 All right, welcome back to the General Housing and Military Affairs and we are here right now on JRH2 and this is a bill that we worked on quite a bit last year. It's a resolution and Michael will explain the differences between the two. And that balance between saying, no, this is not celebrating our high school basketball team as we do with a lot of resolutions. So this is a little bit different. This is being treated as a bill, but it's a resolution. So, Michael will give us the details for that. So for committee that wasn't on the committee last year we worked on this quite a bit in at this time last year actually. And it was brought forward by some of the same sponsors that are bringing this forward and it was a, it was, we're going to have a, we're going to have an interesting time with this is a very difficult subject matter. And we were forced to put it aside with COVID it was just it just proved to be inappropriate to deal with this issue in the middle of a pandemic. Due to the subject matter that you'll hear about and the emotions that are behind it. So it is something that we nearly got to the finish line but did not get there and this will also be done in our committee this year in, in conjunction with H 96 which was, which is a proposal to do a truth and reconciliation commission which in the committee last year was a committee was in the process of being a committee bill, which a committee bill is something that we decide that we want to do that wasn't introduced by anybody else. And there are separate rules that that exists with that but then once the biennium passed it's now a bill. With that I want to turn the microphone over to john and let him, let him tell us the story of this bill from his perspective and why he chose to sponsor it this year. john thank you. Well great thank you and I don't know how many of us have read the book that we all got, but I did we read it this weekend, and it's. Pretty startling. When we look at what happened and Henry Perkins was a UVM zoo zoology professor, and he came up with eugenics survey. And what this was in 1925. And the survey worked with the social service agencies and the state, and they shared confidential information to profile families. Some families that were living in the poor farms or the poor houses. It resulted in children being taken away removed incarcerated, and you'll see in the bill language that some people could be returned if they agreed to be sterilized. And so the 1931 we passed a bill, and it was called an act for human betterment by voluntary sterilization. And henceforth, it shall be the policy of the state to prevent procreation of idiots. Indicials feeble minded or insane persons when the public where welfare and the welfare of the idiots feeble minded or insane persons likely to procreate can be improved. So that's voluntary sterile sterilization, as Aaron provided. So that's, that's a statute that Mr Perkins in the book here was talking about that they wanted to preserve what he called old pioneer stock. They wanted to target families and they had work delinquents were dependent on the state or had mental deficiencies. And so what we see from this is that it really over time targeted our abinac bands, people who are mixed race, French Canadians, the poor and people with disabilities. And there's on page 172 in our book here that profiles one family in Ponville, and the neighbors complained, the true office complained the state, and there were seven kids. And they said that they were pretty truant. So they came in in the state came into the household and the oldest woman Helena she was 17 she was taking care of the kids because her mother couldn't. She was sent to the Vermont industrial school and the Brandon school for the feeble minded, as were all the siblings. Three of the four oldest children including her and it were subsequently sterilized prior to discharge. And the three youngest of Brandon high, high grade morons were soon to graduate with high marks and excellent characters. And the family help Helena after she was sterilized was released, and she did marry, and three of the other kids got farm assistance and they did very productive. The parents were destroyed when all the kids were taken away of course. Here's here's the quote had the community and authorities offered a helping hand, the report concluded, in state of eight years of incarceration, seven years of parole, and dozens of evaluations by doctors social workers and public officials. The state may have saved money and spared the family suffering. So, why we're looking at this now is in 2019 UVM actually apologized, because this research was based at UVM. Mr Perkins was a, and it as it was his father or scholars there, and UVM apologize for its unethical and regrettable eugenics role, and they also took Mr Perkins his name off the building. He seemed right and I'm bringing this forward from our kidney we did this last year, but this has been a topic in the house for a long time about to do this. Representative Donna Hugh told me she's been working on this issue for 10 years. So, I think that that sort of the introduction, and Michael if you could, I first it's a pleasure to work with you on this again. If you can walk us through it I guess. Thank you very much. Can all of you hear me. Yes, very good. My name is Michael Churnick. I'm from the staff of legislative council, and I first worked on a version of this resolution as representative black he was indicating representative Donnie you now over a decade ago. The resolution which I believe most of you should have either digitally or in hard copy has a number of sponsors and its first clause at the bottom of page one in the hard copy version begins as follows. And it goes over much of the history that represented colloquy was and the points was just mace mentioning. Whereas in 1925 University of Vermont zoology professor, Henry F. Perkins established the discredited eugenics survey of Vermont to measure evidence of alleged delinquency dependency and mental defectiveness. This