 with the Vermont House Government Operations Committee on Tuesday, September 15th. We are meeting to take some more testimony on S124. And then hopefully by the end of our meeting today, we will have the opportunity to review a redraft that incorporates some of the suggestions that we have heard to date. So joining us this morning, well, actually before we get started, thank you, John, for your report during the All House Caucus on the status of S54. Wanted to give just five minutes here for a little Q&A or if there was anything that Rob wanted to add to your floor report. Any questions from committee members about the progress so far? Look at that, John. You have answered all their questions. We prepared him well. Nicely done. Okay, thank you, John, for giving that report and Rob for preparing him well. So we have with us Assistant Attorney General Jacob Humbert and we invited you this morning because we understand that you are the AAG who is assigned to the Criminal Justice Training Council. Good morning, everyone. And yes, I am. That's my understanding in terms of why I've been invited to speak with you all. There are I guess some familiar faces. I know Representative Gardner, good to see you. Yeah, as you'd indicated, Chair, I am Jacob Humbert. I'm an Assistant Attorney General with the Vermont Attorney General's Office. I am within the General Counsel and Administrative Law Division and specifically within the Administrative Law Unit. And what that means in particular for me, I supervise a number of AAGs within that unit who appear before the Vermont Labor Relations Board, the Vermont Human Rights Commission, and also provide services to the Board of Medical Practice. In addition to those duties, I have my own case load involving a miscellaneous group of state agency clients stemming the continuum from liquor and lottery to the Department of Libraries, to building general services and military department and those types of agencies and included within that client group, we do have the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council. So I do provide general counsel services to that council. And in my role, as someone who provides general counsel services to the council, I provide one slice of what would be the various roles that my office plays within this context. Those variety of roles are sort of multifaceted. One, primarily my office, the Attorney General himself is a voting member of the council. So he does typically appoint a proxy to appear for him and vote in all matters related to council business. We also have within the AG's office our criminal division. The criminal division may ultimately prosecute alleged criminal conduct of a certified law enforcement officer. The AGO civil division also may at times defend the council and civil actions. In addition, Attorney General Donovan may take certain public policy positions for the AGO and may advocate for certain outcomes, including legislative initiatives that may relate to criminal justice. And the AGO itself also may testify before legislative committees on issues of law, including criminal justice issues. But my role is, as I said, we're general counsel services. So I don't play a role in any of those other circumstances, but I do provide general counsel services specifically to the council. Those general counsel services do include providing legal advice related to statutory and regulatory issues in the administration of the programs of the council. It involves advice and counsel concerning rulemaking efforts. It involves contract review. It involves working with council staff regarding unprofessional conduct complaints and investigations. And it ultimately can culminate in appearing before the council on behalf of the state to look to prosecute unprofessional conduct in tested case hearings. I also serve a role as staffing the regular council meetings that occur monthly, roughly at this point in time. In terms of the unprofessional conduct context, in terms of the services I provide there, as I said, I do provide counsel to staff in the course of reviewing complaints and investigations related to unprofessional conduct complaints. But when an unprofessional conduct case is to be brought before the council, which sits as a quasi-digital body and will determine whether or not unprofessional conduct had occurred and would determine what sanctions would be imposed if indeed that conduct had occurred, I don't serve a typical general counsel role. As I said, I serve an administrative prosecutorial function there. And so whenever there is a case that's brought before the council, a contested case proceeding, the council relies upon a different attorney. Separately contracted legal counsel his name's Wesley Lawrence with the Terry O'Jawson firm in Montpelier. And he advises the council in the conduct of those unprofessional conduct contested case hearings, drafting decisions, ruling on evidentiary objections and such. So that's sort of a broad brush synopsis of what contact my office has with the council and what in particular my role would be by way of general counsel services. Great, thank you. Have you had an opportunity to review the parts of S-124 that envision changes to the criminal justice training council? I have reviewed, but not in great detail. I understood that the committee was looking to have me appear to answer a couple of questions. So that was what I was aware of. Certainly, given my role general counsel role here, I certainly am not in a position to provide my office's perspective on any particular bill. I would defer any requests for an AGO position to our deputy attorney general, Josh Diamond on those questions. And likewise, given my general counsel role, I wouldn't be in a position to provide a council position on a bill or provide something by way of any formal feedback on what its position may be. I would have to defer again to council staff for that purpose. Thank you, I appreciate that. Questions from committee members? John Gannon. Thank you. And Jacob, thank you for testifying this morning. So the state requires any person who's gonna obtain a license or certification or registration in order to practice profession, sign a statement that they don't have any unpaid judgments, restitution orders, child support or have any owed taxes. Do you know if the council is requiring law enforcement officers, applicants to answer these four good standing questions as many other professions do? Yesterday when I heard of the committee's interest in speaking with me, I did review what ledged council I put together by way of their memo and that was one of the questions that included there. So I did reach out to council staff and I asked them to point me in the direction of whatever form they have, which would provide those good standing certifications by way of these applicants for law enforcement certification purposes. I have not yet heard back definitively on whether the forms address that question, but I did also reach out to the council management team to let them know that this is an outstanding question the committee has. And they certainly expressed a willingness that if their forms don't specifically address these issues that they would amend the forms to address those required issues. But Representative Gannon, you're right. There are a myriad of certifications that are required for professional licensees. And you typically see this address through a fairly focused way through some form, some application, something that the applicant will have to check a box and sign and certify. Sometimes it has to be certification under the pains and penalties of perjury as well. So it can be quite important. And in circumstances like this within the council context, I know it's pretty form intensive. I did take a look through the website just to check to see if I could find forms that specifically address this question. And nothing came up with my initial search, but as I said, if this is not being addressed by the council forms, I'm committed to working with the council to make sure their forms are updated to address those required certifications. At least there are four that the committees has identified. And I can work with the council to ensure that those four are addressed. And if there are any others that may be out there as well. Thank you for that answer. And just one other question. You mentioned that I believe it's Wesley Lawrence who's an attorney in private practice, advises the council. Is that unusual for a council to have independent council? It's a common practice, at least in my world, in terms of the departments I'm aware of. The idea here is that typically you'll have, based on the statutory authority that the attorney general's office has, you will have this general council function fulfilled by the AG's office. But when the AG's office takes on the administrative prosecutorial hat, puts it on, in order to create enough separation between the quasi-judicial body and my office, typically you'll have either contracted council or some other council in state government not affiliated with the AG's office advising that quasi-judicial body. So there's no conflict of interest, there's no confusion as to who is advising the board, the body, the council in the conduct of that proceeding. In the bodies I appear before, for example, the department of liquor and lottery, I do also provide general council services to that department, but they also have administrative licensing enforcement hearings. And I take my general council hat off and put my administrative prosecutorial hat on, and I appear before that board and I will prosecute liquor licensing enforcement cases. In those circumstances, they also have contracted with private council, coincidentally, Mr. Lawrence as well, for that board. You do also see that same dynamic in the board of medical practice context, where you have a hearing panel that will sit and consider allegations of unprofessional conduct against a licensed physician, for example, in those circumstances, former judge Belcher serves as council to those hearing committees for the board, and you have an AAG that would appear to prosecute that licensing matter. So it is common in my world, I can't speak for, or what's done outside the administrative law context, but it is fairly common in my experience. Great, thank you very much. You're welcome. Hal Colston. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Jacob, for your testimony. I just have a simple question. When there's a prosecutorial case and the training council retains private council, do you interact in any way to provide any context or historical perspective of what's happening? Well, the private council that would serve to provide legal services to, in this case, the Ronald Justice Training Council, serves as that point of contact for the parties, essentially. Having that individual attorney there ensures that there will not be ex parte and sort of out-of-court statements with the decision-maker, essentially. And so that can be an open line of communication between myself and the other party and the attorney representing the council, certainly to the extent that there would be any kind of settlement discussions and any sort of proposed settlements to resolve the case. The parties would bring that to the attorney for the public body. In this case, Mr. Lawrence would offer up their agreement in principle, would provide context, and would give that attorney for the council the information necessary to determine whether or not what is proposed is a reasonable resolution. And certainly, short of stipulations and things like that, during the course of a proceeding, once a notice of hearing is filed and a case is begun, there may be contacts between the parties and the representatives and the attorney for the council related to pre-hearing issues, whether there are any sort of questions about notice or in discovery issues, scheduling issues, those types of things. So the attorney for the council in this case is that sort of central point of contact for the parties and would be the first point of contact. And the parties would not be engaging in conversations with council members related to a pending matter without the attorney for the council being involved in those discussions. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions from committee members? All right, seeing none. Thank you very much, Mr. Humbert, for being with us this morning. We appreciate you helping us understand a bit more how the legal support of the Criminal Justice Training Council is organized. You are welcome to stick with us if you would like. We have another issue to bring up and then we're gonna go through another draft of the bill and I would also welcome you to take a look at that draft when it goes up on the committee page and reach out to us via email if you have any thoughts. Thank you so much. Nice to see you, Jacob. Thank you for coming. Well, you're very welcome. Good to see you as well. All right, so committee, I'd like to go next to representative Christie of Hartford because he has been working in a small group on the outside of this issue but relating to one of the requests that we heard during our public hearing process. And that request was to not only make sure that we're doing race data collection with respect to traffic stops, but also that we are using our government accountability committee function to understand how our black and brown neighbors black and brown neighbors are doing more generally in all areas of life here in Vermont. And so I wanted to invite Kevin Christie to share a little bit about the recommendation that he's been working towards and then we will hear from Susanna Davis after that. So take it away, coach. Thank you. Madam Chair, committee members, it's great to see you, even if virtually. I'd like to frame this potential amendment to our existing statute with regard to government accountability and what's interesting to me and I think you'll find the same is that we can only fix what we measure. And we've had that discussion a number of times around different topics that we work on in different committees. And looking at the state outcomes, there's no direct mention of people of color, indigenous people. And as we look at the report itself, and I did a little digging and looked at the most recent report, looked at the statute itself, and basically we're just not asking the question at all. When you have an opportunity, I think our Ledge Council, Betsy Ann, probably shared with you the three VSA 2311, which actually documents those outcomes. And then most recently, once a year, the Government Accountability Committee, which is a standing committee of the legislature, meets the Board of Governors, meets and reviews the actual indicators. And so for all 10 outcomes, there are a number of indicators. And just to give a quick example, under number one, which is Vermont has a prosperous economy. Well, it would be important to know how many net new jobs we have. Well, take that one step further. It would also be good for us to know the impact of those new jobs on people of color, indigenous people. We look at the next one, letter C under number one, and it says net new business establishments. Well, for those of us that are looking at trying to support our neighbor, Vermonters, in developing new enterprise, it would be a good number for us to be able to look at that impact on our economic development and how that's affecting our growth in that area. It's not there. We are not asking that question, so we don't know. And as you can see, what we're asking is that we start looking at that. And I think it makes sense. I think what brought me to Vermont in the early 70s was to start my own business. And as an enterprise, that it was formative for me as a young entrepreneur. You know, as a young entrepreneur and as... So coach, I think your cat may have muted you. Sorry about that. Two new kittens, right? Oh, that's fun. It'll happen again then. Well, hopefully I don't lose my train of thought in between, right? But as I was referring to the economic development component, we granted several million dollars for women and minority businesses in our CARES Act money. Having those indicators show us what the impact is is critical because if we're investing funds in different areas of state government, it would be good for us to know. Moving along, under Vermonters are healthy, which is the second outcome. We could do the same thing. Right now, there is no reference to people of color, indigenous Vermonters. And yet they're asking the question, number of accidental suicides, percent of adults who are obese. As we looked at COVID, and I think what's probably brought this to our attention most vividly, is as Susanna Davis will talk to you later about, was we asked the health department to look at race-based data as far as COVID cases went. And what we found is what has been noticed across the country that people of color, indigenous people, disenfranchised Vermonters as well, had a higher propensity for having the virus affect them than others. So again, having these indicators look at the effects and in actuality, a lot of this is being collected, but we're not reporting it within one simple framework. When you have a chance to look at some of the reporting formats that the government accounting ability, excuse me, committee puts forth in their report, there's a number of tabs that allows you to drill down into the numbers. And I was looking at that and I'm going, but it's not telling me anything. You know, I mean, it's telling me something, but it's not telling me the whole story. So that's problematic as we can see. So basically to not take up too much more of your time around this, the granular parts of what we're suggesting, because one of the things that we found out doing the research for this with Betsy M is that the GAC already has the authority to adjust those indicators. It's just nobody's asked them to. So basically by adding this addition to statute, which speaks to the state outcomes report and the responsibility and functionality of the government accounting committee, the population level indicators demonstrating quality of life for Vermonters who are black, indigenous or people of color. What that does is it's opening up that area of questioning so that we as legislators, as we develop our policy, as we develop our spending, we have a clearer point of reference. And as you go through this, you'll see very clearly, even down to the areas of fair and impartial policing, all of that can be extrapolated into that report. In one central area. And that does have an effect on the quality of life for all Vermonters. So I think at this point, I think we've set the stage, so to speak, Madam Chair. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. Committee, any questions for Representative Christie? All right. So next, I would like to invite Susanna Davis to share with us her perspective on, on tasking the GAC with collecting this data. And is there anything you think we need to know about calling for the collection of this data? Good afternoon. Sorry. We have you on two devices, so we probably need to, we need to scrap one of the devices. Sorry, my connection hasn't been stable lately, so I've had to have a backup device on just in case I get kicked off. So I mean, I think, first of all, thank you for inviting me for the reference to Susanna Davis, Racial Equity Director for the State of Vermont. I am grateful to Representative Christie for laying out the issue as thoroughly as he has. I don't really have a whole lot to add. I think that broadly speaking, the collection of race data in Vermont is going to make or break our efforts around equity. And not just equity, not just racial equity, but equity for all marginalized groups, which includes LGBTQIA plus community, people living with disabilities, people experiencing socioeconomic disparity, sex, gender identity, et cetera. So collecting race data actually has a monumental ripple effect for all of these other groups because it helps to drill down where the disparities are in a way that broadly collecting data that's not disaggregated by race cannot do. I'll give one example. We often talk about, let's just say, median household income. And we track the way that household income has increased or decreased over time in Vermont. But if we were to collect these data more accurately with racial disaggregation, then what we'll find is that median household income varies widely between racial groups in the state. We have a large number of white Romaners living in poverty, but we have a wider share of percentage or rate of Vermonters of color living in poverty. And so when we look at the statistical likelihood of a person who's gonna be living in poverty or a person who's going to experience joblessness or houselessness at some point in his or her life, when we look at the statistical likelihood of dying of COVID compared to another racial or ethnic group, these are data that we would not be able to accurately collect and act on were it not for the accurate collection of race disaggregated data. I'll stop there, because I don't wanna go off too much on this tangent if you all are satisfied with that information. Is there any particular issue here that I can speak to that would be useful for the committee? That's an excellent question. Committee, any urgent questions that pop up in your mind? All right, I'm not seeing them diving towards their little blue hands. So I think we will go next to the draft that we have of the bill that will incorporate some of these data collection points within our government accountability section of statute. And so I would welcome you to get back in touch with us. You're certainly welcome to stay with us and listen to the committee deliberations for the next hour and a half or so, but would also welcome you to get back in touch with us if there's anything about the words on the page that give you pause or if you can think of ways that you might strengthen them. Thank you. Actually, I do have one small suggestion and I'm happy to follow up on this one by email. I do think that it's