 Senate government operations. It is Thursday, February 11th, and we are looking today where our first agenda item is looking at the issue of juveniles and the release of the public records exemptions for certain information regarding juvenile offenders. I will just remind people that we don't use chat in this committee because we consider chat as people having a sidebar conversation. If we were in the committee room, we would ask people to go out in the hall and have their conversations. If you need to chat with somebody, go out in the hall. We don't use our chat. With that, I think that we'll just get started. We don't have a new draft. We had the draft that Tucker did for us last time, which we looked at and we need to take some more testimony. We were asked to look at the issue of how it might affect licensing for daycares or childcare centers, driver's licenses, insurance, which is why we have a number of people with us here. I think what I'd like to do is start with Marshall Paul. There's also some confusion we had about the different what we have juveniles and then we have youthful offenders. There was some confusion around that, and I couldn't give a good explanation at all. Brinn Hare could not be with us today. She's the attorney that would deal with this, but Marshall is the juvenile public defender. I don't know, he'll tell us what his real title is. Marshall, I think I'd like to start with you. Any of the committee members have any questions before we get started about general, the way we're going to proceed here and then we'll go to the others to find out what the issues might be with their particular like DFR and DMV and DCF. Any committee members? No. Okay. Marshall, do you want to just then, have you seen the draft? I was just looking for it. I heard the discussion of it last week, but it wasn't on the website so I haven't seen it. I was looking to see whether it was today, but I only have one computer in front of me. I'm not going to look at it right now because that would mean looking away from Zoom and I don't want to do that. But basically what we're talking about is limiting identifying information of juveniles from arrest records and yes, identifying information and then when it goes to court, then the court becomes the custodian of it. So law enforcement, this is really about law enforcement at that point. Right. Okay. So I can start just by introducing myself. I'm Marshall Paul. I'm the Chief Juvenile Defender and the Deputy Defender General for the state of Vermont. And I'll start by giving sort of a quick overview of what youthful offender status is. And then I'll talk a little bit about how various confidentiality provisions work around the youthful offender status and how they can and can't work, sort of what the boundaries of confidentiality are constitutionally when it comes to youthful offender status. So youthful offender status is a status that's actually been around for quite a long time in Vermont. Almost all states have something like youthful offender status. It varies from every state's youthful offender status is a little different, but most of them have a youthful offender type status at this point. Vermont, though, was one of the first states to adopt a youthful offender status. And we did back in the late 90s or early 2000s. And then we made, you know, that law has been tweaked along the way. And so what I'm gonna describe for you is sort of how it operates currently based on current law. And so youthful offender status is a way for people who are charged with offenses that could be in criminal court to have their case transferred down to the juvenile court, but give the court the opportunity and the prosecution the opportunity to sort of hold the criminal sanction, the criminal court system over that youth's head saying essentially if you are a good supervisor, if you do a good job being supervised and being on probation, then great, you can essentially be treated as a juvenile. But if you screw up on probation and if you're not a good supervisor, then your case can go back to the criminal court and you can be subject to a criminal sentence just like anyone in the criminal court system. So it's sort of a high risk, high stake status for youth. And when we say youth here, we're talking about kids ranging, you know, it's possible that someone could be a youthful offender as young as 12 years old, but that's something that is typical. Most people who are in youthful offender status are somewhere between 16 and 22. And so what happens is let's say that you are, just to give an example, let's say a 17 year old charged with a fairly serious offense like you're charged with one of the most common ones is burglary of an occupied dwelling. That's one that kids get a lot especially up in the northern part of the state where there's lots and lots of hunting camps. Man, the number of kids who break into hunting camps during the non hunting season is huge. And that's even though the hunting camps are not occupied at that time because it's a building that can be occupied, that's considered burglary of an occupied dwelling. And it's a serious offense, it's a 15 year felony if it's charged in the criminal court. So if you're a 17 year old and you're charged with burglary of an occupied dwelling, that charge has to originate in the criminal court. It is presumptively an adult criminal prosecution. And there's one exception to that rule but I'll get to that at the end because it's a very, very rarely used exception. So, but for the most part 99% of the cases that case has to originate in the criminal court. Then the youth can ask for youthful offender status at which point their case is transferred to the juvenile division. And then the juvenile division they hold a hearing to decide whether or not that youth should have youthful offender status. And really what they're looking for there is is this a youth that's going to where the interests of justice are going to be served by youthful offender status. It's a pretty vague way, vague criteria but what it actually boils down to in most cases are a few questions which are essentially does the court look at this kid and think this kid will be successful as a youthful offender? And there's a lot of factors that go into that. Is this a kid who has a record of being unsuccessful on juvenile probation? If it is a kid who's not, who's failed juvenile probation a bunch of times the chances that a judge is gonna let them take youthful offender status are pretty slim. Another one and actually one of the ones that's most important is how much time is there for this kid to be supervised and how much time does this kid need to be supervised for? So for example, if it's a kid who was let's say 20 years old when they broke into a hunting camp and they asked to transfer their case down for youthful offender status and when they're evaluated the state comes back and says man this is a kid with a serious protracted drug problem this case is what their treatment is gonna require is