survey targeted members of abinac bands, Vermont is a mixed racial or French Canadian heritage, the poor and persons with disabilities. And whereas the General Assembly adopted 1931 acts and resolves number 174 act 174 and act for human betterment by voluntary sterilization for the purpose of eliminating from the future of Vermont genetic pool persons deemed mentally unfit to procreate. Whereas act 174 resulted in the sterilization of Vermonters, and whether these individuals provided informed consent can be questioned. And whereas this state sanctioned eugenics policy was not an isolated example of oppression, but reflected the historic marginalization discriminatory treatment and displacement of these targeted groups in Vermont. And whereas eugenics advocates promoted sterilization for the protection of Vermont's old stock, and to preserve the physical and social environment of Vermont for their children. And whereas the eugenics survey advocated for assistance from state and municipal officials, and the resulting sterilization intruded on the lives of its victims and had devastating and irreversible impacts on the directly affected individuals and their families. And whereas in conducting the eugenics survey, the surveyors were granted access to case files from state agencies and institutions, and the files remain available to police departments, social workers, educators and talent officials. And whereas as a result of the opening of these files, children removed from families, individuals were institutionalized or incarcerated, family connections were severed, and the sense of kinship and community was lost. On June 21, 2019, the University of Vermont issued a formal statement of sincere apology for its unethical and regrettable eugenics role. And the General Assembly on behalf of the State of Vermont should issue a similar apology. Now therefore be it resolved by the Senate House of Representatives, that the General Assembly sincerely apologizes and expresses its sorrow and regret to all individual monitors and their families and descendants who have were harmed as a result of state sanctioned eugenics policies and practices and be further resolved that the General Assembly recognizes that further legislative action should be taken to address the continuing impact of state sanctioned eugenics policies and related practices of disenfranchisement and ethnicide, leading to genocide. Just one final point if I may represent Stephen was indicating from a procedural perspective, the resolution is stating an expression of opinion of the legislature, it doesn't have a binding sense of law, as a resolution cannot very limited exception But that said, this, this resolution, if passed by the House and Senate would appear in what we call our white books on the record is that correct. But it would be part of the action would be part of the permanent action resolves and would appear in the set as part of the session law says you're referring to miss the white books. Right. All right, john, do you want to have a do you have a final comment at all. Well, for those that weren't with us we've heard, we heard a lot of testimony. You know, and by this point it was stories of their grandparents that people were sharing that they wouldn't answer the door because they were afraid if they open the door the kids would be taken away and some of their descendants were taken away so it's, it has left a really a scarring legacy for people as we heard. Yeah, it's um, there's a there's a lot to say about it and again this is an introduction and so we'll feel free to ask questions without any kind of any kind of commentary that we might have about the bill today will be fairly broad. Um, because of the, you know what we will treat this as a bill. Again, it's, it's not uncommon for resolutions to go to committees it's not, it's not frequent, because it's rarely resolutions are rarely asked to be written that have this kind of depth to them. But we can, again, we can open up the floor for some questions to Michael. And to, and to us all, and especially those of us who were here last year who worked on this representative Hango. Thank you. Last year this was Jerry seven and I was looking back in my notes and I, I would like to know if there's anything different because I remember and I see. I see a date of the beginning of March, which I think was just prior to town meeting. Now actually is when we came back from town meeting so the last week we were actually in person in the legislature. That we were discussing the final paragraph the final clause, the final resolved clause, excuse me. And I don't remember whether that actually was in jrh seven or we were just talking about it and the author has put it into jrh to you. Well, Michael and I worked on this resolution over the summer, or not summer. The fall and we looked at what we did last time and then Michael went back to make sure it was all according to statutes and things. And this is the conversation our committee was having and this was one version and we, there were two different versions but we put this version and this, this one. Yeah, representative angle just to reaffirm what representative Kalaki just said, you would be correct to state that last resolve clause was not in the introduce jrh seven, but this was one of the two potential, if you remember I had a version with two final clauses. This was one of the two potential clauses where the committee was when the committee left at the beginning of the pandemic. Thank you so much for confirming that. Yeah, so. Again, this is a difficult piece of our history. It's something that we're going to, I guess, and discuss and determine if this is the right language that we want to put across our research. Last year in in this and like the concept of an apology I think Michael. I determined last year also through testimony anyway and research that the state has never apologized for actions it's taken quite like this before is that accurate to your knowledge. The best in my knowledge the only