 Okay, welcome folks. This is the house corrections and institutions committee meeting and we are going to be continuing our discussion on the governor's proposed budget for FY. 21. And we're going to pick up where we left off yesterday. And one thing that I think we really, I want to clarify first. I think there's been a lot of confusion over the FY 21 budget, and our coronavirus, our CRF our relief funds, and where all those dollars went and how that's tied into s 338, which is the justice investment. We're working with joint fiscal office to look at those tracks of funding. How much they were, and where they are at present and the concern that we're looking at right now is why are these dollars for justice reinvestment not showing up in the department corrections budget. They don't have a record, they don't have it within their budget. We're really trying to track that down in terms of where the money is. And representative Hooper has some information about that in terms of how the budgeting process worked last June and representative Hooper I'm going to turn it over to you to maybe clarify that and we'll get, we'll have more information. Next Monday or Tuesday, because joint fiscal office is still working on it. So representative Hooper. Okay, thank you, chair and then our normal budget process is the administration proposes a budget gives us all of the background detail. And we say yes or no. And halfway through the year. There may be a reconciliation and we call that the budget adjustment. And so there's some ups and downs and adjustments of the current year budget. You'll recall that last year, we were in process on doing a regular budget. So considering the governor's proposal. And you had made some tentative decisions on March eight 13, we made a bunch of decisions saying yes and no to things in the house appropriations committee, believing that at some point we would come back, you know, in a week or two, and pass that budget and kind of continue down the normal, what we considered the normal path. Instead, we did a second budget adjustment, what we're calling the BAA to and then passed a quarter bill, a quarter of the year bill q one bill in the BAA to and in the q one bills. We allocated some CRF money across state government. At the same time, the joint fist, the administration also was given authority to do emergency spending, and the joint fiscal committee was also approving some other proposed emergency spending. So we were spending in the normal BAA, the BAA to the q one, the administration had certain authority, and then the joint fiscal committee had other authority to allocate funds. And that money is not showing up in a traditional budget. So you cannot go to you will not be I do not believe next January, when Matt has done his fabulous work on the DOC budget that you will be able to go in there and see the distribution of all of those funds from those different pots, maybe you will maybe y'all make that decision, but right now you cannot look at their budget documents and say, oh, there that is. So what we should do is develop a spreadsheet of issues that are associated with DOC and show where those allocations were across those four budgets so that you all can track them up in health care they've done that for their committee. And as a result, we, we made some allocations in the BAA to to DOC of CRF money. I'm pretty sure we did. And then in the q one bill, we made some allocations, you are not seeing that in budget documents. So the F why the complete FY year budget that we're considering now. So it's, it's confusing. And honestly, I think folks in the departments are having a hard time tracking it, and certainly those of us who are not working with it on a daily basis are having a hard time tracking it. And that's kind of the big picture of how this is working. The question before us today, because of the timeframe that we're on is, what do we do with the governor's proposed budget for the entire fiscal year of 21. What happened is we passed the q one. There is the assumption that what the governor proposed in January, unless he has said something different in this new document is the underlying document folded in with the q one. So we have to go back and see, what did they propose way back when. Some of the actions we took in q one and how they relate to that, and then look at what they're proposing today. In my mind, there are not real, a lot of moving parts and do see and I'm going to do this without looking at my notes, but there's the question about the transfer of the ed fund of the community high school funding from general fund back to the ed fund, you made that decision in January, not to do that, unless you want to reconsider it, not withstanding what the governor is proposed. Let's say that decision is done. So your only question on that is, do you want to reconsider the decision you've already made. So that's one. The other big area is so we saw some in correctional services there. You saw how Matt brought in the authority for the additional correctional officers that we gave them, which was either in the BA two or the q one I forget where we did it but we, we explicitly said higher 30 more. And you, you placed them in the budget so we could see it. You don't need to do anything about that it's just there. And there's some other incidental ups and downs, in my opinion, I mean it's not a lot going on in the that's in correctional services right I think Matt. So you may want to look and see if there's some odds and ends there that you care about the other big area that is significant are the decisions that are being made around the out of state beds, and you saw, there was a plan way back in the military. And they're in this is a case where what the governor proposed. We are not continuing with because life changed radically so that concept wasn't going to that good concept wasn't going to work. We've seen some back and forth and ends and outs around that. And so that's the other major area in their budget that they're suggesting we need to pay attention to through the budgeting process. You may have some other policy issues or concerns that you want to address I mean that's always your prerogative in considering the budget as a policy document, but from a financial standpoint, I think it. There aren't a lot of other big moving pieces and I'm kind of looking at Matt who's doing his his math in his head or you know thinking about that. I may have missed something because I'm doing that off the top of my head. And that that's the decisions today, or what do you want to do in the budget in front of us today. Not what do we do about the justice reinvestment money that is incredibly important and fundamental to your work, but from from my perspective from upstairs. I want to solve this problem today and you can have the conversation about the S 338 and CRF expenditures, we will have room for having that conversation, you know, next week and the week after. Mary, I'm just trying to recall our process for those dollars for justice reinvestment because I know it's important to members of this committee. And I think it's important to do see to really know where those dollars are because everyone's being asked about it. I'm going to end up in DOC's budget and DOC gets the blame for saying you're not doing our work that we've asked you to do. So those dollars were they done in the Q one budget. And I'm trying and we had separate pieces of legislation appropriating the CRF funds would they have been in those separate bills. With the CRF funds, that's the question and you may not be able to answer that that may be what JFO needs to look at because if some of those dollars were not state dollars that go into the DOC budget. There's somewhere and DOC doesn't know where they are. They have been appropriated. My recollection is they are in the BAA to and the Q one. I do not believe that we did any justice bills or expenditures in the other great, you know, the workforce development and the housing bills those great big CRF bills that we did. We, we were feeling rather urgent about getting money out to the justice system, and we allocated them in the again in the BAA to and the Q one. And when I in some of that money was for transitional housing some was for diversion. There was some money for CJC's I mean it was scattered around on. Yes, that exists. And again, I would a member up in health care, you know, they have the same issue four or five or six budgets that they're dealing with and allocations in each one. They wrote down the name of each bill at the top and the policy issue on one in another in the column, and then dropped money in, and we can do that you can do that I can, I can, we can do the research and find it. Let's do that I know we have Becky with us and we have Catherine and maybe we can work there. And again, Stephanie has this information, it's been pulled together. So we just need it, we can find it. Okay, the issue, the issue may be that those dollars went to those particular entities and not doc specifically and doc is being asked those questions. And they didn't have control of those dollars. That may be the crux of the issue. Matt, if I may if it's helpful to the committee so so thank you representative Hooper that that summation of our, our FY 21 budget as well as the, the justice reinvestment or coven funding was was excellent. If I may though, so we did have appropriations in both the budget adjustment to as well as the first quarter budget. It's all coven. It's all cares act funding. Yeah, and they're in the, in the budget adjustment to there was 600,000 appropriated to do see and again not. It wasn't part of the budget adjustment that was presented by do see it was it was done after after the budget adjustment to was was submitted. The 600,000 was was provided to do see to support changes to community supervision. It also included funding that is to be passed to the Attorney General's Office for programs diversion, thank you diversion programs. There was one piece and there was a proposal that I believe Commissioner Baker had introduced the to this committee during the second the supplemental budget adjustment related to focus deterrence. And the idea was that those funds could be used to start that program. But because these are cares act funds, they need to be spent by December 30, unless there's a decision by the US Treasury to extend that beyond December 30 but at this point there isn't there has not been that decision. There's also funding, there was $2.5 million appropriated also cares act funding and this was in the first quarter budget. There were several different allocations of funding. There were 760,000 that we had discussed related to body scanners at the facilities, another 700,000 for technology upgrades, a wireless access things of that nature. And then there was as representative Hooper indicated some funding for programs that related to the justice reinvestment conversations community justice center funding, transitional housing funding and then money that was that is specifically directed to the Vermont network against domestic violence. They're, again, there's $2.5 million. All of those funds are cares act. So they would need to be spent by December 30 and for for at least a few of these initiatives. There's better intervention language and one of them as well to set up or supplement programs. And I think one of the things that was really important was to use cares act funding to to start up on some of these initiatives, but there's no this is one time funding that ends very soon, there's no money to at this moment to continue those initiatives. And what we're getting from from some of the from the appropriations committees last week is that when these funds are are unable to be spent any longer or they've run out. There isn't anything to continue this initiative. And I think that's where the confusion lies is that there is money that's been appropriated to justice reinvestment related programs but it's all cares act funding at this point. It