 All right, so this is, it is January 20th, happy day. And it is this is Senate government operations and we are here today and I'm going to go through just briefly a couple of ground rules that we've established here is that we have a number of different people that join us. We have the committee and our staff and of course we're the ones that do the policies. Then we have people that we've invited to come and speak to us. And then our policy is that if other people ask to be in the room with us to observe that they're welcome to do that, they are not necessarily entitled to speak unless we ask them, but they certainly are invited to observe. And then we have people watching on YouTube presumably and anybody who is either watching or is who is joining us just to observe but would like to weigh in and be on the agenda. The next time we take up the particular topic is welcome to call us and or email us and ask us to be put on the agenda. So that's kind of where we are. And I ask people not to use the chat function except for Gail to post things that might be referred to. For example, if Susanna is giving her report and Gail might wanna post a link to that so that people can see that. But if we were in the room, in the committee room, we wouldn't be allowing conversations to be going on around the room. So I consider chat kind of those sidebar conversations and so we don't allow them. So if anybody wants to use chat, they nobody's gonna look at them and nobody's gonna respond. So there we are. So with that, first I just wanna say that I'm not gonna comment on the inauguration we just had, except to smile and to say it was nice and I was blown away by the young woman poet Laureate. I can't remember her name, but I- Amanda. Amanda Gorman. Yep, I was just blown away. But I will say, I will thank Susanna and Boer yesterday for the training that we had yesterday. That was really good and it was, in my opinion, it was also very helpful in terms of practical suggestions and things to remember and things to do and not do. Because sometimes I find training is so high level or philosophical that it doesn't translate into how I might apply it. So I thank you both for that. That was, I thought very helpful. So with that, I think that what we'll do is jump right into Susanna's report. So Susanna, just identify yourself for the record so anybody out there knows who you are and let's go. All right, when a Saturday Susanna Davis Racial Equity Director for the state, thank you for having us. We also have the members of the Racial Equity Advisory Panel on the line as well. They have submitted a concurrent report. And actually, if you don't mind, I'd like just to set back so that they can introduce themselves if they would like. That would be perfectly fine because, and I will say that our committee feels almost a, I know this is gonna sound really horrible, motherly role toward the committee and towards your position because we were the ones that created it. So if you would like to each introduce yourself, that would be great. Thank you. Parental. Parental, I kind of like motherly. But anyway, parental sounds so paternalistic. So I will, Stephanie. Sure, hi there. This is Stephanie Seguino. I am a professor of economics at University of Vermont and do a lot of research on racial disparities in policing and am a very proud member of this advisory panel. Thank you. Clarence, I'm going to cross my screen like that. Hi, Clarence. I can't hear you. Neither can any of us. You don't seem to be muted, but I can't hear you. How about now? Okay. Clarence Davis, work at the University of Vermont Foundation and a proud inaugural member of the Racial Equity Advisory Panel. Thank you. Karen. Hi, Karen Richards. I am the former executive director of the Human Rights Commission and also a very proud and happy member of the Racial Equity Advisory Panel. Great. Andrea. Good afternoon. Thank you for letting us join. My name is Andrea. I'm chair of the Racial Equity Panel and very honored to serve in that role and with my fellow panel members. Thank you. Thank you. Are we missing somebody? The fifth member of the panel is Judge Nancy Wables. Who unfortunately couldn't make it today because she's judging people. So I'm going to say that this is quite an impressive group of people and that I know that this is a topic that what we're gonna do is start the topic today. We're gonna hear the report and we will be having this conversation more than just this one time. So I want you to know that if we don't have time to get all the conversation in, please know that we will be doing it again and again and again probably. So with that, Susanna, if you wanna, how if this is your show now you just figure out how you wanna do it with the panel members, okay? Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few slides that I'd like to show that will summarize some of the points of the report. I'll try to be quick and I invite any members of the panel to jump in as needed either to correct or add anything or to submit any additional information that appears in their own report. So I'm gonna start the screen share. No, I'm not. I don't have screen share capability. But I think Gail can make you a co-host or something like that. Susanna, let me know when you see it. I did give you those privileges. Got it. Okay, thank you. Can you all see my screen? Yes. Yes. Okay. So, dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to talk a little bit about the 2021 report that were issued by the Executive Director and by the advisory panel. First, the statutory grounding that makes these reports necessary. This is three BSA section 503 and 502 that mandate that the panel reports annually to the committee on the extent to which the state's achieving our performance target and the nature and quality of the director's collaboration with the cabinet. And then section 503 dictates that the director reports to you demonstrating the state's progress in identifying and remediating systemic racial bias within state government. And the reason that I highlight these is because the report necessarily goes beyond that scope because in order to identify and remediate systemic racial bias, you really have to understand the underlying concepts that make racial bias systemic. So you'll hear me talk probably more about current social events than you do about the nuts and bolts of governance. And that's by design. It's really so that we can understand just how pervasive racial bias is and therefore how deeply embedded it can be in state operations. So first, I, of course, I'm gonna start by discussing COVID-19, which is the talk of the day for the last year. Can you all see the top of my screen? Can you see the top banner that's a COVID-19? Yes. Yes. Okay. You wanna make sure it's not blocked for you. So one of the things that, I'm gonna cover three topics in COVID-19. One is data reporting and collection. One is disparities in infection and death rates. And then this one, welcoming in xenophobia. And the reason that I'm covering this is because this was a major feature of the state social landscape last spring and summer. One of the things that we saw was that the sort of out of state xenophobia that Vermont has already kind of been known for was really ramped up when we saw people who had out of state license plates or who were known to be recent new residents to the state were being harassed and sometimes assaulted just for their mere presence in the state. What you're looking at on the screen is an image of a car that I passed by. Actually, this is my neighbor's vehicle. And they've written into the dust of the rear windshield we live in VT, waiting on new plates. And this image was really jarring for me because this was a couple who had come from a neighboring state, a New England state. They are actually white people in Vermont. And yet they felt so unsafe and uncertain being here that they felt the need to broadcast that they live here because they were worried about being harmed or harassed because of the heightened fear and anxiety around COVID-19 in the state. Now, aside from the social fabric that was affected by COVID-19, we also had disparities in infection and death rate between racial groups. What you're looking at now is a comparison chart that shows on the left cases per 100,000 people broken down by ethnic group in Vermont. And on the right, death per 100,000 people broken down by ethnic group in Vermont. What you'll find is that despite the fact that people of color in Vermont represent only 6% of the state population, we represent an outsized percent of cases of COVID-19 and also of deaths, particularly in the Asian community overrepresented in the death rate. And the black, the African-American community overrepresented in the infection rate. And one of the big things that was troubling for equity practitioners around the country was the frustration that people assumed that there were inherent factors about our ethnic groups that made us more vulnerable to COVID-19 without the acknowledgement that so much of that heightened vulnerability is the result of systemic bias. I'll give a couple of examples. First, we know that COVID-19, the discussion around it at the beginning was that it was an upper respiratory illness and that therefore if you had an underlying condition related to your respiratory system, you were at heightened risk. Well, we know that people of color, particularly the black community in America have higher rates of things like asthma. An eight-year-old Latino child is twice as likely to die of an asthma attack than an eight-year-old white child. And we know that the neighborhood Harlem has, for many years, had the highest instance of asthma in the country. But what a lot of people don't know is that there's a reason for that that is outside of the control of the community. For example, Harlem had the highest asthma rate in the country because that's where the city parks all of its buses at night. We know that epigenetic factors are leading to worse and worse climate disasters, which are leading to poor air quality, higher levels of PPM 2.5, which results in the United States living more in counties that have violated clean air quality standards than in other places. So all of these factors around us together create a system that