 All right, so we're back for the third video installment here. If you're watching House Government Operation Military Affairs Committee, and we are going to be returning to committee bill draft number 230907, an act relating to miscellaneous changes to law enforcement officer training laws, just to put this back into context. This is trying to put into statutory language the recommendations of the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee and the work that they did. So there were a couple elements that judiciary, these were the elements related to criminal justice council and law enforcement, a statewide policy around domestic violence. So happy to have Tim Devin back and witness seat after our wake off. Thanks for joining us. So walk through this latest draft of the bill. Also just for context before Tim starts, sorry Tim, the draft that's in front of you reflects conversations that Representative Boyd and I were kind of watching and participating in but really that the stakeholders from law enforcement leadership, the network, the AG's office and others to try to iron out a compromise around some of the concerns that we heard in committee testimony when we first looked this up, I think a couple of weeks ago now. So this is I think this is an attempt to reach as close to a compromise as possible, but we'll hear from different stakeholder representatives as we get into it. But I thought we'd start with getting back on to fresh drafts on the page and have Tim walk us through that. So Tim, thanks for being here. Thank you very much for having me Mr. Chair. For the record, my name is Tim Devin, Legislative Council and Mr. Chair, I'd just like to ask you, would you like me to kind of walk through all the amendments again or really just kind of skip to the highlights, which really are literally highlighted here to indicate changes from the last iteration reviewed by the commission? I think it would be a good idea since we had the week off to at least kind of orient us to the whole thing that we're looking at at this point. Yes, no problem. So in brief, this bill requires law enforcement agencies, chairs to adopt domestic violence involving law enforcement officer model policies and future versions of it. The author of this policy, the Vermont Law Enforcement Agency Board or LEAP will be required to update it. It'll also adjust law enforcement officer misconduct categories. One change you'll see here before we had something in category A, it's now been removed. So really we have a category B pertaining to misconduct to include violation of domestic violence by law enforcement model policies and category B conduct. I'll point out that specific language as it has been updated. Sorry, I'm reading from my past summary here and trying to conflict it too. Starting with the first highlight is just in the statement of purpose, specifically just getting some of the terminology you'll see used throughout the rest of the bill. So the bill will include abuse of a family, sorry, the bill will include abuse of a family or household member as category conduct. You should also know I just picked up a typo on line 13. So we'll start from section one, the first part of the bill, the reader assistance heading at the bottom of page one reads domestic violence involving law enforcement model policy. Section one amends title 20 VSA, 2365, changing the title of the section, which will now read domestic violence training, domestic violence, same as calling domestic violence involving law enforcement model policy. And this section has not changed and I'll probably be happy to kind of continue to go through it. Section one amends 20 VSA, 2365, and will require law enforcement agencies and constables who exercise law enforcement authority to adopt the domestic violence involving law enforcement model policies. Any future updates to that policy. One note actually that you won't see here is the removal of the reference to the 2010 domestic violence involving law enforcement model policy that will not appear because it's in a mission, essentially now. But that is one change I'd just like to bring to the community's attention. Sorry, I lost my train of thought here. Moving on to section two, and this is domestic violence involving law enforcement model policy revision. Again, as I've changed aside from the notation to the 2010 reference there, I think I've already summarized that, so I'll continue. Unless there's any questions about what's on the page of section two here. The next part of the bill, and this starts on the bottom of page three, the reader assistant heading on line 17 reads officer misconduct and transparency of information. There are some adjustments to the text here we'll see. Specifically, we have section three amending 20, VSA section 2401. The definitions under the CJC officer conduct. You'll notice if you compare it to the previous version, there was a reference to category A conduct that has been removed. And so now the definitions sections will read in pertinent part. As used in the sub chapter, skipping down to subdivision two, category B conduct means gross professional misconduct amounting to actions on or off duty or under authority of the state that involve abuse of a family or household member. Willful failure to comply with a state-required policy or substantial deviation from a professional conduct as defined by law enforcement agency's policy or if not defined by the law by the agency's policy, then as defined by council policy shall include skipping down to subdivision really H in part. Attempting to cause or causing physical harm to a family or household member or placing a family or household member in fear of serious imminent physical harm. I'll pause there for a moment. So to bring the committee back to the original version of this. So the changes really are that it's gone from a category A to a category B. The category B language was in there before. It was different. Sorry, let me just talk about that. Category B was there. The changes we had there before were simply the on or off duty addition. And there was a subsection H there as of now. However, the previous iteration read a violation of domestic violence by law enforcement model policy adopted pursuant to the above section. So really this as before, actually I should probably correct something in my introductory remarks here. This ties category B conduct to the actual acts itself versus the policy being violated. So we're not talking about a relief from abuse order. We're talking about the act of abuse order. Yes, an attempt to cause or actually cause it. Any further questions about the words on the page on the top here? Let's keep going. The next section, section four was in addition since the last iteration. This adds, sorry, this amends title 20, VSA section 2407, which is titled limitation on counsel sanctions, first defense of category B conduct. And this adds that new category, that new language in 2401 subdivision to H that we just read in the above section to a list of category B conducts which would be considered by, sorry, in the first case instance here to a list of other categories of category B conduct. I'd be happy to read through this. So Tim, just to orient the committee and to confirm my assumptions, what's highlighted is new to this draft. Yes. But only the underlying portions are actually would be new. Yes, that is correct. I should have indicated that. Oh, that's what I mean. So that means that most of the text that you see in section four, unless I'm wrong, Tim, is existing law. It's the things that the criminal justice counsel can act on a first defense that are category B. And we're adding the 2401 to H, the part that we just created in the previous section to that list of things that they can act on a first incident. That's correct. As always, new text that will be introduced via amendment is underlined. Anything to be removed is struck through and anything highlighted underlined or not underlined, which would indicate that's existing law already, just is for illustrative purposes to show what's changed since the last version that was reviewed by this committee. Representative Hancock. Sorry, I didn't raise my hand before. So where it starts on page four, line 18, and it's just highlighted, not underlined, why was that not in the previous version if it's existing law? Page four, line 18. Yep. Category B conduct letter. Section four. Yep, sorry, section four. So all of this is, this is just a new area of law that's being proposed for amendment in this version of draft of the bill. It's not underlined because it already exists. I understand that my question was, why was it not in the previous version? What has changed since we last saw this? Why is this now included? I think we'll hear that more from our witnesses that are coming subsequent to talk about why we're doing it this way. But I think in the original proposal that came out of the committee's recommendations, the idea was that a relief from a final abuse order would be considered category A misconduct. That automatically, the criminal justice council can act on that. And so the category B, unless we enumerate this here in this section, can't go through the CJC process for sanctions until there's been a second, the subsequent offense. So this piece says, we kind of short-handed this and I think Chair Sorrell could speak to this, but it's being like the B plus violations. The category B misconduct that the criminal justice council can actually take action on for the first offense. So we didn't address that at all because category A can automatically do that. But I think what we heard from a couple of the law enforcement leaders that testified was that a relief from abuse order isn't maybe appropriate totally for category A because of just the level of the investigation that happens, that it's not criminal misconduct. So if we move that down to category B, but we also want the criminal justice council to be able to just move forward with the process of investigating and potentially sanctioning an officer who's done that violation, we have to enumerate here or just say that they, we