 Good afternoon. Welcome to Vermont House Judiciary Committee. We are working on draft 0.1 by 0.46. And actually, racial justice statistics. This drafts beyond our committee website. And if we can, we both have it on front of us. Welcome to Eric's practice. We will walk through draft 6.1. Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Hi. Thank you. Sure. Eric Fitzpatrick with the opposite legislative council here to. Talk to the committee about the latest version of. H546, which is an act relating to. Racial justice statistics. I think I heard the chair say that everyone, everyone had version 6.1. Yes. Great. So I can. Do you have a preference about screen sharing or should I just. Indicate to the committee where the changes are between. This version, the previous draft that the committee looked at. Yeah, I want you to do that. Thank you. Sure. So starting from the first page, I'm going to talk about the first draft. I'm going to talk about the first draft. And one, one. Sort of. Piece that you may notice by its absence is that. In the previous draft, this is talking about the duties of the. Executive director of racial equity. This is section one of the bill. The. First or the previous. Interation that you looked at had included something specific about the director. The director of racial equity. The director of racial equity director. To oversee the administration and operation of division. So that's been struck. You'll see later on that. That the division now has. What's. Termed as a lead, but doesn't have a director. Sorry, deputy director anymore specifically in statutes. So that piece was taken out. The. There haven't been any changes to the, if you're moving on to sub chapter two, I'm going to move on to the next slide. I'm going to move on to the next slide. I'm going to move on to the next slide. See the first section, section. Five thousand and 11. Is the broad statements about the mission and purpose of the division. That remains the same. No changes there. It's been that way since the bill was, was introduced essentially. Identical. The duties that you see on page three. So that's been changed about working collaboratively with other state agencies, collecting and analyzing data. Conducting justice information, sharing, et cetera. All of these duties and subdivisions one through seven are all exactly the same. No changes there. You will see some section B. This is on page four. And this is the reporting piece. You'll see there that's the annual report that the. Division makes to the legislature, both to the judiciary committees and the government operations committees. And there's the second sentence of that subsection B. That probably likely to be live lines five to seven. I think of your version, but let me double check that. The, you'll see that there's a sentence that says. The report may include an operational assessment of the division structure and staffing levels. And any recommendations for necessary adjustments. And that may. Sorry, go ahead. Page four. Is that different? I was reading from a different version. So let me. Make sure that I have the. Line member line numbers. So that's that. If you're looking at that sentence now, it may. Be. Ring familiar to you. That was a suggestion that came out of a suggestion that representative Rachel's son had in particular to have that report specifically address. Whatever. You know, structural and staffing needs. That the division might have. And that. Presumably it would. It would. To. More experience and more conducting of its duties. And so that. Have needs or whether adjustments, maybe there were too many people in one area or not enough in another. So to any adjustments that. That needed to be made. Could be included. As a proposal in their annual report. So there's also. And I have the page numbering right now. Thanks. So the next subdivision subdivision one, we're talking about data governance now. There's some new language here as well. So. So. So. So. There's a very bottom of the page lines. 17 to 21 or so. And this has to do with the issue that there's been. Quite a bit of discussion and committee about. And that's the public records. Nature. Of the data that the. Division. Gathers. Remember sort of the general. The general. Policy that the. Bill has now. Different than the bill has introduced with current policy. It's been through a couple of changes based on committee and committee. So. So. So. So. I think. Is that. Generally speaking. The. Data. That the division generates itself. Would be up to the division to make determinations about. Whether it's a public record and how to handle public records request, that sort of thing. But if. If it's a document. Or. Or data that is transmitted. Records. So. So. So. Another state agency, which is going to happen quite a bit. With this. Entity because that's their mission is partial part of the mission is collecting this data from. Other state entities. In that situation. The. The originating agency. Will be the sole records custodian. For purposes of responding to these public. Data request for those data. So for that, for those particular pieces of. The data that we have. The data that we have. The data that we have. And if it's somewhere else. Then that other agency will be the sole. Records custodian for responding. The division's got some discretion to either direct request to, to that transmitting agency or not. And then the new language you'll see. This is, I think. What represent Lefler and. Represent the lawn and others were discussing. And this comes. From that comes out of that. Discussion. And Tucker Anderson, the public records attorney in our office and. The division. The division will. So that's why they team to 21. So it clarifies here that, that while the division may direct any requests for, for those data to the transmitting agency. And that's the stuff that came from that. That other agency initially. Provided that the division shall respond to. PRA. Request. For non identifying values by the division. For preparation of its reports. That is required to make to the legislature. To make sure that. It's not identifying data that the division is using for preparation of its reports. Then it makes the. Response. To the public records act request. So it wouldn't be able to transfer those back to the state agency. It's its own data that it has generated for purposes