 Thanks. Hello, this is Senate Government Operations. It is Tuesday, January 25th, and we are going to, our first item of business is to talk about the staffing crisis and corrections. This is just, there's no bill or anything like that. We just want to get information about it and what's being done and how it's impacting the employees and the people who are incarcerated and stuff. And I'm going to have the committee introduce themselves because I don't think you've been on this committee before. So I'm Jeanette White from Wyndham County. I'm Anthony Polina from Washington County. Brian Collamore representing the Rutland County District. Allison Clarkson, Windsor County District. Keisha Romhins, Dale Chittenden County. And I want to, I'm going to welcome all of you, but I'm going to give, and maybe I shouldn't do this, but I'm going to anyway, I'm going to give a special welcome to Rachel because this is a whole different position that we see you and we were used to just running by the Lieutenant Governor's Office and stopping in for chat and hugs. So welcome. Thank you so much, Senator. And I'm glad you didn't mention the coffee. I was no good at making that. I never got any there anyway. So with that, I think what we'll do is the commissioner, if you would like to kick us off, however you would like to do this and we'll hear from you. We also have Steve Howard here just from from the VSEA to to represent the employee's point of view and how it's impacting them and where you're going and everything. So commissioner, if you would like to start off and just send us on our way. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Senator, for having me and for the whole committee for the invitation. So for the record, I'm Nick Demmel. I'm the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections. And from our team today, we've got our chief of operations, Al Cormier, and our public information officer, Rachel Feldman, who you introduced at the beginning and certainly welcome them to weigh in at any point as I testify about these important issues. On the staffing challenge in particular, the department was facing a staffing crisis even before the COVID-19 pandemic kicked off in 2020. What we've seen since then is just a further exasperation of that problem. The pandemic has imposed a lot of changes on our system. It's imposed pretty punishing time for staff. I think it's clear that the pandemic has been impactful on everybody in society, both emotionally and mentally. But when we pair that down and talk about our corrections workforce, these are frontline workers. They're first responders. They work 24 hours a day, every day of the year. And we can't afford to not cover a post or not cover a shift. And so the burden on those individuals is even higher, I think, than the burden that's being faced throughout the rest of society. I know we share these pain points with our colleagues in the first responder and emergency services community, with those in the hospitals. It's very similar, the types of pain that we're facing for our workforce. So it's certainly the top priority of this department to try to find ways to ease the burden on that team, to lower the pressure, and to get people all the resources that they need to try to weather the storm. The reality is we hope that as the pandemic winds down, that will create some more space for us to work. But at the end of the day, we're going to remain in a staffing challenge, a staffing crisis here. It's something that we can't afford to wait for the pandemic to end. We need to be acting now. And I think the department is doing that. And I'll lay out a couple of the steps that we've been taking in just a moment. But I also think it's important to stop for a second and recognize that the amazing work that the department staff has done to keep our facilities running, they've been innovative and flexible, and they've met the challenge. And as a result of their efforts, their ability to help us mitigate the COVID-19 impact on the facilities, we haven't lost a staff member or an incarcerated person to COVID-19 during the pandemic. And that's something only Vermont can say in the United States. Every other correction system has had fatalities as a result of this virus. So I think it's important to pause there and just give them a moment of thanks and appreciation because they've done just amazing work to be able to pull that off. A couple of the other ways that the pandemic has impacted our facilities, in order to mitigate the virus, we've had to reconfigure the way some of our facilities are set up so that we have those isolation and quarantine spaces. That has direct impacts on our staffing, our ability to manage the facility because we need different types of staff in different places. We've had to move folks around within the facilities to accommodate those changes. And so it's not business as normal in DOC because of the pandemic. But those things have been vital to help us protect the population that's in our care and custody. And I think it also helped us protect our staff. We're also seeing second and third order effects of where the pandemic is impacting other organizations, other institutions. And that's falling back on the DOC to try to help them through. And so one of the best examples is the court system. For a long time now, the Vermont court system has been closed. And court hearings have been conducted virtually. A lot of the court work has not stopped, but it's been shifted to the Department of Corrections to do in-house. And our system candidly was not set up to address that type of thing. But here's another example of where our staff has just gone above and beyond, have been just excellent partners to the court system, and really just jumped in and served in those roles. So they've functioned at times as a quasi-court clerk, as an ad hoc court clerk. They've been helping people get their paperwork printed and help them prepare. They're getting the hearings ready for them and making sure the technology is working. These are all things that far exceed the borders of a normal correctional officer's duties. But they did it because it needed to be done, and they were able to do it, and they executed perfectly. Unfortunately, that comes at a cost. And so for the department, that's taking our staff offline to be doing these court hearings, to be moving people around, as you can imagine, the most salient example of this that I can think of is, we have our housing units separated from each other during the pandemic so that there's not a mixing of the individuals from different housing units. There's a way to stop the spread of the virus between housing units. But if you have multiple individuals from different housing units who need to come to a court hearing in a centralized location within a facility, we have to move those people around in a way that they don't interact. And so that requires an inordinate amount of staff to pull off that type of movement. It sounds like a simple thing, but many staff are required to pull that off in a way that protects the health and safety of the individuals and our custody. And so when we talk about the staffing issue, we have what everybody can think of as the staffing issue. How many people do you need, and how many do you have, and where's the delta there? But the impact is much more nuanced, and it's spread throughout the system. And this is, I bring up the courts not to call them out because that's one specific example that we can point to where we're actually doing a lot more work than we did before with even fewer people. And we have the staffing crisis, which is amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. And so those are a couple of examples of how that is impacting our system. And we could go through a few more of those, but I think that conveys the point. So then the question becomes, what's the department doing about it? And that's a tough question to answer. I look at this problem as both a staff issue and a staffing issue. And those are different, in my opinion. So first and foremost, we need to take care of our staff. We need to show that we view and value them as human beings, that we care about their well-being, that we care about their careers here, and that the department is really invested in them as individuals. And I think organizations who do that well have a very high retention rate because they want the benefits. They want money and to be paid for their job and for the work that they're doing. And that's important. But people also want to feel like they're a valued part of the organization that they work for. People often don't just go to work for money. They want to have a contribution, especially individuals in public service. And that's what everybody in the Department of Corrections is. And so the department needs to meet them there and show them that we care about them as human beings. We appreciate them. And we're going to go out of our way to show that. And so in my opinion, that's a couplefold. First of all, that's a professional development issue. We need to be investing in their careers and keep them engaged, getting them new skills and new training. It's a wellness issue and getting them the wellness resources that the state is actually very good at providing but making sure that our staff is leveraging those resources and the department is pushing them out, messaging about them, and so that they know that they're available at the ready. And even during this time where they're working extremely long hours, they still have the time provided by the department to give them the space to be able to participate in some of those wellness resources. It's also, I think, time that we review our promotion process and ensure that it's merit-based and fair and transparent. And I think it's