official apology with respect to the eugenics movement was the apology issued by the University of Vermont a couple years ago. And in areas where there have been apologies now the Canadian government has apologized twice for treatment of First Nations individuals. Two different times because the first one was viewed as not sufficient. And the second one was primarily about the taking of children from from their homes to to send them to schools that would be in the in them or whatever you know however you want to phrase it. And one of the things that we learned that we talked about last year was that there is to make an apology like this especially to this population. Isn't enough, which is why h96 has been put forward which is a which is a bill to the proposes to form a committee that would determine what a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would look like and that's something that I feel like like needs an incredible amount of inclusivity in determining what that means in research. And so there's a lot of Truth and Reconciliation Commission out in the world but there are a small number of them. Before we move forward with other things that have been discussed in the social equity caucus such as reparations. So that's that would be a proposal to do the thing that one does after one apologizes to make sure that what we're apologizing for is sincere representative Triana. Yes, thank you. Michael, I'm curious was, did any of your research or john. We know if there was an opposition to this movement when it reached the House of Representatives here. Well, yes, there was. Mr Perkins did try to get legislation in 1925 past and the Senate passed it and that house rejected it. The bill came back in 1931. So, on the House side it was rejected. If I may, Mr Chair, there were efforts in 27 that did not come to fruition. Yeah. And that's in the history. And that's why I recommended this if the homework for people to read the, the Breeding Better Vermonters book and to look at JRH seven from last biennium. Look at some of the witnesses that testified and provided hard copies or electronic copies of material we will hear from them or invite them back. There was an essay that was done for the Vermont Historical Society by a woman named Mercedes the Guardiola, which provides a slightly different view on the history. It's a different facet of it's a more political facet of the history rather than what Breeding Better Vermonters really concentrates on on the academic side and quite a bit. And then there's a whole section in the book cast. I haven't read it all, but I read chapter eight, which talks about the role of eugenics and the differential between what it meant in the 20s, 30s to be talking about it and who took it as science who took it as junk science. You know, how it had been regarded even back then. But the thing that's in Mercedes the Guardiola's essay that's in our record is that this conversation actually started in Vermont as early as 1912. According to her records. So, it's it's a it's an interesting conversation. We'll probably hear testimony that says wow that's just what they were thinking back then, or, you know, they were just trusting the science. I mean, which are those are phrases that we hear today. It's going to be, you know, a real, a real workout to just really look at the kind of work that we do it and how we do it, and how we make decisions and how they made decisions in 1931 to finally pass this bill, which started up a couple of different generations of real terror for some people. Representative Hango. When we do hear from witnesses, my notes indicate that we were going to try to look harder to find testimony from French Canadians, whether it be in person or written. And we had a hard time finding that so putting everybody on notice now that if you know French Canadians who are affected who have been affected by this that we would love to hear from them. Because we certainly heard from a number of abnaki. And we've heard from the disabled population we've heard from people who are mental health advocates. So it would be good to hear from another segment of the population that was affected. And, you know, just in terms of the interesting things that are brought up by looking at this one year later. And there are so many things that have changed for us in terms of the virus. We've been hearing about science, and even you know back in the in the 20s and 30s, birth control and sterilization were were things that the general public did not embrace that. If anything people wanted to have more and more children to work on the farms and whatnot, and birth control was really quite a no no for many many decades. And the fact that this prominent scientist was advocating for birth control for certain aspect or certain populations is quite interesting and it's almost a little disturbing to me that to look at this one year later and be able to read things into this book, then maybe what I had read into it a year ago. So I definitely encourage people to look at it through the lens of what we're we're going through now. And, you know, just thinking about how attitudes can change over time sometimes in a very short time. Thank you representative Murphy you had your hand up. I did thank you but I don't need to speak. Okay. All right, I, does anybody have any preliminary questions on this again to the question about the French Canadians representative we have been trying to track down representatives from the French Canadian society. Ron did some research and put a call out through the historical society I've talked to one woman who I believe is the passes I mean it's a volunteer organization and they do primarily genealogical work. And for one of the witnesses that we did have last year Judy Dow, did a presentation on eugenics to their organization over 10 years ago maybe 12 years ago now, and I think that some of that was shared. Some of that testimony was shared with us by Judy last year. And so this person is seeking out. A call out to her organization to see