of the report. So it makes some sense for the division to respond. When there's public records act request for that data. So that's where that came from. And that's the new piece there. No changes to the management. Language about how it manages the data in consultation with the. Archivist and, and. The agency of digital services. That's all. Identical to what it was in the previous draft that you saw. Same with respect to establishing the. Act to manage it for various. Data that collects no changes there either. The next. Change that you'll see is actually in the next section. This has to do with the council. We're getting now outside of the division and to the council, which you remember is. Has an oversight and. Consultation policy consultation recommendation role with respect to the division. And you'll see probably immediately when you look at it, which this is on page seven. About the membership of the council starts on line three. You'll see it's quite different than the previous. Draft that you looked at. That draft, the council had 20 members. Here it's been cut back to seven. So there's seven members total. The. Member appointed by the governor is the same. And actually the members of these seven were in the previous version as well. It's just that. There were various other entities that had members on the council as well. Chief Teslas of the Supreme court, attorney general, defender general, various state agencies, et cetera. All that has been.。 Appreciate those. These would be sorted on racial equity. That's the governor's appointment. And then six more individuals who are appointed by the six agencies or six not stated into these, the five qualities that you see listed on lines 10 through 16. So that's all the same. So it's just the numbers, how many people are on the council has changed, but these characteristics that the nominees and who makes these nominations is the same. That's what I should have mentioned that. A small but important change, that was on line eight. The previous draft actually said six individuals who have experienced with one or more of the following situations added here is experience with or knowledge about. So it broadens the pool a little bit. All right, moving on to it. So now we're still talking about the council. The qualifications are the same. The terms on page eight, there's just a technical change here that line 13 or actually line 11. That originally said, members shall serve until their successors are elected or appointed. But because of the change in who's on the council, there aren't any elections anymore and no legislative members anymore. So it's only appointments. So I need for that language. And then you'll see this is new here at the bottom of that page starting on line 18. These are liaisons and this rule has been added in this draft. These are the folks who were originally part of the council. And we just dropped the number on the council from 20 to seven and significant, not all, not the legislative members, but the other members of the council, rather than having an actual membership rule on the council, the draft now proposes that they have a liaison. And the responsibility of a liaison would be to obviously consult if needed. That's what you see in line 19 and 20. Each of these entities have to appoint a person to service liaison with the council for purposes of providing consultation as needed. And those 10 entities that you see there, Supreme Court, AG, DG, et cetera, are the same folks who were originally members of the council. So now they have a liaison role rather than being actually a member. This takes us over to page nine and actually it's bottom of page 10 where I wanted to direct your attention to next. And no changes here to the language about the meetings, compensation, et cetera, duties of the council. That's all exactly the same. But there is a sunset and you see line 10, page 10. The council sunsets in five years. So in June 20, sorry, June 30th, 2027, my understanding, I wasn't actually able to attend the meeting, but that this came out of the meeting with the government operations committee this morning, that this was where that concept originated. There are some technical changes a little bit during the implementation section. This is just cross references that have been changed in lines 18 through 21 on page 10 and the beginning of page 11. This is just because the number, as I mentioned, the number of appointments dropped from 20 to 7. These cross references had to be corrected as well. The positions, you'll see I mentioned earlier that the position on line, page 11, line 6, it's not a division, not a deputy director now, it's a division lead. So that's the person who will work with the director of racial equity and preserves the requirement for the division lead via IT data analyst. The other two positions, actually that was originally four positions. Line 8 now has two full-time exempt IT data analysts. That was four in the previous draft four positions. So now it's got two, so that's been reduced as well. And the appropriation has been modified in response to and incorporates the joint fiscal offices, fiscal note, and I spoke with JFO at some length about this to try and make sure the numbers are correct. And these numbers are, I guess this is a pretty common approach when a new state entity is stood up. So in other words, when it's getting started, these numbers are based on an 80% of the year cost. And the reason for that is the assumption is that when a new entity is just getting started, say it starts, say, you know, but the act is the effect of July 1st. Well, the agency is not going to be up and running in current costs on July 2nd. It takes some time for before meetings start to happen, before staff is begun to be organized, before any costs are incurred, doesn't happen anyway. So they generally use an 80% figure for year one. And then for year two, it would be 100%. But so these figures that you see that are the appropriation that $363,000 appropriation from the General Fund to the Office for Racial Equity for the Division of Racial Justice Statistics, that's an 80% of one full year figure. Same with the per diems in subdivision two, that $3,360. Now subdivision three, the $520,300 for the division, sorry, for the agency of digital services, that's a 100% figure and that's because that's a one-time cost. That's the understanding that's not going to be needed in subsequent years. That's a first year only cost for ADS. But otherwise, you could certainly change those numbers if you wanted to go to 100%. But my understanding from JFO is that that's not the general approach during year one of a newly established state entity. So these numbers are 80% or these numbers are 100% but we would work from 80%. No, those numbers are 80%. And this is the new fiscal melt? Correct. Was the original fiscal melt like 960 or something, 960,000? I think so. Yeah, I think so. And the original was the same 80%? No, the original was 100%. So I think that's partially why it's less. No, I think the original 960 was based on 80% as well, I think. I'm fairly certain. All right. Yeah, man, that's a good one. So the 960 was 80% of what the full year cost was? Correct. OK. For five and so the full year's cost now is 886. I'm looking at the fiscal note. Yeah, OK. I'm 80%. 