makes people more vulnerable to illnesses like COVID-19 due to the poor health outcomes that we experience as a result of being brown in the United States. So that was another big finding that was highlighted this year. A lot of people really started to see how existing structural disparities gave rise to specific COVID-19 disparities. Last, I just wanna touch on data collection and reporting. In Vermont, we really struggled in the beginning of the pandemic to collect data accurately and consistently. By the spring, we were only collecting race and ethnic data at a rate of fairly a quarter, 27%, despite the fact that race and ethnicity was a required part of the CDC form that was used for patient intakes for COVID-19. It was the advocacy of community groups, community advocates, and working with the health department to issue guidance to these providers that really made us increase that collection rate to over 99%. And then also backtrack to collect the data that had previously not been recorded. So of course, that took an extra expenditure of staff time and resources to collect info on the backend that we could have gotten on the front end if all our providers had been consistently engaging in this best practice of collecting race and ethnicity data. And this I highlight because it really showcases how so much of what the state does, or rather it highlights how the state can make every effort to be racially equitable and to collect thorough and accurate data, but it cannot do it alone. And it requires that institutions like health facilities, et cetera, also participate in collecting the kind of data that the state can then use to measure disparities. Next, I'll just say a little bit about election 2020. It was a mess. It was a hot mess. And we saw a lot of tumult, the community, not just in Vermont, but nationally, people felt as if they had less and less in common with one another, especially on the topic of racial equity. The racial equity task force, of course separate from the racial equity advisory panel, was created and was given three charges. One of those charges was to evaluate how the state can encourage more people of color to run for and serve in public office at all levels of state government, which includes boards and commissions. As part of that work, we interviewed people, legislators, candidates for office who were of color, to have them tell us about their experiences running for office or serving in office in Vermont. The experiences we heard, some of them were really, really just harrowing, discouraging and troubling. We have heard of people being threatened of violence, harassed, and in their minds, it appeared as if there was no recourse. And I hate that I'm depressing you so much right now, but we gotta lay this groundwork. Next, I'd like to move on to the census 2020. The decennial census this year was also quite a mess because of a few changes that were made this year. First, the US Census Bureau introduced a measure called differential privacy. It's a little bit complicated, but effectively what it does is it scrambles the numbers. Rather, it scrambles people's identifiers to prevent nefarious actors from using census data for things like spam advertising, et cetera. So for example, it might take data that says, well, let's just say this neighborhood in New York is 10% Latino, 11% Black and 13% Asian. Differential privacy will say, okay, we'll make that 19% Latino and 6% Black and 18% Asian in order to warrant those actors who may be using data for evil, not good. The problem is that states that have small populations or towns with small populations, dropping the number of let's say indigenous people by just two people could effectively erase them entirely from that town if there were only two people in that town. So states like Alaska and like Vermont who have very small populations of people of color are really, really harmed by measures like differential privacy because since our numbers are already so small, even minor tweaks can represent differences of hundreds of percent. Additionally, the now former administration as of about an hour or two hours ago insisted that undocumented people in the US not be counted in the census. And this is hugely problematic, especially for states like Vermont. We have a large undocumented population here in Vermont. They contribute not only to the social fabric of our state but also to the economic fabric of the state. They are effectively a backbone of the dairy industry and the dairy industry is a backbone of the state. And so by excluding undocumented people from the census count, not only are we just creating an inaccurate picture of American communities, but even worse, we are costing ourselves representation in government, we're costing ourselves dollars that's $40,000 per person for 10 years. And we're costing ourselves a real opportunity to make sure that we're balanced in our representation and in the way that we do business. So the exclusion of undocumented people is also hugely problematic. These two things have been challenged by a coalition of states. That coalition of states does include Vermont. We were included in the lawsuit and actually quoted in some of the legal materials. And so we are participating in pushing back against federal government to ensure an accurate and equitable count. Last, I just wanna say that our response rate was very, very high. We reached 99.9% response rate, which actually put us in a five-way tie for the state with the highest response rate. Part of the reason, in fact, I'd say the reason that we were able to accomplish that was because of the creation of the 2020 Vermont Complete Count Committee. That committee's sole purpose was to ensure an accurate and thorough sense of count in Vermont by focusing on how to count populations. One of the populations considered hard to count is communities of color. So the existence and the really hard work of that committee made all the difference in making sure that we got as close as we could to accurately counting people in Vermont. Next, I wanna talk about the movement for justice that swept and re-swept the nation this past year. A lot of things changed in 2020, but one of the things that did not change was the continued murder of people of color by the government. Somewhere between 422 and 742, people of color were murdered by police, by the government in the United States last year. And it just caused a ripple effect of pain and indignation across the country, including in white communities, which was surprising to a lot of people. We got flooded with requests for things like trainings and talks and insight and policy review and you name it from community members, select boards, not-for-profits, corporations in Vermont and different agencies. And in response, one of the things that we did was to create the Action and Allyship Guide, which kind of helps break down some of the social issues and helps people identify ways to get involved. Also has a list of suggested media and just general good practices. It has been, I don't really think that that flurry has really led up honestly in all this time. And I'm certainly not the only one who's experienced it. I know that Moriang at the HRC has also felt it. Folks at the NAACP have felt it. Pretty much anyone who has ever spoken about racial equity in this state has been flooded with calls for assistance. And some of those calls are really well-intentioned and sincere and some of them are a little bit performative. And so being able to parse through that and do as much work as possible, as effectively as possible with groups that are sincere, I think it's probably the art here. Another thing that happened in 2020 impacting racial equity in Vermont was that the president, the former president issued an executive order on combating race and sex stereotyping. You probably heard about this. This is the executive order banning gender equity trainings and racial equity trainings. That executive order claims that racial equity and gender equity trainings are racist and sexist in themselves because they quote, are designed to divide us and they quote, decrease opportunities for minorities and that they quote, distract from the pursuit of excellence. So talking about racism distract from the pursuit of excellence according to that. So the order effectively barred equity trainings that they thought taught certain divisive concepts that they made up. The order also required that government contractors signed contracts that had new language in it that would bar them from conducting those trainings. And it also established a hotline so that people could submit complaints about violations of the order. In October and in the, excuse me, in October and a couple of weeks ago, we issued guidance to state partners and local partners to advise on how to proceed. It's not likely that the order is really gonna have any impact on people in Vermont or any entities that are doing training in Vermont. Mainly because the entities who do reputable entities who do trainings like this in Vermont don't teach the so-called divisive concepts that are outlined in the order. It also generally just applies to federal employees and their contractors. So overall, we're not concerned that this is gonna really affect Vermont but we're still monitoring it and the legal challenges that have sprung up in its wake. Just gonna run through a few of the administrative things that we've been doing in the vein of identifying and mitigating systemic racial bias. The executive agencies are now required to conduct equity impact assessments with every budget and policy proposal. What that means is that any agency or department that's gonna generate a proposal for budget changes or policy changes will need to complete effectively a questionnaire that asks certain questions to ensure that there are no unintended consequences for marginalized groups or to help them flesh out how they will maximize benefit of the policies of the proposal for all people across Vermont. EIAs are a really, really important part of policymaking. They are sound, they are evidence-based and they're used in jurisdictions across the country. So Vermont is joining the ranks of jurisdictions that have taken that wonderful positive step. Equity liaisons, we now have a