did discuss at one point just saying, blanket, they could use their discretion. And what we're proposing here is that we just add it to these other things that are category B misconduct, but that the criminal justice council can act on the first offense. We'll hear more about that in testimony about that. And Chairman McArthur, would you like me to do a line by line of this? I think, I don't think we need to go line by line through section four because most of this is existing statute. If you could maybe, I just wanted to highlight that in paragraph B, the definition of offense. Yes. I'll just read it through right now. Line eight B reads offense defined. As used in the section in offense means any offense committed by a law enforcement officer during the course of a law enforcement officer's certification and includes any offenses committed during employment at a current or previous law enforcement agency. So some of the new text is creating a gender neutral term and then more of substance is the ladder underline, which indicates that offense is not only contained to previous employment also, or sorry, but also current employment as well. Representative Anga. Thank you. Can we go back to line six please where it says or placing a family or household member in fear of serious imminent physical harm. In another bill last year, we had a long discussion about perception and what is perceived to be and fear of in my mind falls into that category. How is that defined? Fear, I will have to check existing definitions elsewhere. I'm not sure if that is actually defined in this title or elsewhere in the VSA or really pertains maybe common law. I would really defer to the subject matter experts and be even much more satisfactory answer on that topic. I think you in the drafting were asked to help encapsulate the acts or the subject matter of a final relief from abuse order here. I think it was as opposed to referencing a relief from abuse order itself as the sort of triggering act for the misconduct. We'll have more discussion about that section. And that concludes the new changes to this draft. The remaining sections five has to do with the collection and aggregation of data pertaining to involving domestic and sexual violence, number of complaints and categories in B resulting from the filing and charges and stipulations or taking explanatory action. Then really the housing and publication of that data and reporting back to the housing senate committees and government operations. Any other questions about the words on the page? And thank you very much. I think there have been a lot of drafts floating around. So I appreciate your hard work on this. So I'd like to invite our attorney general who's here to take the chair. Thanks for being with us today. Thanks for having me back. And thank you very much for taking up the recommendation of the recommendations of the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission. It means a lot and I'm really, I'm sorry that seems to have taken longer than I anticipated, but really glad to be here on what hopefully is one of the last days of your work on this bill. I wanted to come in person because I think it's important to amplify the work of this commission, which is housed in my office. And I also have Aaron Jacobson from our office who has the subject matter expert and was involved with the work. So if you ask me a hard question, I'll defer to her. But I wanted to, that was a very helpful walkthrough and I wanted to just identify my understanding is that there's really one area that the stakeholders have not all agreed upon and that is whether or not off-duty conduct should be included. So to the extent that I'm correct about that understanding, I thought I would just address that today and say when you look at the definitions and the definitions section of the law, you can see that the definitions refer to on-duty. The problem in this context of domestic violence is that we know that domestic violence generally doesn't happen on-duty, it happens off-duty. So if you want to have this change be meaningful, you need to have it include off-duty conduct. So it's that simple. But I would say something else, which is I have seen the list of witnesses testifying and I noticed that there's only two women testifying and we see a lot in our world of a lot of men are running things and not as many women are running things. To the extent that I was elected the first woman attorney general of Vermont to make sure that voices who maybe haven't been heard as much or people who had maybe been overlooked need to have someone amplify their voice. I would like to point out that if we want to make this change meaningful, we really do need to include off-duty conduct. I wanted to remind you of the statistics of the 40,000 victims of domestic and sexual violence in Vermont every year. When you look at all the different crimes that might be considered category A or category B conduct, not their normal crimes, but that doesn't cover 40,000, right? Obviously the 40,000 is the general public, but what I look at when I look at those definitions is something's missing and it's this story is missing. When I look at the definitions right now and if we are able to include the off-duty conduct, that story is there. The 40,000 victims in the small sliver of perpetrators is there. So it's really important that we come back to what we know and what we want to see changed and how to be meaningful. We really do need to include the off-duty conduct. That's what I would just emphasize. Representative Henga. You may have said this before and I'm sorry if I don't remember the facts and figures, the data, but is there any data at all as to how many law enforcement officers of either sex have committed any crimes of domestic violence or sexual violence against their partners off-duty? I don't have that information. What the commission's report pointed out was that the statistics, we don't have information that they're any different than from the public at large. What we do know is that law enforcement officers have a particular amount of power that the general average citizen lacks and especially in a small town if you are a victim of domestic violence and the perpetrator of that violence is a law enforcement officer, how hard it would be to go where you needed to go for help, which would be the very law enforcement office where your abuser worked and what if you worked also at that law enforcement agency and you wanted to make a complaint and you felt ashamed or you felt like your job would be somehow in jeopardy. There's a lot to the story of when a law enforcement officer is involved with domestic violence, which is why it was one of the recommendations made by the domestic violence fatality review commission. Mr. Chair, Madam Attorney General, do you have this in front of you? Ms. Bill? Yes. Thanks, Mary. If you're on page five of six, the language that says, placing a person in choke hold, attempting to cause cause and physical harm to family or household member or placing a family or household member in fear of serious or imminent physical harm, how would you charge that? I'm not sure I know where you are. What line and section, are you in section four? Yeah. Okay. Five line, five. Okay, I think I got it. Section five, that's okay. Very good, first offense. I would help if I brought my glasses. I can make it bigger. The magic of technology. I mean, I realize this is not a beautiful process, but I would imagine that there should be some kind of a P.O. app or no one. What's your question? How would you charge it? The placing a family or household member in fear of serious and imminent harm? Well, I would tell you my process would be, I would go to the green books and I would see what the options are. So I don't want to tell you off. I don't want to say off the cuff. I would want to look at the facts and look at the options. Is it, I don't know. I guess I can't answer your question. The language seems so broad. So you have concerns about the language being so broad? Maybe someone else can, oh wait, I know what the answer to this question is. Isn't this the language from the RFA? Oh, they're nodding. I got it right. I got it right. It's the language from the RFA. We started in statute. That's what we mean when we, when we're adding the RFA language, that's where it is. That's where it is. Got it. I'm going to go to Hanga. And this question is for Tim. If it's already existing statute, then why is it underlined? So, so I think what, go ahead, Attorney General Clark. I think when I, ledge counsel probably answers, but I like him, but when they're putting together a bill, they don't include sections that haven't been changed. So before this section hadn't been changed. So it wasn't included, but now it's, it's category B instead of category A. So now we see it or before we didn't, because it wasn't being changed, right? So I think us being off for a week is it makes it a little hard. So I just want to take everybody back in time and remember that where we started with this was saying, if there's a relief from abuse order, final relief from abuse order, that that is category A misconduct. That's where we started with the original draft and hearing some of the concern about final relief from abuse order is not crime the way the other category A misconduct lists is. So we heard that feedback. So we'll hear more about this, I think, from testimony from the network and from law enforcement leaders and from the criminal justice council. But what we're doing here is saying the same behavior that would be captured in a relief from abuse order is now being considered category B misconduct if we adopt this draft that's in front of us now, not category A and not a relief from abuse order, but the behavior, the same behavior that's in statute that results in a relief from abuse order that that could be considered category B misconduct by the criminal justice council. So in terms of the sort of like deep process that we're talking about here, so we're calling it either this is conduct, by a law enforcement officer that could be considered for