 Good afternoon everyone and thanks for being here today. During my state-of-the-state and budget address outlined my priorities for this session, affordability, housing and public safety. These are the issues I hear about from Vermonters every single day, and it's our job in Montpelier to address them head-on. Last week I talked about housing and highlighted what I'm seeing or maybe what I'm not seeing in certain committees. Vermonters have made it clear they want us to make it less expensive, faster and easier to restore or build the housing we desperately need to help families and revitalize communities. This week I want to talk about public safety. I've always believed public safety should be the top priority of every government and I appreciate the work the house and senate judiciary committees are doing on these issues, but it's critical we get it right because like housing we can't allow bills that fail to meet the moment, especially the ones that move us in the wrong direction. We hear from law enforcement, municipal leaders, business owners and retirees about their significant concerns about rising crime. Now this is not unique to Vermont, but it does impact our reputation as one of the safest states and there are things we can do to reverse these harmful trends because the fact is from high-profile murders and gun crimes related to drugs and gangs to persistent so-called low-level crimes like simple assault, disorderly conduct, violations of abuse orders, petty larceny, retail theft, unlawful mischief and more. These are the crimes that leave community members and local businesses feeling uneasy and unsafe. Data from the council of state governments has shown Vermont's violent crime has steadily increased since at least 2007. This is reality, not perception. So it's clear to me and to many Vermonters we need to do something different which is why we propose a number of steps to the legislature. Some have described my approach as tough on crime but the alternative is being soft on crime so I want to be clear. I'm not talking about going back to the approach of the 80s and 90s or some while swing to the right. Again, I'm just asking lawmakers to meet me in the middle. Criminal justice reform has been important but we have to address unintended consequences and where it's fallen short, we need to be willing to change course. First, we need to focus on repeat offenses. You've all heard stories about people being picked up by law enforcement only to be right back out on the street committing the same crimes over and over again. These aren't just anecdotes. It's the reality we face due in part to reforms that have reduced accountability including conditions of release that don't have the consequences needed to make them effective. Our decision to effectively remove bail is a tool to get people to appear in court. Juvenile justice changes which have weakened the ability of police and prosecutors to keep our communities safe and more. To put the challenge in perspective, we had over 5,000 arrest warrants for failure to appear just last year and over 12,000 or 21,000 criminal dockets involve repeat offenders. So we propose a number of initiatives to make sure people show up for court. We also know many crimes are fueled by drug trafficking so we need to modernize our drug crimes to take into account new and deadly combinations of drugs. Now again, to be clear, I'm not talking about walking away from those struggling with addiction and substance use disorder. We'll continue to focus on the four legs of the stool, prevention, treatment, recovery, and enforcement. Because without enforcement we can't slow down the deadly supply of highly addictive, cheap, and deadly fentanyl and xylazine that has taken over much of the market. As we told lawmakers, we must update current law to make sure those selling and trafficking these dangerous drugs are held accountable. We also need to strengthen our ability to prosecute when death results from these sales. One problem we have now is the defense of willful ignorance. Dealers claim they didn't know the drugs they were selling contained deadly fentanyl. But maybe they should just assume everything they're selling is deadly. Again, this is just one leg of the stool. We've also proposed increased investment in prevention, treatment, and recovery, all while focusing on root causes of crime, addiction, and mental health because there is no silver bullet. We also need to delay the raise the age provision which has put older, more violent offenders into our DCF system and created a number of unintended consequences that harm rather than help our youth. Most notably, traffickers are preying on young adults using them because they know accountability is less likely. As I said in my budget address, we moved forward with this policy before we put the systems in place to handle the increased caseloads of younger adult offenders. Now last week, a reporter pointed out that some legislators wanted to call our bluff and move forward despite DCF testimony that they don't have the resources. So let me be clear, we're not bluffing and pushing something through to prove a point while under resourcing a department or expecting us to produce workers who simply don't exist should not be acceptable to any of us. This isn't a game. Finally, as I've argued in the past, we need to move to a system of universal