 Good morning. Hello. For the record, that's Anne Rask, Legislative Counsel, and Madam Chair, we're just getting started here with some of the topics that this awesome committee gets to cover. And so one of the things I wanted to do is to just help give you some background information on law enforcement generally, because this committee does handle general law enforcement issues. So we don't have to go through all of the provisions of the document we're about to show you today. But I want to let you know that on your committee page, Kelly has so awesomely put up for you in this location, additional information, a few documents that this committee can access to find information on general topics. And one of those things is law enforcement overview. It's a document that contains miscellaneous information. And if you open it up, it looks like this. And what I've done here is just compiled information regarding law enforcement officers in the state in regard to government operations, the operation of government, which is within this committee's jurisdiction. So you'll see it goes through the different types of law enforcement officers. I've got information about our Capitol Police, our constables, DEC has investigators, Department of Fish and Wildlife has game wardens, there's information about the Department of Public Safety, and Intermediate Spural and Interstate Agreements. But the topic we're going to be talking about today is law enforcement officer certification and professional regulation, since you're talking about the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council. And that's what the council does is they certify and professionally regulate law enforcement officers. So before we get into some of the issues that the council is asking the General Assembly to discuss this biennium, this is just to give you an overview of who the council is and what they do. So generally, the council, the Criminal Justice Training Council, certifies our law enforcement officers. The council itself is made up of appointees. And we could look at the statute. That was one of the things that would have changed under S273 from last year and we'll get to that when we get to the specific provisions of S273. But all law enforcement officers in this state are required to be certified by the council. There used to be a provision of law that allowed our elected officers to not have to be certified. That was changed somewhat recently in 2012. There's a definition of law enforcement officer, meaning anybody who wants to enforce the law has to be certified by the council. And that definition of law enforcement officer is important to remember, requires that a person actually has to be employed by a law enforcement agency, like our municipal police departments or our state police. And then there are three different levels of law enforcement officer certification. This is a somewhat newer requirement in the law. Before that change in the law, we used to have part-time officers and full-time officers. They had the same scope of practice, meaning they could handle all of the same things. But it was just that they were limited, part-time officers were limited to part-time employment. And they had much less training. But they had full law enforcement authority. The general assembly changed that somewhat recently to create three different levels of law enforcement officer certification. There's level one, which is the most restricted scope of practice. I don't know if we even have level one law enforcement officers yet. I'm seeing the executive director, the council shake his head no. But the law provides for level one officers to be able to conduct security, transport, vehicle escorts and traffic control. So do we certify or register private security? Yes, yes, OPR does that. And so they're not, they wouldn't fit into one of these level one, level two, level three. That is correct. Because those security, private security officers, they're not a public entity like our law enforcement officers are. They don't get to enforce the law. They might bounce you out of the club, but they don't have the ability to enforce the law. Thank you. There's level two, which is the mid-level certification. And that's limited to specified crimes that they're allowed to investigate. Statute sets out those different crimes that they can investigate. Although level one and level two officers can respond to emergency situations. And it's just that if a level two officer responds, for example, to something outside his or her practice area, they have to call on someone who is certified to come and follow up and take over. And then there's level three, which is full law enforcement authority. All aspects of law enforcement authority. So that's the greatest scope of practice. Then the council also professionally regulates law enforcement officers. So they train them. And then if there are complaints about an officer's conduct, the council is able to hold unprofessional conduct hearings and take action against an officer's certification. Similar to, for example, how OPR takes action against the licensees that it regulates. There are three kinds or categories of unprofessional conduct, A, B, and C. The way that this is set up is that agencies are required to conduct a valid investigation of unprofessional conduct complaints made against their officers and to report that if there is presumed to be unprofessional conduct committed by an officer, the agency is required to report it to the council in specified circumstances. And then the council itself is able to take action against an officer's certification, such as by warning, revoking or suspending the certification. Those unprofessional conduct provisions were really beefed up in Act 56 from 2017. So if you hear Act 56, that's what that is referring to. Prior to the provisions of Act 56, our statute only provided that the council could either do nothing or revoke an officer's certification and revocation was only possible if the officer was convicted of a felony or if they failed to complete training. So it was all or nothing and it didn't address the multitude of other conduct that might be and they came up with S273. The bill changed a lot from when it was first introduced, but it did eventually pass both bodies in 2018. However, as you have posted online, the governor did veto the bill. So the provisions of Act number 73 did not go into effect. There is a vetoed bill summary, just giving you a high-level overview of what the S273 would have addressed if it were enacted into law. It generally addressed training, coverage, group C retirement, which will get into the law enforcement advisory board and dispatch. So in the interest of time, I know we're running late, I don't, and Mr. Goffyer came all the way up here. Let's just go into a high-level overview of S273 as it would have passed both chambers and be enacted into law. Section one was just a technical correction to the description of the council. Section two and three go together. They address who may be considered a law enforcement officer. As I indicated earlier, under our current law, an officer, a person has to be employed by a law enforcement agency in order to be called a law enforcement officer. And that means that the council, when they train law enforcement officers, for