 doing all of this in the spirit of being true public servants thank you to these health care heroes and those public health safety and human services workers around them while these grants demonstrate our support for those on the front lines I want to remind everyone the best way to support these workers is to continue to slow the spread of this virus our numbers continue to look good in Vermont but we must stay vigilant to keep it that way because as I've said before we need to continue fighting this virus until a vaccine has been developed and distributed which is in all reality several months away so it's up to each of us to protect the gains we've made it only takes a few simple steps to make a difference keep at least six feet apart whenever possible wear a mask in public places wash your hands a lot and stay home when sick taking personal responsibility is the best way to keep this in check protect our health care system save lives and win the war against this invisible enemy thank you again for all your help in this fight and I'll now turn it over to secretary smith to provide more details on the hazard pay program secretary smith thank you governor the agency of human services is pleased to announce that the online application for the front line employees hazardous pay grant program is now open open at 9 a.m. this morning and as of 9 15 we've had we have 130 applications in progress as the governor mentioned this is a first come first serve program so those that are eligible we urge to apply as quick as possible the program was established by act 136 of the 2020 legislature to pay eligible employees who work during the cobit 19 public health emergency from March 13th to May 15th of this year a total of 28 million dollars was appropriated to the agency of human services to provide the grants which will be available like I said on a first come first serve basis the application is for covered employers to apply for the program and then pass the amounts on to their eligible employees who work for them during the defined period there's been a lot of public discussion about hazardous pay for employees during the cobit 19 pandemic while there have been many employees throughout the state of Vermont who did amazing work during this crisis this program is for specific employers and employees as defined by the authorizing legislation as you may recall previous discussions about hazardous pay included references to other employees including grocery store workers cleaning or janitorial services and trash collectors however as outlined in the authorizing legislation this program is focused on public health human services and public safety employers who were open and operating during the emergency response period so what types of employers should apply to this program we encourage all employers in the public health human services and public safety fields to visit our website to learn if they are a covered employer specifically the legislation defines the following types of employers as eligible to apply assisted living residences nursing homes residential care homes therapeutic community residents health care facilities or physicians offices a dentist's office or dental facility homeless shelter a home health agency therapy therapy provider contracted by a home health agency or nursing home federal qualified health center rural health centers rural health clinics or clinics for the uninsured residential treatment program licensed by the department of children and families ambulance service or first responder service morgues provider of necessary and services to vulnerable or disadvantaged populations once an employer determines they meet the requirements and should apply and they will then need to determine which of their employees are eligible to receive the pay eligible employees must have been working in a job with an elevated risk of exposure during COVID-19 during the emergency period this job must have been in person and not done through telework except for home health agencies and nursing homes which have no cap eligible employees are those who earn a base hourly wage of 24 excuse me $25 or less eligible employees who work at least 216 hours in jobs with an elevated risk of exposure to COVID-19 are eligible to receive $2,000 in hazard hazard pay those eligible employees who worked at least 68 hours but less than 216 hours are eligible to receive $1,200 in hazard pay we are encouraging employers to apply to make sure these critically important employees receive recognition and the compensation to reflect the work they did keeping Vermonters safe during the crisis you can find a link to the online application on the agency of human services website and the governor had mentioned it i'll just repeat it one more time human services one word dot vermont dot gov human services dot vermont dot gov with that i'd like to turn the podium over to dr levine for an update hi i'll begin with a quick update on our current data i didn't really bring any slides today because there have been minimal new cases over the course of the last number of days five cases or less our website as of last night reflects 1427 total cases one person hospitalized no change in the 57 deaths there's really no substantial changes in any of the epidemiologic metrics that we follow on a daily basis it's noteworthy that in less than two weeks we will have tested 100 000 people since the onset of the pandemic many of the outbreaks and i should say most of the outbreaks that the public health team has been following are winding down with the newest one being the inmates that have returned from mississippi knock on wood we are not seeing a lot of new outbreaks in the state of vermont at this time i did want to address a new piece of literature that's come out that many vermonters are commenting on writers are writing about and frankly there are emails flooding my inbox it'd be an understatement to say that school reopening continues to be a topic of major interest i'm not going to repeat today all of the reasons that the medical and the public health community believe it's the right time for vermont to reopen its schools since we've spent so many press conferences discussing that issue and even bringing guests to the podium frequently but i would like to discuss the fact that information in this pandemic continues to evolve quite rapidly and that includes the medical literature and publication turnaround times can be briefer than ever before in recognition of the need to get information out as quickly as possible but keep in mind scientific information must be vetted appropriately and one cannot just cherry pick studies to fit the occasion or favor a point of view there was a research letter published in jamma pediatrics last week that is the focus of many people's attention now we call that previously we have stated repetitively the wealth of literature showing children are less likely to get infected less likely to have severe illness and less likely to transmit virus to others in this very brief research report in the form of a letter the investigators suggest that children under the age of five with mild to moderate symptoms of covid-19 had high amounts of the viral RNA the nucleic acid of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in their nose compared with older children and adults in a sample of 145 patients distributed among young older children and adults we don't know a lot about these patients in terms of race sex duration of symptoms how many were minimally symptomatic or any underlying conditions the investigators use this term cyclic threshold or CT value which we've discussed here previously but it's an indicator for the amount of virus present what does this mean this looks at the amount of RNA not live virus itself and we don't know if the virus that they detected is actually virus that could infect someone so it's hard to know what to conclude from this study certainly one can conclude that children can become infected with the virus which we've known and that they might possibly spread the virus if they harbor a lot of it but we have to balance that consideration with the fact that observational studies worldwide discussed here previously indicate children don't spread the virus very efficiently I caution everyone that this report is very preliminary it needs to be further replicated in the scientific community and it cannot by itself lead us to premature conclusions or to reversing our prior conclusions and I would again reiterate two things the time is right for Vermont to reopen its schools taking note of the numbers of new cases we see and the positivity rate of our testing and secondly schools are a microcosm of our communities so teachers and parents and staff all reflect that community and through their behaviors in general so in general adhering to the same guidance that we always give and the governor just provided can impact the environment that our children find themselves in and make it the truly favorable environment that our communities are reflecting now I'll pass it back to the government thank you Dr. Levine before we turn it over to questions as if we didn't have enough on our plate we do have another tropical storm hitting our way Ezias and so I thought I'd have Commissioner Sherling give us an update on what we might expect Mr. Sherling a brief update from the emergency operations center who's in close contact with the national weather service tracking that tropical storm as it moves toward our area anticipated to arrive this afternoon and last through early tomorrow morning the storm is tracked further west than originally anticipated which will bring increased rainfall in the area of the Champlain Valley and over in New York it's moving pretty swiftly we anticipate as a result of that westward track that there'll be an increase in wind component to southern Vermont eastern Vermont in particular at Dennington Wyndham County is based on the current track there's a flash blood watch in effect and a high wing warning in effect among the most important messages for Vermonters is to keep an eye on streams and rivers especially if you're in a low lying area don't traverse water be