time that we look at how we schedule individuals. And by that, I mean, are we using the best technology available to make predictable, reliable schedules for our staff? And one of the things that I've heard a lot is it's challenging to work double shifts, the eight hours plus the overtime shift. It's even more challenging when you can't plan for that in advance. And so we want to try to build in more predictability and reliability on the schedule for our staff so that they can plan for child care needs or just plan for their family needs or plan for their own well-being. When will I get time off? And how can I use that to best prepare myself to start the next shift or whatever the case may be? So those are some of the areas that we're going to focus on in this year. I think that won't be enough to be candid. What we need to do, though, in my approach to this problem is we need to layer as much on top of each other as we can. And hopefully in the aggregate, we'll begin to move the needle on the staffing crisis. It's an unfortunate reality, but there aren't, I haven't heard anyway, a lot of great ideas on how we're going to solve this problem. And the problem is so complex, the state is facing a 2.8% unemployment rate. That means that of the available individuals, they're all going to be highly competitive. So there's 2.8% of the population that's not working. The population that is working, we have to be able to be competitive with them, both in benefits, but also in providing a job, a career for somebody that they're really going to take value in. And I think the work that we did in partnership with the SCA last year to create the side letter agreement, providing additional benefits was a great step, step in the right direction to get them, our team, the pay and benefits that they certainly deserve. And recognition for the fact that they've really gone out of their way above and beyond to serve the state. But again, I don't think pay is the only answer here. I think we're going to have to do more. And so my approach to this is we layer as many things on top as possible, and we slowly move the needle. If there are other ideas that people have, this department will certainly go out of its way to entertain those and try to implement them, because I think all ideas need to be on the table. And I've been very open with our partners at the SCA, with other partners in the legislature, and with the administration that we're all ears for ideas, and we'll certainly entertain anything that we can to try to make this problem better. So I've spoken a lot. I'll pause there for a moment and let people ask any questions that they have, or we can move to any of the specifics that you'd like. So not seeing anybody else's hand up right now, I will ask a question. And then I'll go to Senator Clarkson. I'm not sure how, I think that one of the, when you talked about professionalism, that one of the issues is around training and the type of training and where the training is given. And I believe that the Criminal Justice Council has been, it has been suggested that they take on the training for corrections officers. And I just want, would like you to talk a little bit about training and kind of certification and disciplinary actions. And I know that a lot of it is the disciplinary actions and stuff are part of the negotiations with the employees unions, but just talk a little bit about that and how that works now and how you see it maybe working in the future if there's any attention given to that. Yeah, certainly. I can speak to the discipline piece quickly. And then I'd like to hand it to Al to talk about the training academy and the training proposals that have been considered in the last couple of years and are still being considered today. On the discipline piece, I think this is an area and I don't want to speak for Steve who I think is with us here. I think this is an area where the department and VSEA agree that the process has been a little slow in the past and could use some improvement. And that's something that I am wholeheartedly committed to. And I've already tried to do in my short tenure here is speed up the process for discipline. It's a complicated process and we want to make sure that we're affording everybody their due process and we want to make sure that the investigations that occur are thorough. And so I don't want to compromise those portions of the process, but I do firmly believe that it's something that we can tighten up and make quicker. And it's certainly from the department's perspective and from the areas that I can control, I will absolutely and have already started to do that. And I think where we'd plot this out on a chart, we'd see those timelines shortening and that's something we're going to continue to do. Because I agree wholeheartedly that we can't be handing, we can't let these processes drag out for long periods of time, particularly when we need people back at work. So if the decision is ultimately made that they're able to return to duty, want to make sure we can get them back to duty as quickly as possible. And then in the instances where we have to separate from an employee where we have to terminate, we need to do that quickly as well, in part because I think the folks on our staff want to work with people with integrity, with people who make good faith decisions and who are good employees. And where we have instances where the person violates that level of trust, we need to separate from them because it ultimately will bring down the morale of the department. Regardless, it needs to be happening quicker than it had been. And so that's something that we're committed to. On the question of training and the academy, I'd love to hand it with your permission, Senator, hand it over to Al, who's our resident expert on these areas. Please, thank you so much. Good afternoon. Al, former Chief of Operations for the Department of Corrections. So Act 56 that was signed into law last year talks about the certification and decertification of correctional officers by the Criminal Justice Council. We had worked with the council and presented a report to joint justice in October, I believe it was. What we came to find out was this is going to be a very heavy lift. Should we move forward with the council being responsible for the certification and decertification of correctional officers? A lot of statutory language change that's going to be needed. Correctional officers are not considered law enforcement. And with the certification process at the council, it specifically talks to law enforcement. The other barrier is correctional officers is defined in statute right now include correctional officers ones, correctional officer twos, correctional facility shift supervisors, community correctional officers and probation and parole officers. So we'll need to separate the language and redefine in statute each one of those titles in order to determine levels of certification for each job class. So we will continue to work with the council on that. We were given an extension on timeline from joint justice in the fall to come forward. I can't, Rachel can give me a date on this one. I can't remember exactly when we're meeting again with them, but so those conversations are ongoing and we'll continue to look at it, but it is going to be a lot of work both internally and statutorily that we'll need some change and talking with the executive director at the council related to the number of investigations that they already encounter through law enforcement and the resources that will be needed to include corrections in that as well, given the number of misconduct allegations that we deal with. Where do we pull those resources? Where does that staffing resource come from? Can I just interject here with a question? Have you considered at all doing the certification and decertification process through OPR? They do right now many, many, many professions and they don't determine the qualifications or what constitutes malfeasance, but they do the business end of it. Yeah, that was a topic that was brought up. We've not pursued that at this point. Another project we're working on and we're involved with is the MAS group, which is a national advocacy consulting group, corrections professionals. They are working with the Bureau of Justice Administration right now on bringing a consistent platform to all correctional training academies across the country so that there would be transfer state to state and a national certification board for all correctional academies. Vermont is part of that study right now. So we're hoping with that work at a national level with the MAS group and BJA that we'll see some change in our academy. They have taken our curriculum and have really highlighted and showcased the work that we are doing. They were very impressed with it with the curriculum that we're doing now. So that was good feedback that we've gotten initially on that. But we are working as part of the DRM report that came out of Chinden to add an additional week of training to our academy now. We're working with the MAS group specifically on that as well. So there's a lot of resources going into our training and then what we're looking at at the national level as well I think will bring some benefits to our staff and our training in general. So I know the police academy and I know the fire academy but I don't know the corrections academy and who oversees it and who develops, if there's an oversight group and do you rent space in Pittsburgh at the police academy or where do you hold them and what the length of time is and stuff. If you don't have to answer all those things right now we could maybe go over it and then if you can send us all that information that would be great. Okay, we can certainly put that together. We are not at the