is not meeting the long term investment needs that we have there. And we knew that we were just trying to cobble something together to begin. So the challenges, how do we continue. I think that is one of the reasons there was a discussion in the joint justice oversight committee, as well as in Senate appropriations about reinvesting some of the savings money from the out of state beds back into those programs that either your existing ones that need to be could be expanded or whatever the appropriate action is and that's a question for this committee to answer. So I see two things. I see two things going on with the s 338 funding. One is, it's cares acts cares act dollars, and it has to get out the door and spent by the end of December of this year. The second piece is how do we go forward. After December with dollars for justice reinvestment. Because those dollars are going to go away. So those are the two things that I'm saying is that off base. It's pretty. Mary. That is an issue that needs to be dealt with. Sorry, got the appropriations had on. We have to vote a budget out in next week. Yeah, we have to make decisions in this budget. About. The rest of FY 21. Some of those questions that you're raising come into the budget. So for example, you, you could disregard the governor's recommend. To allow, in my opinion, the $360,000 that they have reaped from savings in the out of state beds, instead of allowing that to fall back into the big state general fund pot, which is what's or it's balancing their budget. It's balancing DOC's budget. So we're going to throw them off budget, but you could take that money and say, Nope, we're not going to balance it this way. We are going to reinvest those dollars in those domestic violence programs or something of that nature. So you can make that decision. You can make that decision. You also remember that we're going to be here in January. And we're going to have a budget adjustment or we're going to have an ability to make additional change. Changes to spending for the current fiscal year for FY 21, as well as going forward into 22. So you don't have to solve all of these problems today because quite frankly, if you try to solve all of the problems that we're facing, we don't have enough money to do this work. We have. We're paring it down, but the looming problem that we have is at least a $23 million. General fund hole that we're trying to fill and it's associated with the state college system. Sorting out the rest of the pieces, but there's not additional general fund dollars that we can bring in. So the question to you is just, how do we solve the DOC budget? We'll fix the other big pieces. Right. So butch. Thanks, Alice. Representative Cooper must have felt me kicking her under the table. She's bouncing on her ball. When she brought up the BAA, it sounds a little bit like we funded. The S3 38 enough to get us into January. To move forward with that. And then by by January, we'll have a better feeling for the out of state beds. What they're going to look like. What's the demand going to be as. The judiciary opens up. So maybe we could. I don't want to say punt this, but I guess I will. Until January, when we have a much clearer picture of what's going on. Within DOC with the CRF funds. And with, with the total budget. And just live with that for now. And especially after we get the paperwork from, from Catherine. So are you, are you saying the, what Mary put on the table there for. The out of state bed savings. To put that towards the bottom line or to put it towards justice or investment too. I think right now the budget shows that going towards the bottom line. And I think that may be the prudent thing to do right now. Until we have a firmer and clearer picture of what's going on. A little later on. And unlike a normal session in May, we're now almost in September. So we're just months away from, from BAA. Commissioner wants to weigh in. And I don't, I don't want to throw another way around this, Madam chair, but. You know, we're just starting to work with, with the council state governments now on. The pieces that need to be done internally from an administrative standpoint. To implement. That's free three eight. There's an enormous amount of work that's got to be done. To include changing our record systems and training of staff. And, you know, the list can go on. I mean, I think we just want to be cautious that somehow providing us money right now that come January, you're going to see new programs. We're just starting that conversation with CSG now. With their technical assistance to include the half million dollar grant that they secured from BGA. To help with that process. So I just want to caution people that. I want to lower the expectations here that you're not going to see new programming. In the next two or three months. You know, you're going to see a start to work on it, such as. What I briefed you on, on. To work with Professor Kennedy. John Jay on focus deterrence. And we can use some of the cares funds to provide. That startup. But really the focus over the next several months working with. CSG and the standing up of the working group. That's part of the legislation. That's part of the work. That's part of the work. That's part of the work. That's part of the work. That's part of the work. That's part of the work. That's part of the work. That's part of the work. That's part of the work. The standing up with the working group. That's part of the legislation is looking at the areas. Where we need the most work. When it comes to community based programming. And then looking at that. To create that program. You know, we're not. We're not. Our work right now is focused on implementing the administrative pieces of. 338. So yeah, I just want to. Caution folks that. You know, this is not. This is not. This is not. This is not. This is not. This is not. Just give us the money and then all of a sudden we're going to have programs in place. Thank you commissioner. Kurt. Yes, I'm, I'm conflicted. As far as I'm concerned, the money that came from the cares act. That allegedly is going to justice reinvestment too. It's not really doing that. It's addressing issues that are related to COVID-19. That's its definition. But it's not. It's not. It's not. It can't be. It can't be used for that. It has to be used for COVID related things. And it has to be used by December. So. What we're getting in here is what I'm seeing is very little. If any money actually going to justice reinvestment too. So at the same time, I'm hearing what the commissioner is saying. And more money doesn't necessarily mean things are going to get done. I mean, if we had a kind of a capacity to put together those programs. Then we're stuck where we were before with people wanting emergency rule legislation to get things. Past when there isn't the money. And the programs to support it. So I'm conflicted as to do this. My initial thought is we ought to take the out of state money and put it into this. At least to cover what happens after January. When we might have some programs that could use it. is something that shows where the money came from, exactly where it's going so that we can see whether there has been increased spending for the programs that Justice Reinvestment II is supposed to be using. And then I'd like to be able to measure the results of that, but that's another story. And again, Representative, I just have to caution. It's not that we don't have the capacity. The capacity right now is being spent on implementing the changes, the significant changes in 338. You don't know what the program is gonna look like until we get that implemented internally. And then that's the whole idea of CSG continuing to work with us, providing us technical assistance on developing the program. And that's where the $500,000 grant comes in with the bigger overarching working group, working with us and CSG on developing the programs that are gonna be the most impactful. So I just call it, because I know what you're saying about measuring outcomes. We're not even anywhere near having a conversation about measuring outcomes, right? I mean, you're talking a fiscal year or two away on measuring outcomes and impact. Yeah, you gotta get the program set up and get the system going and that's gonna take time to get that set up. And then once it's set up and implemented, you've got about a year's worth of work there to see how it is playing out, what the outcomes are before you can determine if it's successful or not. But you can't determine if it's successful unless you have a baseline. And so we need the data for the baseline to determine whether what improvements have been done. But anyway, that's another whole story. I'm not worried about that. But for the commissioner, I'm wondering then, yes, there's a 500,000 with the CSG to go ahead. What happens in January? Some of that CSG, I'm not sure exactly when the reports come out. Will we need the money in January because we still have four or five months of the fiscal year until July of 2021? Is there enough money in there to implement the programs that CSG is going to be helping us stand up? That's hard for me to predict represented because again, I don't wanna make it sound like we're stalling here, we're not. I see this as a very thoughtful, deliberate process that completely changed the way corrections looks when it comes to community supervision. That's not a five or six month process. So for me to say, yeah, we'll need money in April to help that, I can't predict that. What I'm advocating is the budgets that's in front of you. Again, it's your decision, representative Hooper's decision to recommend to her committee. I realized that people got, when they saw us taking the 300 and some odd thousand from bed savings and putting it towards the bottom line, the first reaction is that we're not supporting your investment, that is not the case at all. We put an enormous amount of work into reinvestment but a lot of what's happening right now is not stuff you're gonna see because it's the administrative rules. It's the changing of OMS. It's developing training for staff. It's reprogramming our staff the way they think about furlough violations and so on and so forth. That's gonna start to help identify, for example, rethink the way furlough violations are done, interrupts. Okay, so if we're not gonna interrupt somebody for behavior A, what's the support we need in the community to do the interrupt in the community to modify the behavior? I know from a policy standpoint at 10,000 foot view, it looks like well, all this ought to be happening right now but this is a very deliberate process that has to happen if we're gonna change the course of how community corrections is done. But at the same time, we have testimony from transitional housing people saying that or at least one person saying what they need the most now and what they could use the most now is just more money so that they could do more, support more transitional housing that they- You know what representative in my experience in government, when somebody's telling you all they need is more money, that's a setup for failure. I just gotta be candid about it. It's a setup for failure. I mean, how creative is that thinking when somebody comes in and says all they need is more money. Systematic changes are not about money. So I just, I get, you can tell that's kind of a sensitive point for me about, hey, we need more money. We need more help. No, to change stuff, it's a way you rethink and systematically change stuff. Then the savings come if you're sincere about staying to the model of systematic changes if that makes sense. I get a little frustrated when I hear people saying, hey, just throw more money at us. We'll solve this problem. Well, I was- That's the Lazy Man's way out, right there. I was surprised that he was able to say that because it did seem a little strange at the time, but that's what was said. And I understand- Sorry, the trigger of my button was represented by it. Yeah, that's