cautious around dirt roads and culverts relative to the wind to ensure that you take in any items that that may be moved around by wind gusts that may come up into the 50 mile an hour range in terms of preparation the emergency operation center will be active with a number of assets beginning uh late this afternoon uh we're in close coordination with our urban search and rescue and swift water teams and in close contact with local emergency managers around the plot uh and updates will be sent out as more information on the conditions continue to evolve. Thank you Commissioner Shirley we'll now open up for questions. Thank you Governor so I guess I just start off what is your message to front line workers in grocery stores and gas stations that feel that they are entitled to this money as well especially also how we never really saw a big jump in COVID cases in our hospital yet frontline grocery store workers and around with thousands of people today. Yeah well we're very fortunate here in Vermont obviously the steps we took were conducive to a low positivity rate and low you know number of cases that we've seen and we enjoy that at this point in time. We there was a proposal in the legislature to do just that and include a number of different areas different sectors for hazard pay unfortunately the the guidelines that we received through the CARES Act wouldn't allow for that it's only for health care workers so it prevented us from utilizing that funding source to do that. So again we're very fortunate we're thankful for them going to work every day in those conditions those on the front lines they were on the front lines as well in the grocery stores and otherwise and and we see that throughout Vermont as many thousands of people have gone back to work in different different areas but again they're putting themselves at risk and but I will say that they've been paying attention you know wearing a mask has been a high compliance of wearing a mask even before it was mandatory staying six feet apart staying home with six keeping keeping apart whenever you can at least at six feet and don't get into into situations where you could contract the disease so again we thank them for their efforts it just wasn't allowable under the conditions of the the federal CARES Act. And just a quick follow-up to why even offer hazard pay if these frontline medical workers they never stopped working they've been receiving checks all along but yet we still have thousands of remontries who are unemployed and recently just lost six hundred dollars so why why not give some of this money to them yeah well again this was a legislative proposal that they had initiated to begin with it went from I think it was somewhere around 80 million as I remember to begin with and then pared down from there so and then went down as low as 20 million after some of the guidelines were put into place but that's that might be a better question for the legislature cross thank you governor my question is regarding the new outbreak of cases at or civic down in Mississippi I'm curious if you feel that enough was done to prevent outbreaks in that facility and if you maybe speak to what the state's doing now to make sure that more is being done to address the situation that's important yeah obviously not enough because we it's a major outbreak in that facility Mississippi is experiencing a high a number of cases and and so they're right in that sunbelt along with many other states in that region in hindsight you know I should have seen this coming in some respects but we were relying on core civic to do the testing they were testing with symptomatic cases and not and not throughout now we we took a different course we had our outbreak here in Vermont and so we took a different different approach different track and and implemented a testing program here but with our contractual relationship they had assured us that they were taking care of things there but again not to the Vermont standards that we're experiencing now so we've we've implemented I'm going to ask Secretary Smith to elaborate on this because it's important for people to understand the steps we've taken since then but but again in in hindsight we should have should have seen this coming thanks for the question just so everybody knows core core civic is a private company that houses about 219 uh Vermont inmates in Mississippi primarily because we don't have the space for them here in our Vermont facilities core civic has been following the Mississippi state health guidelines for testing by only testing as the governor had mentioned only symptomatic individuals just to compare the Vermont Department of Corrections regularly tests all staff and inmates those with or without symptoms they also test every single new intake to the system on days zero seven and twelve the core civic Mississippi protocols may work in sort of a low virus spread environment but as you can as you all know Mississippi has seen much greater virus spread in recent weeks and tactics needed to change and the core civic protocols needed to simulate Vermont's the uptick to in more to more enhanced procedures was slow to contain that outbreak we are now insisting that Vermont protocols be put in place by core civic in Mississippi those include testing the entire population and not just those showing signs of the virus and that includes regular testing of the population in a rotating basis like we do here in Vermont in Vermont we have a rotating basis where we test one facility a week we want core core civic to be in that rotation so that you know once every it would be five or six weeks we would be testing that whole facility we we want a procedure and that has been started now we've where were there test where they tested the entire population we don't have all the results back yet we want them to isolate those that test positive from those that test negative that has begun we want them to test correctional officers and staff in the Vermont section of the prison my understanding is that has begun we want periodic testing of negative population purse the Vermont schedule as I had mentioned we want regular entire population wide testing like I had mentioned and plus we want the essentials of medic medical care sanitation and other particulars of the Vermont model instituted that said I just want to caution for here for Vermont or in in any other facility that we may have this is a worldwide pandemic that's wreaked havoc in the northeast and before turning to the south and west without a vaccine we're going to see occasional outbreaks the goal is to minimize the impact of the outbreaks when they occur in Mississippi that didn't happen in in the core civic prison so as the governor said I think the contractor was slow to implement the Vermont protocols to contain the outbreak especially in light of the spread of the virus in Mississippi and we needed to be better on top of that as as the Mississippi situation changed you know we have approximately 1400 inmates in our custody today of those approximately 1200 or 86 percent are under the more strict Vermont protocol and Mississippi with its 200 approximately 219 Vermont inmates or approximately 14 percent of all inmates they need to come under the Vermont protocols and and we need to right now we need to really focus our attention on this outbreak and contain it and dissect what we need to do better as we go forward so um is that enough update yeah we're we're looking we've done the initial test and then we're going to do the protocol testing the seven the 13 days so far we have not heard of any sort of restrictions on test supplies and we're working on labs now to get quicker turnaround than what we're getting right here with the initial so we'll continue as you know Vermont has a very robust testing program other states may or may not other private entities may or may not but we're going to institute a fairly robust testing program in that facility actually if you want to stay there's several thousand miles away from this facility to the year of the stake and oversight wise how are we sure that this is actually being done and you're not just taking care of it yeah that that's a very good question Steve obviously we have people on the phone every day with them those meetings have been almost 24 seven now making sure that we stay on top of what's going that on down there we may put boots on the ground there you know that's an option that we may have to do if we feel that it's necessary I think where our concentration right now is making sure the medical resources are what needs to be really implemented as as we move down the road here so we're looking at all options in terms of what's going on but the first option right now is making sure that we get people segregated that are positive and negative make sure we continue to test the negative people to keep monitoring make sure the guards are tested as we're moving forward and I guess this kind of points out what many critics have said that you know this is a business for those folks and it's treated differently say from how we do things here in the state with our state facilities is it time now to start looking hard at perhaps building an in-state facility I think as the governor mentioned Tuesday what day are we uh last Friday it's been a it's been a long weekend but as the governor mentioned on Friday you know this administration has proposed a new facility and I think it's high time that we start thinking about that so that we don't have to rely on out-of-state facilities this state has relied on out-of-state facilities for a long long time and maybe this is the call where we start building facilities where we can house Vermont prisoners in one because if you look at Vermont I mean our I want to put this in context our testing our tracing our quarantine our sanitation programs in our Vermont based correctional facilities are some of the best in the country right now and and and actually we've had some inquiries from international people about our protocols we have coronavirus protocols there are more robust and comprehensive than most if not every state in the union so to answer your question yes I'd like to see a