 We are gathering here this morning to continue our work on S124 and act relating to miscellaneous law enforcement. I understand that commissioner Sherling has a tight time schedule this morning. And so we will jump right in and invite him to share some thoughts with us. How long do we have with you commissioner? Good morning, Madam Chair. The committee assistants have arranged for me to be with you for 20 minutes and then go to another committee at 1050. All right. And then we can invite you back on a future day. If we feel like we need more information from you. Sure. Great. So what would you like to share with us regarding S124? I believe in the correspondence that it indicated you wanted to discuss dispatch fees. I didn't have any other framing in advance. I think there's only two things to flag for you. One is a timeline that directs the criminal justice training process. And then there's a timeline that's available and directed to provide a report back to the legislature by the first of January. And I would just flag for you that the, we're in the final phases of hiring a new director. That person likely will not be on board and in and available working until I would guess October at this point. So that that time, it might make sense to move that timeline back just a bit. But I think there's a number of. Directions given to various entities to report back on some things. It may take a little bit longer to unpack that with you. But as you know, the governor issued an executive order. Now. 10 plus days ago. And we're actively working. To execute the directions there. And there's quite a bit of overlap between the two. So. I think without getting into the granularity. What may make sense is for us to. Report to the general assembly on the work that's executed as a result of the executive order. And then. And. Assuming you're not still in session in, in October. In January. Revisit those sections to see if there's additional work that you'd like done or additional direction. And then relative to dispatch fees, I can walk you. It's been several months since I walked you through this piece of the proposal in our modernization strategy. So I can do as much or as little. Of that, as you'd like. 124 only is. The issue of. Is rememorializing statutory authority and actually being a little bit more. Prescriptive that we shall adopt a fee structure right now. We have the authority to adopt a fee structure. So. And as you know, our plan is to adopt a fee structure. So no. Real comments relative to that other than to observe that it's. More prescriptive than the existing statute, but we are going to do it in the next. In the next couple of months. I think that's it. All members regarding dispatch. This has been a hot topic in committee for. A few days. John, Gannon. Thank you. And thank you commissioner Sherling for testifying. So it's my understanding that. The department public safety is planning to go ahead with starting and charge dispatch fees in FY. 22. However that the plan is to begin charging at a fractional rate so we've come up with a construct we think is the most simplistic and appropriate construct for establishing the bills and just to walk you through that very briefly that's just to take the cost of dispatchers themselves no overhead no administrative costs no inflated costs just the people who do the dispatching themselves and divide that equally over the call volume and come up with a cost per call and then use that as the basis for what agencies pay and to then phase that in over what would eventually would essentially be a five-year process so in fiscal 21 there'd be no bill in fiscal 22 they would receive a bill for 25 percent of the total and then increasing and 25 percent increments over the course of four years for a five-year implementation and that is inconsistent with the current language in s124 which I think requires rulemaking and then a three-year delay before any dispatch fees are charged that may be a new portion I only got 124 I think yesterday and I had five different committees so I may have missed that piece of of the puzzle so I think under 124 these dispatch fees would not be start being charged until fy 24 at the earliest okay I'm not sure we have strong feelings so one way or another again this is just an effort at balancing the scales for agencies and in particular for taxpayers there are taxpayers out there who are paying for dispatching services twice in some kind of a PSAP or a dispatch facility that covers their town and then they're also subsidizing other towns that are not paying for services so the timeline for that I think is less important than the than the policy shift well you understand the municipalities that will be impacted by this dispatch fees will have their property taxes likely increase because of this which impacts taxpayers as well we are we are aware that there's a variety of different potential funding methodologies and that could be one but again right now we have a system where there is a cross section of agencies that don't pay for services and there's an equally large if not larger cross section of agencies that do and just from a fundamental delivery of government perspective the construct does not make operational sense so all we're trying to do is fix that this is not a moneymaker we have not incorporated inflows into our budget in any way and also important to note that this is part of a larger suite of of modernization initiatives the majority of which with the exception of this one are looking to reduce cost to municipalities for information technology for the IT infrastructure that's required to connect to the state for training and for mental health response which is a whole other topic that has been taken up at length over the course of the last couple of weeks so overall we're looking to reduce the burden on communities this is just happens to be one piece where in that balancing of cost and and operations that we're pretty confident that this makes operational sense well some of the testimony we heard indicated that local law enforcement may have to actually decrease their the number of law enforcement officers they have in order to pay for this service um we have heard uh just I think from one chief who indicated that in the various meetings and in feedback from emails that has not been a widespread uh concern um so that's that's all I can say on that topic okay thank you Jim Harrison morning thank you um and thank you commissioner for joining us this morning um we all realize that dispatch is