worth adding to the language of intent in the purpose section of the Acronautics population level outcomes to include language specifying or clarifying that each of the listed outcomes is designed to achieve equity for all Vermonters across all groups and particularly marginalized Vermonters, including but not limited to different racial groups, ethnic groups, LGBTQIA plus community, people living with disabilities, youth, seniors, et cetera. I think that adding that language to the purpose statement would help to clarify that even if you don't see a group expressly named here, that through the indicators that we'll be collecting, like disaggregating data through those indicators and through our general intent, we will be ensuring that we're addressing the needs of all of these groups, particularly marginalized groups. But I think that it would go a long way to send that message into Advanced Network. I appreciate that. I'm happy to workshop some of the language. Great, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you for being with us. Next, I would like to go to Betsy Ann and I would assume at this point we've got a document new draft up on our committee page. Hello, good morning. Betsy Ann Rask, Legislative Council. I can point it out to you where it exists on your webpage today. Thank you to Andrea for posting all of the documents. If you do go to today's date, the second to the last document is S124 draft 2.1 with today's date, the annotated strike all. This is your running draft strike all amendment S124. That contains the potential draft language that is in here addressing indicators for Vermonters who are BIPOC. And that is on page 21 in the draft section B. And Madam Chair, I can also share screen if you think that'd be helpful for us to take a look at it now or members. Yeah, why don't we go ahead and do that? We'll share screen for this particular section. And then when we start the full walkthrough of that annotated draft, we'll go back to our own devices. Sounds good. I'm going to share screen. And can you see it okay? Yes. Great, thank you. So here we are on page 21, I believe. And it's in this section B. And just for reference to discuss, just repeat some of what Chris was discussing at the beginning. So we already have in law in 3VSA 2311, the requirement or first the general assembly set these 10 outcomes for the state, their quality of life outcomes. There are 10 of them now addressing our economy, our health environment, families, our elders, our Vermonters with disabilities, our government and our infrastructure. And then in subsea, there's a process where the GAC, the government accountability committee has the current law authority to establish the indicators, which is the data that helps demonstrate the state's progress in reaching these quality of life outcomes for our state. And what this language that you've been discussing this morning would do is require the GAC to establish new indicators to address the quality of life of Vermonters to our Black, Indigenous or people of color. And so this language would provide that by next March, the GAC would be required to consult with the executive director of racial equity, the social equity caucus and the chief performance officer and accept recommendations from other relevant entities in order to approve by that March 1 date, population level indicators that demonstrate the quality of life of Vermonters who are Black, Indigenous or people of color or BIPOC. As those indicators relate to those population level quality of life outcomes that are already sets and forth in statute, that list of 10 there in 3VSA 2311B. So it goes on to provide that once those indicators are approved by GAC, the chief performance officer would report on those indicators in the state outcomes report. The whole point of the state outcomes and the indicators is to put them into the state outcomes report. I just have a link of it. So if I can just move this tab out of the way, here we go. I just have it up here on the screen. This is your state outcomes report. This is the 2019 one where the chief performance officer puts all the data together for each of those outcomes and submits a report that shows how well the state is progressing in achieving those 10 quality of life outcomes. I'll stop share for now unless Madam Chair, committee members have any questions for me on some of this language? So committee, any questions for Betsy Ann on this particular part of the draft? All right, I'm not seeing anybody diving into their little blue hand. So thank you for drawing our attention specifically to that point and committee will give you some time to maul this over as we go back to the beginning and start with a full run through of a draft of the bill. So committee, any other questions for either coach Christie, Susanna Davis or Jacob Humbert before we start going over the draft? I wanna just recognize that one or all of them might choose to take off while we're going through the draft. Mike Marwicky. Thank you, Madam Chair. What I'd like to do is at least for myself if not the committees to thank Susanna and coach for their input and to stay open to their ongoing input to this. I think it's invaluable what they've brought to these deliberations and I hope we can continue to depend on their help in crafting this legislation. Thank you. And I will echo my appreciation and thanks as well for the input on this. This has been very helpful and I think it's also a really good addition to the bill. Kevin Christie. Madam Chair, thank you all. You know, as we know, this is a team sport the work that we do. You know, I have to use my coaching metaphors, you know but that being said, I would like to suggest that maybe being that the house co-chair of the GAC is made a Thompson, Townsend. You might want to ask if she has any thoughts relating to this, you know as our co-chair, because there's a Senate and House co-chairs to the GAC, to the government account of the Billody Committee. So anyway, just a thought. I appreciate that reminder. If we were all in the building, of course that would be much easier to do but we will with some intention make sure that we draw her attention to this so that she can give us any feedback that she has. Great. Any other questions from committee members? All right, so let us all find our second device and get Betsy's draft 2.1 with today's date. Fresh at 11 a.m. I don't think it could get any fresher. And I'll start when you're ready Madam Chair if you'd like me to start walking through. Yep, let's go ahead and get started on that. All right, so if you're all looking at draft 2.1 this is the annotated draft strike. I'll just keep a running tab of potential amendments to the bill. I put these draft 2.1 potential amendments together at the direction of the chair for your review and discussion today. And these amendments cover a variety of topics. So just to look at the format again of my tricky annotated strike all convention if something's in yellow it would be added to the bill and then anything in red strike through would be removed from the bill. So on the first page when you pull it up the bill gets into potential amendments to the criminal justice training council chapter and just to note in this section one when A is highlighted in yellow you can see there's no underlining that's just to show that the bill would include current law A that's the current law A in regard to the council in the bill as past the Senate there were just the three asterisks there to not show that language but it seemed that it would be helpful to show in this case what the creation and purpose of the council is so that A is just shown for reference but there would be no change in the current law language of the A but you can see when the general assembly initially established the council it was to promote the public health safety and welfare and to be in the public interest to create the council. So going through another thing that you'll see I've just flagged for you the potential new amendments with green highlighting with today's date just to show that these are the new amendments so you can see at the bottom of page one that new language for B one that would be added in regard to that recruit terminology correction changed to be basic training for law enforcement applicants that was already you had already discussed that in your draft 1.1 so no change there but just a reminder this was just an updating to say that the council provides basic training for law enforcement applicants those are people who want to become officers and then in service training which was annual by the way for officers who are already certified. And so as you had already discussed that elimination of the phrase recruit because testimony on the Senate side indicated that council's preference is to not use the term recruit and instead try to use the term law enforcement applicant but one of the things discussing for this new draft is to also ensure that there's a description that the council was also created now to maintain at the top of page two statewide standards of law enforcement officer professional conduct by accepting and tracking complaints alleging officer unprofessional conduct adjudicating charges of unprofessional conduct and imposing sanctions on the certification of an officer who the council finds has committed unprofessional conduct. So there's no change to the actual council authority to do that that was already enacted pursuant to 2018's Act 56 but this is just an update to the statute because the overall description of the council in this first section of the council chapter just did not address that the council also has that duty to maintain those statewide standards off officer professional conduct because that's the purpose of the professional regulation sub chapter of the council is to maintain those statewide standards by the council's authority to impose discipline on an officer's certification which is different from discipline that an individual agency might impose on an officer because that individual agency's discipline is more of a labor issue it's applicable only to the officer at his or her agency whereas the purpose of the council is to potentially impose discipline on an officer's certification to uphold statewide standards. Any discipline would on an officer certification would travel along with officer certification statewide. So that's a potential new amendment there in B2 at the top of page two to further describe the council's duty to do that. On page two online six there is also a potential updating amendment that the council shall offer and approve programs of instruction because the council not only offers educational programs and training programs for officers but it can also approve programs which may be offered outside of the academy itself. And then finally on page two online nine just adding the current law D there's no change to D but it's just showing the D for reference which is the council's responsibility to encourage governmental units in the law enforcement program and to aid in the establishment of