really seeing a period of intense drug treatment and followed by a period of supervision so we can tell whether this kid has really been successful in their treatment and that may not be something that's possible in two years and so we're gonna kick it back to the criminal court for that reason. That's probably the most common reason that these cases get kicked back up is just that there's not enough time to complete the treatment that is gonna be required. So, but let's say that, you know let's go back to our example of the 17 year old with the burglary of an occupied dwelling. The kid doesn't have a bad record the kid looks like he'll be a good supervisee so then they get youthful offender status and they're put on juvenile probation just like a juvenile probation is supervised. You know, it's written the law is written as if it's joint supervision between shared between DCF and DOC but typically what happens if the kid's under 18 is that DCF takes the lead and once the kid's older than DOC takes the lead. And so they're put on juvenile probation they have juvenile probation conditions just like anyone on juvenile probation and they get, you know, regular meetings with their juvenile probation officer they are doing treatment they are doing, you know whatever it is that they need counseling, treatment, community service, paying restitution whatever the parameters of their disposition we call it in juvenile court rather than a sentence is whatever the parameters of that disposition are they're being supervised by a juvenile probation officer if they violate their juvenile probation they can be taken in on a VOP just like a juvenile normal juvenile probation case. And if the judge finds that they violated the judge has a lot of options the judge can impose more conditions. So for example, for our example of a 17 year old kid who broke into a hunting camp, you know maybe he had probation conditions that required him to meet with his probation officer and, you know, abstain from using drugs or alcohol and if he's caught violating one of those conditions let's say he violates the drugs and alcohol condition a judge could look at that and say, you know what you need an additional condition you need a curfew so now you're gonna have a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day, something like that. But another option that the judge has is to revoke probation completely. And if the judge revokes probation then the case gets sent back up to the criminal court and in the criminal court there's no trial or anything like that because the kid was already essentially found guilty in the juvenile court. So they are sent up just for a sentencing and it's an open sentencing which is why even though youth offender might sound from the outside like kind of a really good deal it's actually a very high stakes status, a real risk and there's a lot of kids who even though they may be eligible for youth offender status I've had a lot of clients that I recommend that they don't take youth offender status and I'll explain a little bit why. So let's say that I have a 17 year old who's charged with burglary of an occupied dwelling that's a felony with a 15 year maximum on it which means that in an open sentencing a judge could sentence that kid to serve in prison anywhere from no time at all, all the way up to 15 years to huge range. So it's an immense risk that that kid takes whereas if you work with a prosecutor and plead the case out. So if it's a case where there's no question of the kid's guilt and the kid does not like the idea of the risk that's entailed like, oh man if I violate my probation and I get my probation revoked I'm then just throwing my fate into the hands of the judge and saying sentence me however you want. And so what happens in a lot of cases as a lawyer when you explain to a kid that that's the consequence for violating or for getting your youthful offender probation revoked it doesn't seem like such a great deal especially when the option is to plead the case out in the criminal court where you can actually be assured of what the sentence is. So for example, you might work with a prosecutor and the prosecutor might say, oh yeah, it's only a kid and I understand that this is not reflective of some long-term pattern of dangerous offenses. And so we can do three years all suspended which would mean that the kid would be not sent to prison, placed on probation and that if they violated their probation and had their adult probation and had their probation revoked the most that they could do before they maxed out their sentence would be three years. You don't have that option to negotiate a controlled sentencing in the youthful offender system which is why it's something that while it's used a lot and used in some serious cases when I have a kid who has a history of being a bad supervisee I tend to recommend to those kids like, look let me just work out the best deal that I can for you in the adult system rather than bringing you down here where if you get revoked which given your history is not at all unlikely you could be facing this sort of immense uncertainty as to your sentence anywhere from zero to 15 years. You know, and as an experienced lawyer you can give a kid some advice like you're not likely to get as 17 year old tagged in your first offense not likely to get any like you're not gonna get a 12 year sentence out of that it would be something less than that but nonetheless that uncertainty that huge range of uncertainty is really difficult for kids and in a lot of cases not going youthful offender is actually the right approach. So that's sort of I told you that I was gonna talk about the one exception to the rule that these cases must start in the criminal division. And that one exception is that prosecutors do have the option to directly file a case as a youthful offender case. So rather than filing it in the criminal division they can file it in juvenile court as a youthful offender status case. The trick with that is there's really two tricks to that. One is it's an option that's not used very often at all like, you know, 99% of cases that go youthful offender started in the criminal division and then were transferred down. Very few prosecutors are direct filing these as youthful offender. And part of the reason for that is that it's not actually up to the prosecutor whether the case goes youthful offender or not even if the prosecutor wants the case to go youthful offender sort of as I just explained there's a lot of drawbacks to youthful offender. And so the youth can reject the youthful offender status even if the prosecutor has offered it up. So those are, you know those are really the reasons why that one sort of narrow exception to the general rule that these cases must start in the criminal division are actually pretty few and far between. I would say that the one exception to that is Jenin County seems to be filing a lot of cases as direct file youthful offender cases but the other counties not so much. So