an important function and we need to have that service and collectively we need to pay for it I'm wondering if you've looked at the efficiency side of providing dispatch and by that I mean have you considered whether your agency should just do all dispatch conceivably could be more efficient I'm not saying it would necessarily be better and that would be a good conversation to have but I'm wondering if you considered just doing all of the dispatch which would hopefully free up a lot of money that some towns and cities are paying today that's a great question sir um we have contemplated that if you one of the bases for the modernization strategy we put forth is 50 years of studies that have been done they all say the same thing that combining services regionalizing services centralizing services instead of fragmenting them and doing them repetitively over and over again in public safety broadly not just in law enforcement or dispatch but for a lot of the services that we deliver that has been talked about literally since the year before I was born and all of these reports and studies say the same thing they all come to the same conclusion that not replicating things on a small scale makes sense that said there are many law enforcement and public safety entities of ambulance services fire departments etc that are very happy with either having their own dispatch facility or sharing with others there are other regional public safety answering points at least for fairly large ones that operate in the state that do an excellent job and their construct is actually less expensive than state government that is not a surprise that operating in the state construct for a host of different reasons actually inflates costs so we didn't come forward with a plan that that was to absorb other dispatch entities and we've actually communicated to the 100 plus agencies that we dispatch for we're we're trying to be as pragmatic as possible if you believe you can get the services the equal services or better services at a lower cost by all means explore the other PSAPs explore your own shared services again this is not an effort to try to make money or to co-opt work from others it's just a very complicated landscape of a lot of different variables and as I described it's one of the things I actually neglected to describe was we have agencies call us with some frequency saying we'd like you to dispatch for us and we can't take them on because we would have to come to you for an increase in budget and our budget's not stable as it is at this stage we as you heard me testify very early in the session I'll just refresh this we put forth a three-year budget stabilization plan just to get us to a point of equilibrium where we weren't asking for residual funds at the end of each fiscal year just to balance the budget so we're unable on the one hand we're providing free services to some agencies whole host of other agencies are not paying some of them want to come to us to get their services we don't have the ability to do that it's just a very unstable uneven and an unfair system that's been created thank you commissioner I can appreciate that however as we all know changing the current system is not easy and sometimes different agencies work in their own individual silo when a and r in transportation came up with a you know the better roads clean water provisions those provisions impacted small rural towns that had just as many roads going through them but not the population to support them so we we have a tendency sometimes to well it's it's only fair that everybody takes care of their own roads but we forget that the town only has 800 people in just as many roads to repair and fix of a town that's got 8,000 people so I'm not sure there's an easy answer for this I appreciate what you're doing I just whatever we do I want to have it done as efficiently and as well as we can and I not sure duplicating the same service over and over makes the most sense but I may be maybe wrong on that so thank you I think you're right sir the studies on this go back again 50 years and they all do say exactly what you're saying which is to the greatest extent possible reduce the duplication of effort I'm paraphrasing of course but you're you are right on point okay thank you Bob Hooper hey Mike slash commissioner sir you you said something a little bit ago and then you're the guy the buck stops with so we'll talk about bucks that you did not include these fees in the budget but the fees that are collected go into a special fund the special fund is able to be used for department expenses to some degree if you're not including it in the budget the budget is staying effectively neutral where's the money going to go and how can you do this off budget if you're effectively taking in a fee that should offset something in your budget no that's a great question so thank you for allowing me to clarify that what I'm saying is we're not looking down the road and trying to build our budget around these fees we will absolutely have to account for them and they will by default create an offset to help operating costs but that's not the goal at all we're we're not in other words we're not relying on a projected income here in order to balance our budget in the future if the income comes that will be a benefit to the state's budget but if all 100 plus agencies leave us and get their dispatch services elsewhere then that's fine as well we're we're not relying on this as a way to balance the budget in the future may I follow up madam chair how much of the outsourced dispatching is workload that is attributable to the number of FTEs dispatch has roughly 50% of the total workload for our dispatchers is with these 100 agencies thank you all right committee members any other questions before commissioner shirling takes off to another zoom room great well commissioner you get three bonus minutes to get around for your next meeting thank you I'm happy to come back if it is helpful to the committee just let me know we may want to have another conversation with you next week so we'll we'll be in touch to try to schedule that sounds good thank you have a good weekend thanks all right I'm gonna I'm gonna move the schedule around a little bit because we have with us sheriff mark Anderson right now and I understand that his schedule is a little touch and go here and there and so since he's here right now sheriff Anderson could you uh could you share with us any thoughts that you have either sparked by this conversation or or in response to