adequate training facilities that's a current law responsibility and it's just shown there for reference. So I'll pause there, see if there's any questions. I don't see any. All right, so we can move on to section two. This is in regard to the membership of the council and there are contained in this draft potential revisions to the council membership. As you recall as the bill passed the Senate the council membership would be enlarged to a membership of 20 individuals and this draft 2.1 would further revise some of those members and increase the membership to a total number of 21. On page two, the first changes would be to remove the commissioner of corrections or designee as a current law member of the council. Commissioner of corrections is currently given a seat on the council and this language would remove the commissioner of corrections from the council membership and also remove the Senate's proposal to add the commissioner of mental health to the council membership. Those two members would be removed and then on the next page there would be members added. If you wanna scroll over to page three, actually page four, none of the membership on page three would be changed but in this draft 2.1 on page four there would be instead of three public members appointed by the governor there would be six public members overall with two additional appointees given to the governor and then additional appointee that would be appointed or jointly elected by the memberships of the Vermont chapters of the NAACP. In regard to these public members overall if you're looking at page four starting online five there is a description of what it means to be a public member. The description as passed the Senate was that public members shall not be a law enforcement officer or have a spouse, child, parent or sibling who's an officer can't be current legislators or otherwise employed in the criminal justice system. So as passed the Senate the governor would get to appoint three public members. This draft on line nine would change that to five public members appointed by the governor but specifically require that at least one of them would need to be a social worker and at least one of them would have to have personal experience of living with a mental condition or psychiatric disability. So that would partly it's from removing the first two commissioner appointees at the beginning that's where the extra two would go and then the additional member the sixth public member on line 13 is a public member jointly elected by the memberships of the Vermont chapters of the NAACP. As I understand it from looking at the secretary of state's corporations division and registry and looking online it does not appear that there is one Vermont chapter overall of the NAACP but there are individual chapters for regions of the state there's a Rutland area, NAACP there's a Wyndham County NAACP and then I understand there's also a Champlain area NAACP this language would require those chapters to jointly elect a public member for the council and so that would just there's just to note that this would require the chapters to be able to get together and jointly elect a member to the council but that may be workable in practice through electronic means. Marsha Gardner has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess it's several weeks ago now we did a count of the positions on this board and counting which ones would represent law enforcement and which ones would represent other entities. I thought we came up with a count of 12 and eight but there are 21 members, not 20. So that's a question that I have and also I'm hoping that at some point we can revisit this to see if we should create more balance on this board. Madam Chair, I correspond to that and putting this draft together with your direction. The, as I understood it, part of that was to address that balance issue. And so when we counted before your right representative Gardner it was eight and 12 with eight being not a law enforcement connection and the 12 being with a law enforcement connection. And so removing the commissioner of corrections that would be removing a law enforcement connection. So that would bring it down to 11 then adding the two new members, the two new public members that would bring it up to 10 and for the non-law enforcement connection and then the six member appointed by NAACP chapters would be an additional 11. So I think you're about balance but we can do another count through representative Gardner to go through this membership again if you do want to try to weigh out what the connections are to law enforcement and non-law enforcement. No, I'm happy with that. Thank you. I think I may have missed some things last week. So I'm, I do see more balance in that committee than we had before. Thank you. Bob Hooper has a question. Ms. Yannis may be an inane point but in I there you designate one of whom shall be a social worker having spent 25 years as a social worker but having no formal social work education or certification and knowing that the National Association of Social Workers is very territorial. Is that too fine a point or something that will be misconstrued? Ill-defined maybe. Oh, I don't, I don't know if I fully understand your question or the concern about social workers. Well, if somebody's going to be appointed as a social worker and they aren't a member of the National Association or don't have a formal social work background or certification but their background is having spent a career as a social worker, is that going to raise an issue? Well, I don't know the answer to that. Right now I'd say the language is a general social worker and so I think it would be up to the governor if this language were enacted as is it would be up to the governor to determine whether someone counts as a social worker. If you wanted to make it more specific, potentially you could say, you could require a licensed social worker or if that's not the direction that you would wanna go you could just further describe any certain qualifications that the person might have to have as a social worker. No, I'm just asking the question not making a suggestion. Mike Marwicky has a question. I think I can add something to what Representative Hooper shared. There used to be a designation within the Department for Children and Families of social worker which somebody could have without having the credentials as a social worker. This was within the family services division and several years ago we did away with that and those workers are now called family service workers. So now there are no people as far as I understand within state government or otherwise who are called social workers without having the credentials. And the chair of human services could certainly shed more light on that if we need. Yeah, you're bringing back some memories from a prior OPR bill now that you're saying that. Are you all set Mike? Okay, that's Ian back to the draft. At the bottom of this page four we're still in the council membership on line 16. There is a new proposal that the governor would appoint the chair of the council from among the public members that are set forth in subdivision A1N. So that N is what currently starts on line five and it is those six described public members as currently written. What I've done is flagged here for you to the question of if you will pursue this public member language and it comes with a couple of two special provisions as a public member, one under this new language on line 16 the governor would appoint the chair of the council from among the public members and then down below as currently written in subsection C on line 19 as past the Senate the public members would get a per diem compensation, the $50 per diem but none of the other members would but all members would be entitled to reimbursement of expenses. So I just flagged the question for you as to whether there are other members of the council either under this current draft or any future draft that should be considered a public member. For example, some appointees above four and page three the question is as to whether any of those should be public members that should be placed down in subdivision N. So they would be able to potentially be chair getting that unstable net, unstable net. Are you still here with you? Yeah, we're hearing you but you're a bit garbled and your video has frozen a couple of times but I think we got the gist of it. We need to consider whether there are other per diems that should be granted for people who may be considered members of the public. Got it, thank you. I have Jim Harrison with a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanna make sure I understand the change here. We had the chief of the Brandon Police Department last week and I believe he said he was the current chair. Did I understand him correctly that the chair is currently elected by the council membership? Okay, so this would change it and put essentially a non law enforcement official or representative as chair of the training council to train law enforcement. Do I have that correct? Yes, chair of the council. Yes, to train and certify and professionally regulate. Yes. And I believe that the current chair, the chief indicated that you're right, Representative Harrison that it was pursuant to the council's current authority. I believe their separate statutory authority to establish their rules of procedure. And so I think that's where that current, that's where they have currently used the council election of its own chair. And this would change that to say that the governor appoints a chair who's one of the public members. Okay, thank you. Rob LeClair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, along the line with Jim's question there, I have to say I have some concerns about this particular language in that we're automatically limiting the governor's ability to pick who can chair. And we're also limiting it to people who have arguably no law enforcement experience. I have to say I find that a little concerning here. I think personally, we're gonna need to go back and visit this. Always happy to have a conversation. We can certainly tee up some committee discussion after we get done going through the draft 2.1. And I will log this as one of the areas that we'd like to discuss some more. Go ahead, Betsy Ann. Thank you. See, we are on page five in that section three, a new subsection B would be added to state explicitly that the new members would need to be appointed by November 15th of this year. That has impacts on other parts of the bill because it does impact the reports back in section 10A, some of which must come from the council. And so this new membership would be, for example, the revised membership would be the ones that are reporting back. In addition to the standard council duties pursuant to law. I am scrolling through. There were no, there would be no changes right now to the general description of council powers and duties. I'll just note on page six, looking at that current language as past the Senate for the council being required to offer