a potential sanctioned by the criminal justice council. And we'll hear from Sheriff Sorrell next with more context about how this work and can answer questions about that. But the feedback we heard was this didn't rise to the level of category A, but we wanted to continue to sort of have the behavior that would result in an RFA be covered as category B. And that's what this attempts to do. So while the attorney general is saying this description is in the RFA statutes, right now it's not in current law as category B misconduct or category B conduct, excuse me. Keep saying misconduct, I should be saying conduct. Any other questions for the attorney general? I have one, which was that I think you did a really great job of reminding us why we started down this path and the work that the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission does actually reviewing the coroner's reports and reports from law enforcement about domestic violence fatalities. And I'm reading the report, it looks like there were a couple of instances where there was a law enforcement officer involved in those fatalities under as a victim or perpetrator of domestic violence. And is that, am I remembering that accurately? I'm just trying to ground this in some reality for folks. Yeah, I mean, the way that we look at it and the way that we say it is these recommendations come from the cases we reviewed. Half of the recommendations relate to law enforcement being involved as a perpetrator. So yeah. And as a reminder, half of homicides every year relate to domestic violence. So if we wanna change that, you actually, I should say, I know you wanna change that because you created this commission to review the fatalities, identify trends and make recommendations to you that can try to address that problem. They've done that. This is one of the recommendations and it's in your hands. Thank you. Thank you very much. Definitely invite you to stay with us. I think we're gonna hear from Chair Sorrell next. Great. Let's take a quick round. I'll get you out of the hot seat for now. Thank you. Chair Sorrell, welcome back. Yes, Mr. Chairman. First of all, thank you for inviting me to come and offer some testimony. I'm not sure what's going on in my beer, but it's been snowing at least two inches an hour in Burlington for the last three hours. And so I'm happy to be in my basement rather than on the interstate right now. I have a few comments, a couple of questions and then a request for you and happy to answer any of the committee members' questions. First, on behalf of myself as the chair of the council, Criminal Justice Council and secondarily, speaking for at least the vast majority of the council, very happy that you're taking up this matter. We recently permanently revoked the law enforcement certification of a couple of former Vermont law enforcement officers for conduct that related to very significant domestic violence. And so we're pleased to see you underscore the seriousness of this issue generally, but particularly given our authority and jurisdiction within involving law enforcement officers as alleged perpetrators of domestic violence. We're pleased to see that you include the reference to off-duty conduct. I think that deserves to be here in the statute. Excuse me. We think it makes a great deal of sense that you mandate that the domestic violence, a model policy for domestic violence involving law enforcement be completed rather expeditiously and that by a year from this summer that it'll be adopted universally by law enforcement in the state. A couple of questions are that you say that collect the aggregate data involving sexual and domestic violence. I mean, it sort of goes without saying, but just to create the record on legislative history, you mean that we will collect just involving allegations against law enforcement officers. That's the data that we are collecting, the aggregate data that we're gonna correct and report on. So if I'm mistaken on that, and you mean that more broadly, please let us know. And secondarily, it's an annual report. We're happy to do that. The reporting date under this draft is January 20. So do you intend that we would aggregate the data and report on a fiscal year basis or on a calendar year basis? I think we can do either. And if you envision a calendar year, so it's relatively fresh data, not more than two weeks old by the time that we report. Just that direction or clarification to us doesn't have to be in the body of the bill, now with legislative history, that would be helpful to us. I will look to our subsequent guests who could testify to that, that were involved in some of the details of how that request came together. But we noted that you want us to be more specific, at least here on the record, about the reporting requirements. And just so that you understand the way the law works in the professional misconduct arena is that if an officer is the subject of a complaint of professional misconduct, no matter what that is, we are to get notice of the fact of the complaint. And then we open a file and it goes back typically to the law enforcement entity in employing the officer in question. And typically either that department will do an internal affairs investigation of the facts underlying the complaint. In some cases, particularly for the smaller organizations, it'll be arranged that a different law enforcement entity will do the investigation. Clearly, if it's a supervisory officer, particularly the police chief or a sheriff, for example, then it should go to a different entity to do the investigation so that the investigation of the boss, if you will, is done by some outside arguably more neutral agency. But we, that is the council's hands are tied for taking action while that investigation is going on. We get the result of the investigation, the decision by the employing agency, what if anything that it is doing or has done in a punitive nature in response to the results of its investigation. We can send it back for more investigation. We can conduct our own investigation or our own additional investigation. If there is a criminal charge arising from the conduct, then that's a so-called category A violation, but we need to take a back seat while that case is going through the criminal courts in order to respect the officer's privilege against self-incrimination and such. So it's entirely possible that we will have a file which is months and months or more in our file without us taking any action on that because we're waiting for others to take action, whether it's in the courts or by the employing agency or the investigative agency. So on this aggregate data, when we report that, if we get a complaint, let's say we're going on a calendar year basis, if we get a complaint that comes in December 1st, all we might have is a complaint that Officer John Doe is the subject of a complaint of professional misconduct relating to a traffic stop or something of that, but we will have nothing to report to you as to any actions that we have taken because we, in all likelihood, would not have taken any actions by that point. And then just a little bit, maybe more detailed than you want is the way that we work internally is we have a professional regulation subcommittee. It's five members and they meet typically weekly or bi-weekly. I think right now we have roughly 40 plus open files. And if the professional regulation committee makes a decision that there should be some disciplinary action taken, the individual who's the subject of it has the right under our bylaws, our operating procedures to appeal for a contested hearing before the full council. And so in order to maintain essentially to protect the due process rights of the individual who's the subject of a complaint, we do not permit the members of the professional regulation subcommittee, those five members, to participate in the hearing before the full council. And in fact, the council members, including the chair, do not receive any notice of the name or any of the specifics of a complaint against an individual officer. So I can't tell you right now the name of a single officer of the 40 plus who are the subject of a complaint, a file that's an active file that we have so that ultimately I'm able to chair a contested hearing before the full council. So you just ask for aggregate data, obviously without names and such, we can generate that, but we are not in a position to disclose much publicly before we, that is the full council has ultimately been in a position to take action. So just sort of an explanation for how that process goes. So just chairs for all to clarify your comments there, to am I correct in understanding that the requests for the aggregated data doesn't in any way change or violate the structure that you have set up? You're correct, Mr. Chairman, it does not at all. Great. I just want to make sure we're not asking you for something that would mess up the firewalls that you did. No, you're not. And my guess is I mean it would be a matter of first instance when we get there, but because we have any number of cases that roll over into the final year, we would probably give you a report that indicates the cases filed during the year on which we're reporting within the following year and the ones that we have completed action on so you can sort of understand better how many cases we are moving through that involve allegations against law enforcement of sexual violence or domestic violence. The council really took no position on whether it should be a category A or a category B violation and the law enforcement and the AG's office and the network against sexual and domestic violence got together and worked out this compromise having it be a B. The ask that I make of you relates to that final point that it being in category B, you add the situation involving domestic violence as a category B and one of the exceptions in B to go along with the use of excessive force, a failure to intervene when another officer is using excessive or illegal force. In those limited situations, we are able to take action on a first offense category B but predating the