if anyone is willing to testify to this. Because that was clearly, you know, it was kind of kind of like, oh, we need to, we do need to address this if we can find folks from from this affected community and, and we also took testimony from from folks in the, in the our indigenous organization that, yes, there was some cross marriage between the Abinaki and the French Canadians because of course the Abinaki from the Missus Koi area went to Quebec in the 1600s, and became associated with the old neck and before they came back to do to. Well, what happened, you know, with the with the Abinaki with the indigenous population was, you know, was they lost 90% of their population. So very difficult, very difficult to find folks who aren't intermarried. But we are seeking with the French Canadian society to get to find people who might testify to their experience if they have if they choose to talk about it. And that's really what we found. The sensitivity we found with the both the indigenous and the disabled community was, was there was a real sensitivity and fear. Still, that they might be targeted for some kind of retribution for who they are. Not the palette cleanser I was hoping to get to first after h81 but but it is a priorities was a priority for this committee last year. And we're going to see if we can fulfill that priority this year. Michael one last piece of clarity from you. Resolutions of this kind are not subject to crossover. The rules on crossover are not applicable to resolutions be they the concurrence, the typical ones that all of you think of the congratulating the sports team, or the more serious policy resolutions. It's not a factor. The one thing that would be a factor of course is depending on if and when the committee were to vote the resolution out, how much time is left for the Senate to deal with it this year. And of course it remains alive for both years the biennium should one house pass it and the other not. To be honest in my conversations with leadership I think that they, you know, I feel comfortable starting work on this bill in this zoom atmosphere. However, if we do get to the point where we are able to pass this now Michael if I'm not again correct me if I'm mistaken on process here. When this is presented on the floor. We are not. We're, we're the house would be voting on a resolution that contains an apology within it. Correct. But it's not complete until the Senate has also passed it through their body and then the pro tem and the, and the speaker sign it and it becomes official. That is correct unless that is correct, unless you opted which I know this is not what you've chosen to do, unless the committee were to opt to do a house only resolution. Right pressing and of course those, if you were to do a house only resolution, it would not appear in the acts and results in the white books, only in the journals and on the website. And so that and and the executive branch is not a party to this resolution because of course this is the legislature. In this case making an apology through this resolution so that is correct we are office the legislative console, stop sending resolutions to the governor to be signed about 40 years ago. After an unrelated incident. So the governor does as no involvement, since this is not binding law, as I said, this is merely the expression of an opinion on the part of the general assembly. Right. And so just to keep that in mind that some. I mean I think that that's as we approach crossover just as we did last year. There are still negotiations that would have to happen between the speaker and the in the Senate pro tem obviously to pick it up if the Senate founded a priority as well. That's that's their prerogative, but I just this is this is, as in most bills this is our half of the of the story. And the idea here is that if we were to pass this through the House and the Senate. That it would be what would be inappropriate at least in some respects would be speaking a speech of apology over zoom to an affected pop to the affected populations you know it just this is what we miss from not being in person. So, I mean, but given the way that we work and given the fact that we'll still be at this in May, it's, you know, like, again, I would, I would hope that we would if this passes that we would be able to do an apology. That coincided with some ability to meet, at least in a socially distant way. In person. It seems a little one dimensional to me to try to do it through a computer screen. But that's, that's for consideration that's a leadership consideration and that's something that we don't have to worry about in our immediate work here so. All right. I am going to call it a day. I appreciate everybody hearing this and hearing the material that we heard all day this today was a. I don't know. I had one of those general housing and military affairs days with all the different subjects that we handle today so let's take off a little bit early and see you tomorrow morning Ron we're at nine tomorrow or 915. We are at nine tomorrow. Continue with budget presentations will start at nine o'clock with the military department followed by liquor and lottery followed by housing and development. And so I think at that time to, we should have time to finish up our conversation again, the decision, the need to write a full on memo to the joint committee joint fiscal committee has been relaxed but and Josh will Commissioner Hanford will be here on Friday to go through their take on it but I think we can just touch base with them but please feel free to read the other material that we shared today, especially from Wendy Morgan and I think that there's a proposal from the Landlord's Association as well just read through it and see what they're planning and know that that that those programs will be handled through the and that $18 million or 20% the 10% for services and for administration and that the administration's proposal includes all of those organizations so far in their recommendations so with that, I have a good night.