Pittsburgh location. Our training academy is in Londonville. It's where? Londonville. Oh, okay. Jim Rice is our academy director. Our current training is a five-week program but I would encourage anybody to come take a look at the building and where we are conducting our training. Governor Scott was there this past fall. Secretary Mike Smith was there. Both seemed very impressed with the facility and what we were conducting and how we were conducting it with our classroom space and training space but always open to show it off. I think we've got a pretty decent facility there right now. Well, oh yes, Senator Polina. Thank you. The commissioner mentioned something about reevaluating or evaluating the promotion policy. I'm just wondering if you could speak more about that. From a staff point of view I'm wondering whether or not I could feel like going to work for corrections is something that's gonna allow me to move up the ladder economically over time. Jesus, talk a little bit about that, please. Yeah, thank you for the question. I think the second part of your question, the statement part is absolutely the goal is to create a system that people can believe in and rely on to have a meaningful career here at the Department of Corrections. And we want people to be continually gaining new skills and new abilities and position them for success in a career here at the department. So as part of our professional development planning we want to, the state offers and the department itself and the state more broadly offers a wide suite of skills and training that we can expose people to. And then the department itself has many experiences within its own system that we could get people trained up on and experience different things so that their position for when they want to make that next move either up the chain or to say it's a CO1 at a facility. So a line correction officer wants to become a supervisor. What skills will they need to do that? And we can lay that out for them and then the department can find ways to invest in them to make sure they get those skills and position them for promotion when that time comes. Or if the CO1 is looking down the road five or 10 years and says, I'd really like to get to a probation or parole office. That's a different set of skills. So how can we make sure that in that period of time the supervisors and the managers at the facilities are really making those investments and helping the person along the way. It's a two-part investment. On the one hand, the department needs to be there to invest in the individual and provide them with the launching pad to do that. And then it's also incumbent on the individual to understand what they want out of their career and seize those opportunities. But we want to make, and my goal, my personal goal here is to make that as easy on the employee as possible so that they can take advantage of that. When I was mentioning the promotion, sorry. I think I was just comment on where you're going now because you mentioned reevaluating the promotion policy. Yep. So I've been touring around all the facilities in the state since I started. And one of the common threads that I've heard when talking to the folks on the line out in the facilities is there's a perception that the promotion process isn't transparent. And there's a perception that it's maybe influenced by things aside from merit. And I'm not making a statement on whether either of those things are true, but the mere perception is a problem for me. And so my goal is to evaluate that promotion process and make sure that it is truly a merit-based process and that the best individuals who apply for promotion are the ones getting those promotions. It's a difficult situation at a facility in particular because it really is a triangle structure. And so the higher you go, the fewer positions are available. And so if individuals don't move out of those positions or they don't become available, it's difficult for people to get to that next level. That's a problem that is harder to solve, but we certainly wanna make sure that the promotion process in general is merit-based, is reliable, and people feel as transparent. They understand why people are getting promoted, that the best candidates are moving forward. Can you remind me also, you mentioned competition for jobs and the slow unemployment era. What's the starting pay for a new corrections department, for a correctional's officer? Hal, do you know the number up top of your head? It's around 1950 an hour, 19 or 20. I think it just went up, but I can't recall. Steve, do you know? It's right around $20 an hour. I think that's better than law enforcement. Steve, were you gonna help answer that? He shook his head. I'm just agreeing, it's about, I think it's about 19 and change. So, yes, Senator Rom-Hinsill. I think Senator Clarkson had a hand up first. Oh, I'm sorry, yes. I wasn't sure if you had your hand up or if you were waving around. No, I had my hand up for a while. Thank you. Just to quickly go to OPR before my question, the OPR has experience on reciprocal licensing, Al. They do a lot, it's good to see you, Al. I haven't seen you for a long time. It's good to see you. So they have a lot of experience with reciprocal licenses. And as, I mean, this is one of our keys to unlocking some of our workforce challenges is trying to make it easier for people to come to us from all over the country with similar skills in training. So as you go through that with the Moss Group, it, another reason to go to our chair's suggestion is looking at OPR because they are terrific. And I guess I have a couple, I have two questions, which is, Nicholas, welcome aboard. You're new, you're young. And one of the biggest challenges we've had in corrections is you're well aware of at the moment is morale. And while all of what you've said is great, it seems that there has been a distinct problem with morale in the corrections department. And I guess my question to you is, what are you doing, given it's a top priority, what are you doing about that? I mean, It's a great question, Senator. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off a few. No, no. And then I just have a second part to my question. Yeah, so that's a great question. I think there's a couple of interesting things underway to really understand this problem set. I think it's easy for us to say, there's a problem here, go fix it. But without truly understanding the underlying problem, it's difficult to come up with solutions that actually work. And so the department has taken on a couple of different initiatives. And first, we have the Prison Research Innovation Network Initiative, which is underway. It's a partnership between the Department of Corrections, the University of Vermont, and the Urban Institute. And they selected one facility in Vermont, Southern State, to do really a deep analysis and baseline to understand the corrections practice at that facility in Vermont, and then identify pain points. And they did that a couple of different ways. But the two primary ways that they surveyed the entire staff there, anybody who would be willing to take the survey, and then they surveyed the incarcerated population. And the results they got were really telling. And we're going to share those later this week. And so that's an area that I think will be of high interest to this body. From there, they're going to then start building innovations to address some of those issues and test them at Southern State. If those things work well down there, we're going to try to scale up some of those solutions to the entire system. But concurrent to that process, we also have hired the MAS group, as Al was mentioning, kind of the leading group in the country of corrections consultants that have studied some of the other facilities and identified pain points among staff. The really interesting thing in both the print survey, which I don't want to get too far ahead of, but also the MAS group findings is that staff actually really like their job and they want to do the work. But they don't feel that the department is there to meet them and provide the services that I was mentioning at the beginning. And so that's where the department, I feel like, has fallen short. And it's trying to support the team that it has in place. And so that's where I think we need to focus. And many of the initiatives that I laid out earlier are a way to target some of that. Certainly that's not an exhaustive list and we have a lot more work that we can do. But it occurs to me that the running thread throughout that, and I'll connect this to recruitment in a moment, is that people want to be valued as human beings. And I don't know, I think maybe we got away from that a little bit. And we need to reconnect with our staff and express to them how much we appreciate them and how much we care about them and we want them to keep doing the work. And so I think if we can even move the needle on that a little bit, it will have a huge impact on our staff and it'll make them feel valued and into the system. One data point that I have to back up my theory on that is our team at Northwest has been recruiting up a storm and they're really setting the trend for the rest of the system on how we do recruitment. We just had a meeting yesterday with all the superintendents and all the district managers and we had a presentation from the guy who's heading up the recruitment effort at Northwest and he shared all of his best practices. And the thing that stuck out in his presentation to me is he said, the best thing you can do is connect with them on a human level. And so he calls every applicant, every day while they're in the process and checks in with them and lets them know that we want them to come on board and here's what we can do for you. How are you feeling about