creation of the criminal justice council, this idea of one bite of the apple for all other category B violations. There's an awful lot of conduct that constitutes category B violations. And already in the statute talks about category B involving, quote, gross professional misconduct and we have just in the last several months we've terminated or permanently revoked the certification status of four former Vermont law enforcement officers and in a couple of them, they were category B second violations and in one or both of those, I know that there were council members including myself who found that the first category B offense involving the officer was at least as serious or egregious as the second and sort of shaking or scratching my head a little bit about why there's, why the council's hands are tied in the case of gross professional misconduct even though it's a first violation of category B we cannot take action. And let me just give you a brief scenario that's not a wild one but let's say that an officer or officers are involved in conduct, off duty, there's been reports in the media for example I'm not trying to free judge or judge any case that's just in the early stages but of off duty conduct which is at least arguably appalling at least arguably calls into question whether the officers can be fair and impartial in their performance or their duties and let's say that an officer or officers in question are taken off active work by an employing agency and while an investigation can be done and let's say that after the investigation is done that the employing agency decides to terminate the officer or to say to the officer we're gonna move forward with to terminate you but if you resign, you can resign by mutual agreement. If that situation should take place that former officer of the agency that he or she has parted company with or been terminated from can turn right around and go to work for another Vermont law enforcement agency and the council may take no action on the certification status of that individual. Representative Chase has a question. Clarifying what you just said may take no action or may not take action? Well, if I've misstated it, our hands are tied. We can do nothing involving that officer's certification. Thank you. So, Chair Surrell, you're asked for us is that instead of enumerating this as an additional exception to the sort of two bites of the apple rule that we consider just saying category B professional misconduct or gross misconduct could be considered on a first complaint. Yes, but I would qualify that Mr. Chairman by saying that I think by underscoring legislatively use of a chokehold failure to intervene the conduct that would give rise to a relief from abuse order which is the language you're talking about now is just sort of underscoring conduct that in the eyes of the legislature would just is professional, a gross professional misconduct. I don't think it's wrong to have it there but if the legislature is going to continue in the category B arena without giving it to the discretion of this council with any right of somebody aggrieved by the action of the council to go to court and say it wasn't gross professional misconduct or whatever, it's not like the council is the final arbiter, why tie our hands? So the ask, we brought this up before the council, the only ones who spoke were in favor of this expansion of the council's authority including, I don't want to speak for General Clark but the Attorney General's office and I think if you ask the network folks they're in favor and the others who spoke every single one of them was in favor of this ask. So that is the ask that you consider striking the prohibition against us taking any action on a first category B allowing us to look at the underlying conduct see how really serious it is and when appropriate do something which might not be permanent revocation might be a suspension and whether some additional required training or such. So that's the ask for you to please consider and we obviously will respect whatever decision you make in response to that request. I think that's a good segue unless the committee has any burning questions for Chair Sorrell right now. We have a couple other people that I want to have testify on this today we're obviously not going to take action on this this afternoon because there's a couple of pretty big open questions but I am committed to trying to get this out by the end of the week. So I want to invite Sarah Robinson from the Vermont network to take the witness chair. I believe you've been deep in the conversations with some of the other stakeholders and I appreciate all of the work that you put into this as well. So thank you for being with us. Happy to be with you. Thank you for having me back for the record. Sarah Robinson, deputy director of Vermont network against domestic and sexual violence. So following the last committee conversation about draft 2.1 the network met with a group of stakeholders including the attorney general's office, the department for public and public safety at the Vermont criminal justice council, Chief Burke from South Burlington. I don't think I'm missing anybody and those conversations were really helpful and productive and definitely we're able to clarify for us. Mostly areas of common ground and then clarify the area of the one remaining kind of area of disagreement. So as a result of these conversations you see largely the language that's in front of you today. I'd like to highlight some of the important changes. As attorney Devlin discussed, this new draft removes from category A the issuance of a final relief from abuse order. And instead adds to category B the conduct which forms the basis for the issuance of the order. So the language that representative Hango was wondering about and that you see throughout the bill. I'll just highlight that for you on page four lines 11 through 13 attempting to cause or causing physical harm to a family or household member or placing a family or household member in fear of serious imminent physical harm. So this was actually a request from the department for public safety. And their feeling was that rather than the issuance I don't want to speak for them but I think I can represent this and then they can correct me if I get this wrong rather than adding the issuance of the order itself. They wanted to ensure that it's actually underlying conduct of the order that was added to category B. So what we did is found the language of that's in title 15, section 1103 and 04 which are the relief from abuse order statutes. And that language of subsection F 11 through 13 is that exact language. So in order for a relief from abuse order to issue the court has to find that an individual has attempted to cause or caused physical harm to a family or household member or placed a family or household member in fear of serious imminent physical harm. So that is where that language comes from. So rather than the order itself being referenced it's really the underlying conduct that gives rise to an order being issued. The second really significant change is we removed from category B in draft 2.1. There had been a violation of the lead policy. So category A was a violation of a category A violation could constitute a final relief from abuse order. Category B, the previous draft to CAD or a violation of the lead policy. So our feeling was that this was also a request of the department for public safety was to remove specifically from category B a violation of the lead policy. But our feeling is that once the lead domestic violence policy becomes a required statewide policy per this bill as you're asking them to do that a violation of that policy would automatically be category B conduct. Pursuant to find the exact reference for you. Because a category B violation can be a violation of a statewide policy. And so that would automatically be a violation of the lead policy would constitute a category B violation. And then there's this question of 20 BSA 2407 which chair Sorrell just referenced but that is kind of new language. And that is this issue of kind of the second bite of the apple or second time around which has been discussed, which is really clarifying that we want to ensure that the Vermont criminal justice council has the ability on the first time there is a category B domestic violence related violation that they are able to take action. And this is really incredibly important because officer involved domestic violence is already very highly under reported. There are huge barriers to people reporting violence from a law enforcement officer. And it's really essential that when it is reported the first time that our systems are able to respond. And in our conversations with stakeholders I was saying, you know, the reality is there is no second time. If someone respond, if someone reports and nothing happens, a survivor is going to mistrust that system and will not be returning to that system to report. So among the stakeholders, the one piece that there is not consensus on is this off duty language that would and we feel like this is especially important because we want to ensure that domestic violence that happens off duty is does constitute a category B violation. Both abuse of a household or family member or a violation of the lead policy that might happen off duty. And so leaving it kind of where it is in the current version that you are looking at ensures that both could be considered off duty violations of either could be considered by the criminal justice council. So we feel like it's important that that is, that's left where it is. And I did want to respond to something that I heard earlier in the conversation which I think it was Representative Kango which was a great question about the how often officers engage in domestic or sexual violence. And the reality is that there isn't great data on that. It's one of the reasons, it's one of the things that gives rise to this recommendation from the Vermont Fatality Review Commission is that we want to have a better understanding of that. We don't have any reason to believe that it's any more likely