sealing instead of expungements with access for criminal justice purposes. Completely erasing criminal records makes no sense, especially when it comes to our collective concerns about repeat offenders as well as gun safety. Sealing accomplishes our goal, so past mistakes don't limit someone's ability to get a job or housing. These are just some of what we're asking the legislature to address. If they don't want to listen to me, they should reach out to their police chiefs, first responders, businesses and community members. Now is the time to be realistic, pragmatic and responsive. We should learn from the failed experiments in places like San Francisco and Oregon, where even they are thinking of repealing many of the measures they put into place. But with that, I'll open it up to questions. John Cable determined for state agencies and sheriffs told the House Judiciary Committee that your recommended budget for his department would require them to undertake a reduction in borders of up to nine staff members. Terry Corson to the Vermont Judiciary told that same committee that they needed an additional 10 administrative positions in order to manage the case law that they have. Defender General Matt Valerio told that committee that your recommended budget would create a $2,000 whole and occurred services context for next year. I'm wondering if public safety is such a top priority for you, why those positions aren't funded in your recommended budget for the legislature? Well, we did the best we could under the conditions of the money we have. We have to live within our means. And for the judiciary, we're a separate branch of government. We thought that they could come in and advocate for the positions that they needed and see what the legislature thinks. Again, we can have conversations about adding those positions, adding to the costs of government, but it has to come out of some pocket. It's got to come out of somewhere else. And I'm looking forward to have a conversations with the legislature about if they decide to move forward with those positions, where it comes from. So we're willing to have the conversation. Did they make that case to you prior to the decision? Well, they send us their request, obviously. And we just have to make decisions about where we focus our precious dollars on. So that didn't meet, again, the judiciary. We thought they could stand on their own and go in the legislature if they've done in the past and make their request known. So you said no, and it almost sounds like you're hoping the legislature says yes. I'm saying that. No, I'm saying they can make their, you know, make their case. We looked at it one way. They may look at it another. They don't always listen. Legislation doesn't always listen to what we include in the budget every now and then. They have their own ideas and they put them into place. So we'll deal with that as it comes, as we have with every single other budget that we've had over the last seven, eight years. Do you want to add? Oh, the only, I'm sorry. The only other answer would be that we did give those justice system participants 5% while the baseline for other budgets was 3%. Those participants received 5% across the board. Governor, you mentioned that raising the age is a point of friction right now, but there's other bills that are moving forward like retail theft and those that have been on the table, Grant D'Auto has been another. I mean generally, sort of, how much on the same page do you think that you and lawmakers are at this point? I think lawmakers have been genuinely receptive to some of our ideas, not all of them, but some of them. So I think we're moving in the right direction and we'll work this all out, but just wanted to highlight to Vermonters what we're seeing, what our approach is, and why we think this is important. Are you sensing that they're maybe shying away from some of these proposals, besides raising the age? I think some are shying away from some of the proposals, but not all of them. Again, they're taking testimony. We're, they're giving us a seat at the table and we're making our case and we'll see what they do from here. They're holding their cards pretty close. I'm not sure what they're going to do. Governor, a couple years ago you proposed building a new prison. Any updated thoughts on that? I opposed it. You proposed it. Oh, I thought you said opposed it. Well, it's just a matter of the dollars. I still think that we were going to have to update and upgrade our correctional facilities, but now's not the time. Obviously, with our limited capital budget and limited funding in the general fund and other places, just isn't the resources to do that. And I apologize for coming in late if you've already answered this question, but Senator Baruth last week said he talks about all these upgrades to criminal justice, but they all cost money and he doesn't want to spend. What do you think about that? I think you read Pete's article probably this afternoon. You get all those answers. He asked me the same type of thing. We will be willing to have those conversations and that's what this legislative process is about. But at the end of the day, the money's got to come from somewhere and you have to balance all those concerns and all the needs out within, I believe, existing resources. So some make it, some don't. If they want to propose something