network of people in SOV agencies and departments who are serving as point people for equity-related work. So they will liaise with me, they will help their agencies maintain an equity focus in their work and they're just an extra set of eyes and ears so that if staff feel comfortable approaching them about an equity issue or if they're noticing certain patterns emerging in their agencies that we can all have a centralized place where agencies can come together and say, I'm experiencing that too or, hey, this is how we handle that problem or, hey, you should try recruiting from this channel. So it offers another avenue for agencies and departments to collaborate on racial equity instead of doing things in a siloed way. And a lot of other smaller things happening, they're here listed in very vague bullet points because a lot of them are not really at liberty to confirm them 100% yet, but we've made changes to things like hiring guidelines. We are looking at the workforce equity in the state because we have not been needing targets in terms of equitable hiring and retention and we're doing work around affinity groups which I'm hoping we are able to announce in the coming number two. Want to talk a little bit about legislative session 2020. We did a lot of things related to racial equity, things like the Economic Stimulus Equity Fund which was the COVID relief fund for people who were excluded from CARES Act funding due to immigration status. That was an incredibly proud moment for Vermont. We were the first state to do that officially and to provide the full payment. Other states had done something similar but it was a reduced payment and it was kind of funneled through community groups. We also set aside money for CRF dollars for specialized training on race and equity and CRF dollars for the creation of an equity dashboard. Those two projects are still in process and with the extension that was granted by the federal government for CRF money spending, we are able to give ourselves more runway so that we can get it right instead of rushing it through for December. So that was another unexpected sliver lining and we were also able to allocate money for translations of COVID-19 guidance. As you all remember, there was guidance changing every week, every day, it seemed like and making sure that Vermont's limited English proficient community had not just access to the information but timely access to the information was absolutely critical. Policy items like criminal justice and land use and environmental justice and housing, all of this was touched on in the last session. Some of it felt more successful than other parts of it. Some of it happened in a whirlwind and others, it seems like the work still isn't done. I do wanna talk about process. Some of the observations that I had from last session were we've gotta do better about balancing timing with urgency. Many times we feel rushed by deadlines, we feel rushed by the looming end of session, we feel as if we've gotta get something done now because this year we have the vote or we've only got a month to do this. And what's really important, especially when it comes to equity work is not just that we get it done but that we get it done right. And oftentimes that require that we take our time in doing so. So one of the things that you will likely hear me say multiple times this session is please for the love of all things on earth, if we have to, let's blow it down because our self-imposed deadlines should not be the dictators of the quality or the breadth or depth of our equity work. Next, we should also do more to ensure fair representation and that people have the access to be heard. I have heard anecdotally from people around the state that they are often frustrated that when they're called as witnesses to testify and they sit through an entire hearing and then at the end they come up and they're always told, oh, we don't have a lot of time. Or sorry, can you come back? Or, hey, we're asking one person to speak on behalf of an entire ethnic group and then we'll make decisions for that ethnic group based on the one person's opinion. And so making sure that we're giving fair access to everyone to be heard is really important. And then also anchoring budgets versus anchoring need. Sometimes we take an approach and we say, well, this is how much money we have, how much equity can we buy with it? When really what we've got to do is anchor the need and say how much equity is needed. And the answer is all of it. How much equity is needed? And now what's it going to take? Or what's it going to cost? So anchoring the need instead of anchoring the budget is really important. I just want to run down as a reminder, the workgroups that are related to equity. And I think, Madam Chair, you'll have to forgive me if I'm wrong, but if I remember from when I first came on, I think you also chair the sunset committee or the summer session committee on boards and commissions. Yes. So you're probably familiar with this, but for those who may not be, this is a list that is probably not exhaustive of all of the groups that the state has created to deal with equity in some way. There are about 17 that I interact with. I formally sit on nine of them. And two of them I serve as liaison per the enabling statute. These groups are a huge, huge part of the identifying and mediating systemic racial bias in state government. So my prime suggestion here is support the groups and resource them adequately. I see that a couple of minutes ago, Dr. Nazretten Longo joined and he's one of the people I would say, I think he chairs two of these at least. And the work that they've put in has been so monumental for Vermonters and it's going to have lasting effects for us. So I strongly urge that the committee and that the legislature consider adequately resourcing and supporting all of these groups. And it looks like that's all I have for you. I wanna make sure that I don't take up all of the time for our segment. So I invite any of the panel members to jump in if there's anything that I missed or misstated and thank you all for your time. Thanks, I would, any panel member would like to weigh in right now and just give us your impressions. And I will say, before you do though, I'm going to say that given the fact that Suzanna, you've been here, I think about a year and a half, is that right? And that in the meantime, we ended up with a pandemic that while you were talking here and we're going through what you accomplished and what you're working on and stuff, I made a note here to myself, energizer bunny. But I mean, I can't imagine the energy and the commitment that it took to get this far with this little time and in these circumstances. So I just wanna thank you. And with that, I'll invite any panel member to weigh in here. What would you like to say? Just please unmute yourself and speak up. I don't hear any panel members. Oh, that's okay. I mean, Suzanna gave a pretty thorough report. And if you haven't read the report, I'd suggest reading it because it fleshes out a lot of these ideas that it came out in a pretty narrative fashion. So please read it. Any committee? Yes, Senator Rom. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Suzanna and committee. I wouldn't, there's nothing I would disagree with obviously. I just so much value your work. What I wanted to dig deeper into is that piece about language access. I was heartened to see that the Department of Health put out a somewhat of a report on why they believed the disparities between black Vermonters and white Vermonters was so high in COVID infection rates. It really sort of landed on systemic racism was kind of the second half of the report. I think that's valuable. And at the same time, I just think it's pretty obvious to those of us who spend a lot of time in Burlington and Winooski that information was very much delayed in the pandemic. So that's really where my sense of urgency is. And also speaking to your point about not anchoring the budget. When I worked to draft a language access plan in Burlington, knowing that at some point resources are finite, we had to prioritize this agency gets lifesaving interpretive services first than this one on down to what's nice to have. And so I just love to dig more deeply into, the most urgent work, I think, some of the most urgent work, which is the life and death situations for new Americans. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you, Senator. You know, language access is absolutely huge, especially in Vermont, because a lot of a big portion of the limited English proficient population in Vermont is also part of the refugee community. And so we have to understand that not only are you an immigrant, but you are also someone who may be coming from a trauma background. And so not only are we providing services to you as a person who's new to Vermont. And again, we've got people writing, waiting on a new place, even when they come from another New England state, right? So not only are you from out of state, not only are you from out of the country, not only may you or may you not speak English, but you also may be coming from a situation that requires care and trauma-informed care. So all of those things kind of swirl together and then the pandemic, right? So all those things swirl together to create a picture that as you aptly described, it could be dire for folks. I do take your point about having to prioritize which sorts of translations and interpretations we can do based on the funding limitations. And I would agree with you that once we have identified the need and anchored that as a standard, then at that point we start to call. And I would recommend things like public safety, particularly when it comes to like court interpretation, if key, public health is really key, and education or anything related to primary and secondary schooling would probably be sort of, and this is me spitballing, I guess I'm spitballing on YouTube, I don't mean to commit the admins of this, but services and sectors at that level of importance I think should absolutely be prioritized in that way. And we have some, we have different contracts with different organizations around the state. ALV does a lot of work, USCRI participates a lot in translation services, but it is gonna be