the process? Those types of questions. And it's not solely because of that but it is in large part because of that. That human connection is helping people get all the way through the process where we see it some of the other facilities people will initiate the process but fall off as the process goes on because it can be cumbersome and challenging and other opportunities come along. But what he's doing is making that human connection with our applicants. We also need to do that with the talent we have in the system and they deserve that from us. We owe that to them. Thanks and just thanks. I appreciate that because this has been a real a thorny issue for a long time. Staffing needs, I mean, I think we generally have an impression that the staffing crisis is with the correctional officers and the number but can you just sort of give us a breakdown, a picture of the whole correction system and where the most acute staffing needs are? I mean, we don't hear about food service. We don't hear about, yeah. Anyway, if you just give us a sense of where the acute staffing needs are, that would be right. I'll keep me honest on this but our most acute staffing needs are certainly in the facilities. It's our security staff, our frontline staff. I think there's certainly staffing concerns in the district offices, which are our probation and parole offices but I think the staffing concern that is top of mind for everybody is within the facilities themselves. They're the staff that have had to incur the greatest burden throughout, particularly throughout COVID but even before. They're the staff that we can't afford not to have that staff in place to maintain the safety and security of the facility whereas a probation office is very important to have 24 hour coverage also but it's different. It'd be like managing a hospital versus having a family practice doctor on call. That's where we face the most acute challenges. I think if we look system-wide, the vacancy rate for the system is around 20%. I think if you paired that down just to our security staff, that number grows a fair amount and that's the area that we need to focus the most on. And security staff are COs? Sorry, yeah, I use that term kind of inartfully. I mean individuals at the facility. So that would be our COs, our shift supervisors, our casework staff, all the individuals that keep the facility up and running and do the daily work on the front line there. Thanks. And good luck. Thank you. So this is just a comment and I see Senator Romhen still has a question. Well, Nicholas, this is at least my first time connecting with you and I had a big picture question. We have the Department of Public Safety seeking to be an agency of public safety. It's always been a curiosity to me that we have a Department of Corrections and not an agency in that you're in human services and not connected to the rest of public safety. Do you have any thoughts on this reorganization and being requested by public safety and whether or not you would want to have a hand in that conversation? Yeah, thank you for the question. I think, you know, one of the things that makes you Vermont unique in this space is that the Department of Correction is housed in the Agency of Human Services. And the message that that sends to me, and I think this is the message that Vermont is trying to send symbolically is that we view the practice of corrections as the provision of a human service and we really want to keep the focus on for those in our care and custody, the incarcerated population, they need to be treated with dignity and respect. They need to be provided services to help them rehabilitate, to help them create the best positive reentry circumstance that we can. And I think that's an important message to send. And so I won't go too far forward on discussing the desires of the Department of Public Safety, but I will say from the Department of Correction's perspective, being housed in the Agency of Human Services has an immense symbolic value, I think, to Vermont and it demonstrates a Vermont's prioritization when it looks at corrections. Because you're right, in most other states, it's either a standalone department or it's housed within some type of broader law enforcement agency. And I think Vermont made a very specific, explicit choice in housing them within the Agency of Human Services. And so I don't have any position on how they should reformat themselves for public safety and I wish them the best. Certainly, I don't think the department at this point should be a broader agency and I'm only a few months in, so I think looking for a promotion at this point would be a little inappropriate. But I think we're where we should be right now. Thank you. And that to me sounds like an argument for why public safety should be more of a human service rather than promoting it to an agency. So I appreciate that sentiment. So just before I go to Senator Calmore, I will say that when the issue of moving the Department of Public Safety to an agency first came up, which was about, let's see, Senator Scott. Governor Scott has been governor for I think six years and it was during the Shumlin administration that it first came up, so at least seven or eight years ago. One of the considerations was should the Department of Corrections be moved into public safety? And there was quite a conversation and as you said, Commissioner, everybody agreed that it should stay in the Agency of Human Services. So that was taken head on at the time and the decision was made to keep it where it is. Let's see, Senator Calmore had his hand up. Thank you, Madam Chair and Commissioner, welcome. And Al and Rachel, it's good to see you. When you were answering Senator Clarkson's question, you mentioned, I think that there's a 20% shortfall in terms of staff. What does that translate into numbers, if you would? How many people? And what are your impressions of the challenges, I guess in terms of recruiting people into the department? How could we help? What could the state do to improve the chances that we're gonna get some really good qualified people to join you? Well, now you're challenging me, Senator, to do some arithmetic and it's never been my strong suit. Unfortunately, as a lawyer, I tried to avoid math as much as possible. That's a rough estimate then. Yeah, I think this total staff number is somewhere around 1000 plus or minus, so you take 20%. So we're probably talking, we're short about 200 or so system-wide, but I could be wrong. And so I don't want you to quote me exactly on those numbers, but it's certainly something we can pull that report down for you and send it over so you have the exact figures. So that makes sense that the overtime, pressure on the overtime is considerable at this point. Yeah, absolutely. What about the challenges that we could help with? Just to back up for one second before I move on, that 20% is system-wide, so that's not just the facilities. So that includes the central office, which is basically our headquarters staff, and then that also includes all of our probation parole offices, the academy, et cetera. So yeah, but that's not to say there isn't a huge problem everywhere it is, and that's something we need to address. And then, sorry, the second part of your question was, how do I assess our challenges? Is that? Yeah, in other words, I assume we're not alone in facing recruitment challenges. There's other states that probably would be in a similar position. Can you think of things that we could specifically address to make working at the DOC more attractive for people, especially from out of state to move here to do that? Yeah, great question. So I can tell you firsthand, having spoken with the corrections leaders from around the country, that this problem is universal. It's being faced everywhere in every department of corrections across the country. And we've explored that there's an organization of correction leaders, basically the executives from all 50 states and some of the US territories, and we have a very tight connection, close relationship. And so we routinely share information between each other. And one of the things we've worked to share a lot is best practices on recruitment. I think everything that has been proposed and tried in other places that was successful, we've tried to do here as well. And certainly there's more that we can do, but the department is very aggressively advertising for positions on social media, on recruitment websites. We have advertisements through WCAX and other local outlets. And so we're pushing that area. I think that could be a growth area for us. As I mentioned, Northwest is doing very well in its recruitment efforts. And so they shared some of their best practices yesterday. One of the things that I've already talked a lot about is making that human connection and dedicating somebody to really usher people through the process that's really helpful. Cutting down on some of the, we'll call it the red tape of the process is a challenge that we've seen. So if we have a posting on a recruitment website, for example, sometimes folks will go on there and upload a resume or fill out information. And then they're redirected to the state site and have to repeat that process. Those kind of redundancies, people fall out of the process at that point. And I think we've all experienced that in the internet age where you start to do something and it doesn't work or you have to do it again and you just throw your arms up and walk away. So we wanna cut down on any of those redundancies in red tape and we're working with our partners across the state to be able to do that. The other thing is targeting the individuals that we really want in the system and finding the best talent. And so we've targeted individuals with previous military background because we know