then we get to the question of confidentiality and the way that youthful offender has worked Senator White you looked like you were about to interrupt me and say something. Well, I was just, I was just going to the area, the only area we're not dealing with the court cases at all here. Right. Only at the point of arrest and what that entails because and if you can just clarify for this for me so when Sheriff Anderson arrests somebody there is no charge yet he arrests them and then so at that point they don't know if they're going to be a youthful offender go to criminal court, go to family court, whatever. So if you can talk about how that how our proposal here would affect the youthful offender status. Is that where you were going? I'm sorry. Yeah, I think I can go there and so just remind me a little bit I think the proposal was essentially to say that on anyone under age 19 that they're identifying information couldn't be released as an arrest record. Yes. Right. And Jeanette could I just tag on to your question because it's puzzling Marshall once they get to criminal court I mean we're trying to affect this we're trying to affect this before it gets to criminal court because that's a public record that is totally public at criminal court. So what we're trying to do is circumvent the publicizing of Juvedal's names under 19. Assuming that. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't even want them to get to criminal court yet because that would mean that they were totally exposed and identified. We will have no control over whether they go to criminal or family court. That's not our question. Right. That's right. Our question is identifying somebody under and right now Juvenile is 19. It's gradually going to move up. So as we identify Juveniles at a certain age. Right. What should we be putting in an arrest record that is public that might impact them at a future date? Senator Collamore. Thank you Madam Chair. I'm sorry to interrupt but I, you said something and I'm confused now. If Mark Anderson arrests someone, there has to be a charge, doesn't there? They have to be arrested for some reason. I don't know how that's written up. He's arrested for breaking into it, but there is no charge yet by the court. Am I, Marshall, maybe you can, I can answer that a little bit and perhaps Sheriff Anderson can provide further. So when someone's arrested, child, adult, anything, they're arrested because the arresting officer has probable cause to believe they committed an offense. That's not the same as a charge. And ultimately it's the prosecutor who determines the charge. So just to use the example of our kid who's caught breaking into a hunting camp, the arresting officer might say, I'm arresting this kid for burglary of an occupied dwelling, which is a presumptively criminal charge. But when that affidavit is passed on to the prosecutor, the prosecutor might look at it and say, you know what, I don't see evidence in this affidavit that the kid intended to commit an offense. And therefore I'm not gonna charge burglary of an occupied dwelling. And instead I'll charge unlawful trespass, which is a, then that's a juvenile offense, which would not be in the criminal court. And in fact, because it's a misdemeanor, not even eligible for transfer up to the criminal court. And so that's my understanding of it essentially is that, you know, when the officer writes up the affidavit, they indicate in the affidavit, I arrested because I believe that there was probable cause that this kid had committed a particular offense. But that doesn't, you know, the prosecutor can then decide to charge that, however they want, or honestly they can decide not to charge it at all. And so you often see a case, you know, when you do arraignments, you're often seeing cases where the charge, you know, the charge that's brought by the prosecutor may say one thing. And when you look at the affidavit and see what the arresting officer believed there was probable cause for, that might be something else entirely. And those decisions are made in a lot of different ways. I mean, you know, prosecutors can decide what charges to file, not just based on what the evidence is. You know, they might say, I'm looking at this and it looks like it could be charged as a burglary of an occupied dwelling. But just given this kid's background and history and things that the prosecution knows about the case, they might feel that's not appropriate to expose that kid to that serious of a charge. And they might, you know, elect to charge a lesser offense. So Mark, do you want to weigh in on that? Is that the way you see that it happens? Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Mark Anderson, Wyndham County Sheriff, I know that there's certain words that we are talking about that are referenced legally. So I generally agree with Attorney Paul. The law enforcement will recommend to the state's attorney charges. Ultimately the state's attorney will draft a complaint as well as information, which will include those charges. They could also find that we haven't reached probable cause for a charge as Attorney Paul has mentioned. So generally I agree, but there's also attorneys in the room who might have a better understanding of the different words at different points in the process. So if we said something like, I guess I want to try to get us to what we're trying to do here is if we said an unidentified youth was arrested for breaking and entering on Pond Road on December 23rd to 230. That's the arrest record. We don't say Joe Smith or a black male teenager or a female from the town of Putney. We'd say unidentified youth is arrested for potentially this charge. I mean, does that cause a problem, I guess, is the issue that we're trying to address here? Thank you for that Madam Chair. I don't generally I don't think that causes an issue. I think prior to some changes with the youthful offender law that was generally how law enforcement would represent this issue. Our practice within my department is to just reference a juvenile was arrested, if that was the case. We don't identify gender, sex. We do identify age. Simply to say it was a 16 year old versus a 13 year old. I mean, there's a difference with regards to that which I don't think would be necessarily identifying. As we get to locations where they could become identifying we generally will sanitize a press release or public release of that. Again, because we don't want it to be identifying and that's ultimately the intent. The concern I would have is the circumstance where we're not sure for filing charges. Where let's say that it's a juvenile operating a motor vehicle in a potentially in a negligent way. Is it to the level of criminal negligence versus ordinary negligence? And so we're asking for an attorney's review of documents to verify if probable cause exists for the criminal charge. If we received a public records request before the charge was filed with the state's attorney or by the state's attorney, are we still covered