different, then we'll listen and be interested to see where that money comes from without raising taxes. Older and more violent offenders are going into DCF systems as a result of raising age. With my understanding of raising age, is it only a best and non-big 12 offenders? So when you say that, what exactly do you mean by more violent offenders? Yeah, I think the proposal is to put, place those older offenders. As you raise the age, they become older and they're in that system. So they are more violent. They may not be part of the top 12, but is it big 12? But they're still violent and some of their crimes and their age difference between some of the younger offenders mixing the two is just problematic. But I might have either Commissioner or Tucker. Yeah, hi, Tucker Jones with the Department of Public Safety. There's two interrelated pieces with juvenile jurisdiction that they're considering right now. So they're considering whether to go to the next step of juvenile jurisdiction for delinquency offenses to originate in the family division up to and through age 19. And then also whether to expand the list of big 12 offenses at the same time. And those are in two different bills right now. And they're really interrelated because the question of which offenses should begin for this age group don't currently include, for example, drug trafficking or carrying a firearm while committing a felony. And so these are some of the offenses that Senate Judiciary is considerate of whether to add those to the big 12 list for purposes of juvenile jurisdiction and to exclude those offenses from initiating as delinquencies for the younger age population. Well, again, we'll have to look and see what they they come up with. They're holding their cards pretty close. I'm not sure what what the final version will be. I think they want to get something out soon. And then we'll we'll react accordingly then missing anything on that. Yeah, there's still a lot of testimony that needs to be taken. I guess I would just say I you know, we did hear from the Columbia Justice Lab about raise the age and their opinion that we should just proceed because we have the capacity and the ability to do so, but did not take into account data that was presented by DCF regarding their caseloads or regarding their youthful offender caseloads, which can go up to age 22. So I think that the committee has a lot to consider when it's thinking that it just wants to proceed with its with its sort of philosophical orientation or to really look at the circumstances on the ground and and decide whether they're setting the system up for failure. Wish winners anything. Thank you, Governor, really just to repeat what what Jay just said, which is that we're looking at the entire system, the whole high end system of care and the stresses on it and the data across all of our caseload. We have shortages of family service workers. Those family service workers serve both the juvenile justice side as well as the child protection side of the work that we do. So to add any additional caseload to them right now is not something that we can support. We want to be able to do our jobs and do them well and this would place an additional stress on the system that we just can't afford at this moment. Maybe we'll answer this, but I know we've seen it. You mentioned to drug crime has kind of been increasing over the last little bit. Has the state been able to maybe pinpoint any kind of pipeline or where they're coming from or the people that are bringing it in or some of the monsters are coming from say Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, other places or any kind of data when it comes to that? I believe there is. So there are many source cities, oh for the record I'm Jennifer Morrison, the commissioner of public safety. There are multiple source cities along the east let's say the eastern Atlantic region. As you can imagine there's a little bit of a whack-a-mole. If we make a big operation that has an impact in a city, Springfield mass or New York City, then there could be a slight disruption in the supply side coming from that location. Likewise it will just pop to another city. And so we do have data on a case by case basis of who is behind what the organized criminal element is behind the cases that wind up in Vermont. But in terms of whether there is one source city that is driving the majority of our violent crime or homicides that is not information that I have available at my fingertips. And I don't believe that there is any one source city that is driving all of what you've been reporting on and we've been responding to. It does raise the issue of the game of whack-a-mole that there will always be a supply side to this equation until we reduce the demand. It's really that simple. What percentage of our homicides are drug related? You'd have to give me a time frame and I'd have to get the exact answer. But 2023 was the first year in my recent memory where it was a higher percentage than DV domestic violence homicides. So I think it was close to 80 percent. But I can get you, I can follow up and get you that. I'll get the information to you, Jason. Governor, there's a bill that's gone quite a bit of time on how to distribute so far this year that would I guess standardize resources more so across the state for court diversion. And it's the idea I guess of diverting