that they share a lot of the values of our corrections staff. We've targeted individuals who are similarly situated educationally or in pay to give them, hey, the state offers great benefits, come here instead and we'll give you a whole career here where you can continue to grow and change and evolve as a professional. All of these things I think are working but we have to find new ways to reach people. And it's just, I think a reality. It's a reality everywhere in the country but certainly acutely so in Vermont. There's not a lot of people to go out and pursue. And so we need to be competitive with these other similarly situated careers and convince people that this is the career of choice. This should be the preference for folks. Thank you, Commissioner. Senator Clarkson. Thank you, Senator. Thanks, just to tag onto what you had said previously, Nicholas, as the, I mean, as you look to targeting your recruitment, it does strike me as you're under the umbrella of agency of human services. I would also target people whose career, whose interests are in people. So, you know, I mean, military is one, but I wouldn't, I mean, I guess you would think that. I mean, anyway, you're a CIA person. So you have perhaps more confidence in that way. But I mean, I think that looking at AHS is an interesting idea and looking to people who have more of a psychology background and a human skills background would also be useful. I think military is a great idea, but I also think that really looking broadly at the agency with which you're in and looking at those trainings in those particular areas also would be very useful as you look to targeting your recruitment. You know, Senator, that's an extremely valid point. And if we really step back and look at what is the future of the corrections practice, that's the way we're going, you know? And we talk about this amongst the executives across the country as well. And we look at five now, but five, 10 years out, excuse me, that's where the practice of corrections is going and that type of infusion of human, emotional, mental, health thought, et cetera. I think where we've seen that in practice really effectively is in our recruitment and retention of probation parole officers who are doing that type of case work out in the field every day. And folks have been very successful who have come in with that type of background. But it's certainly something that I think we could explore as we look to recruit for the facilities as well. Absolutely. And I say this with some experience. My godson is now a Marine, but his master's is in psychology and was trained at Columbia. I know he was recruited by the Marines. He's now in Japan, but he was recruited to do work in the military because of his background in psychology and he's going on to do his doctorate at some point. But I think we forget to look at the world that really understands human nature and or at least is trying to to lifelong practice and study. So I encourage you to think in those directions. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for that comment. So I am going to, I think, jump to see if Rachel has anything to add here, anything. And then we'll jump to Steve Howard. And then we can continue to ask questions of the commissioner now, but I wanted to make sure that we heard from Rachel and Steve. Thank you, Senator White, for the record, Rachel Feldman, Public Information Officer and Principal Assistant for the Department of Corrections. And I am just working on getting all that information for you that both the commissioner and Chief Cormier mentioned. So you should have that in your inboxes in about five minutes along with our staffing numbers. Thank you. Thank you. Very efficient. So I was going to ask the question at one point, if somebody is a correctional officer one, when you talked about having them, supporting them in their desire to maybe become a shift supervisor or something, what if what they really want to do is become the chief of operations? I mean, not that anybody would want to replace you, Al, but just, I mean, that they wanted to not pursue an advancement in the facilities themselves, but in the central office. Yeah, that's a great question, Senator. I wish we had somebody here who had started as a CO1 and worked his way all the way up to be the chief of operations. Oh, maybe... Oh, maybe... I'll make a comment on this question. He may be best prepared to... Al is our man. I'll do my best to explain my career. Some people may say I can't hold a job, that could be it, but no, I think the one thing that's very unique with corrections in Vermont is one, being in the agency of human services and being a unified department where in other states, probation is separate, parole is separate. The court has the county system. Vermont, we've got it all. So it provides an immense opportunity for growth and career advancement as a result of that. And in my career, I started as a correctional officer. I promoted to a correctional officer too. I then saw an opportunity for community correctional officer in the community, applied for that position, became a community correctional officer, became a probation and parole officer, became a supervisor, did a small stint in central office, went back to being a supervisor, became superintendent of a correctional facility for eight years, director of facilities and now sitting in my current position. So 27 and a half years with the department has provided an amazing opportunity with the variety of jobs. And that's, we've got casework. I was never a casework in a facility, but that's something that's out there. Our out-of-state unit, we have caseworkers for the out-of-state population and I know we wanna bring those back, but currently that's a job. Recreation coordinators, volunteer coordinators, food services. There are so many different opportunities within the department. Our policy development in central office, our sentence computation unit in central office. The operations managers that work with our field services, the operations managers that work with our facility of managers. I mean, there are so many different opportunities in areas for growth. It really does provide an amazing career and I'm very proud to be sitting where I am as a result of that. It doesn't come easy by any means and you get a wanna be driven and have some determination, but it's also to the commissioner's point about professional development. People want to, they're gonna have to wanna promote. They're gonna have to wanna do the work. It doesn't come easy and then to the commissioner's point on promotional opportunities and merit-based. I've seen as a superintendent, I saw a lot of staff that went out on their own and took online courses through the National Institute of Corrections and learned an extra skill and then got a certificate as a result of that and that's an opportunity that's available to anybody that's employed by the department of corrections. I mean, there's a lot of opportunities. Become a trainer, go to the academy and become a trainer for trainers. So our staff have those abilities to become a trainer in a certain area and they add that to the resume and maybe that takes them to the department of children and families and that's fine, but we're making them better people than when they came in and I think that's what's important is to understand that we can provide the training and the resources to allow people to promote and have a really good career. Thank you. The only thing I'd add Senator to Al's comment is and Al's a perfect example of where the system has worked right, we got the right man for the job and he's doing an excellent job. To your question, if the CO1, maybe he's a year and a couple of years in, maybe she's a couple of years in, comes and says, I wanna be the chief of operations. I want the department to meet them at that table and say, okay, here's what it's gonna take. Here are some skills you need to get and here's how we can help you get them and get you to that point. And it may take 27 years, hopefully not for some of the younger folks, but there needs to be an investment by the department to say this person wants this, we can get them there. That was what I was hoping you would say. Thank you, Senator Clarkson and then we'll go to Steve Howard. So I'm vice chair of Senate Economic Development and I just, I can't let Hal's comments, and in some ways, yours comments, Nicholas, about professional development, a go without saying are the people who are in corrections also need professional development. TJ always says a good paying, the best response to public, the best improvement for public safety is a good paying job. I hunger for us to do a better job on career and technical education training within the facility and on education. And I would love to have you come back at some point to economic development and talk to us about workforce development within, because we need professional development within corrections as much as with the staff. And speaking of opportunity, there is an opportunity, it's called corrections to change lives and correct course. So at some point, I just had to put that flag down because Al's, you know, the talk about professional development is both in and out. Right. Yeah, Senator, we couldn't agree more and certainly we welcome that opportunity to testify on those topics. We didn't prepare that today. No, I realize. On staff, but it's certainly an area where I think there's a lot of change coming in the next year to two to three years to try to really meet what you're talking about and get the best retraining and preparation for folks to go out and be successful in the workforce and find jobs that are fulfilling and validating for them as well. Thank you. Steve, do you want to add anything? Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Steve Howard I'm the executive director of the BSEA. It's always nice to be back in my favorite committee once again, even if not live. But now that I'm... It's live. Well, someday I hope to be in the same room. That's different someday soon, I hope. If I can remember how to get to the state house. I want to start since the commissioner has been very forthright in admitting that numbers are his weakness. That's where I want to begin because that's probably where I'll be the most successful. But let me just start with, just give you a picture of the overtime scenario in the Department of Corrections, right hot off the presses from the workforce report that was just put out by the Department of Human Resources. In 2017, the Department of Corrections had 19,909 hours of overtime. In FY21, 31,528. That's a 15% growth in one year between 2020 FY20 and FY21. We are facing a 44% turnover in a correction CO1 positions in FY21. And that is after 30% each year for the three years that preceded that. We are in a five alarm fire. This is a immediate crisis. And while I appreciate a lot of what the commissioner said and some of the talk that has been shared earlier about professional development and all of those things which are very important things, we have an immediate crisis on our hands. And we cannot seem to get an immediate crisis response. And that is very frustrating to the men and women who are holding this crumbling system together and have been for a number of years. And so I think that's the first thing that I would say is we need from the commissioner and frankly from the governor an immediate plan to deal with this crisis. And I'm glad to hear that the commissioner is open to some good ideas because I have some good ideas that I've shared. I spent my summer in every correctional facility and every PMP office and over and over and over again through the summer and the fall. And I sat and listened very carefully to what our members were saying about their experience in corrections. And the first thing I would say is we are in such a serious problem. People are exhausted. They feel unsafe at work. They have not seen their families or their children in years. Literally they've skipped basketball games and soccer games and football games and birthday parties and Christmas and you name it. They missed all that. They are disenchanted and they are exhausted. And so when I asked our members to describe just some of the words that I should use in my testimony here when I'm talking with the legislature the words that I hear are crisis, urgent, dangerous, help. So professional development plans are great but we need something right now in an urgent capacity to address a very dangerous situation that is not only in the facilities but it's spilling out into the communities because we're pulling people out of the field into facilities, into hospitals and they are being worked to death and so they are leaving. I can't tell you how many times in my tour around facilities this summer I had a correctional officer come to me and say my partner said that it's me or this job. You either, I'm tired of being a single parent. You either decide if you're married to the Department of Corrections or you come home to us and so they quit or they sit there, one man broke down in tears because he said I need this job but I also love my wife and she's gonna leave me if I don't quit this job. And that's the situation we're in. Now we are very glad that we reached the recruitment and retention bonus, that should be made permanent and I would just say honestly, the administration and probably the legislature are gonna have to just come to terms with the fact that in order to staff these facilities in the field it's going to cost more money and they should plan for 10, 15, $20 million more. Not only just to fill the slots but to fill the slots with people who will run the Department of Corrections on the ground in a way that reaches the level of expectation that Vermonters have. It's going to mean a significant investment in the people that are both there and we don't want to have leave and the people who we wanna have come. And incidentally, I love TV ads, I love Facebook ads, I love all that. But ultimately, what works in the Department of Corrections and in state government is if somebody goes to their friends and their family and says, this is a good place to work, come work here. That's what's happening up in Northwest. That's what's happening up there. They won't do that in most facilities around the state and they'll tell you that they won't do it because they don't wanna lose their friend and they don't wanna hurt their family member who will never see their family members who will be working 16-hour shifts day after day after day who will be sleeping in the parking lot of their facility who will be falling asleep on their way home. This is a crisis that Governor Scott should be on briefing our members and the public on every single week. It is that bad. And so I just wanna stress the level of urgency in that discussion. 50% of our CO1s have less than five years of experience. So another great idea, which this committee has heard about and poor Senator White has heard probably more than she'll ever wanna hear. We have got to fix the retirement system for correctional officers. We've got to be competitive with the states in New England that offer an early retirement because this job is a traumatic job. The life expectancy of a correctional officer is 59 years old. The life expectancy of the rest of us, if we're lucky, is 75. They have PTSD rates higher than veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They have high levels of alcoholism and high blood pressure and 50% divorce rates. We are killing these people. We are killing them. And unfortunately, in the last few years, our members have made to feel like they're the enemy. Like somehow they're the enemy because a reporter decides to write a story. We have to have a big investigation. Fine, have an investigation. But what wasn't part of that investigation was a look at the management that has failed the system. That facility in Chittenden, which was the subject of that investigation, six superintendents in seven years. Why? Where are those superintendents now? Why is that happening all throughout the system? That wasn't part of the study and it didn't make it into the bill that was drafted by the management of the Department of Corrections. That is very disappointing from our member's perspective. They wanna know why. Why is that happening? So the first thing I would suggest is that the administration and the legislature pour money into this department to try to stabilize the department. And then I would suggest that we have a study of the management structure of this department and the management practices of this department. Why are there six superintendents in seven years? That needs to be looked at in a very serious way. And we need long-term reform of benefits like the retirement system so that we're competitive with New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, all have better and more generous retirement benefits than Vermont has. We need people to make a career of it and to see that if they are gonna do this difficult work that nobody else wants to do, then they have to see a light at the end of the tunnel. But yes, they can have career development throughout the process. And that's very important, but they need to say, yes, I can take this until I'm 55 and then I can retire. Because this job is not only mentally demanding, it's also physically demanding. And once you start to get past 55, it gets a little harder to wrestle somebody who's 20 to the ground. And remember, it's really important to remember, we have to have mental health services, not just for our members and for the offenders, but we have to remember that there is, there's a dual role of mental health and social services and security. And security isn't just for the public, it's not just for our members. Security is for the other inmates who might not be able to protect themselves. And that's what we're honestly hearing from offenders who are saying, I think the staffing is a problem because I don't feel safe. They're not enough CEOs to keep me safe in these facilities. So I just wanna stress how urgent the situation is. And I just wanna say, because I wanna be fair to the new commissioner and we've had a couple of exchanges and they've been pretty pleasant. And he's got a huge task on his hands. But one of the things that our members are really hoping for with this commissioner and with this governor is for leadership. And sometimes that means you have to go straight to the powers that be and tell the truth. And that hasn't always been the case with the leadership of the Department of Corrections. It's been a challenge for them to get information to the governor so that the governor knows what's happening in the Department of Corrections he's responsible for. Sometimes he's shocked when we tell him what's happening in his Department of Corrections. So that is gonna be a challenge for this commissioner. And I think the union has a role in helping get around that, but frankly legislators can help with that. They can make sure that the governor knows what's happening in those facilities because sometimes he doesn't and he's quite surprised. That can't happen. I will say to governor Scott's credit, we got this retention and recruitment bonus after months of hard, hard lobbying to get our correctional officers in front of the governor. It took three months. And finally we got that meeting. And when we did and when the governor heard directly from them how difficult their jobs are and what the impact of this crisis is, he responded. And so he gets credit for that. But we've got to