all right. I understand what you're saying. I have a point here. What's really being highlighted here is I think the real crux of this justice reinvestment issue. Everyone just looks at DOC. And what the CSG highlighted is it is a systems issue within the agency of human services and our community partners that need to come up to the plate. And we continually keep focusing is DOC's responsibility when some of this is not. It is our other departments and entities within the agency of human services to support those folks who are out on furlough or out on parole that need substance abuse treatment, need mental health treatment, need safe and secure housing. Those are issues beyond DOC. And when those support systems fail, DOC then picks up the pieces. So some of the issue, and maybe I'm thinking of this real simplistically, those dollars and justice reinvestment have to go out to other entities besides DOC and not to keep looking to DOC and saying, where are you spending the money? Because these are not necessarily DOC dollars. And I know I got Mary going on that one. Mary and then Sarah. So that is the intention. That is what we said we were going to do with the money, that money is going to transitional housing. I get the point. I agree that there needs to be systematic change. We need to sort this, but there is also a need for housing and supports in the community. So there was money that was allocated to transitional housing. Similarly, there was money that was allocated to diversion, a tremendously successful program to help in this interim period. So we are doing that. I would suggest that the other area where we know there is a failure to provide sufficient services plus an ability to make a significant change in the system, notwithstanding the need to do the deep work that the commissioner and all of you guys agree that we need to do. And it's in the area of domestic violence. We know that that's one of the major reasons that folks are coming into the facilities. We know that we have community partners who are incredibly able to do this work. And we know that we have not been providing them with sufficient funding. And in fact, over the years, have changed our domestic violence programming inside the facilities, I think, kind of, I shouldn't even go there. So we know that we have an ability to make some important changes now. We can't wait until we have the perfect system design in place and then act. I think we need to begin, we continue with some of these incremental changes that are, I believe, on the right path and that everybody has agreed, is pointing in the right direction towards what we want to accomplish. Couldn't agree more about accountability and all of that stuff that Kurt's talking about that the commissioner's trying to do, right on. Representative, and that's why, I don't want to make it sound like we're not moving anywhere. That's why we engaged John Jay College in this effort to do demonstration sites around high-risk domestic violence offenders to keep them out of the system and keep them in the community. And that's what we're starting to do that I think we'll see take shape by the spring. So we picked that for your very point that in many cases, and we're seeing this right now, we're seeing a lot of domestic violence activity by folks we supervise. And of course, some of it's just simply pressure that's on us all right now because of COVID. So I appreciate when you realize that domestic violence is a huge piece of what we need to focus on. So we have a few more comments. So Sarah and Mary, did you have something you wanted to say as well? No. Oh, no. But there's a Mary. Sorry. No, no, I was just going to say you're absolutely right. The monies need to be there to do this appropriately. Okay, Sarah. Thanks. I was following, this is very encouraging. And I know that it's, we can't fund the programs now because we don't know what those programs really need to be is what I'm hearing the commissioner say. Even though there are a lot of people who think we already know what we need, but it seems to me that if we invest the way we've been investing, we're going to get the same results that we've been getting always gotten. So I know I was, while we were, while you folks were speaking, I went back to the final version of the bill to see, we put a lot of thought into the reporting that would come back and to break down the silos between like the agency human services and DOC. So I'm, and for what I'm hearing also from the commissioner, one thing we didn't know earlier was whether CSG would get this grant to work with Vermont and it sounds like that is happening. And that's pretty significant. I think we don't see that hit the, our budget, that's $500,000 worth of work that Vermont is getting to help us move forward. So is that true commissioner that this is confirmed? Cause I know that was a question. Yes it is. And so now the conversations are going to begin about how to best use that money, right? And CSG has given us some guidance because, you know, they are, they are the subject matter experts when it comes to justice or investment that has served us very well, correct? We know that from just the work that's been done. So- And so my question was when now, that's very encouraging to hear and how is that looking for the timeline for that? Cause we're, the way that when we were working with this bill, we were thinking a lot about who's going to help us drive that work, the way that we did to get to the first point, you know, CSG played a really important role in pulling all the advocates, the stakeholders, the agencies within state government together really effectively. So that's going to be able to happen and that work will happen this fall, you think, you know? Cause it looks like- It's happening right now. We're meeting, you know, there's hoops we got to jump through like any federal money, right? Yeah. We got to jump through certain hoops. There needs to be decisions how to use it. CSG is meeting with my staff at least once if not two days, twice a week on the conversations about moving forward. A lot of the work we're doing is around the reports, pulling the data that we need for the reports, changing our work, our policies, our databases. So a lot of that work is going on. And CSG, you know, I met with them about three weeks ago and kind of set the stage for staff to be working with them. One of the areas, and this goes back to a representative teller's point, one of the areas that we all agree on, including CSG is that sometimes we don't have the best data. So one of the areas where some of that money's going to be used is starting to build that baseline that the representative talked about in order to be able to measure 18, 24 months from now, are we moving the ball down the field now? And in that process, the way I envision this in that process is as we're moving through this process of working with CSG and we're identifying those areas where we're weak, we're identifying best practice programs to plug that hole. Going back to the John Jay piece, we know that domestic violence is a very difficult, you know, we've tried just about everything. And I think if Karen, or Scott was here, she'd say the same thing because Karen and I have talked about this a lot. The stuff that we've done on domestic violence has run its course. We've got to get more creative for that high-risk group that present a high level of violence in the communities. And it's not always visible to the community, right? So I hope that answered your question, right? There is a lot going on. So folks, I'm really looking at the time and what our duty is today is to go through the DOC budget for FY21 and make a recommendation to appropriations for FY21. And I know in our minds, we're seeing the CSG as part of that, but that may have to be a conversation for next week because we need to make a recommendation. It'd be great if we could make our recommendation today and get this behind us. So let's go back to our, I think Mary calls it the crosswalk, but back to the document that we were on yesterday, on page. Alice, before we go there, can I jump in just for a second? Sure. Thanks. So before we go off the S338, seems to be there's a lot of passion among the members to make sure that that's funded. I've heard people say that maybe we should take that $360,000 balance out of the out-of-state bed column and put it towards initiatives required by S338. So I guess I'm wondering and a question for Mary and this may solve our recommendation problems. I'm not sure. But if we think, if the committee thinks it's a good idea to do this and this funding would be better spent to fund initiatives required by S338, maybe we should do that and go back to the Appropriations Committee and say, why don't you figure it out? Where are you gonna replace that $338,000 within the DOC budget? Don't cut the DOC budget, but because that's also an easy thing to do because they're the weak step for all the human services. And can you replace that money? And if you can't leave it where it is, if you can replace it with a different funding stream, maybe there's some CRF money that can be plugged in somewhere for that purpose. Just maybe a way to move forward and I wonder if that might be palatable to the Appropriations Committee. Mary. Thank you. Our job is to listen to your recommendations and if you're saying, do not make this proposed decision, then it's our job to try to sort it out and to figure out how to accomplish what you think should be done. So if you say do not spend, allow the 360 to drop to the bottom line and balance the budget, go figure out how to balance the budget differently because we will balance the budget. That will be our effort. Now we're going to weigh, if you're saying spend GF money here and every other committee is saying spend GF money, we have to do that sorting act, but that's our job and we'll do that. And if we can't do it, I'll come down and you'll beat me up. But that's the way it can work. So if you think it should be reinvested, tell us that and we will try to accomplish that. Okay. We have a couple more questions, Karl and then Kurt. I just want to react to Butch's idea and I think from a policy standpoint, that sort of fits really well with at least my feeling of values and maybe the committees too, but the idea of taking money that is saved from the out of state beds and then putting it into our, you know, our community, our well, JR2 and then the community piece that I'm such a huge part of that, I think is a great from a policy standpoint, I couldn't think of anything better, a better use for that money. Okay, Kurt. Yes, I'm going back to the spreadsheet and I see a savings from out of state is 586,000, not 360. Mary, can you explain this? Cause you've got other expenses in that same column. So I'm, thank you. You're doing exactly what we need to do and I'm just going down and looking at the total savings in that broad category. They have lots of ins and outs and backs and forths, you know, you know what they've been through in trying to sort out out of state as well as the use of in-state facilities. And so I see the net on that in that broad area as the, what is it, three? 