more minor offenders out of the criminal justice system to free up the space with the court backlog. Is that something that you think jails with the priorities you've been talking about so far? Jay, first? Sure. Sure, we've been following that as well. It's changed many times. It's been unclear a little bit what exactly the goal is. I think originally it was intended to make the system more uniform, which we absolutely support. There are multiple sort of justice organizations around the state. There's four in Chittenden County. There are a couple of counties that don't have any. They provide different kinds of services across the state. There's a number that are unified in their operations, and then others rely on smaller organizations. So anyway, you do need some uniformity of the system. And I would agree that if that's the goal, that's what we need. I don't know that this bill does that. It does provide that the AG's office will provide some standards on a manual. What it also does, though, is try to incentivize prosecutors to move more cases into the diversion system without any data or understanding about the impacts on repeat offenses. We know diversion is not effective for repeat offenders, and this really doesn't address that. It doesn't address violent crimes. You say it's misdemeanor crimes, but I think what they're really trying to do is force prosecutors more into a position like the position of the Chittenden County State's Attorney, which is to divert misdemeanors, effectively taking out of the justice system completely. So no prosecutions of those cases, not no prosecutions, because they have conceded over time in their multiple drafts that prosecutors would have to retain some discretion. But the intent is to move cases out of the justice system and into the diversion system. And that would be pre-trial and during pre-charge, pre-trial and post-charge. So we do have some serious concerns. It also doesn't address resources at all. So we really do need to understand what they're talking about in terms of cost, when they're talking about expanding a system. If all the proposed reforms that you've put on the table, some of which you've narrated today, as it relates to public safety, were enacted into law, would it have the effect of increasing the number of individuals in Vermont who have incarcerated? There may be a slight flip in some respects, but we have to keep, we have to hold offenders accountable in some way. And if we continue down this path, I think we may have fewer incarcerated, but we'll have more crime. So what we need to do is show that we're going to help old people accountable. There may be a jail associated with that. And for a short period of time, we may see an increase. But I think that it's well worth it for those in our communities who feel unsafe. And for the overall system, our judicial system needs accountability in order to function. Everybody? On a side topic, property taxes, there's been a lot of talk about Act 1.7, school construction, the cost of education at large. How they have a factor from your perspective is the cost of health care on school budgets? Well, certainly health care has affected all of us throughout individually and state government as well. We've negotiated some of our contracts with the unions to bring in those costs of health care increases. So it's a factor, definitely a factor. But is it the only factor? I don't believe so. Because it wouldn't be going up 20% across the board. I mean, we're talking, again, over $200 million at this point in time. And what, as I said before, I'm in support of what the legislature is doing in terms of eliminating the 5% cap. But I just want to make it clear that in no way fixes this problem. I mean, that's a small piece of this in some respects. When you look at the magnitude of the $225 to $250 million issue that we have right now, that could account if all of the budgets were reduced, that might take it down 25 million, maybe 10%, 15% at the most on a good day. So I just don't want to, we need to be honest with Vermonters about this, that this one provision isn't going to fix the problem. We're still going to have a huge hole there. You made it clear that you don't support raising revenues, these taxes. Where would you like to see cuts? Well, we've, you know, over the past seven or eight years, as you've, as I've reported, and you've seen, we've had a number of provisions that I think would have put us in a much better position today had we enacted those over the last seven years. But they've been met with resistance. Even this 5% cap and the pupil waiting bill that was passed a couple of years ago was I signed. In fact, it was, I put a signing letter with it, which was unusual in some respects, but we warned of this, this exact thing that's happening today. We warned of it. We asked legislators to work with us. And I can get you that letter if you'd like, because none of this should be a surprise. You mentioned just to get back to healthcare for a second that the state renegotiated with the state employees. Is there an opportunity to do that with teachers or potentially bringing teachers into the general fund? Well, again, if you look back like six, seven, eight years, we had a plan for that that I think would have kept healthcare costs more level over time. So again, we're going to have to contemplate all kinds of different