709, OK. I just asked some clarifying. Sure. So the advisory council, now you've got a total of seven. Am I reading that right? Yeah, yes, that's right. So there's seven there. And then we've renamed from whatever the original group was. Now we're calling them liaisons, right? Exactly. And we've got 10 more there. Correct? So we're back up to 17. And I think originally we started, well, it grew to 23. At least. I think it was 20, or at least in the council. It was 20 in the council. So then actually, can I? Because you asked, when you're talking about liaisons, you were then saying like you're putting those folks back into the committee. And my understanding was that it's not the case. And so when I clarify with it. Well, the 10 liaisons are just going to be a connector from the department to the board, right? I mean, they're going to be. Correct. Yeah, they're going to be a member of the board. They're going to give a stipend. They're an employee of the department. And if there's information to be shuffled back and forth between boards and departments, that'll be them. Exactly. And the duties under subsection D are not for those liaisons. It's for those seven individuals, right? And they're not decision makers on that seven member board. And is that. Is that what you're thinking? Or yeah, you're thinking. Yeah, but there I guess your name and for a reason, which they were going to be doing that anyway. Well, it's because they're key players. And we've done that in other legislation, identified key players from existing departments within state government. And we want people to understand that that's that direct relationship to that. Department or division in question. Right, my one of my biggest concerns is we already have. We already have part of this at the governor's already created it, but you want to create really a whole new division or certainly expand a lot more on what's already created. In actual in actuality, that's why we took them out of the actual bill as part of the committee was because of the relationships that already exist. And, you know, your points well taken. We're not expanding, you know, we're just ensuring that. These folks are the key folks that can be referred to during the course of doing business underneath the new division. So, so the point. So, Eric, this is language on ballet. Is that that here in the green books or would it be session law? In the green books, which I'm sorry, which language are you referring to? I would regarding the lay songs on line 18. What we're talking about now, page eight following entities. Is that part it's in a green book? Yes. Yeah. All right. Thank you. I'm. I mean, I don't want to get argument, but this isn't creative. This is not in existence now. This is not, you know, the racial equity office does not have the capacity, does not have the directives and the details of how to get this done. Yes, in a broad sense, it says director, you are together, racial data or different data, even broader. But this is an office that actually creates the ability to do so. It creates the division to be able to do so. It simply, you know, this is not something that is redundant to what's already there. Exactly. So, so in this bill, I think I know the answer. But departments in the state mandated to pass a lot of information that's been requested around racial statistics. Yes, that's in the bill. OK, so so the way I would look at a liaison, all they're doing is taking that information and giving it to the board. We probably remain duty. That could be something that they could be working on. Absolutely. Yeah, it could be. But we constantly fight one of my biggest problems with this bill is is the lack of sharing of data. And and the pushback that we get from each department of it. Then we're going to continue. So you can say that, yeah, they're going to be forced to share it, but I don't really agree with you there. I mean, they're not doing it now. How is this going to force them to do it? I mean, I suppose if they wanted to. Oh, I think. Go ahead, Eric. Well, I was just going to say that I agree that that there's not an enforcement mechanism in the statute. So if they if they wanted to disobey the the legal requirement, I, you know, that's could sort of lead to other problems. But if they're intent on doing that, yeah, there's no enforcement mechanism. And we did basically the same thing like day one when we looked at this bill, I brought up breaking down the silos that we did eight, ten years ago in human services. And with the small changes in this bill and as the bill became what it is, it's basically what we did back then is the different departments within the agency of human services weren't sharing your pertinent information with each other. And we mandated that you without penalties that that you share your information and it happened. Maybe not 100 percent, but it was happening to the extent that important information was getting shared. So I don't think it's important to have a penalty system. I think that the mandate is is enough. I think people will be held accountable by, you know, the board or whoever, even whatever administration is in place at that time, especially with a with a sensitive topic like this, I can't see anybody saying, no, I'm not going to give you racial equity information. I'm just laughing on that one. I just don't think that's going to happen. OK, well, we need to be on the floor.