to exist within that population than the general population. But what I can tell you because this is all public is that just over the hill, not so long ago there was a officer from the Berlin police department who in his while on duty in his police cruiser with his service weapon went and shot and killed his former partner and then killed himself. And so we know that this is a problem not just in the rest of the country but this is a problem here. And we certainly feel like this bill is one very small step but an important step to addressing this issue. And we thank you very much for your time. So I'm happy to answer any questions about the particular particulars of the language or the contours of our conversations with stakeholders if that would be helpful. Representative Waterson. Thank you. So I'm wondering about this language, the one that you just read attempting to cause or causing physical harm to a family or household member. So that was directly used for this. I believe from a view sorter. Right, that's you. Okay, so does that then exclude by the nature of saying that intimate partner balance that doesn't involve someone who's like within the household or a family member? It's a really great question and the answer is no because the way that Vermont statute defines household member includes current or former dating partners. So they don't have to physically live in the same household to be considered a household member under Vermont law. Our household member statute is, our household member definition is very expansive for that exact reason. Oh, okay, thank you. Yeah. And I can give you that reference too. That language? Sorry, what was that? I was just kind of putting out apologies. I was just curious if we could see that language or the definition of household, you understand? I'm not under that umbrella. I'm happy to do that right now. Just looking in title 15. So it's title 15, chapter 21, 1101. So household member is defined 15 VSA 1101. Household members means persons who for any period of time are living or have lived together, are sharing or have shared occupancy of a dwelling, are engaged in or have engaged in a sexual relationship or minors or adults who are dating or who have dated. Dating means a social relationship of a romantic nature. Factors that the court may consider when determining whether a dating relationship exists or existed include the nature of the relationship, the length of time the relationship existed, the frequency of interaction between the parties and the length of time the relationship was terminated. So you can see that includes current or former partners. Okay, so that's like very expansive on what somebody would typically think what household would define you, because they're speaking to people who had previously lived within a certain domicile, not necessarily the ones immediately there. Or previously dated. Yeah, okay, so that's, it puts the context in a better frame for me here. I just didn't know that it was that broadly defined within a statute. Thank you. Would that include a partner's form of partner kind of thing like if there was animosity in that situation? It's a good question. So it would be the ex-partner that would be considered the household member, but I believe what you may be getting at Representative Chase is a great point that sometimes domestic violence, violence is targeted towards new partners of former kind of after there has been after an abusive relationship. And so, it is our understanding that any kind of domestic violence targeted towards a former partner or maybe a new partner of that former partner would likely be covered in what the lead will develop. Certainly it would be our recommendation to the lead that that would include that because we view that as kind of harassment of an ex-partner. Did I answer a question? I think so. Okay. Anything else for us there? I think so. I invite Burke up to offer us back, who's the chair to the lead? Oh, sorry. I am really, I was on vacation last week. It's cheaper on Zoom. Thank you for being with us again. Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Can everyone hear me okay? Yeah. Excellent. Good afternoon. Thank you for the continued opportunity to provide testimony on this panel. For the record, my name is Sean Burke. I have the privilege of serving as least chief in the city of South Burlington. I also serve as the chair of the Vermont law enforcement advisory board or more informally referred to as the LEAP. The initial testimony on this bill led to a thoughtful stakeholder conversation about the intersects of the domestic violence fatality review commission's recommendations and the law enforcement professional regulations as outlined in title 20. The law enforcement advisory board is prepared to begin work on the model domestic violence policy immediately. The proposed effective date of July 1, 2024 will allow the LEAP sufficient time to do this work. The Vermont law enforcement community is supportive of the proposed revisions brought forward by the network in the attorney general's office that you're reviewing today. As a profession, we are still concerned with the placement of the proposed off-duty language in subparagraph two of title 20, section 2401. If off-duty is added to this section, there is little definition as to what substantial deviation from professional conduct as defined by individual Vermont law enforcement agencies would include. Both the state model internal affairs policy and the council professional regulations subcommittee procedures have definitions related to unprofessional conduct, which are more clear. Both of these policies relying on the statutory framework of section 2401, which is under review today. To offer an agency example of how this is confusing, the South growing in police departments, rules and regulations have 41 different conduct standards of these 41 standards. There are 11, which could easily be subject to internal affairs investigation and potential reporting to the council, regardless of duty status. Such examples include conduct on becoming an officer, criminal conduct on the part of an officer and improper use of one's official position. The remaining conduct standards, which would not fall into the intent of title 20 as it was originally engineered, would include standards related to tobacco use, reporting defects to city owned property, political activities and recommending private services. The law enforcement community wants to see either clear statutory language directly aimed at making domestic violence related conduct actionable as category B first defense violations, regardless of duty status, or reliance on the model policy language as the statute currently provides. If there is broader interest in opening category B conduct for potential professional regulation review, then a fulsome evaluation in rewrite of the statute would likely be needed. Again, thank you for this opportunity and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Questions for Chief Court? Representative Nugent? Are you saying that the way the statute is right now would support behavior being considered something that you would take action on if it was off duty already, like any domestic violence behavior? Is that what you're saying? What included in the state model policy, yes. Right now I can only speak for the professional standards of this organization and our policy would allow for us to hold officers accountable for what we have in our domestic violence policy. So Chief, could you, what I'm trying to tease out and square the circle is, we've heard from the network and other folks have worked on this that are saying, so category B is up until now where we're bringing in this off duty behavior to cover, if we keep this language, the model policy, if there's a violation of South Burlington's department policies by an officer that rises to the level where there would be a complaint before the criminal justice council, I'm trying to really drill down to what's the concern here? Like I hear the concern about being clear that we want, we don't want frivolous complaints being heard by the criminal justice council with 40 open cases, they've got a docket of some pretty serious conduct complaints. I guess I'm trying to drill into like, what's a specific example of a concern here what the consequences would be of us, including model policies or departmental policies, that kind of conduct that would violate those policies as a potential category B violation. It's a great question and I think your next witness might be more fluent in the topic, but to be clear, the entire Vermont law enforcement community wants domestic violence related conduct actionable by the council. And there are disparate levels of policy throughout the state. That was a finding of the Fatality Review Commission as it pertains to domestic violence and when employees are involved. To your point, what I don't want to see is the door open to this, it's an undefined category, substantial deviation from a departmental policy. That's just overly broad and absent the definitions. I don't think we would have clear enough guidance on what to use the model, the state model, internal affairs policy to investigate and then what to report. The issue here to move this forward is the focus on domestic violence related conduct. And I think that should be the focus of the committee from my purview, but I think that your next witness can also offer how this potential addition to 2401 could really entangle some labor issues that would be confusing and complicated as when we're trying to adjudicate these cases. Okay. Any other questions for Chief Burke at this point? I would invite you to stay on. I really do, now that you've said that one here for Mr. Jones. So any questions for Chief Burke from the committee before we move on? Thank you. Thank you so much for being with us. Mr. Jones, thank you for joining us and for your patience while we have been having this discussion. Appreciate you being with us this afternoon. Well, thanks for having me and good afternoon everyone. My name is Tucker Jones. I'm an attorney at the