approaches. It's not one single factor that's going to fix this issue, this $250 million increase in property taxes. It's going to be across the board. We're going to have to look for ways. And it's going to be hard work, tough pills to swallow, but they would have been less difficult to swallow seven years ago than they are today. But they still have to be done because even if we can't fix it this year, this problem doesn't get fixed itself. This is going to get worse next year. So regardless of what the end tax bill ends up being, we need to put provisions in place to moderate and decrease the amount of amount we're spending for schools. And I guess the last question, as the state's chief executive, what's your message to the monitors? I mean, how should they be preparing for whatever the tax rate ends up being? I think they should get engaged with their communities. They should educate themselves in terms of what their school boards are including in their school budgets. And just get more engaged than they have been before. Because if we figure in and they're okay with a tax increase because of the schools, then they can vote that way. But a lot's going to depend on what they vote on and what they accept. But they need to get educated. They need to get engaged. This isn't a time for apathy. This is a time for you to get involved and figure out what you're willing to live with and what you can't. Governor, emergency dispatch is an enormously complex problem. What's your assessment of what's wrong with the system now and your timeline for an upgraded public safety dispatch system coming online? This is something that we've, this is nothing new to this year. It's been around for at least a couple of decades that I can remember. And what I wanted to accomplish over the last number of years is a statewide system that communities could rely on and be engaged in and sign up for. Where it always falls apart is that somebody's got to pay for it. Right? And I said this from the beginning. Like, we've got to figure out is the state going to pay for all of this? Or is it going to be spread out over different communities? And do you have a choice at that point to either sign on or not? And we have to answer those basic questions. And to my knowledge, I'm not sure that anything's been resolved at this point. Those questions still exist. And I'm still not sure that we have those answers. So again, this is a simple issue, but it's complex. Because again, it always gets down to money. Sure. So the topic of statewide emergency communications first was written about 51 years ago. So this is not a new topic. The topic of how to best organize ourselves at the local, regional, or state level has been discussed over and over and over. But the current landscape of efforts to be responsive to your question, as you know, Act 78 last spring stood up the Public Safety Communications Task Force. We have a very large charge in terms of the technical aspects of the work to be done under Act 78. There is also a charge to determine the proper fair and ongoing funding for a statewide system. There's also a charge to establish minimum governance and other certain standards. So it's a very wide scope of work contemplated in Act 78. I serve as the co-chair of the Task Force that is taking on that work. We are in the process of finalizing a contract with a subject matter expert, a vendor who will be charged with doing the bulk of the work that is laid out in Act 78. And it's multiple lanes that need to be run in to get to a place where we have options to put on the table before lawmakers, citizens, subject matter experts, stakeholders, to determine which of the options make the most sense going forward. Interestingly, Act 78 said right in it, like, we don't want to break what already works well. So as the governor said, we have to find a system that people want to be part of that is cost-effective and that works technologically. At the end of the day, first responders in the field want to know that when they click the mic, somebody's going to hear them. Likewise, callers want to know that their needs are being met when they call for emergency services. So I believe that we are probably, this is my back of the napkin, this is not, you know, some prophetic estimate, but I believe we're probably two years from having that the work completed to the point where we can have credible options to weigh about what the future statewide system, whether that's everyone on one system or a network of networks or some other scheme looks like. But when the governor says this is a really simple topic, but it's also really complex, it is no truer words if it's spoken. This is a very complicated topic that is going to require very thoughtful analysis of existing assets and resources, stakeholder willingness to move to a new system, and also keeping track of emerging technologies to maximize the situation in Vermont. As you know, our topography is very challenging at times. So there's a lot more we could say, we could talk ad nauseam about the work that is happening, but it is where we are right now has been a bit of a slog to get to what I perceive is the starting line and we're going to come out of the gate pretty hard as soon as we get this last contract in place to do the actual work that is laid out in Act 78. You're welcome. Thank you all very much. Have a great day.