a goal for us this year to come up with a unified translation plan across the agencies. I'm gonna add something here that may or may not be relevant, but I think it even goes beyond just translations into another language. We, two years ago, before the session started, we had a Senate Democratic caucus to pick out our pro temp and stuff. And we had two young men who were Somalian refugees speak to us about their experiences coming here and what they experienced as a new American, and one of them had a brother who really wanted to become a law enforcement officer. And when they were, he passed the physical test and everything and when they were doing the written test, they give you a scene here, a situation, and then you pick the right response. And he knew exactly what the right response was, but because English is such a, I don't know the word you use, silly language, but the nuances between those choices were so, and he is so small and English wasn't his first language. So he didn't know which of the nuanced ones was right. He could have told you in an oral presentation. So we worked with the Academy around how they do that, and we just got, Tim Ash just sent to me and I think to all of us, a note that that man's brother, the man that came and talked to us, the young man that came and talked to us, it was his brother that wanted to become a law enforcement officer, but that young man himself also, it turns out, wanted to become a law enforcement officer and he just was inducted as a trooper because they were willing to work with him. So I think it's more than just, even if people are English speaking and English reading, that we need to pay attention to the kind of nuances in our language that may cause people not to be able to serve at their highest level. So just throw that in. Any other questions or comments or committee or Senator Polina? Yeah, I just wanna recognize the level of patience or tenacity or frustration that you must feel every day doing the work that you do and how blatant it is when these things are the differential privacy and the healthcare workers not writing down the race data. I mean, stuff like that, it's just so blatantly wrong. It makes it hard, it must be hard for you to just get up and get out of bed every day to do this work. And as someone who's done a lot of organizing, I appreciate the fact that you have to be resilient and find small victories to keep moving forward in a way that is really useful for everybody. But I'm wondering about, you showed that list of those equity groups, I don't know if that's the right phrase to use, but it seems like we sort of put those groups together so we can pat ourselves on the back and say we're addressing this issue or that issue. I'm wondering, maybe you said this on your presentation, but should there be some real thought about trying to take a hard look at what those groups are actually doing and somehow make them more coordinated or combined or just something so that we don't just have this list of organizations dealing with equity that aren't doing anything. I don't need to be negative by saying they're not doing anything. I'm just wondering what your take is on that. Yes, Senator. I do think that there should be a closer look given by the legislature, by the executive to how many groups we've created. And I have a different slide that shows a timeline of when all of those groups were created. It goes back, I think as far as the 80s with the HRC and then the closer you get to present day like the last five years, it has just been an explosion of task forces. And so it is really critical that we keep that in mind the next time we're thinking about creating a commission or a workgroup or a task force that we consider the balance between a standing committee versus a task and finish group. And that we look at the overlap. Now, I will say, and I forgot to mention in the presentation, but last February, we convened all of these groups. And believe it or not, we convened them in the same room because we were only weeks away from learning that we could never do that again. And it was a gathering of members of all of those groups who came together. And we said, hey, do you all even know that these other groups exist? And for many of them, the answer was no. And then we did some very unscientific data collection to figure out where are the overlaps and the gaps between the workflows of those groups who's required to report, who's not, who do you report to, who gets staff assistance, who doesn't, do you have funding? And what we learned was very illuminating but it also provided an opportunity for us to build a camaraderie. The group was enthused enough that they agreed to meet quarterly from then on. And so we are sort of doing that, that coordination among ourselves, but we do strongly encourage you members of the legislature to consider how we have to bounce and pivot with each other to accommodate the seemingly ever-growing list of committees that are being created. I will also know that there are multiple people who sit on multiple of those committees. On the one hand, can be a good thing because it can help to sort of un-silo and create consistency. But on the other hand, it leads to burnout and representation fatigue. And it also is a missed opportunity to engage new people in Vermont who don't have a direct line to government. So those are just some things that I would consider. I think task forces are necessary. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Anthony. Let's say task forces are necessary at times. They're better than studies. It goes back to what you said about being rushed through a legislative session and you gotta get things done. And so often we don't have the time to solve problems. So we appoint other people to hopefully go out and solve those problems for us on behalf of legislators. And I think that sort of plays into what you were saying about needing to take a longer term approach to developing legislation that really works. And I know from my point of view, every time a session starts, the first discussion we have is like, how are we gonna get out of here as quickly as possible? And I think that's not a good way to make policy. I feel like you have to rush your way through it. So I appreciate your feeling about feeling rushed. And I hope we can overcome that somehow. Susanna, I would love to see that chart that you did. If you could share that with us at some point, just all the groups and when they were created and what their timelines are and do they dissolve after they're done with doing what they do or do they keep on? And are they, whatever you came up with, I think that would be really valuable for us to look at here because we are the government operations committee. So we should be looking at that. I'll turn that over to Gail. Thank you. Senator Clarkson. Thank you, Susanna and the team. I'd like to go back to your report and talk about anchoring the need. And you who have been appointed to, we have seen so many pieces of legislation where you or your office have been specifically appointed to serve. And we helped you a tiny bit because we knew we could only help you a tiny bit. So I'd like you to actually share with us honestly what anchoring the need would actually mean for your office. What would you need in your office to actually fulfill the work and the expectations that we have set and that the administration set for you? Thank you, Senator. You know, to be frank, what I need most is not gonna come directed to my office. The bulk of our investment in racial equity should not come to the racial equity director's office. It needs to go to areas like health and housing and justice and education. And so what I really want from you is many, many dollars to other people to do this work. Now, in terms of the very narrow question that you're asking me that I'm trying to wiggle out of, which is do I need to- I'm hearing that wiggle. Okay. Do I need staff and money? The short answer is yes. And we can get a lot done. If you add one person, if you add two people, if you add 10 people, we'll make it work. We've been making it work for the last year and a half. So I say very generally, yes, added staff support will be a big help, but I am less concerned with the specifics around that and more concerned about making sure that nobody sees that as the bulk of our racial equity investment. And I also should say, I don't know if I should say, but it seems like I am saying it now, I am aware of conversations that are happening internally that will speak exactly to what you're asking. So I just beg your patience for a tiny bit longer. And I think that you'll probably get an answer to what you're looking for. Well, and I think your answer is fair because we know you need more people to do your work, but what would be particularly helpful for all of us who serve in other committees of jurisdiction are with your specific suggestions, which you're beginning to roll out with the task force, specific budget and programmatic and budget suggestions that tie to dollars that we can advocate for in our committees of jurisdiction. Because if you say embed that anchor the need, embed it in the policy areas, great, but we need your direction as to what and to how much. Thank you. Is that? I won't be shy. We see that. None of us are. So we expect the same review. Thank you, Senator. So any other questions or concerns right now? What I had hoped to do was then to hear from Etan and then kind of continue the conversation. I'm aware that we did tell Senator Rahm that she could take a, from now on we will ask you to make your interviews after. After committee so that we don't disrupt the flow. The rest of us don't get called for interviews. So we don't have that problem. That's not true. You get called all the time. I know. I just ignore them. So does that make sense to do it that way? And Etan, are you okay with that? If we take like a 10 minute break right now and then come back. Absolutely. Whatever you do. Okay, great. So what I would do then is ask everybody to mute and turn off their videos. And Gail will put up a thing that says that we're on break and that we'll be back. So here we are. So Etan, thank you. And I don't think that this report necessarily probably is more likely to go to judiciary. But