facility here in Vermont as a Hs secretary I would like to see that so that we can make sure there's uniformity among all our prisoners in terms of the robustness of a program that we have. If I could just before Mike asks his question I just would like to say you know we did make this proposal to the legislature to build a new facility and and it was not well received by them or many others throughout the state so I do think it's time for us to revisit that and and because we we know our facilities our infrastructure is outdated and needs to be upgraded and we need to bring our offenders back to Vermont and have them under one roof we are the gold standard I I would say in speaking with other governors I don't know of any many others if any who have come forward to to tell us about their experience what they're doing in their prison populations that is even close to what we're doing here in Vermont thank you thank you governor thanks because that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you about the hospitalization facility but uh but since the mandatory math order there are still people going into hardware stores convenience stores without math and we're hearing some towns still have not seen those the facial safety masks that the state was sending out last Friday just wondering when all the towns actually see these maps so they can distribute them to their people I know there were 200,000 they were going out in different ways whether it was through some of the community action centers whether it was a few food distribution sites whether it was through the towns and so forth so it's going to take a little time to get them out I again I would say we're not unique in in talking with other governors throughout the country who have mandatory masks as well as we do they're experiencing the same thing that they they can't get compliance to that last whatever percent regardless of the enforcement measures that they put into place it just hasn't helped so there there's a certain sector that is resistant to this I get it but but if they really want to help and want to do their part they should they should put a mask on it's an easy thing to do to help others but we're working we're working at trying to distribute the masks I know that there's been even in some of the businesses I've seen where or heard where they've had masks there given to their patrons they may charge for them or they may just give them to them but I would advocate anywhere we can to help on another route and if it's a business maybe they would consider providing the mask or or at least having them available for someone to purchase well okay I my understanding last week was that a lot of the fire departments rescue squads were going to be the primary point on a lot of these that's sort of their daily way to ultimate safety so but these fire departments are not in the scene again yeah I don't I thought it was I I'll get that you know to determine how that was being how they were being delivered but it was my understanding that fire departments will one segment of that that there are a number of other ways to get those out but let me get that for you or so that we can get it make sure that we're accurate on that sure and last thing what is the uh pot to the program we trained for it and what is the accountability for this program to actually see whether 200,000 masks are actually going somewhere or whether they're sitting on a shelf at a community action place or you know fire station or whatever yeah you mean the accountability part these were all donated donated masks to the state that I'm aware of a cloth mask and and hopefully that the community action centers the fire departments the food centers and so forth we'll see again the need to get these out if they have extra masks they're not able to distribute them we we'd like to know that so that we can get them to the areas of need so we'll have to pay attention to that but I'm not sure about the accountability part either and whether who's keeping track of that commissioner shirling are you aware of anything while I get you on yes governor the communication went out via the emergency operations centers municipalities and first responders late last week at the same time it was announced at the press conference so we're now taking in the request for masks they're not going to be randomly distributed they're going to places that are requesting them so the plan is for next week for those to be delivered to the municipalities and first responders that have requested them in terms of accountability we can ask for an account of how many have been distributed to the folks that received them after next week so commissioner shirling if somebody wanted to reach out in a fire department wanted to obtain some of these masks they would go to the seo c correct there there is an online form I believe but for first responders and municipalities they all have a point of contact through the sdoc so they can contact uh beyond duty sdoc folks as well thank you both very much thank you thank you Mike Lisa the ap Lisa rocky ap hi can you hear me again oh hi thank you um this is a question for secretary smith um has the corrections department department gotten back the results of those those pending tests from me in mason in uh Mississippi yeah I let him answer that but I know as of this morning we had not received those back yet they went to a another uh commercial lab in I believe michigan whereas the initial batch went to the state lab in Mississippi and they were good enough to do those run those tests for us but as we're seeing across the country that seems to be problematic in some of the commercial labs the slow response time some are saying you know seven to 14 days I heard I was on a call with the national governor's association yesterday and that was the common complaint was the slow response time with the commercial lab so I think that's the case but I'll let secretary smith answer further Lisa we're hoping that we're going to have lab results today but as of yet I don't have a number on the remaining labs that we're waiting on um I'm hoping that by the end of the day we will um we're just as anxious as you are to get those numbers okay and um when do you want to change the testing protocol for inmates and what exactly is protocol and then when and then why didn't the state require Mississippi to do that at that time knowing that Mississippi was only testing for asymptomatic asymptomatic in case yeah and if you remember before northwest uh we were only testing for symptomatic as well that was our protocols we changed it right after northwest and went into a higher level of of a testing requirement and a robust requirement for that at the time uh symptomatic testing is the and still is by the way is sort of what is recommended in Mississippi through the health department from what I would I understand and had been adopted by core civic as the as I said in my remarks as soon as the virus started to change it in a low virus environment that's probably okay it's not our protocol but it's it probably catches uh the the symptomatic cases that you want in a high virus sort of environment um in and even in a low virus environment you just want to make sure um and uh where we test to everyone on a periodic basis that did not transfer to core civic it should have it should have um the protocol should have been in place like the Vermont protocols so in April we changed our protocols uh core civic is changing their protocols now it should have been sooner so what is what is our protocol now our well there's several there's um it every week or thereabouts we test an entire facility um so yesterday we tested northwest um the facility next week it will be another facility will include the core civic uh facility into that rotation as well so every week we test a a facility the entire facility um that's one protocol um if we have symptomatic patients excuse me inmates excuse me if we have intakes any intakes you come into our facility you are tested at zero seven and twelve days you are quarantined that is an important aspect of keeping the virus out of the facilities if you test uh positive you are you are quarantined uh that's part of our protocol as we move forward there's also a whole set of protocols if we have a major outbreak in terms of sanitation and quarantine units that we can stand up and frankly we have those units now in anticipation that we will have positives that come into our system so that's our protocol okay thank you great the county courier hi governor um i think this question is probably going to be for dr Levine so you probably have to hook here okay uh you got a question about happening and i reached out to Bennett Truman who's unable to get really much of an answer as of as of yet so um i've had a reader who reached out um who was showing signs of covid sore throat fever body ache um this person doesn't have primary care provider doesn't have health insurance called 211 211 refers them to notch which is the local um provider here for federally provided health care um and and they wanted they required this person to be set up as a patient which requires having pocket coughed in order to just get a referral to go get tested um so this reader i i guess long very short they they want to know um is there a way that people can get tested that are showing symptoms that don't have a primary care doctor don't have health insurance but would really like to do the right thing and get tested and get contact tracing underway if it cuts indeed um positive test hi just dr Levine so the key part of the question is the fact that this was a symptomatic patient so like anyone with symptoms of anything we like people to be connected with the health care system if you're going to get a test and rather than then decide themselves what their diagnosis is and what the appropriate workup is they should be connected with the health care system so without commenting further on the federal qualified health center you know they were trying to engage this person it sounds like in health care which i think is really important to be sure that this position worked out the way it needed to um obviously