by this exemption? I think that that's our point is that we want there to be or some of us want there to not be a release of any identifying information until it gets to the court. And at the court, then the decision is made where there goes to family court or criminal court. And at that point, if it goes to criminal court, it's all public. But if it goes to juvenile court, it's a little bit beyond a little bit silly to have released the information beforehand that's out there. And so it's out there and then it decided that it should go to juvenile court where it's all confidential when it's already been released. Madam chair, I agree. I think it would be simpler. And there might come a point where ultimately a court of competent jurisdiction or state's attorney provides notice that they will not be pursuing it. Maybe that could be an avenue out upon the receipt of notice that is not going through a criminal process. Then that could be subject to public records. No, but why would you want it to be a public record if there was no charges brought? I think that's a question for people who support the public records act, but I would argue that there will be people who are saying for the purpose of transparency. Yep, I agree that there will be a difference of opinion here on all of this. Senator Collamore. Thank you, Madam chair. So just so I'm clear, and I did get a lot of pushback since our last get together, mostly because of the editorial that was in the local paper here. So if someone is 18 years and 364 days old, they would, they are considered a youth juvenile. Juvenile. Once they turn 19, we're not talking about them with this bill because it all is public, correct? I'm getting. If I can just answer that quickly. The answer is yes. Once they turn 19, they're no longer a juvenile. In 2022, the age of juvenile jurisdiction is going to adjust upward once more. And so then 19 year olds will be considered juveniles. There's no more by the age is not set to go up further than that. That was the way that that bill was written, the raise the age bill. It was, it was simply an increase of two years from age 18 to age 20. So not including, when I say two age 20, it's always confusing. It's not 20 year olds. So it's up until the 20th birthday on the 20th birthday, they will become an adult in the eyes of the juvenile justice system. And that was phase, that was implemented in two phases. So the first phase went into effect this year. The second phase goes into effect in 2022. Understood. Thank you. So if you don't, you don't say any age in something like this, you just say a juvenile and that'll depend on the definition of juvenile in the court system, in the statutes. Yeah. Marshall. I would recommend not using the word juvenile because the word juvenile has a lot of different meanings depending on which chapter of state law you're looking at. What would you use? You know, I think just putting in the age 19 and then- Up until their 20th birthday. Oh, no. Yeah. Now you would put up until their 19th birthday and then you would put in a clause that it goes up to their 20th birthday when- 20th. In 2020. What? Were you saying something? Well, they're- Yeah, they're 19 all the way through until their 20th birthday. So it has to be clear that it's not just, it's their entire 19th year. Yes. I mean, we can use the language from the raised the age statute. And so in 2022, it would be up until their 20th birthday. And we actually have in the juvenile chapters in several different places at this point just because we referenced these ages all over the place. We figured out how to draft the statutes. It's really, Bryn Harris figured out how to draft the statutes so that they automatically adjust. It's essentially passing two different statutes, one of which is effective on passage and then the next one is effective. It would be on July 1, 2022. So do any- Oh, I'm sure it's our Marshalls. So I just wanted to kind of chime in with the, because we got a little sidetracked and I had been going to answer the question of what would this, what effect would this proposal have around youthful offenders? And it would be, it would work fine. It would do exactly what I think it's intended to do. The one thing it could do is there would be places where youth are, where people who are over the age of at this point, 19, who are still eligible for youthful offender status could still have their arrest records public, but then get youthful offender status where their case then becomes confidential. But I, you know, in my opinion, that's not actually a big deal because for 99% of these cases, they're going to go through criminal court anyway. And so that affidavit, that information, that's all gonna become public record anyway. So it's not costing anybody any confidentiality even though this doesn't capture the entire world of people who can find themselves in a confidential court proceeding, those ones who it doesn't capture are already exposed in other ways for the most part. So I certainly have no objection to the way that this has been drafted and the, you know, the intent of this. And I think that it works fine with the youthful offender law. I actually think that the way that this has been proposed to have it essentially be that we just say arrest records are of kids under the age of jurisdiction are confidential. And then they become essentially the courts become the custodians of it. And if the case ever becomes non-confidential, then the arrest record can become non-confidential through the court system is a really good and actually really creative way to address this issue. That's our Tucker. Any questions for Marshall, Senator Rom? Well, I don't think this is necessarily a question, but I was really grateful to Marshall for some email back and forth just about how racial disparities will just end up having some unintended consequences here. I wouldn't change anything about the bill, but I just want to name that when there is discretion, we've seen in the numbers that it's just more likely that black youth will be charged and maybe potentially charged in a higher level court that becomes public. So I think, unfortunately, what we will still see is that black youth will still have more of a public visibility for the crimes that they commit that are similar to white youth. One of the statistics that Marshall shared with me that I found really compelling, even though it still would count them as a youthful offender, is that black youth in Chittenden County make up 2.5% of the population and 25% of the youthful offenders. So the statistics are really jarring and I just hope we'll continue to watch the overall issue of who's being advanced to criminal court, who's having their information shared publicly and being seen as a visible criminal versus who gets the benefit of the doubt that they're young and made a mistake. So I just want to name that before they move on. Yeah, and I just clarify that statistic a tiny bit. It's like the most minor point, but I try to be