we are going to, because we deal with law enforcement. Yes. And data collection and stuff we're going to be, this is, we're going to be looking at this. And Bryn here is going to be working with us around this issue. So we thought that on this day we would have you giving us the report also. And then to help us in our conversations and to flush it out a little bit. So thank you very much. My pleasure, fine. Well, let me give you sort of the background to the report and just to frame what my remarks the background to it sort of the significant takeaways as I would think of them. And then kind of a, I guess it's defense of funding. I would like to go through it in that order. This goes back actually the history of this to the pandemic. The bill that became Act 148, which I believe was S338 we were told was a shoe in. And then after the pandemic started we were told that nothing pandemic non-pandemic related was going to go through. I depend since I'm not a lawmaker and I live down here in Putney I have all these informants sort of scurrying around the state house. And that's how I get my information because the conversation thing doesn't work real well. So suddenly, I think it was probably early July. I was informed that the S338 had indeed gone through. It was signed and was now Act 148 the Justice Reinvestment Act. And also that the ARDAP, the panel that I chair have responsibilities in regard to the new act. And specifically to section 19 this was the section that directed the panel with the help of the crime research group to consider data that could be used for the amelioration of racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. We were before this point as a panel looking to amplify many of the points that we had made in our report of December, 2019. There had been a feeling certainly on the part of the joint judicial committee that a deeper dive might be useful in regard to the recommendations that we had made in that document and we were turning our attention there. We were now being asked to reconsider data and it really was a reconsideration given that we had very much spoken about data in the 2019 document. So this wasn't really a stretch for us. The timeframe I have to say was and in this I am echoing the bit of Susanna Davis's talk that I just heard. We were asked to do this by the 1st of December. We were told about this quite early in the summer and this really felt like quite a reach. It actually was. And as far as I can sort of piggyback on her exhortations to you about being mindful of the asks that are made, I would love to get on board with that because this was really quite difficult for the panel. We were- Can I just throw something in here? Sure. What I've told people, I know that we have a lot of reports coming back that were generated through what was S-124. We have a lot of reports coming back and I suspect most of them are probably due around January 15. My feeling with reports is that when we get that it is better, as you and Susanna both said, in everything to do it right, but rather than to do it quickly and that if there is need, a progress report is certainly better than trying to rush through a final report. And we were fine with that. I think what needs to happen though, again, it's back to communication. That needs to be said because I do know a lot of people who are preparing reports right now for 124 and I have very little hair, they have less. I've been telling everybody who's contacted me about a 124 report. That's exactly what I'm told them. Okay. So Senator Clarkson, did you? Yes, but Etan, forgive me, I'm Allison. Remind me what our DAP stands for. Racial Disparity. Advisory Panel. Our tactic, our actual title, it's quite unwieldy. The Racial Disparities in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Systems Advisory Panel. We just say Racial Disparities Advisory Panel or our DAP for short. Thank you. The acronyms sometimes... Oh my God. I know, I just drained the SP, I'm losing my mind. I don't know what anyone's talking about. English has evaporated as a possibility. So anyway, when we were doing this report, we really weren't sure initially that it was possible and we spent some time discussing what could and could not realistically be done. But obviously we got it done, you have it. There was some anger, people were feeling that we were repeating ourselves and there was some irritation about this. The endless reports are something that tends to annoy people of color who would like to see motion and perhaps a bit less verbiage. Nevertheless, we turned our attention to producing whatever it was that we could produce in roughly 10 hours of meeting time with the full panel. We meet, for those of you who don't know, on the second Tuesday of every month between six and eight PM, that's it. That's it. So we had to produce this in relatively short, with a relatively short time, with relatively little labor and few laborers in some ways. So the lack of time meant that we convened a subcommittee to do a great deal of heavy lifting. These were people who could meet every week, who could work off times and such. And that's a lift. There are five people on the panel, like myself, who are community members, who just are donating their time and effort to this. We did all of this with the support of the Council of State Governments and certainly with the tremendous assistance of the crime research group, with whom this would just not have happened. They were statutorily required to help with the data collection that the new report, excuse me, would necessitate. And as I say, this group, the subcommittee met weekly. Initially, an even smaller group of us met with Kristen McClure, who's head of agency of digital services. And again, her help was initially quite significant to this. We met with a collection of IT officials from various state agencies to get a sense of three things. First, what data do exist? Secondly, in what form they exist? And lastly, the possibilities of communication between the various data systems that exist within the criminal and juvenile justice systems. The results of those meetings, and I believe that there were two of those meetings, are contained within the fourth appendix of the report that I'm hoping you all have. It's called the current state of data and data flows regarding racially relevant data among various state agencies in Vermont. Senator Clarkson, you look concerned. We don't have the report. I mean, at least, I mean, you may have emailed it to us. And in that case, I apologize, but I couldn't find it on the judiciary website or on our website under documents. I will look into that committee. Thank you. If you go to the legislative website and go under reports. Oh, just generally, I went to our committee. That went to judiciary. I don't think this one was ever directed to come to our committee. Sorry, you're probably right. I don't remember, but anyway, it is there. Okay, under, okay, great. Got it. So yeah, and then there's that fourth appendix, which is, I mean, that's one of my favorites. And the reason it's one of my favorites is because of the flow chart. And that flow chart that's there once you get to see it was created by Kristen McClure. And I love it because it reminds me of the work of MC Escher and is rather suitable for framing. It most importantly shows that very tangled web that are the data flows regarding racially relevant data among various state agencies. As the report notes, this is a snapshot of the state of affairs from September and cannot be said to depict matters as they presently stand. Things are necessarily getting better. They're changing not necessarily because of the need for cross agency communication, but rather because of internal needs. So it won't help to assume that for the purposes of this act, that the data flows are more comprehensible now at the beginning of January or indeed usable, okay? You're just looking at a picture of what it looked like in September. It's crazy, it's lovely, isn't it? I mean, it's really quite, put it on the wall. I mean, it fascinates me. The subcommittee continued its work from the point of that chart. Like what do you do now? And it seemed to the subcommittee and then to the full panel, because of course we kept going back to them. That without some sort of standardization, and this by the way is an issue that the ARDAP addressed in the 2019 report, this effort that was being asked for under 148 would be yet another failed effort concerning the effacement of racial disparity. I'll say that again. That without some sort of standardization, this would be yet another failed effort concerning the effacement of racial disparity. This had been and continued and continues to be a dominant theme for the panel as the current report makes clear. Without some serious and focused standardization regarding data, the aims of Act 148 with reference to data cannot be achieved. This was perhaps a guiding notion that shaped the panel's efforts throughout the summer and fall as it prepared the present document. Another important moment that concerned the panel had to do with identifying the high impact, high discretion moments in the criminal and juvenile justice systems at which either unconscious or conscious bias can make an entry. This was a task that had occupied our collective imagination in last year's report, but we certainly did not take it then as far as we did here. All of the lawyers on the panel, and there are many, they're great, put their heads together to make an extremely comprehensive list of these moments. And this took no small amount of time, as you can imagine. The community members were able to add other moments that might seem to be outside of the legal framework. Moments such as interactions between students and guidance counselors in the school, which as many of you will know is for very commonplace to say that's the beginning of the school to prison pipeline. It is easy now to give you a resume of these acts, but I must note the enormous amount of time it took to compile these lists. It seemed endless and people dedicated enormous amounts of time and energy to this compilation. What happened at the same time was that a compilation of the data that do presently exist. And with the help of the crime research group, we created