some of their trainers, they have to be law enforcement officers in order to train would be law enforcement officers. So the issue that was going to be addressed in S273 is that means that an officer that's a trainer at the academy, the police academy is under the council, that an officer had to keep employment with an outside agency, like a municipal police department or the state police, in order to maintain certification. What sections two and three would have addressed is they, it would have allowed an academy trainer to be a certified law enforcement officer just by their employment at the academy, so long as they complete all of the requirements for certification. So that would have allowed that in sections two and three of S273. You'll note this specific language in section three. It says the ability of a person to be a certified law enforcement officer at the academy does not qualify that person for group scene membership in the state retirement system. That'll be addressed later in S273. The issue with this is that group C retirement is a special subset of a retirement system that requires early retirement for law enforcement officers due to the nature of their job. But the state treasurer raised concerns about adding more people to group C retirement in part due to the nature of these academy law enforcement officers. One of the issues that was addressed that was that their main job was going to be training officers, maybe not out on the road responding to crimes. And there is a federal law regarding mandatory retirement and under federal law there's a definition of law enforcement officer and it says that a person has to have a primary purpose of investigating crime. So that was a concern of the treasurer and this committee wanted to add this language to specifically say that academy officers don't automatically get into group C. Section four would have addressed the membership of the council and made changes to it. I won't go through all of the changes but this was the reason that the governor vetoed the bill as set forth in the veto message. I think the big picture is that this change instead of allowing the governor to appoint five additional members this bill would have specified those one, two, three, four, five people who are currently appointed and specified the entities from which they come and specify that those folks get appointed by their body that they belong to. For example, BLCT would be membership would be appointed by the league. And then the bill would have added three public members, one appointed by the house, one by the senate and one by the governor. There was some cleanup in regard to the per diem compensation. And section four a just addressed the existing membership of the council and how it would change under the changes of the membership proposed in the preceding section. Section five addressed the training locations. The council provides training to its officers and this would have required the council to adopt rules to identify and implement alternate routes to certification aside from training at the academy. And it would have also required the council to offer courses of instruction for law enforcement officers in multiple regions of the state and to strive to replace some of their overnight courses with regional trainings whenever possible. And section six would have required a report back from the executive director on the council and how things were going with those training changes. Section seven also would have required the council to have a plan including a schedule to structure its training programs that an officer that's currently certified at level two that's at mid level to be able to transition to full law enforcement authority level three. Because right now the way the training set up if you are currently level two but you want to be level three you essentially have to start level three over again. So that would have required some sort of transitional provision. Section eight was just a cleanup. Section eight A is addressing the issue of law enforcement coverage. It would have required DPS to determine the number of calls town received in FY 18 and then determine the number of calls that came from the town without a police department. This is going to coverage issues throughout the state of law enforcement officers and who how available they are to people. And it would have required a report to the GOVOX and judiciary committees about their findings. Section nine addressed that group C retirement issue. It would have required a study committee to study this group C issue. It would have been essentially looking at those retirement issues and also would have involved a review of the job descriptions. So this whole section is that group C retirement issue. You could see there would have been a five thousand dollar appropriation to the office of the treasurer for the purpose of contracting to get to the point of this review of the study committee. I'm just going to scroll through here since we're running short on time. Starting with section 10. There is some changes about the law enforcement advisory board. This is an advisory board that deals with public safety issues. One of the things this would have done is repealed where it currently exists in statute. It's just a technical change because it doesn't really belong where it is in statute. So there would have been a recodification adding it back into where it should be in statute and just doing some cleanup changes. And then the big picture is in 2019 the bill would have required the LEAB to include in its annual report ways towns can increase access to law enforcement services and then also some recommendations regarding how agencies update and provide crime information to our Vermont criminal crime information center. And then finally sec 14 would have required a report back from DPS and the Vermont enhanced 911 board about dispatch. Dispatch is a continuing issue. I'm sure you'll hear more about it this biennium but it really was going to request or require recommendations about how there can be more equitable dispatch within the state. So those are that's the main overview of S273. Any questions? Questions committee. So much for the first job. Oh, thank you. Very refreshing first thing in the morning. Okay. Let me see. Can you help? Oh, thank you for the reason of Harrison. Thank you. Awesome. Excellent. So let's let's invite Richard Gavira to introduce himself. Do you need anything on the screen? No. So great. So my first appearance in 2019. Morning committee. Rick Gauthier, executive director of the criminal justice training council. Last year, to piggyback on what Betsy Ann had just talked about last year, this committee and Seneca of ops took a lot of testimony on the issues in S273. And when it was vetoed, I heard from the chairs of both committees because of all the work that had been done and the potential for losing some of that. So what I told both chairs was that I would go ahead and do the council was tasked to do and what the law enforcement advisory board was tasked to do. And the reason I could speak for the LAB is that I'm the current chair and I've been with them since their inception. So we we had a meeting and agreed that we would provide that information. I'd also targeted today to have that done. Unfortunately, there