precise with statistics is I actually don't know, I could not, I've not been able to find data on the percentage of youth in Chittenden County who are black. So that's actually the percentage of the population of Chittenden County that's black. I couldn't find anyone who broke it down. I found statistics where they break down the population of Chittenden County by age and by race, but none that combine the two. So I'm not actually, I would imagine that if you were looking only at, say, the under 19 population of Chittenden County, the percentage of youth that are black would be a little higher. Exactly, yeah. Just as anecdotally, observationally, you know, there's, it's a lot of, a lot of the black population in Chittenden County is driven by the refugee population. And it's been a lot of, it's a population that's been growing and it's a lot of young people. Whereas when you look at the white population in Chittenden County, it's a lot of older people. So I think that if you looked only at the youth population, you would see a bit more diversity than you see when you look only at the older population. But like I said, that's anecdotal and observational. I don't actually have a statistic for that. And even if it was just double rather than 10 times, it's pretty jarring. So other questions for Marshall at this point? Thank you, Marshall. Thank you. So let's jump here. Does, first of all, does anybody else who's with us have a time constraint? I see, because I'd like to make sure that we get to everybody, but I know that everybody is pretty busy these days. Does anybody have a time constraint then would like to go first? I don't see anybody. In that case, I think we will jump to, because there were some very specific questions about how it would impact insurance, motor vehicles, licensing. So I think we'll jump to Commissioner Pichek first, if that's okay with everybody. And Commissioner Pichek, I will say that we enjoy as the wrong word to use, because we would rather not see you giving these updates every few days, but you're doing a good job. So thank you. Well, thank you very much, Chair White. Thank you to the committee for inviting me here today as well. Good to see everyone. So I believe there were some questions during your last testimony about the impact of the proposed bill on insurance. And I've been listening to the testimony this afternoon. And if I have the nuance, right, that you're talking about initial arrest records, not the eventual conviction of an individual that's under a certain age, that would stay the same. So in that case, an insurance company certainly would make a determination about driving record, driving history, certain types of arrests that are connected to driving. And that would definitely have an impact on somebody's driving premiums. But those would be based on convictions. Those wouldn't be based on initial arrests. I mean, certainly due process of the law requires that the evidence be presented that defenses be made and that an individual be convicted before they see even those kind of non-governmental impacts. So if it is simply initial arrests and then the process plays out as it would in criminal court, if it's determined that it should be in criminal court, or if the process goes to juvenile court and it plays out as it is now, it really should have a, I wouldn't even say negligible, it should have no impact on auto insurance rates either for those that are under 19 or those that are generally in Vermont. Thank you, that was pretty concise. Any questions for Commissioner Pitchek about that? Senator Colomar. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanna make sure I understand, Michael. So does the insurance company eventually gain access to a driving record of a juvenile or not? Yeah, I know it's a good question. It's actually one I was asking myself while you were speaking, because I believe if those records are sealed and they're not reported to the DMV, then the insurance company wouldn't have any way of accessing them. If they are in a criminal proceeding, obviously, of course, they would have access to those. Right. So they wouldn't be able to offer any discounts or anything like that with a safe driving record if they couldn't access the records? I think Marshall might have an answer for us. So two things on that. One is that this wouldn't affect, as I understand it, traffic tickets, which make up most of a driving record. I think a lot of us have, I'm speaking really for myself here, have a lot of traffic tickets, but I don't have any convictions for traffic offenses, just a lot of tickets. And tickets are handled by the Judicial Bureau, they don't involve an arrest, and the Judicial Bureau is not confidential for juveniles, for adults, for anybody. That's Judicial Bureau is all public. When it comes to traffic crimes that can be prosecuted and brought in either the criminal or the juvenile division, there's actually a provision and it's kind of hidden. It's not in the juvenile code. It's actually in Title IV. And I want to say if it's in Title IV, Section 33, but I'm doing that off of my pop memory, so I might be a little off there. It's the section of Title IV that deals with the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts, has a provision in it that says that the juvenile courts can forward records of convictions for traffic offenses to the Department of Promoter Vehicles. I understand that it's not always clear what DMV does with those, but there is already a mechanism to pass that information to the Department of Promoter Vehicles. So if somebody was stopped and given a ticket for speeding on 91, that's public anyway, but there's no charge there. It's just a ticket. Right. Yeah, okay. Senator Clarkson? Don't accumulate in speeding tickets have an impact on your insurance rates, Michael? Yeah, for sure. I mean, even a single ticket, even a single ticket could. It isn't just convictions that affect your insurance rate. It's a certain amount of speeding tickets as opposed to parking tickets. I mean, you don't get docked for parking tickets. Right. So I think- You have to get docked for speeding tickets. Yeah, and I think the point there is, when you have the speeding ticket and you decide not to contest it, it's not an arrest, it's not an arrest, you're not being arrested and then you're sort of consent, you're sort of agreeing to the violation or you're consenting to the violation. So I think in that instance, if you think of that as a, whether it's a conviction or whether it's basically a complete completion of that process that you've exhausted your appeal rights or you've agreed to the charge as made on the ticket, then it's complete and it's on your record. But I don't think that we're not dealing with traffic, with violations of that nature in this bill. We're dealing with charges. People who are arrested, people aren't arrested for speeding. They might be arrested for going 110 in the wrong lane, which would be then a different charge, not just a speeding