other sections of s124 good morning thank you madam chair can you hear me yes we can great I'm not used to calling in to zoom by phone uh the several thoughts and also some comments based on previous conversations on behalf of the sheriff's association generally for the sheriff's association we support a vast majority of this bill regarding dispatching we have for years said that we have concerns about the duplication of services and the double taxation on Vermonters that is by way of a variety of things and I don't need to to get into all of that unless specific questions are requested however with regards to dispatching we firmly believe that regionalized services would be more valuable to Vermonters that's not just for law enforcement dispatching but that also embodies fire and EMS dispatching as well there's several sheriffs around the state who are currently prepared and capable of providing dispatch services speaking from my agency alone and looking at the various town budgets with regards to concerns about increased taxation I think that some of the fees that if the department of public safety's bill were to or a proposal were to be followed to a T that towns could ultimately move services to a regionalized dispatch center whether that's operated by municipality or sheriff it could also reasonably improve services for the citizens of each region and I'm using the word region specifically because I think that there's valuable delineations that some communities have where in Wyndham County I might have a town that feels are better served in and Bennington or Windsor County and vice versa for towns and neighboring counties to mine so the for cost savings aspect I think that we're actually going to be better served in regionalizing it I would also think that a permissive not a requirement but a permissive to allow counties to fund sheriffs for dispatch operations could allow for resolution to issues such as the 800 person town for which I have several of those where they have the same cost of the roads but ultimately within each county we generally have a the the political or I don't want to say political but more the the identity of each county which differs from different portions of the state but are rather similar when we speak about the the region itself yeah that makes a lot of sense committee members questions for mark Anderson on dispatch all right have you had the opportunity to review some of the other components of s-124 I will admit the last time I read it before this morning was during the last session so I'm rusty in several areas I perceived notice of this hearing not long ago so I'm working on I'm at page 16 thus far I can understand that you that you wouldn't have had much time to review it and and so I wonder if we I wonder if we might have the hope of of getting you back in with us sometime next week I'd be happy to try as best as I can I my schedule for the next three weeks or so is very volatile with for no notice uh uh demands all right so committee members do you have any sections of the bill that you would like to focus the sheriff's attention to um so that he can prep for coming back to hopefully to speak with us um at a future meeting rob la claire um thank you madam chair and I apologize if this question was answered I'm still trying to figure out my iPad here um sheriff who do you get your dispatch services through currently I currently provide them for myself sir okay so you're one of those private peace apps is that like like lamoille so uh a delineation and terminology uh a peace app or a public safety answering point receives nine one one calls my office is not the direct uh call taking agency that receives nine one one calls so uh this is a problem with duplicity and fracturing of dispatching in the state as it currently stands and has stood for for decades uh where a nine one one call comes into the peace app and then the peace app looks up the emergency uh agency that's supposed to respond and then they call them and if more than one piece or I'm sorry more than one emergency response is required such as police and fire fire and EMS or police fire and EMS all three of those agencies need to be contacted and so what I'm saying is let's condense it all into one answering point where the peace app and the police and the fire and the EMS all have dispatchers in the same room the I operate a dispatch that serves my my office another county sheriff a police department and I feel like we answer for one other entity I can't think of it right now we operate 24 hours and we have the ability and the capacity to expand it's all contract based though which means that each year we have to evaluate the contract and what works and what doesn't work and if unique costs such as COVID-19 come up what effects that has turns out that it was incredibly COVID was incredibly detrimental to my dispatching operation which actually threatened its ability to operate but we are able to through act 147 provide the guaranteed support to continue operating an emergency dispatch operation sure so what what kind of infrastructure upgrades would have to happen on your end to become a peace app regarding the peace app I think I would need to talk with the novel one board to to fully understand their requirements so I don't want to comment to that right this moment however in terms of the capacity both technical and personnel to be able to if I want to provide dispatching to all the agencies in my county I think I need to set up three repeater sites and connect to the computer systems that we use it's all the cost of radio infrastructure is probably more significant I'm fortunate that I have a pretty strong options available in my county speaking with some of the other sheriffs they also have positive relationships and or access to sites and facilities that would allow them to expand if the funding were there you're good thank you thank you sir all right any other questions from committee members mic per wiki well I just want to thank the sheriff I'm not sure if everyone's aware he's currently on national guard duty right now so he's taking some time from that to do some work here so I appreciate that he's he's gone out of his way to help us out here thank you mark thank you sir and just as a note of reference I am not here in my capacity with the National Guard I am here as the representative of the William County Sheriff's Office of the Vermont Sheriff's Association I was told I need to say that absolutely thank you for clarifying that great committee any other