360. Yeah. 360, yeah. But I don't see why the, why not the total 586? Shouldn't, if that's the savings from out of state that's what it's supposed to be used for. It should be used for the justice reinvestment. Part of your savings from out of state is associated with your in-state bed costs. And so part of that is because we were going to fill the Caledonia work camp and that's not happening. So you're not getting an increase there in the Marshall's bed. You're not getting that 255,000 from an increase in federal Marshall's beds that was projected because of COVID. So your issue, so the money coming in isn't what is reflected here in that column because they haven't been able to go forward doing this. I understand, but the purpose of justice reinvestment is to reduce the number of inmates within the state so that we can bring them in, bring them back from out of state. But part of the- We can bring them back and save half a million dollars. We should use that for justice reinvestment. Part of the reason we could bring those back was because we're beefing out more beds at the work camp. And I don't, manager, I don't want to cut this, but I think there's another factor here that I have to remind you of, we're still in the middle of COVID and we are tying beds up right now that sit vacant on a given day because of our quarantine practices. And we're tying beds up that sit vacant on a given day for our medical isolation beds if somebody comes into our system and tests positive. So we have to have those beds available to us. It's the story of why we've kept the facilities clean. We just stopped it again in Rutland and maybe other states and other jails aren't as successful because we're tying up beds doing that. And so as, and I just got briefed on this the other day, as we, as this population goes up yesterday, I haven't got the number yet today, but yesterday we were at 1,416 in the system. And that's sliding north and it's squeezing us. I mean, as of the other day, and I forget what the number was because it was actually higher one other day, we were at minus seven beds at that point available because we're keeping these beds in each facility free for the purposes of quarantine and medical isolation. And until we can see our way around COVID, that's not gonna change. So I just kind of, you know, on this idea of savings and moving people back, that's a major factor in the conversations right now. We have another question, Marsha, and then Butch. And we can afford to short change the system and then trying to find money later. That's only a comment, but that's my comment. Yeah, Butch. So to Kurt's point about taking the full 586 versus the 360, if the committee decides to go along with what we've been talking about and letting appropriations figure it out, I think to be reasonable, it's gonna be easier to fill a whole of $360,000 than it is a whole of 586. And in this case, I'll take a major piece of the pie rather than getting none. So I would support with the going with 360 and making it reasonable and much easier for approach to figure this out. So we did not go through this particular page, Matt. So why don't we do, why don't we start there? And then we'll have a committee discussion on the 360 reinvestment. And again, on my screen here, if you have a question, folks, please physically raise your hand because I can't see the blue hand. So Matt. Sure, thank you. So as was just discussed, there's several, the first five items out of the six and out of state beds appropriation are reversals of the proposal from the January FY21 budget. I guess that maybe the easiest way of looking at this is that the top number that you see there, the starting point, the $6,744. The FY20 as past budget was $6,226,000 and change. So these five proposals that were in the original budget reduced the out of state budget by $226,000. These proposals in January made sense, but during the pandemic, in terms of increasing US Marshall beds, which are down right now, the utilization of those, increasing the per diem costs, these aren't things that practically can be done at least now in FY21 for the foreseeable future, as well as filling the work camp because of all the efforts related to the pandemic and the mitigation and prevention of the spread of the virus. So these five items effectively add back that initial reduction of 226,000. The appropriated beds in the original FY21 from January was for 225. So you'll see in the very bottom line of this, the reduced appropriation from 225 to 206 is that $586,000 reduction, but in the overall scheme because of the reversals of those, that's where we're getting that $360,000 net reduction in the restated budget. And I went through that probably too quickly. So if you want me to go through each line item in more detail, I can certainly do that as well. Matt, can you tell me which page you would like me to be on in this? 26, 20, I'm sorry, 29, I'm sorry, Phil. I was gonna say, I don't see any figures he was talking about. I've got it up on my iPad so I can see. I apologize, folks. I was looking at the spreadsheet on a different screen. Yeah, I was too. I'm sorry, it's page 29. We got it up. I've got a, is it up there? Okay. Because I've got it reduced so much because I'm working off my iPad. Okay, questions. I think it's pretty clear because we've gone around this in an indirect way. So the decision we need to make is about the 360,140, but let's go to the next page. We'll come back to that. We've got two other decisions to make, but it's not on this last page. It's on the previous pages, but let's finish up on this last page with Matt. So the final appropriations are for the recreation appropriation as well as the offender work program appropriation and the restated budget doesn't have any additional items. So there's nothing in the restated to discuss in terms of those two appropriations that are on the bottom of page 29 and then page 30, which finishes the DOC budget. Okay. So I'm gonna go back to what Mary laid out at the very beginning in terms of the three moving pieces. Excuse me. Matt, I have a question on the last page. Yeah, okay. Um, so can you, we're working from specific to general and I'm used to working from general to specific. So can you tell me what did it, how much, what's the total for the DOC budget? Is that the 168, nine? What the governor is proposing. Is it 166 or 168, Matt? It's 168. The starting point was the 166, 166,853. And then with the ups and the ins and outs for what we've reviewed, it's a positive $2.1 million and that's related largely to the COVID relief funds that were requested, the 4.95 million. So the budget actually increases from the 166.8 to the nearly 169 million. So when the budget was proposed in January, the governor recommended 1.66 million plus. Whoops, no. Yeah. 166 million. Right, 166.8. You said 1.6. Well, 166 million was what the governor recommended and FY21 in January. So I've got two questions. What was the budget for DOC and FY20? Yes. Because we need to know what that initial increase from FY20 to January, FY21, January's FY21 budget request. So what was the DOC budget for FY20? Because this FY21 budget, governor recommended in January was based off of the FY20 budget. That's correct. And so the FY20 as passed budget was 160 million, 351,000. So from FY20 to the beginning, to FY21 governor's recommend, which was presented in January of this year, there was a $6 million increase to DOC's budget. In the intervening months, this recommended FY21 budget from the governor, this before us, is based on what the governor recommended for FY21 in January. So from that proposed budget that was never passed, there's another increase of about $2 million. And a lot of that came from what you're saying, Matt, was because of COVID or the COVID dollars? It's the COVID dollars that were included in the correctional services permitation, nearly $5 million. So that brings it to a total of $168.9 million. So that's where it gets confusing because you got three moving pieces here. And usually when a governor presents a budget, it's based on the previous year's budget that has been passed and enacted. And this one is different in that it is not based on the FY20 budget that was passed and enacted. It is based on what the governor proposed in January for his FY21 budget that was never passed by the legislature because we had to go home. So does that answer your question, Kurt? Yes, the second question you asked was going to be my second question. What happened? What was FY20? So thank you. Yeah. So what Mary laid out at the beginning, we really do have three decisions. And one decision was already made while we were in session and Appropriations Committee had been working on this and incorporated it within their proposal. They hadn't been passed yet. Was the Community High School of Vermont. It was about $3 million to keep that being funded with the general fund and not the ed fund. And that there was some real hard conversations while we were in the building with Education Committee and Ways and Means Committee. And that was the decision, the recommendation that was given to APPROPS to keep it in general fund. And the question is, do we want to revisit this or not in such a short period of time for the coming out of the general fund or the ed fund? I know that there's some real issues in terms of community high school and that whole program, but we're not going to resolve that in the next day or two. And we're not going to resolve that in the next five weeks. That's going to be work that we can do when we reconvene in January because that's a very deep dive. Butch. Thanks, am I unmuted? Yeah, I'm muted. As much as I would love to see this funding go to where it belongs under the time constraints we are. I think we got to put that high on our list or whoever goes back for the next session and have a serious conversation of where this money belongs. To try to move it now would, I don't think would be prudent. And this is a conversation that's going to take weeks. So, but do you saying keep it in the general fund? That was the decision that was made back in March? Yes, ma'am, keep it in the general fund. Okay. Other folks on this one? Much to my chagrin, but keep it in the general fund. So let's have a raise of hands of folks who want to keep it the 3 million plus in the general fund and not from the end fund. So those in favor of that, raise your hand so I can see it. Marsha, do you have your hand raised or not? You do, okay. Butch. And I'm a yeah. You're a yes. Terry, your hands raised. Carl, Sarah, Kurt, Felicia, Linda. Is your hand raised? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And Mary, your hands raised. Okay. So we're, and I am too. So we're unanimous in that, Mary. The other piece that Mary brought up was the authority for the 30 new correctional officers. Do we need to do anything with that? Mary, you're looking questioning. No, you don't, you do not need to do anything for that. I was just mentioning that as we did that, oh, in one of the earlier budgets. That was just an FYI about why there was that change there. So no money, you don't feel that that's an issue money-wise? No, they just show it, if you look at the spreadsheet, it just shows as an in and an out. Those positions will be paid for with the savings from the overtime. That they're spending on their other folks. That is the theory behind that. They are so far, sadly, sadly, from being able to fill those positions that it's just an accounting thing. It's a way to get the positions on the books. Okay. So then that moves us to the out of state bed savings of 360,000. Madam Chair, it might be easier if we took down the spreadsheet then you'd be able to see everybody. Yeah, good thought. Thank you. So then the remaining decision is to the 360,140 on the out of state bed savings and which put out the thought that we should recommend to House of Props that we reinvest that towards the justice reinvestment too. I'm supportive of that. Okay. Let's do another show of hands then. So for folks who would support reinvesting that 360,140, can you please raise your hand? Marsha Yes, Butch Yes, Terri Yes, Mary Yes, Carlos Yes, Sarah's Yes, Felicia Yes or No, Yes. And Linda? Yes. Okay, and I'm a yes. So that's 11, not 11, 10, 10, zero for that. So with that Alice, we have to understand that Mary may be back at us in a few days. We get that. So Mary, is that sufficient enough for you to bring back to your committee? Yes, thank you very much. I'm, we will want to say specifically where we want to put those funds that we're reinvesting rather than just. 360. Yeah. I think there has been a notion to put them towards domestic violence programs in the community, the existing domestic violence programs in the community. You may want to have a longer conversation on that. I don't know. So I'll put that out to the committee