a sense of where these data might reside. We also got from crime research group a sense of what data just don't exist. And once the panel had determined that that data would nevertheless be of great importance, we focused on it. Again, we were looking at these high impact, high discretion moments. In the end, we came up with a compilation not merely of the data that are there and their location, but also the locations as a result of working on the creation of this report. We joked about printing out these documents and putting them in a time capsule on Campbell's hump. That if finally we have all of this in one place and no one would get to it, which isn't good for transparency, but at least it would all be somewhere. What subsequently became clear were the relatively high number of high impact, high discretion moments in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. We were also mindful of what might be perceived as the relative impossibility of getting to all of these moments in Wavnell's swoop. We then set our minds to prioritizing these moments to the best of our abilities. And what you then have in the report are both a list of prioritized moments, high impact, high discretion moments and racially relevant data that concern them. And then also a broader list of such moments. We deeply believe that all of these moments are of great concern and need attention and focus. But we show the moments that we believe to have the greatest priority and what data do and do not exist concerning these moments and also their locations. At this point, we had a spread of high impact, high discretion moments and racially relevant data or lack thereof. And the question became what to do with this, frankly, mess. It seemed clear to many of us that there was no one presently in state government who could on their own do the huge lift that would be required here, not only to create the needed data, but even more radically to define it. Like what data are important? Radically, to define it, then gather it and certainly then finally to analyze it. From the early meetings with Kristen McClure and the IT officials, it became clear that no one actually has the time to do all of this. And again, look back at that flow chart in the, yeah, I'm paying 24. It's fun one, isn't it? It's an eight, yeah. Get out the ad bill. The whole report in terms of the amount that's here and the amount that's needed, it's all overwhelming. And crime research group just did a huge lift on this. I mean, they just, they like picked up the world. It was really quite lovely the amount of work they did. Also the council of state governments, they came to our rescue at this moment or at least to mine because I was certainly a bit overwhelmed and a little bit despairing. And it turns out that a lot of this work is already underway in Connecticut and also in Colorado. And the council of state government people facilitated a meeting between three officials from the state, this is another long one. The state of Connecticut's criminal justice policy and planning division in the office of policy and management. Yeah, it's where it is, right? They know someone in that office who used to work for them. And we were curious, what could we learn from these people since they're already doing this and frankly they're nearby? They are involved in the implementation of that states, Connecticut's own efforts regarding the collection and analysis of data concerning the amelioration of racial disparities in both the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. The panel had a productive meeting with three officials from that division who offered useful insight. And as I said, we felt that their insight would be, it was gathered from actual experience. We felt it would be invaluable. And so they're there. You have this in one of the appendices to the report. We put this in in fact and the recommendations that we made are in the third section of the report itself. The meeting with these three people and one of them was Mark Pelka who's the undersecretary in that office in the criminal justice policy and planning division in the office of policy and management. And then two of his lead planning analysts. That meeting led to several additional recommendations from the ARDAP to you all, the legislature. The ARDAP felt that building on their experience would be useful and that there was really no need to reinvent the wheel, especially since the need for movement on the matter of racial disparity is so pressing. And we made the following recommendations. You have them, but I'll go through them quite quickly. Where are they a ton? They are in the third, I don't know, I should open that report, which is kind of, they are in, pardon? On a page? Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. I don't have that open at the moment, but I can do that. It is on, it is in the third section of the report proper. Okay. Give me a moment and I can probably pull it up for you, but it just takes a moment because I didn't have that particular thing open. I think it's on page nine, the Roman numeral three data collection and analysis implementation strategies and recommendations. Correct. Correct. That is it. That would be it. Okay. It's on page nine. Thank you. You saved me. No, I just was so curious about where this was. Well, you found it, I'm glad. This came from the subcommittees meeting with the Connecticut folks on the 3rd of November, and some of them overlap and reinforce recommendations that the panel has already made, that a body charged with the definition, connect collection and analysis of data pertaining to racial disparities across the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems, both be created and staffed. Experience has shown that Connecticut has needed three staff members charged with data collection and analysis, that this body is housed in an entity that is not subject to the vagaries of the political process, nor in any entity that is politically constituted. In short, the matter of reducing racial disparities must not under any circumstances be seen as a partisan issue. That funding be provided for positions within each state agency, Vermont state agency, that needs to extract data concerning racial disparities within its purview, that is to be provided to this new body. This extraction is both a time consuming and possibly lengthy process. That this body produces monthly reports distinctly and deliberately aimed at both the legislature and at broader communities, including historically impacted communities, pertaining to racial disparities in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems that are concerned with basic demographic information. Transparency must be prime in these reports. That this body's work should be guided by an advisory organ consisting of stakeholders from historically impacted communities, such as communities of color, neurodivergent communities, and communities of gender and sexual minorities that concerns itself with the definition, collection and analysis of data pertaining to the amelioration of racial disparities in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. Stakeholder input on these matters is crucial. And finally, that the legislature both expect to create this body and further be prepared to consider legislation that supports the work of this body as this body's needs change over time. I would like to note at this point that when we voted on this report, there was one abstention from the judiciary on this section, but otherwise the entire panel approved all of this. I wanted, as I said at the beginning to conclude by addressing funding. And for those of you who know me, I am by nature and training and probably genetically a college professor. And I do research. It's what I do. It feels like breathing. And I did some research when I wrote this for you. And what I wanted to do was begin with some history. And I wanted to talk about the costs of things in the middle of the 19th century. And a very common job description, particularly in the South in 1850 was laborer. And it covered a lot of different things, but it was very common. Most people were laborers. They made in today's dollars $6 a week or $312 a year. Slaves, and it's as vile as it is to say, we're not talking about people at this moment, are we? We're talking about something that's a species of animate wrench. And depending on which source you're talking to or looking at, they cost between $23,000 and $40,000 a piece. Many plantations had 50 slaves or fewer, but even at 10, which is not usual, but 10, the low figure means that $230,000 was committed to slaves for the annual income of just under 767 free laborers. 50 slaves would mean $1,150,000. Another important element of all of this were slavers, slave ships, which were largely made in Bristol in England. And they cost each of them in today's money, 62,000 pounds, which comes out roughly and my math is bad here or what. Depending on the exchange rate, it's around 83,000. Again, the annual salary of 277 laborers, free laborers in the United States. None of this addresses the cost of feeding the slaves, who of course were only nominally people, feeding the slavers, the slavers families, maintaining the ships, which was significant. They had to be cleaned and refitted after the transport of slaves to the new world so that the ships could then transport goods such as cotton or sugar back to Europe. This of course is the famous triangle trade. The point that I wanna make here is the outlay of capital and the dedication of capital to an economic system in which white supremacy played such a crucial role. And the resonances of that system are sadly not anachronistic today. These are huge sums of money that have gone into the perpetuation of racial discrimination. And one can profitably ask what it costs to support the repressive efforts that went into reconstruction and into Jim Crow, none of this was free. To undo this is also not going to be free. It's not simply a matter of not buying slaves or slave ships. If it were, there'd be no report. There'd be no hearing. We could all go home, have tea, life would be great. What there does need to be as this body recognized when it authored Act 148 is a move towards understanding through data the personal impacts of