ticket. Right. So we're not dealing with tickets here. I understand that, but they do have impact, right? Right, but we're not- They do have impact on your insurance rates is the only point. Right. So it's not just convictions. Right, but we're not addressing that at all. Right, I know. Okay. Any other questions for Commissioner Pichak? Okay. Thank you. Yeah, thank you all. So I think the other question that was asked was, would it have any impact on, I suspect the answer is going to be the same on these, for licensing through OPR. So Lauren. Good afternoon for the record, Lauren Hibbert, Director of the Office of Professional Regulation. Thank you so much for inviting me to come testify on this issue. So we do ask on every application in our office if you have been convicted of a crime. And based on my knowledge, I used to be a public defender in New York City. I have never practiced criminal law in Vermont. So I wanna preface it with that, but based on my information, a person charged as a juvenile would not have to disclose that they were convicted under their youthful offender status or their juvenile delinquent status. That is not to say that we do not receive responses to that question that indicate that someone had a juvenile record because people do not understand the distinction there. And as a matter of policy, we do not consider anything that is disclosed to us that happened when somebody was a juvenile or under the age of 19 at this time, soon to be 20 when the law changes. When we have a few select professions that we are authorized by the legislature to conduct criminally supported background checks for, there's four of them. We only conduct a criminal background checks on three out of the four, just as a quick overview that is PI and security, real estate appraisers, osteopathic physicians and nurses. Nurses we do not currently conduct background checks for we have the authorization, but we haven't started doing that criminally supported background check. Fingerprint supported background check yet. And my understanding of this bill is we would not receive the records if the person had not been referred for prosecution under fingerprint analysis either. And that is fine for the office of professional regulation. I don't believe we're receiving them now when a juvenile is fingerprinted, but I could be wrong. On whole, the office of professional regulation does not have any policy objections to this bill. And we believe that we'll be able to continue our work safely if this bill were passed. And I appreciate the opportunity to speak to it. Any questions for Lauren? Senator Colomar. Thank you. So I just want to understand, Lauren, if someone is 17 and they've been convicted of a felony, you would not get that information on their phone. Is that what you're saying? If they were to be clear, if they were convicted of a felony in criminal court, we would receive that response and we would take that into consideration. It's the things that we do not take into consideration are convictions of a juvenile delinquent or a youthful offender, but someone who is charged in criminal court, we would be asking, do you have a conviction? You have you been convicted of a crime? The answer would be yes. We would receive the information and we would take that into consideration in making our licensing determination. So even if they didn't self-report that they were, you would still get that report from the courts. So if it is a profession where we receive a criminally, a fingerprint background check, then we will get that information from that avenue. We do not do a criminal court search on every licensee that we license in the state. A lot of our licensees actually are not from Vermont or have a limited exposure of time in Vermont. Vermont criminal court search is not indicative of whether or not somebody has been convicted of a crime. It only tells us whether or not they've been convicted of a crime in Vermont. But we do find that people lie to us, people being people. And when we find that someone has lied to us on the application saying that they were not convicted of a crime and in fact they were, then we bring a case involving professional misconduct charges, unprofessional conduct charges. Okay, I guess I'm still not clear. Somebody on their form said no, but they had been. There could be a case where you would never know that. That is correct. But this is after a conviction. This isn't at the arrest point, right? You don't ask if people have ever been arrested. We do not ask that on our standard application. There are, I believe in PIN security, we ask that question, have you ever been arrested for anything before? But not in our standard application. We do not ask that question. Okay, thank you. We do ask if anyone has any pending arrests currently, but the majority of not, have you ever been arrested in your life? But I do have a pending arrest and we do ask that question, but the majority of our professions require that you be over 18. And I would argue that that, that is important to protect public safety. I haven't thought through candidly whether or not this would be a bar. This is, I don't think this would be a bar from us asking that question of someone who was under 19. It would be a bar on us asking for the record independently of the court or of the arresting agency. It's my read of the law. It's not that the person themselves does not have, could not answer that question. Thank you. Any other questions for Lauren? Thank you. Thank you very much. So Tyler, I think the question here, are you, yeah, you're here. I think the question for DCF was, would this impact, you do licensing for childcare centers, would this have a negative impact on your ability to function and license people? For the record, Tyler Allen, DCF Family Services Division. Thank you for the question, Madam Chair. I'm actually realizing I hadn't prepared for that particular question that would be through our licensing unit and I'm our adolescent services unit. So in order to get a specific answer to you, I think I would have to return or submit something by email in the interim as for an answer to that question. I think I had prepared to speak to what Marshall Paul already so eloquently and comprehensively covered. Oh, okay. All right, great. Sorry for the confusion. That was my fault. Any questions for Tyler? Okay. Are there, were there any other agencies here that I don't think so? I think that was the list that we asked to come and testify to. And I do see that we have Mike Shirling and Pat Gable and David Sher and James Pepper. So how, who wants to weigh in now? Should we start with the commissioner? Happy to, Madam Chair. I think I'll be super brief. Unfortunately, I don't have a current version of what you're working on. I've my navigational abilities on the website are failing me. I think largely the as crafted, this works for us as you'll recall, we didn't have a specific position. We were just looking for clarity. The only flag and I don't know whether this