Department of Public Safety and I don't believe I've testified in front of this committee this session yet. So hello, Mr. Chair and hello, representatives and thank you for having me this afternoon. I am, Mr. Chair, mindful of the time. I think you were planning to wrap up at 345 so I can just be as brief as I can. Is that all right with you? I did try to buy us a little bit more time. So, and also I think that since there are a couple of open questions here that I wanna make sure we get resolved. We're not gonna try to do a markup today. So we definitely wanna hear your testimony. Yeah, no, that's great. So speaking about draft 3.2, 230907. So there is broad support and consensus on almost everything here in the draft before you today. I think this new structure focusing on the underlying conducting category B provides clarity that abusing a family or household member would be actionable by the council for a first offense on or off duty. And there is broad support for that clear authority. Again, for any abuse of a family or household member on or off duty would be actionable by the council. And I've heard no concerns about that policy goal and this draft makes strides to achieve that. And I very much appreciate working with Sarah and Erin on that language. And I think the bill in front of you is a better bill as a result of those conversations that we've had recently. But of course I am mindful of the time and that you are gonna be looking to pass this out shortly. So in this draft, the Department of Public Safety does recommend a different placement of the words off duty on page four, but not to change the effect as it relates to the actionable conduct for abusing a family or household member. It's a different placement, not a removal of understanding that off duty conduct would be contemplated here. And in our conversations about this bill, I said it would be expected that this would be happening off duty and not on duty in most instances and it would probably be the exception perhaps that abusing a family or household member would be happening on duty. And so there's kind of broad recognition of that fact. But nonetheless, there is some concern about the placement of this in the definition of category B conduct on page four, section 2401 subsection two. So in the current bill, off duty is added to the definition of category B itself along with a reference to abusing a family or household member, which is also enumerated as an example of category B conduct in a new subsection below, subsection two H. So this is somewhat confusing because none of the other enumerated examples of category B conduct are included in the actual definition itself in subsection two. So that's one somewhat, is that's an area of concern of that language about abusing a family or household member in the definition and in the enumerated subsection below? But it's also unclear. If I could just, I really, this has been a point of some confusion here in the room and I just wanna make sure we're really, really clear. So the enumeration that you're talking about is in the exceptions, right? And so I believe you're talking about the exceptions sort of the sort of inability or the tying in the hands of the criminal justice council to look at a category B conduct as on the first complaint. No, what I'm referring on page four, I'm referring to the definition of category B conduct itself in two, 401, subsection two. And the way subsection two is structured is that it says category B conduct means and then there's this somewhat long explanation of what it means for a policy violation. And then it gives A through A, B, C, D, E, F, G examples of what would constitute category B conduct are ready. And so they're basically examples enumerated below. Section 2407 is the section that deals with the exceptions for the first offense and the language is added there as well, but that's on page five. So it is somewhat confusing on page four because you have this definition and it's a broad definition that describes the type of gross professional misconduct amounting to essentially a certain policy violations generally. And then it gives you A through H now of examples of what those are. So for example, the legislature added the use of a chokehold as an example of category B conduct that would be part of policy violation here. And now what the committee is doing in this bill is adding another example that abusing a family or household member essentially subsection H is a new addition for category B conduct. But it's somewhat unclear that we're using this example as well in the definition and subsection two itself. And it's somewhat unclear as well how or whether this language expands category B conduct generally to a range of off-duty conduct for the other enumerated examples, A through G. So the consequences of that broader expansion just have not been vetted yet. So we did propose some alternative language that attempted to achieve the same policy goal by saying in subsection two, category B conduct means gross professional misconduct amounting to actions on duty or under authority of the state or both comma except as provided by below comma. And then in subsection H, we specifically state at the end of that clause relating to abusing a family or household member that it applies on duty under authority of the state or off-duty first offense. So it's just, it's alternative language but it's designed to be clear to preserve the fact that abusing a family or household member would be actionable off even if it's off-duty which we may perhaps expect it to be in the first place. Representative Waters-Evans had a question. I feel like my brain is gonna explode, thank you. Okay, I'm just trying to figure this out. Could you explain what is the concern or the detriment to including this language the way it is right now? Like what could be a possible undesirable outcome from having it as it is? Sure, well, first of all, I apologize if I am the one who's going to make your head explode because that's not my goal. That's not your decision. That's just the way I relate things. I'm just not used to this yet, but the question is, so I would ask these two things. Well, I have a question for you. That's my first question. What would be the outcome of this? That would be something like I understand you're saying things about repeating it and the list and all of this stuff but it doesn't seem that confusing to me personally. That would be my first question. So I don't know what the negative outcome would be. And then my second question, which I'll ask, maybe you're not the right person to answer it, but earlier when Sarah Robinson was testifying, she pointed us to the section. There was 15 VSA 1101 that had definitions in it. To explain the definition of household members to us, but I noticed that earlier in that section, it defined what abuse means. So I'm wondering if that definition of abuse applies to line three in that section number in that section number, do this as category B conduct? Sure. That makes sense. And I don't think I'll have a good answer on the second question, but I'll just start with the first. Sure, thank you. The concern here is that the Act 56 structure, Act 56 was the bill that, the act that revamped the professional regulation scheme for the council. Specifically delineated between certain criminal conduct and then certain conduct that officers engage in on duty or under authority of the state to make it actionable from a professional regulation level. And the way Act 56 is structured is it's entwined with the employer discipline scheme as it relates to the employers are doing the investigation and essentially have their own disciplinary authority. And then Act 56 through the council has its own set of delineated criteria of when the council would be taking authority. And right now everyone understands the current structure. And if we're going to be changing the underlying definitions of the terms, we wanna make sure that the employers and the employees are on the same page about what could result in professional decertification or other action by the council. So the employers aren't taking inconsistent employee discipline action at their level because one of the reasons this was structured the way it is is because we didn't want to, I say we, I wasn't around at the time for Act 56, but one of the reasons I understand it was structured in this manner was because you didn't wanna have an employee discipline that is less than termination than resulting in the council taking action on decertification. So you have an employee who is still employed but decertified by their public employer. And this was the balance essentially that was struck at that time to define what could result in decertification. And our proposal here from our commissioner is that if we're going to essentially crack open Act 56, that is fine if that is the wish of the committee or stakeholders or both, but she recommends that we do so in a systematic fashion so that we're not creating unintentionally some imbalance at the employer discipline level that is gonna take some time to catch up to whatever changes that we make through professional regulation. So that's the gist of it. The bottom line is that it's a broader conversation from our perspective to be adjusting the framework for professional regulation because it happens to be intertwined with the employer authority to discipline their employees at that level. So I'm not sure if that answers your first question or not but that is the broader concern. So we're running short on time. So I do want to just say we are definitely going to come back to this later in this week. I don't know exactly when the current moment. I'll figure that out after we break but I did just want to ask before Mr. Jones leaves and then I saw your hand up representative Nijin so I won't forget about you. I'm just looking at what I'm listening to the testimony from Chair Sorrell and thinking about different ways that we've tied the criminal justice council hands. I really want to respect Act 56 and the concerns we've heard about off-duty conduct but when you just look at