most people who are presenting with symptoms want to be on the fast track to getting the test and getting a result so that they know what they have and what they should be provided with guidance on to do so that is the way this should evolve in that setting and that's why we have it arranged that way that's about really all i can say that that was the appropriate thing and they made the right phone calls ahead of time to try to get further connected and they actually got connected with the right health care provider it sounds like they just didn't want to follow through on the actual pathway that provider wanted them to go through well it's my understanding that the provider actually said that they didn't even have an appointment to become a patient for like the next four or five days anyway but it just seems a little strange you know we've you told it earlier in your introduction that we we've processed a hundred thousand samples but if these samples aren't going out aren't being conducted on making the right people you can do a million tests and if you're not testing right people it's i would think it's a really destructive um and you had mentioned uh question probably two months ago about the cost i asked about um would it cost anyone anything for anyone to get tested that needs to be tested and and you were pretty clear that there will be no cost we want everybody tested especially people that are showing symptoms but the person i talk to is really you know they're in a position where they they can't pay a fee for a for a doctor at this point in their life and they're having to make the choice of do i continue you know without a test in my life or you know or or try to go get an asymptomatic test but my understanding is that that's booked out for a couple weeks um this person is frustrated because they're trying to do the right thing and get tested um what is there a lot of obstacles to doing that yeah i understand that in this case um but again the reality is the person did not feel well and they needed health care and part of the health care was a test possibly but the other part was actually getting health care so i can't really say much more than that you know we do prefer for a symptomatic person to not go through one of the pop-ups because of the fact that they are symptomatic and we need to know that ahead of time and make special arrangements with them so that they're not at risk of infecting anybody else and so the health care system is designed for just this type of person but they need to follow through appropriately so it's safe to say that uh what was mentioned two months ago that that if you want to get tested it won't cost you anything it's really not totally true that that if you are showing symptoms and you want to get tested it is actually going to cost you something especially if you're you don't have insurance it will not cost you for the test that that is all we mentioned is that testing is not going to be charged to the patient but but if if somebody's uninsured and they're showing symptoms they have to go through doctors so they have we have you know we have a lot of resources for people who are uninsured as well uh in the state and there are clinics that have been existing for many years that specifically their role is to provide care for those who are either underinsured or uninsured and they do a great job of that so there are there are other out what steve is all i can tell you all right we're going to move on well i'll i'll let you move on it sounds like this person isn't going to be able to get tested hey great this is mike smith if that person feels comfortable would they contact my office um and we'll um we'll we'll try to sort through what what's going on here how's that sound sure thanks mike shon chester telegraph thanks this is a question for uh secretary french there's a the many schools who won't be able to bring teachers in for planning and training in the week before the september is universal it was ordered by the governor scott because they won't have enough days in their contract to make it through the 175 day year we we understand the aoe is at the legislature for a five-day reduction but they're not going to meet until later in august and there may not be a lot of time for any kind of certainty for the districts to work with would it be possible for a school district to petition the state board of education for a waiver of days under the unanticipated closing clause of the statute or does the fbe have the power to just do it unilaterally at its august 19th meeting uh thanks shon that's a fairly complex question i think um you know just firstly uh we have not put any specific proposal for the secretary that's uh regarding the calendar we have expressed an interest in working with them uh to address some issues so they speak to thanks the calendar is something you know just that the statute is you'll do is something to how we need to be addressed going forward in a very uncertain semester um your question about the waiver though i'm not sure uh the current regulation would allow a waiver at this moment time i think our you know language and that regulation like so much of our regulation never anticipated pandemic can really speak to uh essentially snow days or some other unanticipated diversity that happens in the first half of the year and then leaving a district very limited option in the second half of the year to address the issues um so i don't i don't i'm not fully convinced that the state board would have a forwarding under current regulations if the only issue but it's something certainly again that we're interested in working on i would say um in the messaging the school districts i said you know you should it as much as possible try to anticipate repurposing some of your in-service days for the front of the hierarchy then um with the understanding that uh there will be i think it's fairly broad interest in addressing the calendar issues in the legislature uh going forward but that's school districts very much uh very much time to plan that um it kind of leaves them sort of sitting there waiting until the very last minute would you expect the legislature to be able to get that done before the the five days before the september eight uh opening yeah as i said i haven't put uh we haven't put forward any specific proposal legislature i've had sort of informal conversations with them so it's hard for me to guess at this point as to what extent how quickly they move on the issue i will say districts are working really hard on these plans now so i don't necessarily believe um you know that that beginning part is really the um sort of ultimately necessary to determine our plans i would agree it's really important to have that time to practice implementing some of what's in their plans as you get back in the facility but it's hard at this point to predict i think you know what the legislature would do but once again i think districts do have some flexibility in their current calendars to redeploy day towards the front of the earth they chose to do thank you very much hey uh well we're i want to go back to the question from greg uh greg if you're still on if you could have the person you were talking about contact our office eight two eight three three three three uh we'll make sure they get a test without any out-of-pocket toss colon bt digger good morning almost afternoon um i had a few questions for general scott about uh the prison i know it's been or the outbreak in mississippi i know it's been touched on a number of times but i still had a few questions um when the administration signed a contract with court civic uh it was coming in the wake of uh camp hill and some frustration there uh and having to follow pennsylvania's rules and explicitly uh it's that court civic would be a different situation and that uh vermont could include adherence to our own laws rules and policies as part of the agreement um so i'm wondering why court civic did not automatically follow vermont policies or why vermont's it must but not request that court civic follows his policies around that that thing yeah well again uh this was of late we're in the middle of the pandemic uh we should have uh adhered to that and uh made sure that they did this it's it's tough to convince another state that they're not doing things to our standard uh in terms of uh of the protocol not just with the correctional facilities but others as well and so uh it's much easier after the fact obviously uh for them to see the need and uh and to see the viability and doing it the way we had uh had approached this so again uh looking back we should have uh we should have pressed harder on them to do this but um it was just the uh shortcoming on our part can you clarify when uh vermont first made a request to have court civic follow the same testing protocol i i don't know um calling we can find out but i i just don't know i don't know if there was a formal request made i i just don't know have that information because i heard secretary smith earlier that the contractor was close to implement the vermont protocols to contain the outbreak and if indeed vermont did not ask them to follow the protocol is it fair to say that they were close secretary smith calling you answered your own question when you said the contractor shall follow all vermont rules regulations those sort of things um and that clearly didn't happen in this case when they were contacted in terms of protocols i don't have a date on that um we'll get to commissioner baker to get back to you on that in terms of slow but slow to me means that we they weren't following what we were following and i also if you if you um follow along with me i said as the contractor was slow to implement the vermont protocol protocols the outbreak and especially as the spread of the virus in mississippi started to accelerate we needed to do a better job to stay on top of that and we did not and that's what the governor is talking about with respect to the secretary smith be the core civic keeps an eye on every state and uh government body that it has a contract with and makes sure to proactively change its own laws as opposed to acting on