do much more. That was just a beginning, just a start. It's a good start, but we have got so much more to do. So I think I'll conclude with that and just hope that when you think about correctional officers and you think about probation and parole officers, I mean, Senator White now has somebody who she worked with all summer, Leona Watt who is a star in this department and who everybody respects and honors as one of the leaders in this department. But these men and women like Leona, like so many of them, their mothers and fathers, their little league coaches, their neighbors, they are regular people. And I have to say, I want to give the commissioner credit. We have the last few years in some ways dehumanize them. And we've read statistics or read reports about them and we've forgotten that these are real men and women. They break down and cry. I've seen them do it. This is a really difficult situation. And I guess what I would ask the legislature to do is sound the alarm. There is a five alarm fire burning out of control and it needs immediate attention. Thank you. Thank you. I do have a question here and I'm not sure because I agree. I think we have a real crisis right now that needs attention. And I applaud the long-term changes because I think they'll make real difference in the long-term. But I know that you said you had some very specific recommendations, but when I was writing down the recommendations that you had here, they seemed pretty long-term, not immediate, like the pension system. And that is under consideration right now. But that kind of is for... I don't know that that would recruit a lot of people but I don't think that that solves an immediate issue and the management structure study. So do you have ideas that the legislature other than sounding the alarm can actually do to make a difference and to make changes? Because if there are legislative changes that need to be made, I mean, putting more money in is certainly one thing. But how that money would be spent is gonna make a huge difference because we don't wanna just put 15 million in and then say it's gonna make a difference in the long-term. So what are some of the... And maybe that's putting you on the spot, but what are some of the very specific things right now that we can do? Well, some of those things are things that are subject to collective bargaining, but I will say that the first thing that I would do is pour money into the department, specifically to raise their wages and the benefits of the people who are working there. And we have to have a reflection of the fact that the market rate is for this particular profession is too low, the rate that we're paying is too low. The commissioner has in right now in his power, in the contract that exists right now, the ability to do a market factor adjustment, that should happen and that should be funded by the legislature. There is also the ability, the commissioner has the ability to issue merit bonuses and those should be issued right away. We should continue the deal, to start working on the, we should continue the deal that was put in place over the summer, but we should do more than that because it's going to require more than that. These jobs are so difficult and only getting more difficult and we have to put our money where we have to invest our money in the people because the people are the ones who decide whether or not the system succeeds or fails. And if they need that support. So those are the first two things. I also think group G, which is the retirement plan is an important thing to get done in the legislature and it would be great if the commissioner and the governor would support that plan, publicly support it and say to the legislature, it has to be done. That would be a great step. No, that would be, I understand the politics of that. It's tough. It's above the commission. It's in the works. It's in the works. I can't, I'm not going to comment on that one at all because we don't yet know what the group C plan looks like. So it's really hard to have the commissioner and the governor come out in support of it when we don't yet know what the plan is. It would be helpful, I think to our members to hear the commissioner say that he will fight for it and he supports it, but not just the commissioner, also the governor, he needs to say that. I think, and that is a way of both telling our members that they're on our side, they understand the problem, but also saying to the legislature, you've got to get this done. This has got to get done. This is a must have before the legislature leaves. And that kind of leadership from the governor and from the commissioner, I think can make a significant difference. I've seen it happen in the state house before. So while there are details to be worked out, I think that kind of immediate action would send the right kind of message to the legislature and prioritize that. We have not yet had the governor say he supports group G and we believe he would say that. I don't want to talk anymore about group G because the pension task force has yet to receive the actuarial report on group G. So there is no such thing as group G. And in theory, the pension task force and my guess is this committee probably support some kind of group G, but we have not, it's really hard to ask people to come out in support of it before the details are done and they aren't done by the actuaries yet. So I think that the task force has made it very clear to corrections officers that we do support this in concept. We just need the details. So. That's a very important point. Senator Clarkson. Sorry, I'm trying to be good. Steve, I understand, I understand this study is going on itself, East. I also understand, given I represent that neck of the woods that one of our biggest challenges is having correctional officers being poached by Massachusetts and New Hampshire or joining states. And I don't know about New York, New York's closing and a lot of the prisons that are close to us. So I don't know how big a competitor they are for poaching our people. But what are they? I mean, when you go to immediate suggestions for immediate action on how to improve things, what are they offering our correctional officers other than just more money? And it may just be more money, but I doubt it. What are they offering that we aren't offering and how can we meet that? And so anyway, well, I guess that's my question. I think that's a very good question, Senator, and I appreciate it. More money is certainly an important aspect. Market factor adjustment is a tool that has been used in our health care facilities that the state runs. It could be used in the correctional system and the commissioner can do that now. So that would be an important first step. The other thing I would say is it's really important for, you've heard me talk about the disconnect that exists between people who work in facilities and work in the field and the folks who work the managers in central office. And the commissioner has a chance, no one expects he would have done it by now, but he certainly has a chance to fix that. And the tour that he recently did, I think, was well received, but our members need to see the managers in central office in the facilities, not just talking to the superintendent, but actually going down in and talking to CEOs on the third shift in the middle of the night, those kind of things need to happen and they haven't happened in years. We've got to get the managers from central office out into the field and into the facilities. The CEOs need to know them, need to talk to them. They need to talk to the CEOs. As we learned from so many experiences, when you hear from frontline workers, you can find the solutions to the significant number of problems that face this department. They have ideas about how to fix it, but they need somebody who knows them, who will spend time with them and who will listen to them, who have the power to make those changes. So those are some immediate things that are financial in nature that could happen pretty quickly. And can you just, I mean, if you may not have a better answer than the, because I mean, we have a real concern in Southeast of the poaching and that adds to our incredibly high turnover rate. And I think it has one of the highest turnover rates, Southeast. So I may be wrong on that, but I thought it was pretty hot. You need Southern State. I mean, we are Southeast. So I can say. Southeast should be open, but it's not. Right, right, right. Southern, right, right. So in addition to money, is there something else that New Hampshire and Massachusetts are offering that we aren't offering? Is there something else that we could be? Yeah, I think it's financial. I think it's the way they feel they're treated by the management. I will say that our members, this is gonna be slightly confusing to Senator White, but I will say this, we did survey our members around the agency of public safety and we surveyed our law enforcement numbers in our corrections members. And our law enforcement members overwhelmingly do not wanna be part of the agency of public safety. Interestingly enough, our corrections members do wanna be in the agency of public safety by an overwhelming, almost unanimous. And so I think there's also some advantages that they feel to that. And as you've heard here today, there are states who do that, who have their CEOs in an agency of public safety. In an agency of public safety. And is that true in Massachusetts or New Hampshire? You know, I don't know off the top of my head if that's true. I just know that that's overwhelmingly the feeling or those who responded to the survey. And I think it was a pretty, Tom Abdonore will have to tell us, but it was a pretty significant response to the survey. A large number of people responded. So it was an