members. What's your thoughts, Sarah? I think that makes sense because we have put the CRF dollars into transitional housing. And so to me, and we've helped out our community justice centers, which we know are part of the this and it's clear from the commissioner that that this is something that this is, he put a focus on this. So I would support that idea. Other folks, Kurt? My only, I mean, I agree with Sarah on that, but my only question or concern is that I want to make sure that the focus deterrence effort pilot is has enough funding also. And if the 200 or so thousand that's used for that is taking something away from something else and I would, I can see using this money for that too, if necessary. Is there enough money in that deterrence pilot project? Does anyone know? Sure. So I would say that there's at the moment, there's not and only simply because it ends in December, the funding that we have would end December 30th. I don't see a way that that program would use all of those funds by December 30th, but this is a much longer term initiative than just the next several months. So to answer the question directly, no, there wouldn't be enough funding at the moment too for the continuity of that program beyond the CARES Act funding. So do we want to make a recommendation that goes to both domestic violence and the deterrence pilot project, but the bulk of it goes to domestic violence? I mean, do you split it up in half? Do you, or do you just make a recommendation, leave it open and let approves make that decision? Yes, or approves or DOC, somebody who knows what the programs need, I personally don't know what each program would need and how much would be best for. Other folks, is there consensus then that the 360 plus goes to domestic violence and the deterrence pilot project and let approves figure out how it's divided up? Mary, you look really confused, or you have a question, Mark? I'm just thinking about how to say that in budget language that works, but we'll sort that out and maybe I can have a conversation with the commissioner and Matt about just how to give the authority. I don't want you to be saying next year we thought we gave money to DV programs in the field or we thought we were doing this and where are the results? So we'll need to think about that, but we'll work it out. Give us the broad direction and we'll work it out. Okay, so is the committee okay with that? I'm seeing nods, yes? Okay, Mary, that's the direction that we're headed for that. And it's the 360, you agree with the net rather than the gross of reinvesting? 360, 140. Madam chair, I have to get off because I have a double court appearance, I have a few minutes. So I didn't want to see me drop off and I was being rude. Matt's gonna stay on, try to answer any other questions I expect we'll be back visiting you, maybe there's always next week. So. That's my next conversation with the committee members. What are they working on next week? I went forward to it and we'll connect them. So I'm gonna be dropping off, thank you. Okay, great. And we'll have Phil connect with you. So that's the conversation I'd like to get into next week, we're gonna be talking on Tuesday about the space study for getting the legislature back near Montpelier somewhere come January, with Freeman, French and Freeman, that's gonna be Tuesday. Then we have Thursday and Fridays set. We don't have to do the Friday. That was an add on this week because we, I knew we couldn't get through all the budget decisions we had to get through in time. We have to do work on the CRF. Where's Mary? We had money appropriated through the, for the CRF for DOC. We had about one point, not quite 1.5, about 1.4 million for the tier one. And we even had more than that. Can you weigh in on any of that now, Matt? Those CFR, those CRF dollars? Certainly, be more helpful to go through each of the individual allocations one by one, or certainly let me just pull up the sheet. So I'm looking at the right amounts as I talk through these. So there was in Act 120, the first quarter budget, there were five different buckets, if you would, five different allocations of funding. The first $760,000 for temperature scanners and full body scanners at the correctional facilities. These are being looked at right now. I don't know, there's not been a final decision, but we've been working and researching, working with several vendors that produce these products. What we're trying to gauge now, the difficulty, is that these machines, so that the body scanners, I guess the best way to describe them would be, they're very similar to what you would see at the airport when you go through a security checkpoint, the X-ray machines effectively, but that's not quite what they are. These machines aren't something that are just sitting in a warehouse right now. So in terms of using, and the COVID funds are certainly appropriate for these items, they reduce contact. The long-term solution is also a good one, but in the immediate, they reduce any physical contact or having to get within the six foot distance of any one who's going through one of these machines. But they're not just something that's sitting in a warehouse ready to be shipped. So if it's something that we move forward with, the concern of course is they need to be delivered and paid for by December 30th. So we are working very rapidly to make this happen, but again, a final decision hasn't been made yet on the specific vendor, the items, the machines, but this is something that we are looking to do and working quickly for. So Matt, are the vendors that you're working with, are they saying yes, they can get these delivered by the end of December, or are they saying no, no, no, there's such a demand, we can't get them done? There is, there's almost yes to both of those, but they're saying that they can get it done. The final decision would need to be made and the order would need to be placed with them very soon to I guarantee isn't quite the word because there's, I think if anyone's had anything shipped to their home recently, guarantees are not what they were eight months ago. We are confident with some that we've spoken to that they will be able to deliver these. They know that the funding for these, they're working with several DOCs across the country right now in very similar initiatives and hearing the same things from those departments of corrections that they understand that the funding for these is it's critical to have these delivered so they can be paid for prior to December 30th. Otherwise, what we and probably others would find is that you're getting very, very expensive equipment that doesn't have funding outside of these one-time monies. Questions from the committee? This was a one-time appropriation for the first tier when we were way back there at the first tier. So Sarah, it was 760. Yeah, I just hope that we can find a way to do this. This seems to really solve an immediate problem, but also other problems that we had heard before COVID around body searches and especially for women and staffing and what that did inside some of the facilities. So anyway, yeah, I'm glad to hear that some progress, but I'm hoping that we can do this. Have a questions? Good to go. Okay, the next part, Nat. Certainly, thank you. So the next allocation was for $700,000 for technology upgrades to support COVID-19 necessitated transition from the in-person programming that we've had up until the pandemic. And services across facilities included Wi-Fi, looking at heat mapping in the facilities. The community high school has a learning management system and a network associated with that. The language continued for devices, applications, video conferencing services. This is one where there's a lot of conversations happening right now. There's a lot of great ideas in terms of what can be done. The challenge with this one is that IT items do not come quickly. I guess the best way of saying it, this isn't a state like an ADS. There's more hoops to jump through when it comes to the IT items. We need to make sure that what we're getting is something that's actually gonna work with the systems we currently have. If it's different systems, it needs to be assessed more so to make sure that the technology is something that can be supported. We are also working very quickly and diligently on this one. There's several ideas in terms of what can be done. And the hope is that, and I think from where I sit, I believe that the funding for this will be fully expended, but there's several different ways we can go in terms of what we would do with that. And we do have a conversation with several within the department early next week to discuss then kind of final steps in terms of the decision and then moving forward with it. Like I said, I am confident we'll be able to use these funds close to fully. The limitation on this again would be the timeline. We don't, I don't want to take the approach that simply because we make a decision to purchase something or to go forward with something that it will actually be able to be implemented, delivered or the service done by December 30th because this is one where I'm not quite as certain as I was with the first allocation that we'll have vendors that will have supplies or be able to deliver on these not immediately, but before that December 30th deadline. So you're feeling that the 700,000, you're feeling that it will be tight, but you would be able to get the equipment that's needed by the end of December and not sure if it's going to use the full 700,000. Yes, that's correct. Questions? Then the other piece is the rental assistance for folks who are re-entering. Yes, so that allocation was for $350,000, 200,000 of which was estimated for direct rental assistance for those re-entering the community and the remainder of that's the other 150,000 for domestic violence and batter intervention programs. I'll speak to the first part first. We've had conversations with the Vermont network. This was, I believe was originally a $400,000 request for batter intervention programming. They are working to, and I actually just received, while we've been on received an email from Karen Tronsgard Scott regarding this, I haven't quite gotten to that yet in terms of the planning for this. I believe that in terms of that allocation of the 150,000 or perhaps more because the direct rental assistance side is fairly limiting in scope of, in terms of the number of individuals that would be able to be eligible for these funds. So we may have some more of that 350,000 to put toward the batter intervention programming, working with the network right now to see what can be done before December 30th, what they're already doing and then what can be done before that. In terms of, and I just said the direct rental assistance, we typically, in terms of rental assistance funding for DOC, typically spend in general funds for a full fiscal year, less than the 200,000. And in fact, typically, I don't think there's been a year where we spent more than 200,000 in this very specific item. Because we have a fairly short time to use these funds, my belief at this point, I've spoken with Derek Midovnik and his group about this, who are the ones that are working with the offenders and then getting them the rental assistance funds. I suspect that a much smaller amount than the 200,000 would actually be used, not for lack of trying it simply because of the number of offenders in the community or in facilities that are being released that would actually be eligible for these funds. The hope of course would be we'd be able to spend down the entire amount because of how many individuals that would assist but the practical reality is that in by December 30th, it's very unlikely that that amount would be on the higher end probably 50,000, not the 200,000. And even the 50 may be a little bit higher than what reality is. So if the direct money for rentals doesn't come in at 200,000, say it comes in at 50, are you saying the remaining 150 would be put towards the domestic violence