requests from those people on the other side of the contract i think it's both to be honest with you i i think and i i think i'm acknowledging that it's both if you're a contractor and you you have a contract that says you're going to abide by the rules regulations of that certain entity then yeah i do expect that i at the same time i also expect expect the department of correction to make sure they are following those rules governor scott on may 8th uh there was news out of arizona 400 prisoners tested positive at a core civic facility in arizona on may 16th 1300 out of 2500 in may said a core civic facility and kind of see that's a positive uh why didn't your administration see this coming and what does accountability look like uh in terms of that um who should have seen it sooner who should have asked it uh and what are the consequences for the failure to do that colin i think uh i think i've admitted two or three times already secretary smith did as well that we should have pushed forward on this should have seen this coming i don't know how to be any more clear than that i wasn't aware of the dates i didn't happen to read it in any of your stories on vermont digger but but if i but if you did i missed it so i wasn't aware that they had the outbreaks in arizona or tennessee in those facilities but i do know that that most of the other states have not adhered to the same standard that we have in terms of our prison population we learned the hard way when we had the first outbreak of i think it was 38 offenders and then we took steps to rectify that and it's not just testing the offender population obviously there has to be a port of entry there has to be an intake so you have to test staff members as well so it gets a little bit more complicated than just testing the offender population we had assumed their protocols were working there weren't any cases being reported to us of any outbreak or any positive cases in mississippi so we assumed that what they were doing was working for them but obviously when the six came to vermont and we tested them as per our protocol for new intakes coming into the state we found there was a problem and then we went further again should we have seen it sooner we should have sure coming on our part admittedly but but at this point i think the main goal is to get back on the right track and and i think other offender populations prisons should take notice that this is happening and and they need to do a better job maybe do it the vermont way different top secretary said thanks for your time and secretary Smith if you could have both follow up with details about when vermont requested i really appreciate that thank you call steve any tv um hello can you hear me ken thank you one for the doctor and one for the governor if i may um dr lobine i had this question from a viewer and bear with me because he walked me through this and it it's it's different okay the coronavirus is a family of seven types of uh coronaviruses with uh saris cov2 being the virus responsible for covid-19 and um there are seven different the seven different viruses are id and um you know the stars uh cov2 murals uh 2290 and goes on and on and then we have the flu shots for uh brisbane kansas colorado bouquet etc i guess basically what this person was asking me is the tests that we're testing are they specifically for covid-19 or do they include um any of the six other uh types of coronaviruses yeah that that question actually isn't that complicated so the only thing in your list of coronaviruses that you didn't mention is that there are many benign non-pandemic causing coronaviruses that all of us in this country have been in contact with since we grew up so the phenomenon you're referring to is cross reactivity of an assay so it would react and say the test is positive and you would wonder is it truly positive against saris cov2 or is it picking up another coronavirus in the same family so when these things go through um their um validation testing uh they carefully look at this whole phenomenon of cross reactivity and that's where the the term specificity comes in of the test because a very specific test is only going to be positive for this particular coronavirus and it's not going to be a false positive making you think the person has covid-19 but they actually are infected with another coronavirus so the higher the specificity the more likelihood that the test is not mistaking another coronavirus for the saris cov2 so we feel pretty comfortable that the majority of tests are actually detecting saris cov2 which is the cause of covid-19 great thank you i say i hope that clears that up for this person thanks a lot and governor you mentioned that you considered uh building a a new prison here in vermont but you're getting a lot of pushback from the legislature uh did i hear that correctly yes yeah that was um i think two years ago we made the proposal and it was rejected okay would a new facility like cancel out any of the existing facilities or would it be in addition to no facilities we have it would be a replacement of some of the facilities we had proposed a more of a campus type approach much much larger than some of the ones we've had to bring them up to up to standard i see and um is this a philosophical problem i mean do we aren't the percentage of the prison populations for drugs something like about 50 percent being drug offenses i don't have that in front of me but i don't believe that to be the case but we can get that for you sure thanks so because i i i i was thinking that the way the legislature was was thinking that jail should only be for violent offenders and that we'd have to eventually phase out or treat uh yeah drug offenders yeah i don't think it had anything to do with the the population of the size because we had advocated we needed to update the facilities so we could build at any size we could put it in any location uh we we were uh flexible in terms of of how we do this um so it was um it wasn't based on the population and the offenses i see so it's more more more for modernization um from our standpoint yes to update the facilities i mean if you've been through some of them we ended up closing one in Windsor appropriately uh and uh and we have some challenges in some of the other locations as well you know fortunately i've never been through any and uh i hope not to have to okay um thank you uh thank you both very much thank you are you free wcax our owner's god the primary election is a week away and just wanted to see how you were feeling about your chances and whether you plan to if you were to get the nomination to campaign more in the general um but we'll see what happens you know it's a week away um obviously i've been focusing on the pandemic and our day job and uh we'll have to see what happens after you know with all these challenges coming our way i would like to be able to to campaign more uh maybe in a more traditional sense but but again the pandemic comes first and my day job comes first so i'll be focusing on that and doing as much as i can in the after hours all right compared with your other um your competitors do you feel like you have a good chance going into it i think i have as good a chance as any of my other competitors okay thank you god please governor why is china sending brahmanshers unidentified packets of seeds and do we know what kind of seeds they are you've met with council general hong ping have you notified him or other officials of any concern about this and it's so what do they say it's a good question guy and one that i asked the secretary tevitz the other day because i wasn't quite sure or i haven't gotten the whole answer back but uh i wasn't sure what this even meant what the seeds were i don't think they know yet what they would what they would grow into and this is some sort of what they called a brushing attempt and and and so i'm i'm not sure of why this is taking place but it's some sort of marketing approach i believe so well i'm awaiting some of the response but but it's a great question and no i have not reached out to the chinese delegation i'm sure our secretary of agriculture is working on this and and i'm not even sure if we're the only state who has received these seeds but i believe that it's it's more broad than just vermont so i'll be happy to look into it but i just don't know have all the details at this point but they're great questions thank you vermont superintendent's association told lawmakers last week about sharp fluctuations in enrollment wants them to change the state education funding formula to protect schools against falling enrollments in covid expenses what are the total enrollment numbers right now compared to last year and do you think that uh for the reason stated that the formula and and formula is likely to change yeah i think these are very unusual times while we've seen a dramatic drop in the number of students over the last 20 years i think i've remarked we've we've lost about 30 000 students down from about 103 000 down to 73 to 75 000 at this point so we've seen a dramatic drop over the years due to our demographics but the pandemic is going to be even even more volatile in some respects i know that there are a number of i've seen i saw that there was an increase in the number of of parents asking for homeschooling we'll see how how dramatic that i think it was doubled from last year but but i don't know at this point about the numbers the actual numbers and i might ask secretary french if he has any information he might be able to share yes thank you governor we won't know those numbers until after the first month of school that's when we complete with all the census areas where we actually do the sampling and calculate what's called the average family membership so that's you know essentially the issue the superintendents we're raising is that our methodology for doing that might not be even implemented in context with covid-19 so it is something we'll be talking to the legislature about it but how do we do that census and then follow the tier specific question guy we don't have those numbers yet nor would be typically until october till october we're not going to know how these