are a couple of wrinkles thrown into it. So a written report won't be finalized until I have a couple other tees crossed and eyes dotted and hope to have the written report done by early February for the committees. But I did tell both chairs I'm happy to go up to the verbal update and where we stand so far. So the two pieces from the council that is working on it was the alternate path to level three certification and the path from level two to level three certification. We formed a working group subcommittee from the council and we met on that a number of times we surveyed enforcement leaders from around the state asking them what they would like to say. First of all, did they approve of this? And we got some pretty strong opinions on both sides. Secondly, if there was an alternate path, what should that look like? So we took the results of the survey and began drilling down in this working group. We were probably 90% of the way towards the final product when we were contacted by Champlain College and they said that they wanted to become a police academy. So we're seeing a presentation from them to the council for the meeting on the 30th. So I've held off doing the broader report until we see what the council how the council reacts to that. So that's that's what they're considering an alternate path. In other words, alternate path. They don't come and do our 16 week residential we have in there 24 five for 16 weeks. The profession itself split pretty evenly on whether or not there should even be an alternate path. Among those that felt there should be there was a strong preference what we call the police discipline model, which is the current model we use, but it would be non residential. So wherever that would take place. In essence, they'd be there for eight, nine, 10 hours a day and then go home. So those are the paths we're working on the alternate route to level three certification. The route from level two to level three proved to be a little bit more challenging because we started having some conversations around block training and how do you provide block training and how do we work that in with the current resource level that we have and how do we factor in experience on the job. So we finally at the last meeting we discussed the viability of a club model college level experience program where you take work experience and maybe in service training they've received and a number of other things and then decide that they've met that standard for level three certification. The council should weigh in on that at the meeting on the 30th as well. So I'll have an update after that. That's why I said I could give you a progress report but I couldn't give you a conclusive report to let that piece was done. So that's the progress we've made on those two pieces. On the LEAB piece the dispatch report didn't specifically task the LEAB but that's the vehicle that commissioner ultimately decided to take a look at it. So the LEAB created a working committee and we included the members specified by statute in the working committee and met and came up with a proposal for enhancing dispatch services. You should see that in the LEAB report which you should be getting today or tomorrow. And then the what was the second LEAB doing? And then the VCIC and data entry. Okay thank you. The VCIC and the data entry that's my error that they're not ready by today. I had assumed because we had a whole bunch of other things going on that those are pretty easy lifts turned out not so much. I've talked to the deputy director of VCIC and he's pulling together the information that the committee is looking for the guards who calls received in areas that aren't covered by municipal agencies and the standardized reporting. I've talked to Karen Canat from the crime research group and she has a couple of recommendations to standardized reporting and make information more accessible. She's putting together a report for me as well that I anticipate the next week or so and that I'll certainly include along with everything else. The access to law enforcement services was actually one of the very first things the LEAB worked on in its inception and we talked about a number of options that communities have. And essentially it's a matter of updating that information with regards to contracting constables forming their own municipal departments. And if you contract your contracting with a neighboring law police department you're contracting with the sheriff's department those sorts of things. We I think the VLCT still has that resource but it's basically essentially updating that. You should probably see that in the LEAB report as well. And that is the 50,000 foot view of what I've been doing. Rick in the news lately there's been some issues calling into question some of the tactics used in training. Help me with the boards. What board is overseeing the actual training? Is it the one the LEAB that you just mentioned? No it's a council. A council. And what's the makeup difference of the council? There's not a lot really. The memberships tend to mirror each other. It's various commissioners, representatives from Sheriff's Association, Chiefs Association, Constable Association. There is more room for public participation on the council than there is on the LEAB. But they're they're essentially pretty closely aligned. Okay. Who is the chair of the council? Chief Brackell from Brandon, okay. I guess I would wonder if we were to do any oversight or questioning would it be the chair that we should have come in? That's more a question, I don't know. That's a great question. There might be some limitations because it's currently under litigation so I may not be able to talk about it. That's a fair issue. We may want to talk to the Attorney General's office then to find out what we can and can't do. It's just it's been made public and as I would think as our committee's purview over law enforcement, especially the training that we might want to ask some questions. Absolutely, I understand. And I don't want to supersede the role of the council that is supposed to be doing this. Any questions for me? So given that 273 wasn't impacted and I thank you for you know going to work some of the pieces on there that both the Senate and House had talked about, is it your hope that or is it your desire to come back with a proposal that we could put into a bill this year that hopefully didn't run into some roadblocks with the fifth floor? I think the overall goal is to get the council to decide what it's going to recommend and then bring that recommendation back and I don't want to try to guess what they're going to recommend because I wouldn't know how about it. Well I can hear about it on the 30th of January and the chair of the council has been on this working group so he's been in the loop the entire time. They're aware of the reports back to the legislature so I'm going to assume that they're going to make a decision on the 30th. To remind me again when we will see the report. If all falls together you should see it the first week of February. They've written final report. Any other questions from the committee? Thank you for your time today. Thank you. Appreciate it. We have bells ringing folks and we have let's see next on our committee agenda which I don't have in front of me.