piece to bring that up to 300 or is that 150 not gonna be expended period? No, I believe that the remaining 150,000 from rental assistance, that's the conversation that we're having with the network right now in terms of what they would be able to do with additional money beyond the 150,000. My belief, and again, I haven't had the full conversation with them yet. My belief is that they probably wouldn't be able to spend the 300,000 if it were that amount. It'll be more than the 150,000. It might be 200 to 250, but unfortunately, this is a case where regardless of how much we have in CARES Act funding, because of that December 30th hard stop in terms of spending it, the annualized rate was around 400,000. So it's unlikely that more than 200,000 in the six month period would be able to be utilized. There's the potential that some additional money beyond what the normal six month utilization could be used, but I believe that this particular appropriate or this particular allocation, there may be some funding left over. We haven't quite gotten into the conversation of if there's flexibility to shift funding between these appropriations, should one require more money than what was allocated and one less, just thinking through some of the remaining funding that we would anticipate that could be a conversation if that's possible. Because I think there are a couple of these that we may see the amounts that are quoted to us slightly higher than what those allocations were. And so you would need language to be able to move the dollars around? Potentially when I say I should be more and more clear that the body scanners, the temperature scanners are the equipment is fairly expensive. And it's possible that for instance, if we were buying six body scanners that I don't wanna say that 760,000 wouldn't be enough because I don't know that for certain at this point, but it is possible. Those are pieces of equipment that range in price from I think 100,000 is kind of on the very, very lowest end up to almost double that per machine. Not to say that we're looking, the ones we're looking at don't have final dollar amounts for those yet. But I suspect that if there's anything that would go above the allocated funds, it may be that one just simply because of the range of that equipment in price. So I'm gonna ask a question. I don't know if it's gonna be of our other committee members or of Becky. When we were doing the CRF we had, we started out with tier one and tier two. And I think that got changed as it went through the process. And I'm going through my sheets here that we did when we were all discussing this. And we had a tier two for DOC, which was rental assistance and PPEs with a quarantine costs for tier two. And can someone remind me what we did with tier two? Sarah, do you remember? Well, our recommendation went up to appropriations and then there were some changes. There were changes. Well, the change, the big change was the 300,000 for the tech equipment got bumped up. And we had 300,000 in the tier two. That got bumped up to the tier one with the 400,000. And that's why that's 700,000. There was also some money added in for CJCs for some of the costs that they had for around tech and programs and costs. It was about a little under $400,000, I remember. I didn't come from our tier two. I'm wondering what happened to those tier two dollars that we had for DOC. I believe that it was only just tier one, but that was put in and they were dealing with tier two. They thought they'd deal with that separately, but I'm just checking the bill right now. I don't see the tier two in here. Because what we did for tier two, so not all those dollars were expended. The dollars now, I think it's like, what is it, 200 million is available, is out there that's not committed. And the thinking is they were gonna put that aside to go towards either balancing the general fund budget or the ed fund. Well, I don't think the ed fund would qualify. And right now the general fund isn't gonna qualify because we were hoping that the feds would loosen up the requirements. So we have some dollars that we sort of said under the old tier two to go towards rental assistance and PPEs and quarantine costs for DOC. We had 650,000 between those two. This is an old sheet. You can see that. Is it the PPE included in the old mat? Is it included in DOC's request, this five million? What five million? Well, the CRF that we just went through the 4.9 million for a DOC. I think it is. Yeah, so I believe that the 4.95 million dollar line item in the FY21 budget. In your budget, right. I was thinking what we worked on within our committee for that CRF didn't come up to five million. They have other, they have other budget money going in. I guess my question is PPE covered in that 4.95? I would assume so. Specifically in that, no, that would go to salary, but we do have funding allocated from some rollover or some carry forward CARES Act funding that wasn't used last year that was related to PPE. And we do, I believe we have enough CARES Act funding for PPE for the remainder of this calendar year. Okay. That's what I guess my question was. Can I, Alice, could I ask a question? I mean, I think what I'm hearing Matt asked for is some flexibility if there's like some unused money. And I think, I mean, I think our intention at the time is with our discussion was we were thinking that folks were gonna be released from facilities and there was gonna be an increased need for rental assistance, you know, for during this time period and that's turning out to whether it's not, you can't use all that money. So I would be in favor of if we can to give them some flexibility because I think we wanna use these funds up. But I think I would like to hear, I would like to hear a little bit more about why the transitional housing money is only 50,000, I guess. Cause that's a little bit different from what we heard. We never heard directly from Derek about this. We were working pretty quickly. And I don't know if there's time in this session to do that, but I think that's where the committee's intention was, was to help with that. As we knew that there was gonna be a need to or try to get help, get people who could be released could be released. And I think that's been happening. I'm thinking of our timeframe. And so I know what you're saying, Sarah, and I'm wondering if we could do that maybe on Thursday and that that may be a little late for a probes, but I'm not sure. Cause they're gonna look at the CRF dollars as well in this whole FY 21 budget. So what I'm hearing is the real priority is to allow flexibility language, to allow flexibility to move the dollars around. Now, is that, I wanna just be clear. Is it just for the direct rental and the domestic violence, the 350,000 to move within that? Or is it the whole amount with the 760 for the scanners and PPEs and 700,000 for the heat mapping and Wi-Fi equipment and the 350. So within all of those to be able to move money around. In terms of the movement, if we were looking at what might not be spent, I believe of the five allocations and we've gone through, I think three of them at this point, we haven't touched on the CJC or the Vermont network allocations, which are another nearly $700,000 of funding within this 2.5 million. I believe that there's likely two allocations, the rental assistance being one and that that was granted to community justice centers as the other that will likely not meet the full amount in terms of what's able to be spent. And this is not for lack of effort from DOC or the entities that we're working with. We've had a lot of conversation with all of the individual community justice centers. Everyone is acting very appropriately in this. The desire to spend these funds is there. I've asked everyone to think creatively in terms of how the funds could be used on eligible qualified expenses. Unfortunately, it really does come down to the timeline of this. December 30th, not being the limitation in terms of only having a few months, it's not enough time to purchase items as an example. It's that that timeline is not, there's not enough expenses that they would have that are eligible to expend those funds fully. So the community justice center's appropriation was 252,000 directly for the CJCs. And then the remaining 111,000 for those CJCs that have transitional housing programs. I guess the easiest way of saying it is if there weren't limitations on the funding, if it were general fund, as an example, and this isn't an ask, just as a hypothetical. If this was general fund and there weren't the December 30th timeline, the transitional housing programs might look at other places that other physical space that could be rented or at least for a much longer term period. But that's not possible to only do through December without the additional funding to continue those. Similarly, on the community justice center side, there's a lot of funding that's going to effectively so that they could work remotely. So they could provide the same services that they historically have, but remotely. And there's only so much that can be, as an example, laptops and cell phones and technologies that perhaps there weren't before are able to be purchased, but there's only so many of those items that could be. And even pushing the boundaries of looking at things and saying this is perhaps not a definite yes or no in terms of an eligible expense, but if we're willing to have the conversation, there's just not enough of those types of items to fully expend the money between the 18 justice centers. So that's another appropriation, I think, where the total request and what the actuals are through December 30th, it's very, very unlikely that the 363,000 there would be fully spent. And there are none of us in this that are feeling great about that because of course, no one wants to ever leave funding on the table, but the understanding here collectively is that there are limitations on these funds, what reasonably can be done with them and there's just not the possibility. I think even if these funds were available for another year, tying it to COVID related expenses, it's just, it may not be possible. I think even with that a full six months or another year added to it, that they'd be able to go through that amount of funding. And again, it's not to say these funds are not needed by the justice centers, it's just the limitation of what's eligible in terms of the expenditures, that there may not be enough items and enough time to do, to expend it fully. Which? So to Matt's description of trying to spend the money and get it where it belongs and spend it wisely and all those various things, that's not unlike when we dumped millions of dollars into water quality projects and found out that the entire state, not just state government didn't have the bandwidth to either A, do the work or B, accept the money. And I think unfortunately we may have overtaxed and then too zealous in our request, not too zealous on our request, but just when you have a lot of money, it's hard to spend it sometimes. So Matt, what is the other part of the 2.5 million here besides? The final piece of that is a total of 327,000 that's being granted to the Vermont network against domestic violence. And that was broken down into two specific sections, 130,000 of it was for $13,000 grants. That would go to each of the 13 domestic violence offender accountability programs through the Vermont network. They'd be managing this. And the remainder was to support victims of domestic and sexual violence who are incarcerated and re-entering the community. So working with the network, they have that 190,000, I'm sorry, 197,000 would be, they're looking at four different programs themselves and some other programs that would, I think focus largely the women's facility at Chittenden in terms of providing that programming. In my conversation so far with them, that the 327,000 very much seems like those funds will be able to be utilized. Of course, because it's kind of almost a