students turn our schools until october that's correct uh there's a lot of belief in any given year there's always a lot of movement of families and so forth so we have to wait for each they register at each school district and so forth and then we okay thank you i would say that there are going to be less than the 75 thousand that we normally have thank you john dylan vpr thanks uh just to continue on uh testing vain here there are no appointments available for two weeks that pop up sites that separate canan i wondered if that was true and secondly our policy has been tested suppressed and are we confident are you confident that we have the resources to do that especially with college students coming back i know uvm she's in different testing procedures in a different lab but the state may need to confirm so given the the likely increase in demand do we have the capacity yeah i'm not sure i got all of that john but uh but that did catch my attention as well the the number of pop-up testing sites were full so i reached out to secretary smith and i believe dr levine has the answer on that issue in terms of capacity he can ask answer that as well but we have a good supply of inventory at this point in time but as we've seen throughout the country i'm i'm concerned because uh because other states have ramped up and are utilizing a lot of the the testing supplies for their own states and the commercial labs are are being utilized and which has slowed down the process for response that's why i'm grateful for the uvm lab as well as the state lab that we have here our public health lab in our and we have brode in uh boston who's been doing an outstanding job for us and turning those results around so at this point in time we feel confident in our testing program but uh but again i always remain concerned based on you know what i don't know and uh because i i obviously we don't have control over the supplies on a national basis so um it's a it's a good question but at this point in time today i feel confident uh that we're we're all set for the next month or two in terms of the the testing supplies and inventory dr levine now there's a lot wrapped up in the question you've asked and um a lot of it has to do with the fact that in spite of what uh your concern is we continue to do a thousand plus tests a day um and that has been very consistent and we still have the capacity to do that as the governor said for the next month or two as well the goal is to keep our eye on that horizon because we know that the country is undergoing such a surge in request for testing and a problem with turnaround time in testing so we have to be very very aware of that all along the goal in vermont is still to try to do all the testing that we say we want to do in spite of the previous question you may have heard and we have a prioritization scheme and clearly those who are symptomatic or at the top of the priority listing slightly down but not too much further are those who care for vulnerable populations like the corrections population you've been hearing about long-term care health care workers etc and then lower down than that but still call the priority because it is uh are asymptomatic for monitors who have some reason that they need to be tested perhaps their interaction with the health care system requires a test perhaps they are a contact that was identified through contact tracing perhaps they are trying to get out of quarantine early from travel out of state the whole host of reasons those by necessity have to be at the bottom of the priority list but there are still priorities because if we don't have that in the mix of our testing not only have we disappointed all those people but we've also not got a really good idea of what our positivity rate is and does it reflect reality we've been talking a lot about Mississippi today and i don't know it as of today but the last time i looked at Mississippi the percent positivity rate was 22 percent compared to Vermont which is now at 0.5 percent and the northeast which of course is enjoying i'll put that in quotes a respite from what the rest of the country is experiencing because we kind of were there first so 22 percent means you know anytime you do a test you've got a better than one in five chance that that test is going to be positive that's pretty incredible and if you extrapolate that i know i'm not taking away the fact that we've talked about what course civic is doing i'm not doing and the governor and secretary have said what we would have liked to have done or not done earlier i'm just stating fact based on my opening comments today just like the schools the prison environment is a microcosm of a community so if the community that all of the staff in the prison work in has got a percent positivity rate of 22 percent you might ask how are you going to avoid having somebody come to work who's asymptomatic and doesn't know they harbor the virus hopefully testing protocols that could prevent that would be helpful but it wouldn't prevent people from having positive test results it would just allow you to identify them sooner and who knows what the impact on the workforce might be at a state that's experiencing a significant surge so we want to maintain all of our testing capacity across all of those priority populations we continue to work with healthcare system in the state medical centers hospitals specifically in terms of making sure that they're advised well about what to obtain for their testing and to what we call diversify the portfolio so not every every hospital in the states dependent on the same supply chain and reagent chain and if that ran out we'd be stuck as a state we want there to be some variety there we will continue to do pop-ups and people should be persistent when they call about a pop-up to make sure that there truly hasn't been any opening up until the time that pop-up actually takes place and we want to continue to follow new avenues you've heard us talk about our interactions with kidney drugs and they are piloting something with us now and we're on the verge of trying to expand that significantly throughout the state the governor mentioned the road in Boston and there are opportunities that we might be able to pursue with that much we're also continuing to work on so that we again maintain that capacity that we want to have for the future not just for now and when or if turnaround time should be an issue everywhere including the northeast like it is in some other parts of the country we want to have enough established contacts and contracts that would allow us to hopefully capitalize on ones that are turning things around quicker than others and in the midst of all of that we are still using as the secretary's term stockpile mentality making sure that we try to make sure we have as much reagent on hand for the tests that we do do in state so there were not at risk of running out precipitously like happened in march when the country didn't have any ability to respond did i cover most of what you asked about yes thanks um for the governor just very quickly you mentioned that testing came up in this nga call recently and how much of a coordinated to the multi-state response is happening to the national disparities in testing given the lack of really any cohesive federal policy on this yeah i'm not sure that there's any formalized plan working together obviously the the national governance association is the call that was on and and heard many talking about the need for more testing and the and the slowing down of some of these commercial entities so but i'm not i'm not aware of any formalized states working together on that i also john before you write the headline i wanted to go back and clarify something that i said just so we're clear when i said that we had enough inventory it was comfortable comfortable with the inventory we had for the next month or two that meant if we stopped receiving any inventory we stopped receiving any supplies tomorrow we'd have enough for a month or two having said that there has been no talk about reducing or eliminating or we haven't seen that the supply has stayed consistent if not building in some respects from week to week so i'm comfortable with where we are but i just want to make sure you understood i wasn't saying that we're going to run out in a month or two i'm saying if they stopped supplying us we would we'd have enough for a month or two okay so coming in what was that john i said we have i think he's saying we have supply companies just confirming we have supplies still coming in yeah john if you we couldn't hear your comment but if you said we do have supplies coming in every day so and that's remain fairly consistent if not has has grown a bit over the last month certainly over the last few months but even over the last month i've seen a steady increase or leveling out so i'm comfortable with where we're at at this point in time okay thank you very much the connection that's all right tim from our business magazine hi governor i want to ask you about the the CARES money where this is going to go but uh first of all it sounds like dr levine that the testing question is still hanging out there if someone is systematic can you talk about the synchromic surveillance you do on friday um you don't want that person hanging out there in the community why would they just go to a hospital which would have to take them in and treat them without having to worry about signing up at a health center going through the doctors that whole VR impersonation i'll let dr levine answer that but but while it isn't our first choice for someone to show up they could sign up at a pop-up test as well that is still i know that there's a there's a problem and and the number of people signing up at some of these pop-up tests at this point in time but but they can still do they could take that approach dr levine the last thing i want to be going on record for is to condone someone going to an emergency room setting for a non-emergency so i won't i won't say that i mean that's always an option that's available for someone but you know there are also urgent care centers and there are phone calls to health care providers