white supremacy and racial disparity upon people in our own systems of justice. But this is going to involve an outlay of capital. Just as the civil rights act did in 1964. And that's ongoing, by the way. That didn't stop in 1964. It continues to happen. There are legal articles all over the place. And I spent lots of time reading them concerning the extent to which employers can legally justify discriminatory practices on the basis of cost containment and profit maximization. That happens all the time and lawyers know this. Put another way, the question becomes what financial costs can courts properly impose upon business in the effort to enforce the equal opportunity principle? This is ongoing. It's a commonplace. What I'm saying here is that to say that there's no money may at once be true and also support the very system that this body seeks to dismantle and interrogate. Let me say that again. It's because two things are true at once here. To say that there's no money may at once be true and also support the system that this body, this legislature seeks to dismantle and interrogate. Actualizing these recommendations for me, for the panel, becomes a question of making extremely hard, likely intensely creative, and possibly extraordinarily unprecedented decisions. But I do want to make it very clear that to say there's no money is in fact an ideological statement when we are discussing dismantling systems of oppression. There's no money means that the money is being used elsewhere and that choices are made about the dispersal of capital just as they always have been. Just as they always have been. If saying there's no money seems reasonable, I am begging all of us to consider why that's so. Why does that seem reasonable? Finally, the reasonableness of saying that there's no money is exactly the thinking that exemplifies systemic disparities. It's located in the reasonable itself. This is in fact the essence of systemic racism is when we just take refuge in what is reasonable. The system is already in place. It seems reasonable because it's familiar. Not because we're necessarily putting on our KKK hoods, but because we live in a system that is already telling us that racism is okay. I'm also asserting here passionately that none of this is gonna come for free. Slave ships cost something, slaves cost something, both financially and in terms of incalculable horror. And it all costs the ruling establishment money in the first place. Getting out of this is gonna cost money too. And that's all I have to offer you. So... That's all? I'm afraid so, Jeanette. Senator Clarkson. You put it in such a great way, Etan, because no one has released it. I mean, I haven't heard. And we've been talking about this for a long time in many ways. No one has put it in terms of the cost of the system, the cost of building the system. And thinking about it, the cost of dismantling it is going to be equally expensive. Yes. And it's the first time we've actually, I've actually heard it stated that way. So thank you for that. I thought it would be helpful. I thought it would be, I mean it, when you actually, it's very frightening in some ways when you do the research on this, when you realize the amount of capital that was involved in this was just extraordinary, huge. And then when you stop to go, we're going to do this for free. These systems are so entangled and so complex and have filtered through technology into even forms that cannot be, could not have been imagined in 1850. There's just, it is naive at best to believe that we're going to get out of this without expenditures. Senator Rahm. I'm so struck by, I've just been turning over in my mind that as I understand it, kids of color make up about 2.5% of the population, but 25% of the youthful offenders who are going into our court system. It's not a problem I think money can fix and probably can help, but even our defender general's office was saying that in Chittenden County where they've really tried to take a concerted look at this and they've had the numbers and they've tried to watch this trend, they haven't really moved the dial. And so it just, I'm really soul searching on this one because it just feels so urgent to make sure our kids are not, I mean, that's a huge disparity. Yes. And, you know, I just wondered if you could comment on as we prioritize, I mean, how we really work to support kids. I have legislation to try and limit the use of suspension and expulsion in schools as a behavioral tool because we know about how much that affects kids of color and kids with disabilities. But I mean, what is it going to take our other states seeing that big of a disparity? What is happening here? I'm really going to, I can't, I have not had the time, I'm afraid Senator to investigate exactly what's going on around this in other states to the point of having percentage points for you. I can say broadly from my reading, yes, that there are similar, there are similar and even greater disparities in certain places. That doesn't answer your question entirely but also saying, what do we do to fix it? I need my panel. I need my panel for that. I'm not smart enough to do that on my own. If we were to invest in one thing to try and turn something like that around, what would it be with respect to? One thing. One thing. I think that's what we were working against was the one thing. I think the panel was trying very hard not to do one thing precisely because the one thing wasn't the thing. I'm actually going to punt on that one too because we've already narrowed it down from perhaps what, 20 different things that the juvenile justice system should look at to five that we prioritized without the help of Jessica Brown and Rebecca Turner and Sheila Linton just to name a few people. I'm not going to even hazard on this one to go anywhere. If you're asking me to take the five that we were able to come up with and go to one, I'm not that smart. So, Ethan, maybe I misunderstood but the five recommendations that you gave us all revolved around the creation and funding of a body to, or am I looking at something different? That's section three, yes. But we were also, we made point in section two, I believe it is, made reference to, there is a table that provides you with a prioritized list of the high impact, high discretion moments as we identified them. And I guess my question would be following up on Senator Rahm's question was that if we were looking at that prioritized list and I don't have it in front of me right now so I can't remember it, but would, if we were to do, to pick one thing, would it be number one on your prioritized list? That's what I'm saying. I want to talk to the panel. I don't believe we put them in rank order. Oh, okay. I think what we did is set these five. Okay, I see. Start at the top. So, I see six here. Okay. The one you just read. I'm sorry, I'm doing this from memory. Yeah. Because I do not have that particular document sitting in front of me at the moment. And I was so happy you found it, I just let it go, but I will find it. Give me a moment. The computer is slow. While you're looking, Madam Chair, may I just add something to this as we begin the way that costs that this reconciliation will cost us. Is a David Cahill said a couple of years ago, I just didn't really struck home with me when, as Keshia's talking about things that are really just striking us as we go through all this trauma, the cost of trauma to our, and we were talking about the criminal justice system. But I mean, and when you think about the cost of trauma to a culture, I mean, this is what we're talking about is the cost of trauma and how we rectify that and heal that going forward. And what the, but the, what the, yeah. Anyway, it's... I wanna go on, you know, I think I only heard the end of Susanna Davis's presentation, but it really is back to the issue of equity. If you're going to do it, you need to do it. It's not that there's just gonna be one issue here. Because first of all, they're interrelated and it took a lot for the people on the panel to disaggregate them to enough as much as they did to even get to the list, the lists on page four and on page six, the prioritized lists. It took a lot of effort at disaggregation to get those down. It really, my sense is we really need to go to the needs part that she mentioned and not really focus so much on can we afford this or that? It's really a broader concern. I'm not trying to say I don't understand money's involved, I do. But I do also think it's important to bear in mind that there are limits to disaggregation. So this is, I'm trying to distill all this in my head and I at some point need to hear more about the creation and funding of the body that you've suggested here and what that, the details of how that would work and in contrast to putting, and that's gonna cost something, I understand that. So that need prioritized with putting money into the, for example, the education system to get rid of this disparity that Senator Rom was talking about with the number of kids who are kids of color who end up in the criminal justice system. So it, and I hate to, I do hate to say this, but we are going to have to make decisions about where to put money and where not to put money. It isn't as if we can put money in every place. So I at some point would like to hear more about this body that is the potential for creating this body and what it would actually do and can it be, is it something that is limited time until we collect that? I don't know. Anyway, I'd like to hear at some point hear more about that creation and is this something that the, I believe we're getting some money from the council of state government to the Brennan center to work on the justice reinvestment. And is this something that we can, I don't know. Senator, are you aware of appendix two and three in the report? No, I did not read the whole report. I just read it. You may find that useful to the point that you're making. Okay. Appendix two are the statutes used in Connecticut concerning the collection of relevant data. And the third appendix are the statutes that were used in Connecticut to create this particular, excuse me, the criminal justice policy and planning division. Okay. So that will perhaps start you on that. Okay. And there are other things to be done after that should you need them. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. May I just add madam chair, that as this is described, it makes me think that actually, that we have a body that could have a committee, I mean, a sort of a sub body formed out of it, which is your government accountability committee. I mean, this is asking for accountability because it's a body charged with the definition collection and analysis of data pertaining to racial disparities. So you could in a way have a government accountability subgroup that could have focused exactly on this stuff. I mean, I think you have the umbrella for it. We don't need to necessarily create a new umbrella. It's accountability. That's not a, that's a volunteer legislative committee. I think that what this report is talking about is more of a professional body that works on it. And I would think that where it, if anything, just off the top of my head here, it belongs with the research group. Yes, yeah. But that's, that is what they do is collect data and I think and do research. Yeah, and they're very helpful in that. What, the point, which one for you? Karen Gannetz, what is it? What is it called, Aetan? Crime research group. Crime research group. Oh, the crime research group, right. Yeah, they're great. The point that the panel was making was not certainly to disparage their work, but simply this is a particular kind of expertise, the reconciliation of different data systems. There was a sense on the part of the panel that this was a huge task and one that may be bigger than their staff to handle. There was also a sense on the part of the panel that there's enough work on all of this that there's a lot of collaboration that should be happening. And I know that in the criminal justice system, I'm thinking just right now in my head about data collection in the law enforcement in that end of it. And I do know that I'm pretty sure that all the law enforcement agencies are going to be moving to VALCOR. So they're all going to be using the same system. So that will make it- That will help. That'll help as long as the individual, what? There's an example here of some of the issues that were crazy. I don't remember who it was. There was some agency within the criminal justice system using a system that is so antiquated that it conflates race and ethnicity. I mean, currently, we have a system that's doing this. I'm not kidding. In the state of Vermont in 2020, I mean, maybe they changed it in the last six weeks, there's a system that is still conflating race and ethnicity. I mean, somebody's got to go through this. And I mean, when someone told me that I got a headache, I mean, I just wanted to like throw things. We're glad we weren't around. Yeah, no, it would have been a bad thing, but I mean, it's that level of, it's reconciling not merely different systems. There are different conceptualizations behind them that are simply, I mean, they're like 100 years old. I mean, nobody does that anymore. Well, I think it also become, collecting data becomes, for example, I work for a housing authority on special projects and on our application, it says race information and ethnicity information. That's voluntary because you can, and there's a reason for some of that because you don't want people to be discriminating against people when they read the application and they say, oh, this is a person of color. So we're not gonna look at their application. So it's- I understood, but this is a little bit different. This is sort of saying, you see what I mean, okay. Yeah, I do, I'm just saying that I think in the collection of data, there are so many variables and why you do it and why you don't do it and how you do it. And I'm just thinking of law enforcement, for example, when they collect data at a roadside stop, is it self-identified data or is it that data identified by the cop that stops the person? It's a huge difference there. Right, and the issue in that particular instance is to identify whether there is profiling going on. So what's most important at that moment is the perception of the person with the power in the situation, which would be the law enforcement officer. Right, right. So I think that the collection of the data and the coordination of it within the criminal justice system after their arrest happens, when you get to the level of the courts and stuff is more in the jurisdiction of judiciary, ours is kind of pre the actual entrance into the justice system. It's how you get there. That I think that if I'm looking at this right, because I do know that judiciary is also looking at this through the justice reinvestment. And so I don't want to, not that I don't want to do it, but that we all have enough to do anyway that we don't want to be duplicating. Does that make any sense, committee? Yes. We might create the body, but the judiciary might direct it. Well, I don't know that we'll even create the body. Well, I don't know, but I mean, that those are your dividing up of the... No, no, my dividing line was, if we're talking about the criminal justice system, there's a, you enter it through some action that involves law enforcement. So then you enter into the court system and the defender general and the attorney generals and the state's attorneys and the department of corrections. And so it's all, it's a kind of a continuum. And I'm saying that our particular purview here, I believe is where it starts with law enforcement and when it gets to the actual entering into the criminal justice system, that means going to the courts or to juvenile court or adult court or diversion or whatever it is or to corrections, but that is more in the purview of judiciary. Right. That's what I thought I was saying. Yeah, that the portal is okay. That we address law enforcement, they address the judiciary. And I didn't mean to be saying we don't wanna do that, but I do, I am aware that they are going to be doing that also. So. Oh my gosh. There's some strange video. It's the adjutant general. Oh, that's the ad. Oh. Yeah. It looked like we were being bombed, zoom bombed by some. Nobody wants to zoom bomb us. So, Aetan, I think that I am going to spend a little more time with this report on reading the appendixes. Okay. And committee, I think that we'll set up another day to come back to this, to address both Susanna's report and this and maybe look at the also look at the list of things that different committees and stuff. And both Brian and I are on the sunset committee. And I'm not sure if we wanna push it off to them to look at all of those and how they collaborate and or if we wanna do it ourselves. But anyway, okay. I mean, the more someone could help us figure out how all of these reports intersect, the better. I don't know if that's something we can get Ledge Council to help us with at some point. Well, you know, we, I think that Susanna talked about how we have all these committees and task forces and stuff have just grown. And unfortunately, what happens is that we have 11 committees in the Senate and I think 14 in the house and we each take our little piece of it and we ask for a report. And so there isn't any kind of centralized reporting system. So what Atom was talking about before was that this report that he was just talking about that came out of what was it one Act 148 was kind of on top of and in addition to an almost not in contradiction but in other reports that had been requested before that we don't. So I think we need to look at how we request reports and how we assign them. And that's just, I don't know how we do that. Right, because duplication of effort seems and they're done in silos. And you're right, duplication of effort is a waste of all our time, particularly volunteer time, which it is our time after we end session anyway. To that point, Madam Chair. Yes. I realized that Keisha and I both as serving in different aspects of leadership on the social equity caucus panel have been asked to meet with the speaker and the president pro tem with Susanna to discuss the recommendations and what we're and I'm not fully clear on what the purpose of the meeting is but it was sort of arbitrarily put at 345 today which had been moved and I hadn't appreciated that it had been set for so early in time. So maybe just one of us, I'm happy to stay here if Keisha wants to go off, but I just wanted to let you know that in another silo, there is a request of our presidents at 345. One of us, I'm happy to stay here if you want. Okay, I think we're going to have to start putting our foot down that- Yeah, no, I knew you would say that and I apologize. I'm just gonna say the chairs meetings right now are scheduled for four o'clock on Tuesdays and other than those days, I think that we should not think that we can schedule anything before 430. Right, right. And further on in the session, it'll probably be more like five. I would agree with you and normally, this got changed from another time that was super inconvenient like the inauguration and I hadn't appreciated it had been rescheduled for today at that hour. Okay, all right, well with that, I'm gonna say that we will reschedule this whole, the conversation here and continue working on this and I, there are some things that Susanna had in her, I think it was in her implicit bias training about questions that we ask when we're looking at pieces of legislation. And if we can put those kind of in front of us so we're thinking about them. And then this morning in judiciary, Matt Valerio, the defender general had four questions that he always looks at when there's new legislation and how we would, so I'm gonna add those to the list because I think they are also important. Yes, and, yeah, that was useful. Did we get sent their presentation? Cause it was so good, it was, I'd like to ask, I'm gonna ask her for those questions, the lens. Okay. All right, so with that, thank you, Etan, so much for joining us. And you'll be back and we hate to be so kind of muddy here or wishy-washy or what is the word I'm trying to kind of unclear. But... There's always an unclear stage. You should have been there while we were writing this thing. Okay. All right. Okay. All right, thank you. Thank you, Senator. Thanks a lot. Be well. Thank you. Thank you, Etan. Enjoy the banana belt. Yeah, right.