pass-through where it's in DOC's budget and we're granting it out, we'll of course have oversight of it and be working closely with them, but in terms of the direct management of these funds, I can't speak specifically to whether or not they'll be able to be spent. I know what I would say is because of the December 30th date, think that everybody's under the same pressure that the will is there, but whether or not there's actual expenses and everyone wants to act within the, of course within the rules that these funds come with. So I can't say for certain that they would be fully expended. I suspect that there may be some dollars left, but nowhere near in terms of what we've just talked about with the other allocations. I do think that they're already working on this and that the likelihood is that these will be, 90% plus of those funds would be expended. Is my understanding and the likelihood being all of it, but. So the biggest issue, the biggest issue of funding that might not go out the door due to no fault of anyone's, it's just part of it is the requirements of the dollars to be expended by December and the logistics of that, it would be the CJCs for 363,000. That's right. The 350,000 for the domestic violence and the direct rental assistance would need some flexible language to move those dollars around. The question is, we do the flexible language, do we just limit it to that particular 350,000 for domestic violence and the direct rental? Or do we open it up to the others? And then the other question is, what do we do with the CJCs dollars of 363? Do we say, well, 200,000 of that is freed up for some other uses and keep 163,000. I don't know, I'm just putting that out. Or do we allow the CJC dollars to be used to be moved to some of the other items if the money can't be expended by December? So that's the question, is the committee clear on that or are they confused? Yeah. Sarah? Well, I have to say, I've heard from some of the CJCs and I've been hearing a little bit about some confusion between DOC because I think part of it is because some of these dollars have been hard to track and it's outside of our regular way of doing things. So before we, you know, and I know that I'd like to hear a little bit more about before deciding to take the money away from the CJCs to put it into like the scanners, because when we heard original testimony about the scanners, I was kind of shocked by the low number of what we thought those would cost. And so it doesn't surprise me that they're more expensive, but I think I would hate to see all of that get kind of swept up. So is there time to hear, I think like the CJCs have somebody who... We'd have to, we probably have to do it next Thursday. Yeah, I mean, I'm not asking for more testimony. I just think like an email or something I would like to know, because I think that they had to pivot really hard to move their programs virtually. And I think to me it's like, there are 18 of them. And even if they each bought like one or two laptops, it seems like that money would go pretty quickly. But... Is there one that you could reach out to and get some direction for us by next Tuesday? Sarah? I think it's Jill Evans who's been coming to our committee meetings and has kind of been, is kind of the liaison. I could reach out to her if you'd like to. Because I'm just thinking upstairs with appropriations because I've heard two things, that they're gonna deal with the FY21 budget and the CRF dollars at the same time. So that's what we need to give a recommendation on, is there gonna be any dollars available within this 2.5 million that is not gonna be expended by December of this year and those dollars can be now put into another pot that's not connected to us. But... Sure, we want the money to go. So... Out the door, we don't have any sitting. So, why don't you do that, Sarah? And then email the whole committee back with what you find. So that's one moving piece. The other moving piece is... Hey, Alice, just a quick question. Sorry. Question. Do you realize how hard it is to buy a computer right now? It's difficult to even buy freezers, right? Well, I know that. Difficult to get anything. It's, I know, but with kids going back to school and everything, they've had an awful time even getting computers, schools and stuff. So as much as we'd like to spend it on them, which I'd love to too, getting them is gonna be pretty near impossible. Well, that's what Sarah's gonna check out with those CJCs. So our people, if we just look at the 350,000 appropriation for the domestic violence and the direct rentals, are we comfortable with putting in some language to allow those dollars to be moved between those two entities? I'm seeing nods. Yes. So that's one given. So then the other piece is we've got the scanners, temperature scanners, and then the heat map and the IT equipment. And Matt, you're wondering if the 760 is gonna be enough for the temperature scanners. Should we also put in language to move the, that you would have the ability to move money between the 760 for the temperature scanners and the 700 that's targeted for Wi-Fi, heat mapping, and IT equipment. Would that help or not? It may, if there's gonna be language potentially that goes in to move some of the rental assistance funding to the body scanner and heat scanner allocation, that whatever's moved may be sufficient. But again, to representative Coffey's point, when we had first, and this is a very short turnaround, working with a couple of other DOCs who had recently acquired this equipment. I think Pennsylvania DOC was one we talked to, researched. The machines aren't all the same and different facilities may have different needs. The ones that, from those that we worked with to get some initial estimates of what these cost, they weren't quite the machines that we're looking at. So that was the cost difference. But I suspect that we probably, if there is more funding required in that 760,000, it's unlikely that it would be significant. It's not quite the word because 100 or 200 is certainly a very, 1,000 is a significant amount. But I don't think it would be much beyond what the transfer from the rental assistance allocation to that would be. I don't know that we'd need to look at the IT, funds or any others in terms of perhaps bolstering the amount for the body scanners. Though in terms of the short turnaround to spend these funds, it may be helpful to have language that was, that did facilitate the transfer of funding with approval from one to the other. So you're thinking of transferring of funds between all of those three items, not just the 350 between the domestic violence and the housing rentals? I think at this point, what we kind of know for certain is that the community justice center funding that the full 363,000 wouldn't be utilized. I think similar for the rental assistance funding and not the batter intervention piece, but the 200,000 that was initially allocated for the rental assistance, those are funds that full 200,000 wouldn't be utilized for that. It really is a question of how much more could be added to the 150,000 for the domestic violence and batter intervention programming that reasonably can be expended by December 30th. So, Kurt? A question and a comment, but I just wanna make sure the scanners that we're talking about, these are the same I gather as the one that we saw in Concord, New Hampshire that is also, will be used after this for drug scanning and things like that? That's correct, yes. That's the intent of these that during the pandemic, the major benefit is that there's no contact and that would continue indefinitely beyond the pandemic. Okay. For things like drug scanning. Then can we establish just the priorities of these three or five items that we're talking about and say, if there's money in this one, let's go for the higher priority one and if that can't be expended, go to the second priority one. Can we just do that and allow a DOC to transfer the money as they want according to our priorities? I don't know. The priority, I don't know. What's the committee? I would have a hard time setting up priorities. It sort of reminds me of when we do the capital budget with the first part is dealing with BGS state-owned buildings and they have all these line items for construction at different buildings and also within ANR like Fish and Wildlife, they have all their individual parts or we allow language for the department or the agency within their own purview there of those line items to move money around between those respective projects. So BGS can move money around in that section one of our bill that deals with those line items for projects be it 120 State Street, be it 108 Cherry, we've given the authority for BGS to move money between those projects. That's how I'm sort of seeing this instead of prioritizing because I don't know if we could get agreement on prioritizing human needs over infrastructure and IT. What are the optics of that? Also, we don't have time right now. I mean, I think this is real limited. This is not, this is not the same. Regular session. Yeah. And I just wanted to add to the timing piece and this might be a question for Matt, but if you set priorities and there's the December 30th deadline and you're sort of focusing the money on one thing that can't, ends up not being able to pan out by then. I don't know if that creates difficulty for DOC and trying to prioritize. I think it does. We've, like I said, we've done a lot. There's been a lot of work done on this and a lot of conversations with all of the partners involved in this. It really does come down to the short timeline. I know we're just about four months away from not being able to spend these funds going forward. So that really becomes the difficulty here is that, again, there's, I think I said it already, that the will to spend this from all of the partners is there, but the ability in terms of what they're able to purchase or what things are needed and are related to COVID-19 really is a limiting factor here. And I guess the long way of saying this is, even if there was the ability to transfer funding between to and from within all five of these allocations, I would suspect that the full $2.5 million will not be fully spent down by December 30th, simply because of the limitations of what can be done with these funds. If they were without restriction and you're able to buy things that weren't, or invest in things that weren't COVID related, and of course that's not the case, we would have the ability, I think, in many of these areas to bolster programs, set up new things or make purchases, but everyone involved in this is fully aware that there are restricting, there are limiting factors on these funds beyond just the December 30th deadline. I don't know if that helps through the committee. And yeah, how much do you think of the 2.5 would not be spent? 