when you know your health care provider and they know your medical history and can authorize a test at a location where you can actually get the test but if the health care provider feels that you are a very strong candidate for covert 19 based on what you've told them your isolation begins then and even if you got the test that day and it didn't come back for two days you're still supposed to be in isolation so i want to stress that the right course of action is to be advised appropriately about the likelihood you have the condition and then do the right thing and the right thing would be isolating yourself assuming you were stable in other ways and didn't need urgent health care and then await your test result and if your test didn't come for two days or so but the likelihood was considered very strong based on the diagnostic criteria that your health care provider was applying you still stay isolated until further notice just like we tell people don't show up at work if you don't feel well this would be especially important in that case all right thanks for clearing that up governor the from us uh yeah my public radio poll just came out and you received a very high mark strike 80 percent on your pandemic response but one of the other questions was on the budget and by two to one margin the respondents say they would rather see tax revenues go up rather than programs being cut i'm wondering i know i know your views are on that but i want to get your response i wonder what do you know how granular i didn't look at the poll tim but i wonder how granular they they got what what taxes were the uh for vermoners willing to accept what what taxes do they want do they want to pay that was the it was a very dry collector that was basically 54 preferred raising revenues versus 28 cutting so i guess it depends you know nobody minds a tax increase as long as it doesn't affect themselves i guess so if we're talking about you know a sales tax increase or rooms and meals or something or income tax or something they might they might care a little bit more than if they just thought it magically came from someone else so my theory has always been you know raising taxes is always a last resort there's other approaches we can take we're in the midst of a pandemic we've been fortunate to receive a lot of money from the federal government which has helped our economy and a lot of different respects there may be more coming down the pike so to speak so we'll we'll cross that bridge when it comes but i believe we can we can get through this without raising taxes that would be my method in your referencing the cares act limitations as far as the front line workers are concerned with their other restrictions that you can't use it for the budget you can't use it for unemployment insurance either but as as i recall there's about a hundred million dollars left what would you recommend the legislature do with that that pretty substantial amount of money left well actually i think i think you're going to find there's going to be a little bit more money because as you might remember we we somewhat borrowed against the cares money to get us through the last fiscal year thinking that we were going to have a deficit well lo and behold it appears we're going to have a surplus so that freed up some more of that cares money so we should have more than just a hundred million that's determined we'll work with the legislature a lot's going to be determined on what congress does in allowing for more flexibility what is going to be allowed what's not right now our hands are tied and a lot of different respects but if they gave us some flexibility that may free free up the money to be utilized for something that would give us the highest return and that would be my goal is to to find ways that we can invest in areas that would would help us in the longer term rather than just look at the short term let's look at the longer term if we have extra money but we'll see again they're still talking and in washington we'll see if they they come up with some other provision i would i would dare say something's going to happen just don't know what it's going to be and also that under the current rules that the money has to be allocated by the end of this year which is you know happening fast yeah that that's part of the flexibility that i'm talking about it's not just about whether you can utilize the money for for budgetary purposes but giving us some flexibility in terms of expending that money um maybe going beyond uh the end of the year would be tremendously helpful to us all right great thank you lisa valley reporter good afternoon i have a question for the secretary french and not a not involved question for secretary curly we're hearing a lot about small groups of parents creating learning pods to help their kids with distance learning even hiring tutors to work with their children we've also heard people concern that this creates better opportunities for those who can afford to create a lot for those who can't afford pods and tutors so the agency of education have a position on how these private pods square with the principles of act 60 which calls for substantially equal educational opportunities for all students hi lisa i think i caught the question you're breaking up a little bit um yeah i'm understanding that the sort of movement nationally as well and provides on the pod issue with parents coming together to do that and i think you know as we said earlier um you know reopening plans aren't perfect um but on the other hand you do need some parts and flexibility to local districts so i'm very concerned about equal opportunity and uh going forward is to call and we'll be collecting data on these patterns so we can better understand where the opportunities are not being provided thank you and for secretary curlings um i know local business asked me they had applied with state grants through the apcd portal and they were listed as recommended for expenditures and recommended for approval since july 17th they would like to know if recommended for approval means that there are sufficient funds for them to receive the grant and if so what can they expect to receive those funds you have commissioner goldstein on as well sorry if secretary curly may not be on the call i'm i'm sorry okay um so it was very broken up i believe there is somebody who applies for grant funds who may have received um that they've been recommended for approval but but have not yet heard that they are officially approved and they're wondering that that would be okay and wondering if there will be grant funds available to be approved is that correct correct yes okay so yes at this moment everybody who is in the queue awaiting final approval there there are funds available to cover all of those apps so if they're in the queue and they receive i'm recommended for approval if they receive final approval they will um be able to um get the grant fund at this point and is there a estimated time frame they said recommended for approval since july 17th so i would just encourage them to send me an email and i can follow up on it but what i will say is uh if they apply through the apcd format we have a very um hands-on review process and it takes quite some time and we still have i want to say about 400 applications that are in the queue awaiting final approval so we've been getting through quite a bit but there there are still some in there and there are applications coming in every day i would be probably helpful for us to just double back and see if there's a reason that stuff great i'll share that information so thank you great thank you chris brought a royal reformer chris mays brought a royal reformer star six to unmute chris all right we'll go to erin at bt digger erin petain a question about this hi hello yeah go ahead erin okay i have a question about his status of library um under the latest guidance um you know as libraries we open it our evaluation of them seems like they have a lot of different approaches they're taking you know in terms of the number of hours they're open and the number of people that allow them to the library the services they provide is there any efforts for the state to further kind of provide guidance or clarity or standardization to what libraries should be doing at this point and i i don't have the answer myself erin but i might ask either secretary curly or secretary young if they might have something to add to that this is that's very true i might like uh see secretary young has a comment on that against something to be library i'm sorry it's very broken up today but the libraries um maybe are are operating very differently from one another and you know we have guidance that needs them to operate and especially why they may be choosing to do it differently secretary young are you on erin i will um i will have somebody reach out to you directly and uh see if we can um bring some clarity to that question okay thank you i just have a follow-up if you think you could get a clarification on that um about the classification of libraries they were originally classified as retail for the purposes of closures and reopening and then got moved to arts and culture i was wondering if anyone could answer why that news happens and if there's any discussion of putting them in their own category considering that they have kind of a huge role in agribus you know public service and for assistance i i don't have the answer but i believe they're put in arts and culture to give just that flexibility to increase the amount of capacity i think we went to maybe 75 percent for arts and culture and it was as a way and retail was at 25 percent as you as you might remember so um i think it was to give them that flexibility that you were advocating for um secretary current anything you can add to that i would just um erin i would just encourage you to reach out again or i i'll reach out to you but uh between deputy secretary brady and myself i think we can um give you sort of a history of how that falls and i would be happy to do that okay so i'm going to start with the phone issue governor this is secretary young sorry about that um i would just be starting