courses of instruction in different areas of the state and striving to offer non-overnight courses whenever possible. I think you heard testimony from the council last Friday that they do try to offer courses in different areas of the state. And the non, there are non-overnight courses, I think the testimony indicated that was essentially the status quo except for the basic training for law enforcement applicants who are by council rule currently required to do that 16 week Monday through Friday overnight training at the academy. But aside, I believe that the council testified that aside from that basic training requirement that the council does not require overnight courses. Just to make- Give me Harrison. Yeah, thank you. Betsy and maybe you skipped over it or I missed it, but on page five, you said the new membership of the council shall be appointed on or before November 15. Given that if this makes it to the finish line, it's not going to get signed into law until possibly as late as October 1st. That just seems kind of a rush to find the right people and get them appointed right now. So I just flag it, we may wanna consider a later date, that's all. Got it, noted, thank you. I am scrolling through section five on page seven. I just flagged for you on page seven, online six. There is currently no language changes from what the Senate passed as to that requirement for the council to structure its program so that by next July, a level two certified officer would be able to transition to level three certification using either portfolio experiential learning or CLEP testing. And I just flagged that for you because my notes from the chief last Friday was that the council would need to have additional resources to make that happen by that date. So I'm just, I just flagged that issue in case you will want to revisit that because the council feedback was that it was, as I understood their testimony, it was not something that they would be able to accomplish under their current resources. In section six here on page seven, line 16, the as past Senate version had a report back from the executive director of the council to the GovOps committees regarding their council's plans to change. Some of the training in accordance with the requirements up above. And you heard testimony from the council last week about them being in the process of getting a new executive director. So the suggestion was to provide the council with additional time to report back so it can get its new executive director established. And so this would extend that report back from January 15th of next year to March 1st of next year for the new executive director to report back on the plans for changing its training. But otherwise this language in regard to the report back and the rulemaking requirement that's up above in the bill, you can see on page eight line seven as past the Senate that the language would require the rulemaking for the alternate routes to certification. It would be July 123 as currently written. I will move down to section six A. So this was the language as past the Senate that council services, which would include training at the police academy and any other services provided by the council would be prohibited for any agency that's not in compliance with the collecting roadside stop data or any other policies required under the council chapter. And you had heard from Representative Donahue, I believe last week on her suggestion to make a similar change about the language that you had in S219 that would make state grants contingent upon agencies being in compliance with this roadside stop collection data. And her recommendation to this committee was to also make the state grant authority contingent on the adding in the requirement that an agency also has to be in compliance with the current law requirement to report any interactions that an agency's officer has in responding to what appears to be a mental health crisis and there's death or serious bodily injury that occurred during that interaction with law enforcement. And so she had made a request to this committee to add on to the S219 grant language and that proposal by Representative Donahue was similar to this language as past the Senate to make council services contingent upon compliance with current law requirements for agencies to collect roadside stop data and be in compliance with any other policies. This would add the language that Representative Donahue was requesting in that other area to say that council services are also contingent on an agency reporting to the AG's office as is required by current law, any death or serious bodily injuries when an officer responds to mental health crisis. So this language would be added here. And Representative Donahue's specific request appears later in the bill. Rob LeClaire has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I'm, wouldn't this information be reported regardless of what caused it if that was the outcome of the interaction? So there is this current law requirement. It's an 18 BSA section 7257A. This is the statute that established the Mental Health Crisis Response Commission within the office of AG. And within that statute in subsection B, there's a specific requirement that says each incident involved an interaction between law enforcement and a person acting in a manner that created reason to believe a mental health crisis was occurring. That results in death or serious bodily injury to any party shall be referred to the office of AG by the relevant law enforcement agency for review analysis and recommendations within 60 days of the incident. So I think the big picture is that it is a requirement imposed on agencies right now under current law. And I believe what I understood Representative Donahue would be saying was that if these bills will address the benefits of state resources like grants or in this case, council services that would potentially go to law enforcement agencies, so long as they're in compliance with their current law requirements that it should be added that to be able to enjoy those state resources, agencies need to be in compliance with that current law requirement to report the serious bodily injury or death when an officer or an agency is responded to a mental health crisis. I think partially part of this language is to try to help ensure that agencies are complying with their current law requirements for reporting in this case to the AG. Okay, I guess you probably don't know this, but do we have any examples of where something like that's happened and it hasn't been reported? I do not know the answer to that. All right, thank you, Beth Jean. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to keep scrolling. I'm on page nine, no change here. Once we get to section eight, there is that new proposal to require any potential hiring agency to contact an officer's current agency for that current agency to disclose the officer's performance there. It's already a current law requirement for a potential hiring agency to contact an officer's former agency if an officer is no longer employed as an officer. Well, there would be no change under this draft to that language as past the Senate, but on page 11, if you scroll up, you'll see that there was that transitional provision in section nine, that would say that that new proposed requirement for a current agency to disclose an officer's performance at that agency shall not apply if there's a binding on disclosure agreement prohibiting that disclosure that was executed prior to the effective day of that section. And so that the chair asked for language that would prohibit moving forward any language and a collective bargaining agreement. I'm here on page 11 on line four to prohibit a collective bargaining agreement between an agency and an officer that would include a prohibition on the exchange of information between the employing agency and another agency about the officer's performance at the employing agency. So that moving forward, collective bargaining agreements would not be able to include those types of nondisclosure agreements. So just to put a slightly finer point on it or a different point on it, I wanted to make sure that we are honoring the fact that there may be contracts under which these types of nondisclosure agreements are allowable currently. And we're not seeking to do anything about current contracts that may allow the execution of a nondisclosure agreement that would keep an officer's discipline at one agency from being shared with a future employer. But in the interest of moving forward and making sure that law enforcement agencies have all the information at their fingertips, we just wanna make sure that those kinds of nondisclosure agreements are no longer used in the future. Thank you. And related on page, in section nine B, on page 11, starting on line 14, there is relatedly that transitional provision to say that that new prohibition on including for any CBA to have a prohibition on the exchange of information would not apply to a CBA that took effect prior to the effective date of this new requirement but would apply to any CBA that takes effect on and after the effective data that section as a transitional provision. And Betsy Ann, can you just remind me if this is indeed the way these words work on the page? It was not my intention that any disciplinary action between an officer and their employing agency would be able to be made public necessarily by this but that it would have to be shared law enforcement agency to law enforcement agency. So not to splash across the headlines but just to make sure that a new hiring agency has all the information. Yes, thanks for that reminder. As currently written, it does just address the agreements but I think I failed to make that completely explicit that that language cannot be shared publicly. So if committee will pursue this, I will make a note to make that explicit that any other confidentiality requirements would need to be maintained by the agency that receives the information. I could add that language because I did not explicitly add it here. So if you would- I think that would be helpful. And unless the committee objects in some way, I would say go ahead and work on making that more explicit but he's diving to their hand. I think I will work with our labor attorney and I can also, there's also language currently in law that I could point to as an example for maintaining the confidentiality of any privileged information. Thank you. On page 12 in new in section A, this was the language that as past the Senate provided that agencies that use body cams need to comply with the LEAB model body cam policy. You had already discussed in your previous draft making this clearer that the requirement to have and use a model body cam policy is only if an agency or its officers are actually using body cams. It's not a requirement for all agencies to use body cams. This draft would, instead of having the LEAB establish the policy, which they did in 2016, this would instead provide that it's the council who establishes a model body camera policy so that any officer who is authorized to use a body cam need to follow the council's model body camera policy. So you'll see relatedly there's language in that section 10A report back where as past the Senate would require the LEAB to propose any revisions to its 2016 model body cam policy that would be changed accordingly to the council since this draft would give the council the authority to establish the model body cam policy instead of the LEAB. Jim Harrison. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Betsy and any background as to why we're switching the policy from the leave to the council? I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference to me personally, but I'm just curious. This is the first time I've heard the change going to the council. Yeah, I would be happy to open that up for a little bit of committee discussion and welcome others to weigh in with their thoughts on this. The thought with respect to having the council take on this responsibility is that the council is going to be reformulated as a council that has both civilian and law enforcement expertise on it. And since there are so many issues with respect to the use of body cameras that have a lot of civilian interests and civilian implications, my thought was that the council that has more balance might be the better entity to create that model policy. Happy to have other folks weigh in if they have thoughts or questions or just open this up for general committee discussion right now. Rob's unmuted, is that a hand raised as well? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just, what's the makeup of the league now? Do they have, it's gotta be all members of the league, you know? Yeah, the law enforcement advisory board is all law enforcement, yeah. And for the most part, yeah, you can see the, for reference, the LEAB is addressed also in this bill because it would be getting moved from where it currently lives in statute to where it really belongs because it is an entity under the Department of Public Safety. You can look at the current or at the membership of the LEAB on page 24 if it's helpful for this discussion. So what this part of the bill is doing is deleting the LEAB where it's at in title 24 because it just doesn't belong there. That's the municipal law title and moving it under the chapter entitled 20, regulating the Department of Public Safety because as originally created and as this language would say, the LEAB is created within the Department of Public Safety to advise the commissioner public safety, the governor and the general assembly on issues involving the cooperation and coordination of all agencies that exercise law enforcement responsibilities. So it is a focus on law enforcement. The membership would change, would remain mostly the same as it did now except the Senate didn't propose adding a few new members to the LEAB. One of them being, I can, if I go to the section by section summer, I can tell you for certain because it's not easy to tell from the bill as currently written as a strike all. But I know the chief of the Capitol police would be one member that was added. I believe another member that was added is, let's see, someone from, I shouldn't guess DMB perhaps, I can tell you with certainty in a second. But if you look at the language of the LEAB or the membership of the LEAB, it really is a focus on law enforcement except you've got the member, the defender general also gets a seat and they're the US attorney and the AG also have a seat there to discuss law enforcement issues and BLCT. Rob, any follow up? Nope, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Marcia Gardner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I believe that the governor's executive order recommends that the commissioner of DPS and I'll say Betsy Ann did this analysis for me. I wanted to see the comparison between the governor's executive order and the bill that we have before us. And the governor's executive order says the commissioner of DPS will recommend a model body camera policy to the Criminal Justice Training Council. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for raising that. Representative Gardner and to Andrea also for reposting all of these documents. If you are interested in the executive order it's posted there too and the body camera language is in section D with that requirement just as you stated. Representative Gardner for commissioner of DPS to represent, propose a model body cam policy to the council. Any other questions on body cam policy? All right, moving on. I will move on. I'm on page 12, line 13 in the, what's labeled as section A. This would be a prohibition on officers using any facial recognition or other biometric matching technology, facial surveillance techniques, for example. I am, I just wanted to give you a heads up. I am running this language by our judiciary attorneys because I did see when reviewing the statutes that it does appear in your current law drone law and I provided a link to it there. It's a 20 BSA 26 22. There's currently a prohibition that when law enforcement uses drones those drones cannot use the facial recognition technology or other biometric matching technology unless the drone, on the drone unless the drone is not being used for related to a crime for example, if it's doing a certain rescue mission or if it's allowed pursuant to warrant. So it does appear that currently a warrant may permit a drone to have facial recognition technology. So I just want to put that on your radar if you will pursue a prohibition on facial recognition tech that there does appear to be that current law require authority for drones to include that. I will also just further discuss to see if there are any other issues with our judiciary attorneys as to this prohibition on law enforcement use of facial recognition technology. Thank you, I appreciate that. Jim Harrison. Thank you. Betsy Ann, does the other biometric matching technology interfere with fingerprints? That's a great question. I didn't think of that. So I'll put that on the question of how that would be interpreted and whether there needs to be any clarification on that if you will pursue that, this prohibition. And additionally, I recall the conversation on drones from a prior bill and that they can be used for search and rescue. Would that also allow facial recognition or are we taking that out somehow? That's another good point because right now that this language is only about exceptions under the drone law. So that drone law could be a potential model for any exceptions you wanna have here if you do wanna pursue this. So those are great points. And I guess the last question and this is probably a broader conversation. I don't know if other states prohibit facial recognition. And if so, what's the primary reason for that? It's just a broad question. I don't know that we use it today. I'm just wondering. I just, if we're trying to catch a bad apple, I hate to tie our hands up but I don't know if that's a good question. If we're trying to catch a bad apple, I hate to tie our hand behind our back. That's just a question. I can speak to the second part of your question as to other parts of the law. The only other, the prohibition that I'm aware of right now is in the DMV statute. It's 23 VSA, I think it's section 364C that prohibits DMV from embedding in any of its practices, the use of biometric matching technology. But that's beyond just law enforcement, but that's just DMV practices generally. Do we know if other states prohibit facial recognition for law enforcement? The only information that I have at this point was from your testimony last week about some of the, I think, I don't know if it was states, a state overall, but there were some towns, I think, that were moving forward with prohibiting it and in New York, a moratorium on school resource officers using it, but I would have to look further as to whether there are, to confirm whether there are state prohibitions elsewhere on using this. Yeah, I don't know that it's being used. And I just, I would want some input from law enforcement whether or not down the road that makes it harder to catch criminals, that's all. It's just, I get the concern, you know, but I guess I look at it, if you're not doing anything wrong, don't worry about the surveillance camera. So that's just me. Thank you. So I think one of the concerns that we heard in testimony that led to this being added is that facial recognition technology appears to be much less accurate with African faces, African descent. And so that using facial recognition technology that doesn't as accurately identify a black or brown person as it might a white person could inadvertently lead to, lead to mistakes being made and unfair treatment of certain people. Okay, and that's a fair concern. Thank you. Any other questions from committee members? Marsha, you're unmuted. Do you, did you have a question? No, I did not. Okay. Just read, turn to read all the cues in this little zoom room that we have going on here. Go ahead, Betsy Ann. All right, I'm on page 13. And this is just a reminder. This was the red strike-through came from your draft 1.1. As passed the Senate, this language would have amended the definition of what constitutes category B, unprofessional conduct. And you had already addressed that issue in S219. So it's done and taken care of. So you don't need this language in this bill because you've already made that policy decision in S219, the provisions of which took effect on September 1. So I will continue to move on. I'm on page 15. Oh, I'm gonna pause for reference. Go ahead, Jim. I'm sorry. Did, I think when we left last, the chair was going to reach out to judiciary to see if they were looking at the unprofessional conduct in the criminal penalty related here on the use of force with judiciary to see if they were addressing how we left 219. I don't believe that I've gotten a full sense of what they're doing yet. They are working on that in the context of the bill that we ask to be relieved of, but I don't have an update yet from them on exactly what they're doing. Okay, no, thank you. I just didn't want to be one of these. And then it falls through the cracks. That's all. If we're- Never let us forget such an important piece. All right, thank you. And I've been speaking with one of our judiciary attorneys who's brand new is handling S119. I do know that they house judiciary is focusing on use of force and use force policy. So I can also reach out to confirm with her whether they're addressing that sunset on the crimes related to force. Thank you, I'm going to keep going. We are on page 15. And just a reminder in regard, this is the bill that would not be changing this draft from the as past Senate version that would require an agency to alert the council when it receives a credible complaint, alleging that an officer committed category B conduct instead of the current law language that says that the agency only reports to the council after they go through the process of conducting a whole valid investigation. But that