200,000 total, I'm just putting that out. My thinking is, if we can figure out what we really think might not be spent on the 2.5, and then put in language that allows within that 2.3 or whatever between all the programs allows the flexibility of those dollars to be moved around. So if the funds are, if we're looking at these five allocations, I think it's fair to say that 200,000 may not be spent. The caveat that I would put there is that the, and the one that worries me, I think more than the rest I mentioned earlier was is the technology upgrades? And it's simply because we can say we wanna go forward with something, but if that thing or those things cannot be done, and there are some limitations we have in terms of the ability to get into facilities. If there's work that's needed to be done for the heat mapping as an example, it may not be something that during the pandemic really can be done in the way that it could previously or at some future point. And if we get answers back on items like this, I do have a concern that again, not the lack of will to get these things done, but the inability to get folks in the door or get systems implemented. That's one that there's a higher possibility that those funds might not be spent regardless of what decisions are made just because of that timeline and the inability to get into the facilities. And I don't wanna look at this from a defeatist or pessimistic view that the intention here is to, is to utilize those funds, but that may be one that's more out of our control. I'd equate that almost to a physical project within a facility. If we were looking to, as an example, add on in terms of construction, the desire to do it and the funding to do it are only two of the factors. The timeline that's needed to do it is the limiting one in a lot of cases. By December 30th, it's possible that we wouldn't be able to expend those funds, not for lack of trying again, but so if we're able to spend on the technology, I think 200,000 is a safe estimate to say that may not be spent out of the 2.5 million, but that $700,000 pieces is looming very large in terms of that could, we could be closer to a million if we weren't able to spend, and I won't say we wouldn't be able to use any of the 700, but if we looked at a project that would utilize those funds and that project couldn't be done in a way that we could spend those, that's a very large area that could have some funding left over. The IT piece, the heat mapping? Yes. So we're going on a guess in terms of how much you can get out the door and it's contingent on items that we don't have any control of. What's gonna happen in our facilities, whether or not we're gonna be able to physically go in there, what's gonna happen with getting the equipment? Is it gonna be produced number one in time? And then is it gonna get here through shipment in time for us to pay the invoice? Those are all situations we have no control over. We wanna make sure that if everything comes out where everything lines up and you can get everything, you wanna have enough money to carry it. And then we don't want to lose the money. So I'm wondering, this has came into my mind. So I'm wondering if there is a check-in that Joint Fiscal Committee can do in like November or end of October to see where we are with all of the, particularly with the scanners and the IT issues, where we are with that, if it looks feasible, that it will all fall together and come about in by the end of December or that it is not, one or the other is not gonna come together. And then the Joint Fiscal Committee would have the authority to pull some of that money and allocate it towards something else. Cause it looks like you're gonna need, for these dollars, it looks like there's gonna need to be a legislative check-in from the end of October or beginning of November. And I don't know if that's the way to deal with it instead of just saying we're gonna cut 200,000 and then something's cut short. So I'm just putting that out as a thought. We allow the flexibility to move the dollars around for the 350,000 between the direct rental monies and the domestic violence. We allow that number one. Number two, do we allow those dollars from all the others to also be able to be moved? So we have to make a decision on that. And three, do we have Joint Fiscal Committee do a check-in? Does that seem like a path forward for the committee? Terry's nodding, Marsha's nodding. Yeah. Mary, Kurt. I'm kind of nodding. I'm wondering whether there's already some sort of a plan that somebody has involving the Joint Fiscal Committee. I mean, are they automatically, I think you mentioned October, they're gonna look, are they gonna come to us and say, what do you got left? No, I don't believe so. It's gonna be done upstairs in a probe. It's Becky, I don't know if you know any further information on that, but I think what I'm hearing is find out what can be spent, what can't be and whatever can't be will be dealt with this special session. That's what I'm understanding. I don't know. Becky, if you know anything different or have heard anything different in your world. I know there is a date by which if funds appropriated in Act 120 were not used, they kind of have to revert back to the state, to the Coronavirus Relief Fund and so they can use it for other things. I'm just checking what that is in the bill. And I'll let you all know. And what's the date for that? I just have to check. I'll look quickly and let you know. Okay. Is that a path forward that the committee can go in? Yep. Butch. So what's, what bill are we talking about commending? Is it the budget bill or is it the CRF bill that we did? Or yeah, I guess that's my question. It's the CRF bill that we did. When do we need to get this done? Next week, immediately. Because I think a prop is doing both at the same time. And I think too, the chairs are to check in with the speaker to see where we are dollar wise with our CRFs, like over the weekend or Monday. So we'll continue this conversation on Tuesday also with our tier one money. I know with the, with the state house. With the state house, there's, there's million bucks in there for that, plus or minus. 750. I think it goes up to 750. So let's, let's, our people come to, I know we're comfortable with the 350,000 and being allowing them to move money between the direct rental and domestic violence. I know we're comfortable with that. Are we comfortable with also allowing money to be moved between the temperature scanners, the heat map, IT items, and the CJCs? Well, I see a no, I see no comment. Sarah's going to look in for further information on the CJCs. Sarah, you have a question, Mark? I just have a question, you're reading my face. Yeah. I'm not comfortable adding the CJCs into that, that bucket. I'm the scanners and the tech upgrades. Like the things, I'd be comfortable. That's a, that's a little over, what's that? 1.46 million. 4.4. Yeah, 1.5. I think flexibility with those two makes sense because those are things that happen inside of the facilities. The CJCs are outside the facilities. I just, before we get more info, I'll try to get this today to, if I can reconnect with Jill about. Okay. Kurt? I think we've established some items within DOC that can use CRF funds. And if any, if with any of those DOC finds that they can't get it out at the time, they won't be able to use it than they should transfer to one that they can use it for. If the CJCs can't use it, I would rather we put it into the body scanners than to revert it back to joint fiscal and not use it at all for DOC purposes. Other folks? I agree with that. I would like it to stay within DOC but I'm hoping that when Sarah has more information from the COJs that it can go in one of those places and stay within that area. So. Okay, other folks, this is something we're gonna have to noodle on over the weekend is my thinking. So why don't we, Sarah, you can check out, check with Jill Evans and give us a little bit more information on those CJCs. And we'll revisit this on Tuesday. And Becky, have you found anything yet in terms of, okay, she sent a chat. I'm sorry, I didn't wanna interrupt. Yeah, Act 120 requires that the, it's on page 32 of the bill if anyone wants to look at it. It says unless otherwise authorized by the commissioner of finance and management, any money is appropriated from the CRF shall revert to the CRF to the extent that they have not been expended by December 20th to enable reallocation. So there are some backs up there that gives the state like an additional 10 days to use that money if it's not a lot of time but that is all that I'm aware of at this point Who makes that decision to reallocate on the 21st of December? The 20th, it's if an amount of money was appropriated to an agency or department and they haven't used it by December 20th unless they've been given an authorization by finance and management to keep that money, they have to, that whoever received the appropriation has to send it back to, it goes back to the state's CRF fund. But then to be reallocated who makes the decision how it's reallocated to finance and management? It does not actually say that I guess it would have to be finance and management. Perhaps the e-board would be involved in that decision. I don't know. I can try to see what the thought process was there. And they have 10 days to spend it. Well, I'm gonna have a conversation with the speaker over the weekend and I'm gonna bring this up and bring up the thought of having the joint fiscal committee maybe weigh in at their October or November meeting. Does that make sense? I think people are saying, yes, I think people are getting tired. We've been on for going on three hours. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and bring up on three hours. Okay, so let's finish up here. We know we got some outstanding decisions to make for the CRF money that was going to DOC. Sarah's gonna check with Jill Evans and then send us an email, a whole committee, an email. And I don't know if Becky, for the flexibility of moving language, the language for moving between at least the 350,000. Is that something that you would have to draft up and then we submit to a probes? Do you know? I can draft it up. I'll check with the Appropriations Committee on how they would like to do that. I don't know, it's something that I would just give to JFO, but I can work on that. Okay, and then we can decide a little bit further. I don't think there was disagreement in moving money between the IT and the scanners. I think the issue is, do we also allow the money from the CJCs to also be moved at the same time? I think we've got to noodle that one over the weekend, let Sarah do her work and come back to us. That makes sense. So Tuesday we've got a full day. What I would plan on on Tuesday, we're back at 8.30. I would plan on a little longer meaning than going to 10 o'clock. Because we're gonna hear from Freeman French and Freeman, we have to figure out that the state house dollars that we put in on the CRF and have a conversation on the thoughts that are in the Freeman French and Freeman. And the whole discussion about how we come back in January is going to be discussion that goes way beyond our committee. We're not gonna be the driving force. We're gonna be a committee that can give some information, but we're not gonna be the ones that make the final decision on what it looks like. But we will give our recommendation, whatever that may be. And there's higher powers up there that will end up making those final decisions. But it's, we need to do our due diligence because we may come up with something that hasn't been thought about or a hybrid of something. I have a quick question for Matt, if we're just to quickly, the term heat map in this case, I'm not sure how it's used, what does that mean? So this would be, and my IT understanding isn't, I have a limited IT understanding. There's folks that deal with this a lot more than I do. My understanding of the heat mapping is that this would be, if you're putting wireless access points, if you're putting wifi in your home because homes aren't built of the same materials that the correctional facilities are, typically you can put a router and it'll go through the walls and things. The heat mapping effectively is analyzing and to some cases, I think even X-raying those walls to understand what's in them and if a signal would pass through those walls. They basically have to go through the folks that do this and assess an entire facility. And the process of that is a lengthy one and mixed with one. That's fine, I wasn't sure whether it was referring to a statistical heat map or a technology heat map and it's a technology heat map for wifi. That's fine, thank you. Sure. Okay, anything else before we finish up and finish our work for today in the committee? Okay, if not, thank you folks for listening in or watching us and we will be back as a committee on Tuesday morning at 8.30 to go over the space study from Freeman, French and Freeman to look at how to bring the legislature back to in-person work come January, we hope. And we are back on the floor this afternoon at two o'clock. So thank you all for listening in.