that's what you tell them no I think that might be a good idea for both the 27 slash the reserve so we understand that they're prepayments okay so you make note of that okay so that brings us to okay the transportation foundation which I explained is just a is to is the amount that they put here is actually a reduction of about 300,000 dollars and that is according to it's what they need for the pay act that the original amount was higher than they needed does anybody have any concerns about that so that brings us to our last issue well two we have two more issues one is the most difficult part of those where is the return issue with the judiciary do we have a final number on that is it zero or no according to Adam Greshan's calculations the FY20 that will actually run a surplus about 53,000 is that I actually forget what the court administrator said is that based upon them leaving a charged position and the associated staffing that goes with it not what Adam Greshan presented us it was purely doing a calculation for the judiciary the way they do it for the rest of the state government and doing what they did they have a vacancy now so he did it based on the payroll there is a vacancy rate that they take into account fine I think it's zero anything is going to be a surplus in the color the entire that vacancy in the court just happened so if he was looking at actual payrolls it's just recently that that judge was elevated to the Supreme Court like within the last month so it probably hasn't even shown up in the payroll this first day was last week in the Supreme Court the state of the state last week was this first week Marsha? so we're okay with leaving that issue up let the record show that the member of chitin passionately tried to get more money for the judiciary and failed do we want to explain why we're leaving that alone? I think we can do that I think we can do that now with russians memo that he provided is that okay? yes that's a good question I don't know when she did so does she stay down to the end of the year? so our final issue is the agency of human services and their request to change the language to allow for multiple deputy secretaries in AHS right now they can only have one deputy secretary currently they actually have none but they're only allowed that one the proposal from Mike Smith was to allow two which is similar to the agency of education and the ethics Mike does anyone know how many divisions there are within the agency of education or AHS has I believe six each one of those has a commissioner that has that division and that it is under those commissioners so I'm wondering in ag how many commissioners are there in ag and how many commissioners are there in education but I don't have a problem what he's proposing but I have a problem with the depth of some of the social services they've got a couple now that together they've got three deputy commissioners people complain in that agency that here's what people are saying the core organizational structure bothers me two commissioners doesn't two deputy deputy deputy my only point Mike my only point would be that as you change titles such as in this instance you also change the payment and I realize how large the agency of human services is but you've got a lot of people at the top a lot of commissioners a lot of deputies I think I want to hear a little bit more about what the organizational structure would look like after having appointed deputy secretary we did a diagram of how the various subunits of the agency of human services on one side was going to be health, mental health and what was the third there was all the health care related ones oh health connect yeah health connect, health and mental health under one deputy secretary and then everything else would be under another deputy secretary yes two questions first the moral comment I think I would prefer to go this way with two deputy secretaries and what others in the building have suggested from time to time and that is break it up into several agencies and then you'll have even more cost because you'll have multiple secretaries and secretary offices so that would be one concern but the other thing is maybe this is more of a question I wasn't asking for any money does that mean no money the rest of this fiscal year or is this going to cause them to a marchers point an additional appropriation when they do the budget next year and that would be the question I would have it's easy to sign off on another deputy secretary you just people around in your shop and you don't come back to us and ask for any money this year but they build the budget for next year well we've got another office I think that's just the question what is the concern assuming I don't know does this cause an increase in appropriation everything was flat next year because of the addition of a new title just to confirm a language that was proposed it's not a specifically two deputies that's the proposal but the language that's proposed is may appoint such a number of deputy secretaries as the secretary deems necessary that is the same language that AOE has but just to confirm it's not only two deputy secretaries I would put in regards to that two is clearly what he described to us and I don't think I would want to add language such that 0.6 I agree with that yeah should be clear cause you're right and it may not be him it may be somewhere down the road and all of a sudden need a new office building all your commissioners and then they have a to them you're right another disreview just very carefully Secretary Smith has recommended no changes whatsoever to his current staffing chart and some of them do include commissioner and three deputy commissioners and there's quite a few deputies so they're might be able to top it but anyway he has made no changes with his proposal except to add the one deputy secretary but I'm thinking that the language that he can add as many as he wants might not be real good can I personal opinion I'm not real problem with Matt and other cause he's got some major issues in that agency that I think needs to work on harder and I I know and he's probably at the mandate of that so does everybody agree we should suggest a word change to limit it to two deputy commissioners and then can we put it into one with the testimony we heard from Mike Smith the secretary of H.S. that that was his plan very good should we ask a question or make the assumption that this does not have any budgetary implications now yes we should definitely say this does not have any budgetary impact this year we don't know about next year can we ask that question man I think our folks should know what they're committing to well I think we can raise the concern we don't know what the budgetary impact will be next year right I'm not sure if they can get someone hired for this budget year yeah I think excuse me I do try to get this moving because it takes a while to hire a qualified person for it and again probably a good man to try to tackle some issues but he needs to help we want sooner and later which I know he's saying this would allow him to do it with the budget adjustment this is the other issue I'm just going to put it wrong briefly is overtime pay for state police you said it on appropriations testimony and I believe you're fine with their explanation of their overtime I was two fold once for officers and then also the dispatch centers and as we know they had a hard time filling the slots they're on drugs for 325 I don't know I think they're 288 and they've got some members who can pull up for the term so it's portion very legitimate I just lost four did you I wanted to ask Jesus oh really come on come more pay more alright so the last issue that's not in this memo at all which we took testimony from the state auditor yesterday on and I think we resolved that we were fine with the physician but we may just want to put it in the memo give it a we're in the memo that we were totally looking to that it's just say that we're fine with the state auditor hiring an additional auditor for funded through the tip payments and a reduction in software costs by bringing some software in house is that okay with everybody yeah okay, good are there any issues that I failed to raise I think everything else that we were highlighted for us we've dealt with earlier that's the end of that it's everything that I had marked that you needed to address or you wanted to address can we even see that or something no we get a single soul copy for the entire committee paper yeah, they do and they do not send them electronically yes it's a matter of it looks like the education has one deputy secretary but several division directors division directors which are a couple of pay grades down from a commissioner or a deputy commissioner or another now I'm sure it's an affirmation companies that are companies that we have outsourced to are supposed to save the government at least 10% I thought it was one of them did you find them? I've been looking for that legislation I can't have someone in the know look how eager the blood's at so Betsy, do you have a reason yes and I can put this together is the committee going to stay to take a vote or so that it should be from the whole committee or should I just have it be from the chair and vice chair to the chair and vice chair of that committee or what is your plan? okay so the memo received from the from the chair to our chair okay do you want to draft it as a memo back from the chair to that chair maybe and me just doing that you're going to sound good I will do that I will go down and do that now and sound good and just to confirm there were a few other more minor things like reversions back to the general fund when there's a surplus do you want the memo to at least acknowledge that you looked at those or is it just really not necessary to address those in the memo? did we look at everything that was highlighted in the memo and hear our concerns okay that sounds good perfect I'll be back thank you