to um the question first by saying our state library and his team has done a fantastic job working with all of the public um and school libraries across the state through the pandemic to ensure that they were able to deliver um so many needed services to her monitors and the the challenge with the uniformity primarily is that most of these libraries operate um under the control of municipalities and other governance structures so um they are you know operating within those those confines but not as state entities so that is one reason why you see some lack of uniformity around the libraries um we did start uh with treating them as retail when when this big it started opening uh and i and i what i will do is refer you to our state librarians who can really give you um an idea of the evolution of how libraries have operated through the pandemic uh to achieve maximum utility for all the monitors okay thank you seven seven days hi governor can you hear me we can i think the majority of my questions are for secretary Smith that's all right that's that's fine with me Kevin uh most of these questions involve um the Mississippi situation the first one is whether Vermont inmates down there are segregated from the rest of the population my understanding Kevin they are segregated from the rest of the population the the what we're doing now is segregating within the the uh within the pop it in Vermont population from positive and negatives so that is ongoing right now yeah and so when you said that you were requesting that um the the operator that facility to facility-wide testing did you mean the entire facility or do you mean only the area where the Vermont folks are located because i think that facility has a 2800 in yeah i was uh i was talking about the segregated facility that houses Vermont inmates but i also was talking about any employee of that um of that facility that may enter that segregated facility you know if that is reasonable like do they have a rotating shift of employees or are there dedicated uh employees to the Vermont uh inmates i don't know the answer to that it's reasonable to me okay the next question i have is um you mentioned a lot of things that you want them to do and literally you listed about six or eight things that you want to this uh private company to do but that says to me that they haven't they haven't agreed to do those things yet can you separate what you've asked them to do versus what they've agreed to do yeah i think we're in pretty much agreement to the things that i have listed um i'll you know i'll check with uh kevin i'll check with commissioner baker on the latest status of this but everything i listed is something that um i believe has been talked about and agreed to the logistics of how to do it still haven't been worked out but the agreement of making sure that um that list is complied with is something that um i i think there's general agreement with okay at any point in the conversation with with this organization was was there any protest made about the cost of what you were requesting because i would imagine that any additional cost protesting would be borne by them as for the contract that's right yeah i was not specifically in those uh conversations between core civic and uh the department of corrections uh i don't know what the issue of uh cost is and what it will be but i will tell you this this is what we do in vermont this is what we will do in mississippi and i guess i'm wondering who's going to bear that thought if you don't we'll work it out i don't know yet okay and then the last question is it may be for you or the governor um or combo but it's pretty clear that construction of a new modern correctional facility in the state of vermont even if the legislature became enamored with that proposal we take years and years um or let's just say years um is there any interim step between uh that and housing more than 200 inmates you know in a in a in a state far away uh where the fence is demonstrated issues with having them follow protocols uh as expected yeah kevin you know for years we've been uh using out of state facilities as you mentioned this isn't going to change overnight but if we don't start um it'll never change and uh what i what you heard the governor say and what i am advocating is we really got to get serious about this and um and frankly we'll probably you be using out of state facilities in the interim why we move uh to you know why we discuss fun construct and move to a new facility but at the same time if we don't start now then we'll be longer out of state you know i'll let the governor yeah kevin i might add uh as everyone is probably aware we've reduced their our offender population overall dramatically through the pandemic how long that will last i don't know i mean we're not in total control of that we have the facilities and we have to maintain the facilities and we have to make sure that we have a place to put people um but um but with justice reinvestment um that might have uh some some benefits uh in terms of trying to keep the population down but uh and judiciary has a role to play as well i mean they uh they're the ones that uh that put them through the process to determine if they're in uh go into incarceration or not so they play a role so we need to have this conversation as we work our way through this if if we could uh magically get to a place where we have a vaccine we don't have to have this additional capacity within each facility um and we didn't grow the population any further uh we could bring them back we could put them back in the infrastructure uh just based on the on the net number of number of offenders that we have been have reduced over this period of time because i believe it's been like 300 300 and something uh is the number that is in my head so uh that would account you know we we would have the capacity to bring them back if we didn't need to uh to increase that in some some respect that's what i'm trying to get i was a little surprised to hear that focus be returning to the construction of a of a multi-million dollar uh you know correctional facility in the state in a time when we're seeing a sharp drop in the number of inmates in the state so i and so i was thinking you'd be more maybe pivoting to focus more on the justice reinvestment and the reduction of the population and in an effort to possibly return out of state prisoners to the state without building such a large facility with a large investor yeah um well i i think it all has to happen at the same time kevin uh because the infrastructure is dilapidated uh if you've gone through like the chitin facility uh you know that it needs to be replaced so we're finding that throughout the system so regardless of the size and again we can be flexible on the size uh to have a more modern updated facility um would uh would be beneficial for all involved so i think we have to have the conversation concurrently even if we were to bring everyone back it doesn't uh it doesn't fill the need that we have to replace the existing infrastructure got it thanks very much gentlemen all right joe the barton chronicle question for secretary smith and one for secretary french um secretary smith um i understand there are a number of out of state inmates in other facilities around the country um have you been in contact with all those facilities and are you assured that those inmates are being treated in accordance with Vermont standards yeah joe you're what you're saying is we have the Department of Corrections has prisoners in other facilities throughout the country i'm not aware of that and i'm not i'm not saying that it but i'm not aware of that okay well um i that um commissioner baker said something to that effect in his news conference yesterday but i can i can easily check on that yeah and i guess and it may it may be that um somebody is picked up in another part of the country of a parole virus i'm just speculating joe on a parole violation or something but before i go speculating um let me uh have the commissioner follow up with you on that thank you very thank you very much i guess you're off the hook then the secretary of french um i got a message from a reader who is worried about the possibility of children in her family being uh infected with covid as they go back to school and is planning to um homeschool the children in accordance with the state regulations on schooling but at the same time she is very concerned about the effect that this might have on the local community schoolers by reducing the the student count for the school and thus costing it revenue is there anything that you can say that might ease her mind or uh if there's something she needs to take into account when deciding what to do yeah i think that's a great question just uh representative you know the cause of some of the a lot of the anxiety that we see uh i don't think the features the help of parents and students uh you know the first thing i say to her is either her child i mean i mean the first obligation of any parent in terms of the funding uh you know we had a question earlier in the conference all about uh the number of students how we take attendance with so forth and that's i think part of what she's asking i think firstly you know she's to do as best first soon and then we will uh speak to address issues relative to uh the adn count and so forth of the web record uh clearly this is these are indeed the situation and um it's something i think we're going to have to address regardless because our statutory language on adn carry membership doesn't really line up with uh how we're going to reopen schools in the fall thank you very much hey joe um not just to speculate a little bit further and we'll check with commissioner baker on what exactly he meant but there could be vermonters there are vermonters i'm sure who have committed crimes in other states that are incarcerated in those states i'm not sure that that's what he was speaking of but um i'm assuming that secretary smith will you know check with commissioner baker and i'll hear something sooner or later you will thank you thank you that's it great thank you all for tuning in and we'll see you again on friday