is addressed or not, or if it would be restricted based on the current language, but in the event there is a public safety threat, we would need, we think we need the ability to publicize that. So in other words, a fugitive who happens to be a juvenile or a person identified under this new construct that poses an articulable risk to the public. We'd want to be able to publicize that as we search for that person. I think that that did come up last time. And I don't, it wasn't incorporated, but I think that that committee, does that make sense to you? I mean, I, and there was the same question about Amber alerts. And I don't understand how it would impact that because there it isn't the person that's being arrested, looked for as an offender, but a victim. So this is an arrest record. Yeah, again, I don't have the language, but as you deliberate and look at the final language and work with legislative council, if that lens could be brought to bear just to ensure it's not restricting that that would be helpful. Okay, thank you. Senator Clarkson. So, Michael, why does that, I mean, unless you're asking the general public to help on a search, if you're just asking emergency services and public safety personnel to search, surely then the name doesn't need to be public, it just needs to be contained within those professionals. Are you talking about a public service? They're very rare, but they do occur a couple of times a year. Instances where there are people that pose an imminent risk to the public, even more rare that they're juveniles, but again, it does occur. So we just wanna make sure there isn't a restriction in the event that someone is at large and poses a risk. I think someone who's threatened to school shooting and we can't locate them. Yeah, I'm just trying to differentiate them. That's all. Again, rare instances, but an important albeit rare need for that carve out. I think the example that was given to us was, in addition to a school shooting, something that occurred at University Mall where they knew who it was and they were trying to find the person that needed help from the public. It isn't just from the law enforcement community. Yes, perfect example that suspect happens to fall into this category. So I think that Tucker has that information and with his magic hands, he will draft it perfectly. Tucker? Something that you may wanna flesh out and discuss. This exemption applies to records reflecting the initial arrest of a person or records reflecting the charge of a person. That's the scope of the records that we're dealing with and that borrows language in existing law. Those are the records that are public. Everything else is covered by the general law enforcement exemption. So I guess the question that I would have as you're working through this is, do these sorts of press releases that the commissioner has brought up? These public announcements in the public records world we call these proactive disclosures, do they fall within that exemption category? Records reflecting an initial arrest or records reflecting a charge? If they don't, then this exemption is not going to prohibit the release of identifying information. And from what I'm hearing, it sounds like these sort of announcements take place before initial arrest and before charge and therefore would not be covered by the exemption. Parker has very deftly and surgically identified an issue. There are instances where pre-charge that information may need to go out. There are also those that are post-charged. So we may have an arrest warrant. So the initial filing is done, a warrant exists. The person is, their location is unknown and they pose an ongoing risk to the community. So there could be an intersection with this particular statute that you're contemplating. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Did anybody else wanna weigh in on that? That particular issue, Marshall, I see you unmuted yourself. Sure, I mean, I think that's actually really, that makes sense. And I can actually think of a few occasions that actually fit into that category. Honestly, I think it's the two that I'm thinking of are cases when kids that I've represented have been arrested and then escaped arrest and been on the run. And in the two situations I'm thinking about, there wasn't any, these were not kids who were posing an imminent threat to anybody and there was no need for publicity, but I could certainly see that happening. So we have no objection to including some, real clarifying language just to make clear that, if it's a public, imminent public safety risk or the need to find somebody, that's fine. That's not what our interest is in trying to protect. Senator Polina. In the cases of this imminent risk, would we sometimes be disclosing the person that's him or herself, the name and whatnot. But other times it might just be identifying information like the person is white male with blonde hair that kind of thing, things that we were talking about before we would not disclose, but it might just be identifying information. It could and Senator, as I understand this and as Tucker indicated, that's probably not subject to this new component. If we haven't identified them, we haven't brought a charge. So there wouldn't be a restriction. It would be only instances, in this narrow lane, it would only be instances where we've begun some kind of criminal or juvenile proceeding. Right, that's right, I get it, I understand, thanks. Okay, so let's see, we have, David Sher, do you want to, and thank you for people who have weighed in already, this is very helpful. David? Thank you Senator, even for the record, David Sher with the Attorney General's Office. We believe that the direction this is heading in is good, don't have any issues with the concept. I think I had one point of clarification, perhaps Attorney Anderson might be able to help us with or I may be misreading or misinformed, but my one question was, it seems like in those situations where you have a juvenile, and we're saying somebody under the age of jurisdiction, within the age of jurisdiction, but where the law says that initial jurisdiction will lie in criminal court for those big 12 crimes where somebody's 14 up to the age of jurisdiction, which is due to change soon, and initial jurisdiction lies in criminal court for those, and perhaps it stays there, you know, let's say that that's the way the proceeding develops, then the records custodian would not switch to the juvenile court in the way that it is, I believe is contemplated, the way this is structured, and the result would be an odd situation where a public agency remains the custodian, you know, they still have possession of these records, it is the case that a lot of the information could, maybe most of the information could be accessed through the court anyway, but the public agency would be left in a situation where they'd be forced to respond that this is exempt from the public records, even though it can be accessed, much of it, most of it can be accessed