language as past Senate would not change in this draft. I'm on page 16 and on line seven, this language would not change, but as a reminder, this would require the council to provide a copy of any report it receives from an agency, including its investigative report and any supporting documents to the council advisory committee, which would recommend an appropriate action to take in regard to an officer's subject to that report. The council advisory committee already exists in law. You enacted it as part of Act 56. It is the four members who do not have a law enforcement connection and the fifth member is a retired officer. Section 10a contains those reports back, reports back from a variety of entities on law enforcement issues. And the first change that would happen to this language as proposed on page 16, on line 20 is to give the council more time to report back. So overall, the variety of entities that have to report back under this section would need to report to the GovOps committees by January 15th of next year, but the council has its new membership, it's getting its new executive director. And so the suggestion is to give the council more time to report back and specifically to state that it's initial, they would have a progress report that would only need to be verbal and then any follow-up recommendations thereafter. And so this language from bottom of page 16 to the top of 17 would say that for the council's report, the council is not required to submit a verbal progress report until March 1 and any recommendations for legislative action until April 1 to just give them additional time as they're going through this transition. On page 17, so the bill sets out the different topics that different agencies have to report on. The first topic is in regard to law enforcement officer qualifications, no change to 1A where the LEAB would be recommending universal standards for interviewing and hiring new officers. On line nine, that's just a technical correction because if the introductory language would already establish the criminal justice training council is being referred to as council and parenz, you don't need to state it again here on line nine. So that's the only change there to the council. But what you will see in this subdivision 1B and in other places is to specify that in addition to the entities that the Senate has already described that the variety of entities need to consult with this would state that the council would also have to consult with statewide racial justice groups and statewide groups representing people who experience mental conditions and psychiatric disabilities when the council is consulting with entities in order to review officer law enforcement applicants current exams for cultural sensitivities and overall appropriateness. In subdivision two, there is also a requirement for recommendations on law officer training. So here again, the council would be required to consult with specified entities and this revised language would say that those entities would include statewide racial justice groups and statewide groups representing people who experience mental conditions and psychiatric disabilities. And this recommendation from the council is to review at the top of page 18 the current requirements for basic and annual in-service training in order to determine whether appropriate training is provided in the areas of cultural awareness, implicit bias, de-escalation, recognition of and appropriately responding to individuals with a mental condition and whether that training is embedded into training on other policing policies such as traffic stops and searches. In your prior draft, I had made a note that your S219, which is now Act 147 stated in the introductory language that the legislature is committed to evaluating whether and how to gather data regarding interactions between officers and people with mental health issues and only a follow-up note for our conversation is that as we were discussing earlier, there is that current law creation of the Mental Health Crisis Response Commission and that requirement within that statute that created the commission for agencies to report officer interactions in a mental health crisis that resulted in death or bodily injury. So at least part of that reporting is happening now. And I was just providing that note with the 915, 20-day just for reference but otherwise no changes to that language. Just related to this recommendation on training in page 18, line seven, as passed the Senate, the bill would say that after the council reviews the current training requirements for officers, the council would be required to recommend any amendments to statutorily required training that might not be necessary for all officers because while the council gets to establish some of the training requirements for officers through its rulemaking authority and general authority that statute grants to the council to approve training, the statute does control some of the hours of training that all officers have to receive. And so the question would be whether some of those statutory requirements are still necessary for all officers. We're still on training on page 18, line 11. This language as passed the Senate would require the council, the LEAB and DPS to consult with the VLCT and any other interested stakeholders to determine whether the council should be reestablished within a state agency or other oversight entity. And the suggestion is to remove the language that would require a report back on whether the police academy should be relocated to a different area of the state from where it currently is. So eliminating that, but maintaining the requirement for them to recommend whether there should be more flexibility in the residential and field training required of law enforcement applicants, including whether they should be able to satisfy some aspects of basic training through experiential learning. I think that's getting back to that basic training requirement of the 16 weeks with the overnight requirement. I'm on page 19. The third topic for reports back is models of civilian oversight requiring the AG's office overall to consult with entities in recommending one or more models of civilian oversight of law enforcement. And the suggestion for this revised draft is to require the AG's office to specifically consult with the Vermont Law School Center for Justice Reform and statewide racial justice groups and statewide groups representing people who experience mental conditions and psychiatric disabilities. And similarly, in a number four, the topic of reporting allegations of office misconduct, again, this is a requirement for AG's office to consult with specified entities. And the suggestion is to add there, specifically statewide racial justice groups and statewide groups representing people who experience mental conditions and psychiatric disabilities. With the overall point of this report back is identifying a central point for reporting allegations of office or misconduct. Maybe the council or another entity and how the allegations should be handled. Number five here is not revised as past the Senate. This is about access to complaint information. This duty would be on the council advisory committee to consult with the Secretary of State, Human Rights Commission, ACLU and other interests parties in reviewing public access to records relating to allegations of office or misconduct and substantiations. I'm on page 20. And the sixth topic is body cams and related to the change earlier in the bill that would have the council adopting the model body cam policy rather than the LEAB. This would similarly change that. The bill as past the Senate said that the LEAB would report any changes it deems necessary to the model policy that it established in 2016. And instead it would say that the council shall recommend a model body cam policy for use by agencies and officers. And this section goes on to say that after consulting with the Secretary of State, Human Rights Commission, ACLU and adding statewide racial justice groups and statewide groups representing people who experience mental conditions and psychiatric disabilities and other parties, the council would have to specifically recommend policies for responding to public records requests for footage and the timelines respond, how and what footage is redacted, length of footage retention and storage. And then relatedly in regard to being able to obtain body cameras, this subdivision B goes on to say that DPS would consult with now the council since it would be given this model body cam policy authority and the LEAB to investigate the possibility of a statewide group purchasing contract for body cams and central storage locations. DPS would have to, if it recommends a group, it would have to detail its recommended structure and operation. So this is going, I understood to go to the cost of obtaining and maintaining body cams in the footage and whether it could be cheaper to have a group purchasing entity. The last subject for report back is on military equipment and the language as passed the Senate would have required after an opportunity for community involvement and feedback to LEAB to recommend statewide policy on officers use of military equipment and the suggestion for this draft is to instead say it would be the council that would recommend a statewide policy on officers acquisition of military equipment. So not use of, but what could be acquired and the council would make that recommendation. All right, we're out of the recommendation section. I'm on page 21. Now this bill would get into topics relating to state data collection and analysis and there's that new section B that you already discussed earlier. That would require GAC to consult with the executive director of racial equity, social equity caucus and the chief performance officer accept recommendations from other entities in order to approve by March 1st, population level indicators that demonstrate the quality of life for Vermonters who are BIPOC as those indicators relate to the current quality of life outcomes set forth in 2311 B. And then once approved, the CPO would report on those indicators and the state outcomes report. Jim Harrison. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a question on style. I'm not sure what it means of substance, but we have a lot of different caucuses in the legislature. Any of us can form one at a whim. We could have those that like Boston cream donuts. I mean, we just formed a new one last week for the National Guard. I don't know that I've ever seen statutory language that referred to one of those caucuses in terms of stat, we refer to different groups, but I'm just curious, is that unusual or is it just something I've never paid attention to before? And do we set any kind of precedent by doing that? I'm a member of the tourism caucus. Does that mean we should have a seat at the table when the tourism commissioner is developing their marketing plans? I don't know. I'm just asking the question. I don't know how often it is used to refer to spaces. It's a decision if you would think it is appropriate. Sorry, my internet. I got the internet message, sorry. There's nothing prohibiting you from mentioning or referencing a specific caucus. I would see that as a policy decision for you to make if you wanted to do that. Okay, thank you. I just raise a caution. We're going down this path where other caucus groups might want to be referred to in the statute to, and the challenge with caucuses is they're self-selected. So I think we need to be cautious of that. Hal Colston. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to clarify that the social equity caucus involves about 75 legislators. So it's a very strong voice. And I think it's appropriate to be part of this part of the bill because I think it really would add a lot of value. All right, is your internet back in tip-top shape again? I think so for now. I'm on page 22 in a potential news section, what's labeled as C right now. This goes to Representative Donahue's specific request to amend the language that you included in S219 that would say, and this new language in S219 will take effect on January 1 of next year. To require, this new language would require the Secretary of Administration or designee to review all grants from an agency of the state to a local law enforcement agency or Constable and to approve grants only if the agency or Constable has complied with the race-dating reporting requirements that are required by law and Representative Donahue's specific request to add and the current law requirement for reporting death or serious bodily injuries involving a law enforcement officer responding to a mental health crisis. So this is taken directly from Representative Donahue's proposal. The one thing that I will note here is just double checking what your original intent was because I noticed under your language in S219 that you can see here on page 22 online five, it refers only to local law enforcement agencies, which I would read to mean only municipal police departments and wouldn't include a county sheriff, for example, or any of our other state law enforcement agencies. And so I just wanted to double check whether you did intend to limit it in that way to only local agencies or whether you meant to expand it to all law enforcement agencies. And if it's all law enforcement agencies and you wanted to pursue this amendment, you could make that correction here. That would be my intention. Folks are welcome to dive in with an objection and we can arm wrestle for it. Rob. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was gonna see if that worked. It sure did. I'm watching. I would agree that if we're gonna do this that it should apply to all law enforcement agencies. I'm still questioning as to if that winds up being the end result. Is there examples where it hasn't been reported already? I guess I'm failing to understand the need for this. Again, if that's the end result, it would seem to me that those things are already being addressed and I guess reported. Thank you. I don't recall the specific testimony, but I feel like there was a bit of concern about the quality and consistency of reporting. But I'd have to go back through my notes. Well, that, I do agree with Madam Chair. I think we had a lot of discussion around that for sure. My question is just do we need to carve this out when I would say that regardless of what the motivation was, if that's the final outcome, it seems like it would be reported, but... I'm on page 22 and just a note on line 12. This is just a technical correction to get rid of that reader assistance heading regarding the VCIC because up above this portion of the bill would refer more generally to data collection and analysis of which the VCIC language is a part. So it's just putting this section 11 under the overall broader topic of data collection analysis. This section 11 as passed the Senate contains the requirement for the VCIC to establish and provide training on a uniform of list of definitions that agencies would use when entering data into their system of records, either Spelman or Valkor and requiring every officer to use those definitions when entering data into their agency system. The suggestion on page 23 in the new language is that on line 10, when the VCIC comes up with these definitions, it would be in consultation with the Vermont Crime Research Group, statewide racial justice groups and statewide groups representing people who experience mental conditions and psychiatric disabilities as they come up with these definitions. So we can forward along through the LEAB provisions, again, just repealing where they currently are in Title 24, which is a municipal law, putting them where they belong, which is in Title 20 in the DPS chapter because they're created under DPS and then maintaining the Senate's changes to the membership of the LEAB. I think it was adding the chief of the Capitol Police and then adding a new member, the 18 law enforcement officer appointed by the president of the VSEA. And I just have to go back and double check the summary to see what other, if there are any other members that would be added that are new. I know I put that in your section by section summary, just don't have that my fingertips. But otherwise, aside from adding a few members, the only changes that would otherwise be made to the LEAB's current statute is just updating the quorum accordingly to reflect the number of members. And then just recodification. But otherwise, no changes. I know we're up on one o'clock, Madam Chair. So I'm just gonna quickly scroll through to get to the DPS dispatch language, which starts on page 25 or 27, pardon me. So as the bill passed the Senate, it would have required DPS to adopt rules setting forth the rates that DPS can charge for dispatch. They already have the statutory authority to charge for dispatch, but this would say the DPS would have to have rules to provide its fee structure and that those rules could not be imposed until three years after adoption. What this language would be doing is removing that rulemaking authority and prohibiting DPS from charging rates until the general assembly establishes a fee structure. And amending these statutes, I just wanted to note that I am only providing for reference at the bottom of page 27, starting on line 20, the current law language for the different charges that DPS can charge for some of the services that it offers and updates this statute, but no changes to those current law authorities. I'm just providing them for reference, but you can see the language that allows DPS to charge for dispatch begins in current law on page 28, line 17. There's that current dispatch charging authority. You can see it currently allows the commissioner public safety to enter into contractual arrangements to perform dispatching functions for state municipal or other emergency services, establishing charges sufficient to recover the cost of dispatching. What this language would do at the top of page 29 is remove the rule adoption language. I'm just gonna scroll through to point out the substantive language is on page 31 to remove the Senate's proposed section 17, which addressed that rulemaking authority to charge dispatch rates in this potential new language in section D here on page 31, line nine, would say that notwithstanding the provisions of that prior subsection or any other provision of law to the contrary, DPS shall not charge to recover the costs of any contractual arrangements to perform dispatching functions for state municipal or other emergency services until the general assembly enacts in law the fee structure for those charges. And it would require DPS by January to consult with VLCT, the EMS Advisory Committee, Vermont Police Chiefs Association, the State Firefighters Association and Local Emergency Medical Service Police and Fire Agencies in order to recommend by that January 15 date to the GovOps and Ways and Means and Finance an equitable dispatch fee structure for the department to charge for dispatching EMS, police and fire service and potential funding mechanisms for those charges that do not rely on property taxes. So overall, this language is designed to maintain the authority of DPS to contract for dispatch but to put a temporary hold on their authority to charge for those dispatch functions until the general assembly establishes the fee structure for them. Jim Harrison. Thank you, Madam Chair. So Betsy and I just wanna make sure I understand this. So even though we're leaving in statute their ability to contract and charge, we're saying they can't charge right now. Is that correct? That is correct. And I went back and forth about how to structure this. I mean, the law is the law. The session law would control if you enacted it in this way so that even though statute says that they can charge there would be that session law that would be in places prohibiting them from charging. Another option is just to do it directly and amend the statute and then go back in the future and amend it again once you establish the fee structure. So it's just one way or the other of doing it. It should not make a have a substantive difference in how the law is executed because session law has the same force and effective statutory law. But if members would be more comfortable with removing from statute the current ability to charge and then enacting at a later time charging authority once you have the fee structure set that's just another way of going about doing the same thing. Yeah, I don't have any preconceived notion I you're the lawyer. So I would trust I just wanna make sure I understand it correctly. And I think this change is good and it allows more time for conversation and discussion about whatever is decided to go down the road. I would just flag the January 15, 2021 which is only a couple of months away for getting all of these groups on the same page easier said than done. And I'm sure public safety has their hands full with a lot of COVID related issues right now. So it just, you know, the world's not gonna end if this isn't done by January 15th. Thank you. Any other questions committee on this section of the bill? All right, we are past time. So thank you Betsy Ann. We will come back to this again tomorrow. And in the meantime, if there are other perspectives that you would like to hear from as we work through language on this bill you know how to reach me. All right, we are back in committee I believe at 830 tomorrow morning, is that correct? No, all right, I'm seeing some heads nodding. That means we're on the same page. Great. Give me a shout. If you need me for anything this afternoon and thank you so much Betsy Ann and thanks again coach for being with us today. We'll see you. Oh, Mike Murmicki has his hand up. Go ahead, Mike. Just a quick one at nine o'clock tomorrow. I'll have to leave and go check in on Senate resources. Chris Bray's committee. Senate natural, okay. Natural resources. I don't know if I'll be needed but I'll be there for a little bit. Hopefully, thanks. All right, super. All right, everybody have a good rest of your day.