the enumerated things that are category B conduct, sexual harassment involving physical contact or misuse of position, misuse of official position for personal or economic gain, excessive use of force, biased enforcement, use of electronic criminal records database with personal, political or economic gain, placing a person in a chokehold, failing to intervene and report to a supervisor when the officer observes another officer placing a person in a chokehold or excessive force. My original question is one I would really love folks to answer, which is if a law enforcement officer does any of those things, whether they're on or off duty and there's a complaint and then it's heard and then the officer has the opportunity to appeal whatever decision the criminal justice council makes. Why, what is the concern? What is the bad result that we're looking to prevent? These are some pretty serious behaviors that we're talking about here in category B. So I guess I don't know, Mr. Jones, if you're prepared to answer that level of a question right now, but I just look at these things and I just think giving the criminal justice council the ability to take a look at these behaviors if they're committed, whether they're on or off duty might be worth considering for this committee. And for purposes of today, Mr. Chair, what I can add is that those examples that you just enumerated from A through G, they are all contemplated to be on duty or under authority of the state in the current definition of category B. And so this is the subsection H was the first one, essentially that we're adding here that were specifically contemplated under the statutory scheme at least to now include off duty behavior whether it's under authority of the state or not. So if you look through A through G, for example, all of those were contemplated to be on duty or under authority of the state in some capacity. Okay. And none of that, none of that precludes the employer from disciplining their employee up to termination for a variety of off duty conduct that Chief Burke referenced in passing in his testimony. Okay, representative Nugent, you have a question? Kind of just wondering if I'm thinking about this the way or understanding what you're saying, which is it feels like a Venn diagram to me a little bit. I don't know, is that accurate? Like where this is placed is not necessarily gonna affect the outcome happened to the officer, but it will affect how efficiently it gets handled. In terms of the placement of the phrase off duty? Yeah, because it sounds like you're saying the conduct itself agreed that that needs to be something that, I guess that's part of my question. So right now the conduct can be dealt with at the local level, I guess that's part of my question. Is it possible that it can't be dealt with at the CJC level or can it? So certain off duty conduct now would be actionable by the employer, whether it's on duty or off duty. And one of the examples that Chief Burke gave is unbecoming conduct. And it could result in disciplinary action by an employer up to termination. The category B conduct is currently written as specific to on duty or under authority of the state. And there is broad consensus that as it relates to abusing a family or household member that it should be specifically drawn out. In this case, we're proposing in subsection H itself to include on duty, off duty or under authority of the state in that subsection is just the proposal here. But the effect for abusing a family or household member would be the same, which is that first offense, it doesn't matter whether it happens on or off duty, it would be actionable by the council for a first offense. I'm not sure if that answers your question. So I think we've got a little bit of work to do here to suss out whether this off duty piece is gonna be in the specific to this new H offense for, and I just don't think that's a question we're gonna answer this afternoon, but hopefully this week. I really appreciate the candor of your testimony. A little bit concerned, I just gotta say on this particular issue, I would have thought it would have been easier to come to consensus with this particular piece of legislation. And I think we've got a little bit more work to do before we're at the finish line with it. We had one more bill that I hope will be very simple for the committee to address. I'd like us to, if there's a couple of burning questions, we can do that, and then I wanna pick this back up in a day or two, I'll present it to the board. I think, aside from the head explosive across the aisle from me, the terms that we're using seem to be the crying for the subject matter expert to arrive from someplace. Once you take the oath, I don't know if you're ever really off duty. You always have the ability, the obligation to step forward. Friend over my shoulder there might be able to lend some color to that, but it seems like we're not talking about once you're employed, you have a certain level of expectation and on duty or off duty doesn't really cloud it that much. Take note. I mean, it sounds like a morality clause that's common in some aspects. Employment in other sectors. Yeah. Senator Pickley. Just to add to the confusion, I think it's important and maybe what Mr. Jones is trying to describe is what the initial intent is or was of A through G. And we are looking to change that and that is, again, that's what I'm hearing is under the category B, those A through G but that differently were looked like before when it was created. And now I'm further to put in a provision that it's on and off in the actual wording or description of category Bs. That's where the concern lies. If I hear Mr. Jones correctly. That is correct. And it may be that there is broad areas of consensus within this, these two topics really of order and off duty conduct and first defense better defining what it is, the conduct that we're trying to get at here. What the department's recommendation is, is to essentially decouple the specific DV considerations that there is broad consensus about from this broader conversation that implicates broader policy interests relating to the scope of authority for council sanctions. And when it comes to the scope of authority for council sanctions, the recommendation that we have is that we study this matter in a systematic way that addresses all of the concerns that we are hearing from witnesses and from the committee that takes into account how this structure was originally contemplated when it was passed and under act 56. That's the proposal. It's not to say that there is necessarily broad disagreement about that but rather to make sure we're doing it in a thoughtful and systematic way as opposed to tacking it on to this DV specific bill. So I think we're gonna dig into this a little bit more over the next couple of days and come back to it. Really appreciate Mr. Jones, you bringing the department's perspective on this. I don't, I think we're pretty far away from consensus on which direction to head in on the specific area of disagreement. So we'll put a pin in it for today. I wanna give the committee five minutes just to take a deep breath and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna take up what I think is a very simple bill that we can act on in the next day or two but we'll get an introduction and then a little tea up of H178. Welcome back to what has to be the seventh, eighth, ninth YouTube video probably if you're watching at home for the House Government Operations Military Affairs Committee here is after four on Tuesday, March 14th and we are going to do something completely different. We're gonna take up what I hope is a short little bill H178 and I'd like to first invite Tim Devlin from Legislative Council to just tell us what's on the page. Thank you for having me, Mr. Chair. For the record, my name is Tim Devlin, Legislative Council. Before you, you have H178, a bill that relates to professions and occupations, notary public exemptions. This purpose of this bill is introduced is really to add persons employed by the Vermont Department of Corrections to the list of persons who can be commissioned as notaries public, perform the editorial acts within the scope of their official duties and exempt those people from all regular requirements for notaries public. You'll see just quickly going through the bill, there's really only two amendments. First appears on the bottom of page three which adds the Department of Corrections to an already enumerated list of other departments that are exempt and then also some de-gendering amendments for at the top of page three, changing he or she to the person. And I believe that is it. The date is to be effective upon passage. I'm happy to do a line by line read through if you'd like. I don't think that'll be necessary at this point. I think what we'll do for expediency is to, and since we're running late and appreciating these patients, is it invite Commissioner Demmel to come up and talk to us a little bit, to this up and if we have more questions, we'll bring you back. Thanks, Tim. Commissioner, let's take the hot seat. Thank you all for this today. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. So tell us a little bit about the context for YH178 and what the department's position is. Sure. So thank you again. My name's Nick Demmel and I'm Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections. Heard your last testimony. That sounded a bit complicated. So hopefully we keep this very simple and straightforward for you. The law outlines a number of exemptions for notaries who are performing their duties, largely as state employees or as local law enforcement. And I think simply there was an oversight at the time that didn't include the Department of Corrections, which is ultimately the state's largest justice organ with nearly 1,000 staff. We have just over 1,300 incarcerated individuals in the state this morning and well over 3,000 individuals on community supervision who are managed by our 12 probation and parole officers which are geographically dispersed around the state. Many of the individuals that are served by our system are justice involved. Well, all of them are justice involved involved in many other aspects of our justice system which necessitate official documents, court paperwork and a slew of other notary needs. So the department frequently relies on our staff as notaries both at the central office in each of our six prisons and in all 12 of our district offices. And so this would really alleviate a large burden on the need to take the continuing learning requirements to pay fees, to maintain those certifications. And particularly at a time when we have a robust staffing problem, it's difficult for our staff to peel away that many of our staff are doing multiple duties in addition to their assigned duties. And so if we can keep the burdens of this work as minimal as possible, I think that'd be certainly a positive outcome for our system and for the folks that we're serving. But if there's specific questions, I'd be happy to dig into any piece of this and I'll pause there. So the idea here is that there are already law enforcement agencies, fish and wildlife motor vehicles where persons employed as officers are just automatically able to be notaries by virtue of their employment there. So yeah, so they become a notary and then there's requirements of non-official notaries, not state government notaries that they have to go through additional training on an annual basis pay fees. Those are exempted for state employees who fit under this criteria. So we're simply asking DOC to be included in that list. So I think up here, you're right, if I'm not, I apologize if I missed it, but so you're looking to get like your pro officers, COs, those kind of folks able to facilitate staff for the 1,300 and 3,000 respectively audience of inmates and some level outside supervision. Yeah, I think the folks who would probably most take advantage of this offering are caseworkers who are preparing people for release from the prison into the community because they prepare a lot of documentation for those individuals, probation parole officers as you highlighted, administrative staff in our business office or the business offices or our 12 district offices. Those are the key demand signals I can see from our staff needing this opportunity. But the COs know then. Probably not. I just didn't know because of your direct interface, okay, I can memorize that document you've got to get to, but no. Probably not. I got it, that makes sense, based on what you just said, thank you. Representative. Hey, so you just, through administrative people, like people that are working in an office that aren't fully in law enforcement capacity. So there's no law enforcement capacity in the Department of Corrections. The, in the state of Vermont. Well, the P&P people have some degree of. Yes, that's right. So there is limited arrest powers of probation and parole officers for individuals under their supervision. That's right. But the law enforcement powers of the state do not extend to the Department of Corrections. That's the way I was reading this originally, that it was specifically to, then DCF doesn't either, so. Right. And that was, we were trying to understand why the department wasn't included in the first place. And law enforcement, we could understand, sometimes there is a misconception that the Department of Corrections is a law enforcement agency. But then we saw our sister agency and the agency Human Services and the Department of Children and Families. Further confused and perplexed why we were not included. Any other questions for the commission? All right. Anything else you wanna tell us about this? That's all. All right, thank you very much. Thank you for sticking around. I have Deputy Secretary Hibbert for feedback from OPR and the Secretary of State's office. Thanks for being with us again. Thank you. Nice to be here. You're looking at my phone just because that's why I have a draft of the bill. So I apologize for that. For the record, Law and Hibbert Deputy Secretary of State, it's okay, I'm good. He was offering his computer, which was very kind offer. Thank you for having me here today. So there's the history of the exemptions, which is for law enforcement as a broad category. And then employees, if you look at the bill, if you look at page two, section B, it's law enforcement related. Persons employed as law enforcement officers who are certified under 20 BSA chapter 151, who are non-certified constables, semicolon, we love those semicolons, or who are employed by a Vermont law enforcement agency, the Department of Public Safety, Fish and Wildlife, Motor Vehicles, liquor and lottery, addition of corrections here, children and families, defend the enumerated list. So when notaries transferred to the Office of Professional Regulation, we talked a lot about the different exemptions and who should be registered under our office. We looked at what the functions were of every department and who really needed to be notarizing. And let me just say from a broad stroke, we have no objection to the inclusion of this. The only piece that I remember from the conversation was we looked at what Department of Corrections was actually using notarization for and made an assessment that they could use notaries far fewer than they are on their current forms. But this does, this exception is fine. The only thing that we have been working with state agencies is just to look at when they're requiring forms to be notarized and when they're not. And it may be in released situations that certain things need to be notarized in order for the process to work smoothly. But if it is a standard form by an official state employee from our perspective, if it doesn't need to be notarized, it's really a third-party document that needs to be notarized. I think sometimes we run into situations where there's a miscommunication or misalignment of when something needs to be notarized. And we are happy to continue that conversation with the Department of Corrections to make sure that the notarizations are happening because they're required, that there's not an additional burden on the corrections team, but on whole no objection to this inclusion of the exemptions. And the guidance that we provide is people need to put their title and their full title and their name on the notarization so that it's trackable. And the limitation on this is if you are providing notary services in your official capacity, you are prohibited from providing notarial acts in any other time in your life. You could only do it when you're acting in your official capacity, but then if you want to notarize for a friend on a weekend, you need to become a notary. Just to be clear, it's just in your official capacity in your job. And that's why we believe, and our guidance is that you should put your full name and your full title on the document with the notarization. All right, that is important. I'm hailing it. Just one question. So these folks are not required to even keep a log? They're not required to keep a log. They're not on our website. They're just doing it under their official title. So 180 people hanging around here that got that authority would only be able to do that authority and it matters. Yes, but I would fight you on that exception. I'm just kidding. I said I would fight you on that exception. It would seem like some self-dealing. I don't think you're the last person to threaten to fight one of us. Sorry, that wasn't a real threat. Just for the record, it wasn't a real threat. Seriously, we're punchy here. I am too, I'm sorry. First and foremost. Thank you, I have a quick question. Would there be a downside to something being notarized if it didn't need to be? I think the notarization process is cumbersome. That is the downside. And it is a little bit of confusion. It creates confusion around authentically necessary documents that need to be notarized. So it creates some gray space of does this need to be notarized or not. And so we are trying to work with our state partners to make sure that there is clarification on what types of forms documents need to be notarized versus which ones do not because it's complicated. Would you say no problem with corrections being on this list and how those folks do this? But in addition, we also could probably save them some time and energy by taking a look at the documents that they're currently notarizing. It's just an offer. And I just met the commissioner as you all saw, I just shook his hand and introduced myself. So it's a conversation that can continue and I'm just gonna make sure that we can do that. But I don't think that needs to be added to this bill. I don't think there's any barrier to this bill moving as then it's a good exception. So committee, any other questions for Deputy Secretary Hibbert? So here's where my brain is at. It is almost 4.30. We had a pretty intense conversation this afternoon about our previous bill. Tomorrow afternoon, I am told that floor is not going to be super long. That promise has been broken in the past, but I'm being optimistic here. What I would like us to do, especially since Representative Merwicky had to leave for another meeting, is I would like to take a look at this overnight. If anybody has any questions, great. But if not, we could vote this out toward the end of the day tomorrow. Unless there's any objection to that. I'm straight forward. So that's the plan, so everybody knows. We have done a lot of good work and had some good discussions today. We'll see, I think I was hearing some chatter about our previous bill that we may be able to see some language to help clarify and reduce confusion in an upcoming draft. So maybe we'll take that up on Thursday, but we'll come back to 178 tomorrow afternoon after we are done our work on H270 for the day. I think that that is it for our work today. Deputy Secretary Huber, thank you so much for being with us. It was my pleasure, thank you. So any questions just about the agenda? Anything that I should be aware of? We're doing a lot this week. Get sleep, drive very safely if you're driving anywhere like me. You too. All right. Thanks so much everybody for the hard work today.