interesting dichotomy between the two groups during that. But so I think that we can find the solutions to this problem if we think about it immediately in a crisis mode with crisis management. And then we can look at more long-term changes, both in terms of compensation and also in terms of how the department is run. And the legislature has a role to play in that. You have the oversight role to make sure that this is getting done. And you can hold the governor's feet to the fire to make sure that he's delivering on this. This is a serious, serious problem. We are really at a breaking point. So what happened last year when we wrote, we wrote a letter encouraging a couple of things. And was it around bonus and merit pay and bonuses? So I don't know that it did any good, but perhaps we could do the same thing this year from our committee. We can talk about that. We don't have to talk about that now, but we can talk about that and then to have a discussion on that about whether that would be. Just to point out from our perspective as an agency or as a committee that deals with state employees, we don't deal directly with corrections, but we deal with state employees. So maybe we could, I'll take a stab at that and we can talk about it. Madam Chair, as you know, your letters are legendary for reaping results across state government. And I would say that it did help in getting this recruitment and retention packaged together. That was an enormous all hands-on deck task by the VSEA and its members. And your letter did help. It did help us in fact get the meeting with the governor that we couldn't get. So I appreciate that. It was very effective and I think it would be a useful tool to try again. Yes, Senator Rahman still. Yeah, I just have a few questions and comments. One, I'd just like to be reminded how many Vermonters are incarcerated out of state and how many dollars that takes out of state rather than improving facilities here in Vermont. And I'm sure there's different levels of security to contend with, but I would love to be reminded of that. Two, I just recall last year, we had a major study coming out of some of the allegations and concerns around supervision, substance abuse, sexual assault and coercion. And I was really horrified that so many of the recommendations seemed so disconnected from what the experiences were and spoke for drug testing and lie detector tests for workers who were often the ones who raised the concerns. And so I just really wanna back up what Steve is saying about how that escaped a management overhaul and a focus on what's going on at the management level and focused on the staff who were the ones who were trying to improve the situation. And finally, I have emails speaking of human services and corrections. I don't think it's just symbolic. I mean, I have emails from folks designated agencies and mental health services saying we're deeply underfunded. People are leaving our designated agencies and droves for private practice. And then we have mental health crises that fall to law enforcement and corrections to deal with. And so Nicholas, if you feel more than symbolically part of human services, I feel like it's also sounding the alarm about the continuum to make sure that people don't end up incarcerated because our other systems that we're underfunding are failing. So I just wanna jump in here with one comment about the bill that came to us last year that I think you're referring to, Senator, about the polygraphs and the drug testing. If you remember, that did not come from the commissioner. That came from the House committee. The commissioner had no interest in that part of the bill. It's just immoralizing it past one of these chambers and that was an answer. It is, but I just wanted to remind us that it didn't come from corrections at all. I don't know why it even was there, but yeah, and I think that commissioner, if you wanna comment on that, but I think that one of the things that we need to remember when we're talking about both people who are incarcerated and the corrections officers that work with them is that if we had stayed on the trajectory that we were, that was predicted that in 2010 by 2021, I believe it was predicted that we would have 2,700 or 2,800 people incarcerated, but because of the judicial and justice reinvestment that Senator Sears has been leading us through, we now have about 1,700, I think. So we have made a downward trajectory and one of the results is that the people who are currently incarcerated and not all of them, but the majority of the people that are currently incarcerated are, in the health field, we use the term a higher level of acuity. I don't know what the term is here, but that makes it even more difficult for the corrections officers because they are dealing with a population that is at a higher level of acuity. I don't know what we call it. So commissioner, I don't know if you had. Yeah, absolutely. So to respond to the Senator's first question, as of this morning, we have 137 incarcerated individuals out of state in their house in Mississippi. In the FY23 budget, that line is about 4.5 million. We typically don't spend that total amount and the amount of savings that we recapture from that line are spent in justice reinvestment projects. And so that money through statute comes back into the justice reinvestment work that we're doing here in the state. So that was for your out of state beds question at that. Can you tell me the name of the facility just so I can keep track of that in Mississippi? I can. I can tell those. The county in the town. The county correctional facility. In Teltweiler, Mississippi. Thank you. I'm glad I kept the spelling, but I'll take that under. We can certainly pass that along to you so that you have that information. So just for clarity, Senator, that 4.3 million is allocated for 350 beds. So to the commissioner's point, we have 137 filled now. So that the vacancy rate and that rest of that funding is used for justice reinvestment. Oh, any, yes. Senator Clarkson, did you? Just to, I'm just, what are your, who makes, is it up to you? The commissioner Nichols, is it up to you to decide where the justice reinvestment dollars are spent? If it comes back to the Department of Corrections, what are your top priorities at the moment for spending that reinvestment money? I don't know how much is it this year? So that money does come back into the DOC budget, but the allocation, the spending of that is based in recommendations by a committee that they reviews those projects and spends that out. And so certainly DOC is a part of that, but that's a broader effort across the state that gets to determine how the justice reinvestment money is spent. So how, how is it being spent this year and how much is there at the moment? Because that's a number of beds between what Al is just talking about, between the 300, what did you say, Al? 300 and how many beds? We're allocated 350. And so that's a huge difference. So that's a lot of savings. What are the top priorities and what's the money? So the figures I gave you are for FY23. We can pull down the budget adjustment testimony that would capture the FY22, the recapture of those funds and certainly happy to give you a testimony on where that's gone. There's been a slight lag in the way we've spent justice reinvestment money because that process is still ongoing. And so much of that is waiting to be spent, but we can provide you specific testimony on that if that's something that you would appreciate. Well, thank you. And I am gonna, I see Steve has an answer here or comment. And then I'm going to remind us that we are about 15 minutes behind ourselves. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just be very brief. I just wanted to add just two things to what Senator Rom Hinsdale raised. I just wanna, first of all, remind the committee that the facility in Mississippi is a private prison owned by Corsivic. So the state of Vermont is sending money to the private prison industry, which is most people I think would argue not consistent with Vermont's values. And that should be addressed in the longterm. But I also wanted to point out something that Senator Rom Hinsdale said about just how people felt about some of the allegations and how they were handled in the legislation. Our members in the Downs-Rackland report, five times in that report it says, there is no widespread evidence of drug use by correctional officers. And yet it was the then commissioner's top priority in that bill. It made our members feel bad that he viewed them that way. And there's no evidence. His own research said there was no evidence of that. But you raised an important point, which I think is something that the commissioner sounds like he's gonna get on and gonna address, which is why did a correctional officer who brought the allegations to the management, why was that ignored by the management? Where are those managers? And I'll tell you where they are. They're in central office today, still employed by the Department of Corrections. And that really bothers our members. So I appreciate you pointing that out because it's part of what I think the commissioner heard when he visited the facilities about what happens. When you screw up as a CEO, you're out. You screw up as a manager, you move up. And that is a problem. So I appreciate you raising that. And I thank you for the time. So I'm going to suggest that we take a quick, really quick break here. Seven minutes. Is that okay? And thank you commissioner and Al and Rachel and Steve. This was, and we will consider writing one of our famous committee letters that we tend to do. And then we'll see where we go from there. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. This was good. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. Thank you.