from the court, anyway, it may be that my worry is more academic than it is going to be a serious issue in reality, because much of the records will be accessible, but it is, I wouldn't wanna put public agencies, including my own, in a position where we are forced to say, hey, can't get anything from us when people can just get most of the stuff from the court, it's an odd position to put the agency in. Senator Plain, did you have your hand up or? I was getting a glass of water, I almost said. Okay, okay, sorry, I'm trying to watch everybody here. That's okay. So is there some suggested language around that or how do you, I mean, I guess that is an issue, but if somebody can just go to the courts and get it. I don't want this concern to hold things up. Let me, because I think it's probably a narrow use case and again, I just don't wanna put our agency or other agencies in the position of appearing obstructive when in fact, and obstructive for kind of a strange reason like just a technicality when in fact that isn't anybody's intention behind passing this legislation. Let me think about, and I'm happy to sort of work with legislative council and think if there's a simple elegant solution, I don't want this to bog down what is basically a piece of legislation we think is going in the right direction. Thank you. Any questions for David and Pepper? Maybe you have some thoughts on that. Hey, for the record, James Pepper from the department of state's attorneys and shares. I don't have any specific thoughts. I actually liked just the idea of naming the custodian. I know that one frustration that I often have is when multiple departments, multiple agencies are in possession of a record and I'll be sitting there redacting a record and all of a sudden some other agency releases it in its entirety, even though there is what I would consider to be confidential information that might prejudice a prosecution or something. So I actually really liked the idea and I wish it was more universal towards, I wish there was more direction for records unrelated to this specific kind of juvenile arrest records. But that's a conversation for a different day, obviously. Again, I think that this bill is very much in line with the underlying goals of the expanded juvenile jurisdiction and youthful offender. So I think it's just, honestly just bringing our public records laws into concert with the kind of protections that we've extended to youthful offenders and juvenile delinquency cases. So I don't have any problem with the law, the draft bill as it's written. Thank you. Any questions for Pepper, for James Pepper? Sorry, I just cannot get used to referring to you as James. It's fine. I actually, I mean, very few people other than my mom call me James, so whatever works for you all is great for me. So Pat, I see you're here. Patricia Gable is here with us. And I know that we're not going into the court. We're not going that far. We're kind of stopping here, but would you like to weigh in? Yeah, I was mostly interested in clarifying the committee's goals in terms of the civil records that are in the judicial bureau. And so based on the discussion, I understand that really the proposed bill doesn't have any impact on what I do as custodian of the records and the judiciary will continue to follow the current law and the current rules. And so I found the discussion helpful in terms of clarifying the committee's goals on that. Thank you. Any questions for Pat? Okay. I'm looking to see who, have we lost our media people? Lisa was with us. I don't see her. I've dropped off, Senator. They have all dropped off. All right, well, does anybody else want to weigh in on any part of what we have so far? And I think that hopefully we can, what is next week? We have it, I believe on the, I have too many pieces of paper here. We have this on our list next week for Thursday again to hopefully wrap it up. Does that work? Sounds good. So Tucker, if the commissioner has some language, you'll work with him around that issue of public safety. And David sure will spend some time thinking about whether he has some elegant language or not. Anybody else have any thing that we want to get in here? And then I will, I hope that we will then be able to make sure we hear from the media because Senator Caldmore, I did read that. Also the editorial that was in the, in your paper. And, but I, and there's just a difference of opinion here, I think. So Senator Clarkson to do, oh, Tyler, yes. So sorry, as a point of clarification, I just wanted to make sure, would you like me to return and get back to you with that answer on licensing from our residential licensing unit next week? Yes, if you could. My guess is that it's going to be the same answer as from DFR and OPR, that it's a conviction, not an arrest. I suspect that too. I just wanted to get it from the source. Yes, if we could have that, just have that information. And if it's just a simple matter of sending something to the committee that, so that we can have on record, that would be great. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks. Anything, anything else committee? No. No, okay. I don't even remember what we're going to next. I think at three o'clock we have. Madam Chair, we're going to the preparedness bill. Oh, yes. Okay. And is that at three? That's at three. So we have a time for a little break here if you want. Committee, I will say that I'm just going to throw this out right now that we have the commissioner of public safety has told us that they will have a draft of the agency proposal to us by the end of the week and has asked because they're in charge of doing all the stuff around COVID that we have a joint meeting with house government operations for a walkthrough of the bill of the draft. So we've invited them to join us next Wednesday. Just so that you know. Okay, and they are working on, we had talked about the dates for the reapportionment board to get information to us and about changing that. The house is going to send us a session bill that says that. So we don't have to do that until after crossover. Senator Rom. Madam Chair, I have a specific interest in the independence of the criminal justice council for its other purposes than the academy. And I just wondered if there's past language. I can look at, I think you referenced that tribe to maintain the independence of the council. Well, there's the fire academy. The fire, I don't know if it's called fire and safety council is independent. The academy is under the agency or under the department now, but the council is independent. Commissioner Sherling, did you want? Yeah. I was going to offer a cheer discretion, Madam Chair, to Senator Rom, that we're actually working right now to bolster that language in the initial draft bill. And you'll have an opportunity to tweak that as you see fit to ensure it's clear. Yeah. I think we've had a lot of people weigh in on that. Senator Clarkson, did you have, okay. So should we take a little break and come back at three? Sure.