questions for Mark Anderson all right so we will be in touch to see if we can give you a little more time to review different parts of the bill and and see if we can find you next week thank you madam chair can I just make some some other comments on the areas I am aware of and absolutely you to speed over the council membership we spoke favorably of there's several people who are overlooked who I believe are added based on this so I think that is positive I agree with the commissioner's assessment on the report that the executive director needs to make as part of the process and helping identify candidates for the executive director they're going to have a lot to do so some easing on that would be very useful for the the incoming director once they're they're hired uh the I think chief brickel from the the chair of the training council is also on the call who might be able to speak to some more the the minutiae of the council related bills but ultimately there's not a lot that the council disagrees with the concern on body cameras I am an agency that has body cameras I have awareness of the costs the the technical issues the training issues that go with it my biggest concern with body cameras aside from the acquisition costs and the storage costs is the public records burden the it has become extremely prohibitive in my agency when a person wants to review the body camera footage for a an event and these are not the events we're seeing on national tv today these are events surrounding maybe a response to a person in a mental health crisis which brings in two three four officers who have different involvements different levels and it requires a one-to-one time ratio of a person processing the video to ensure that we're meeting confidentiality requirements that we're not releasing information that is exempt under the public records laws and then it comes to those the point where we need the technical ability to be able to process through the redaction or the blurring or or other activities required to appropriately sanitize things the the inherent nature is that a one-hour incident with four officers requires more than four hours of administrative time to process it I have concerns about the or the shares association has concerns about the the public nature of what is otherwise very private if I activate my body camera and enter into someone's home there might be things in their home that while not illegal might be embarrassing to them and that could potentially become public record for other things and then there's also concerns about who would be and would not be required similar to what the state police spoke about regarding the colonel being required to wear a body camera where he's not performing law enforcement functions he's administering the agency so just the the minutiae of the body cameras does bring concern to me and I fear if not appropriately or deeply examined in the minutiae we will have a lot of issues that will increase cost of remuneration yes definitely that is that is a concern that we have heard many times in committee and we we share that so thank you for bringing that up committee any other questions on body cam for mark anderson and was there anything else that you wanted to share with us about your review of the bill so far up to page 16 no madam chair okay great thank you so much for doing a double time double duty here in scrambling to make yourself available and we'll see if we can come back to you next week great and if I'm not able to attend I would be happy to submit and writing any answers to questions that might be an easier way should it be necessary but I will do my best to attend in person that would be great thank you we'll we'll be in touch by email thank you madam chair you're welcome to stay and listen to as much of this as you're able to and we're going to switch gears now and go to a different witness and it seems to be seems to be well represented by folks in the windham county area so and schroeder is with us this morning and it appears by our agenda that you are on the criminal justice committee of the nc double it n double acp of windham county and I would love to welcome you to share your thoughts um with us on s124 um thank you um to the committee um and to the chairperson for the opportunity to testify on s124 and um as sarah said i'm a member of the criminal justice committee of windham county n double acp and i'm a resident of dumberston um and um i have a few specific comments on um um s124 and i did um send to andrea the text of this so um you know i guess those are posted on your committee page i'm not so sure about this but one of them is on section 124 i mean s124 section 10 a where it says about military equipment and it says after an opportunity for community involvement and feedback the law enforcement advisory board shall recommend a statewide policy on law enforcement officers use of military equipment now um i wondered if this could be improved to be something like new york s08508 and what they say there is prohibit state or local police from accepting military surplus equipment from the federal government um so in all of this will be in the notes if anybody wants to look more at that um following that one um since the board is already studying the military equipment i wonder if they could study something like invasive surveillance technologies and um and i would suggest putting this in as something like number eight um saying after an opportunity for community involvement and feedback the law enforcement advisory board shall recommend a statewide policy on law enforcement officers use of surveillance technologies advanced or autonomous weaponry facial recognition software and predictive policing policies and the last part of the technology part there you may recognize from the aclu n double acp 10 point plan that was recently issued i don't know how many of these technologies are currently being used in vermont but i think it would be good to get ahead of this and one issue for example is that facial recognition software has been proven in multiple studies to be inaccurate at identifying people of color and especially black women um and here's an example again this is from mass 2800 section 65c and they say there shall be a special commission to study the use of facial recognition by the department of transportation and law enforcement agencies um also also um on january 14th of 20 um instep with summerville and brookline cambridge has banned the use of facial survey surveillance technology and 72320 the new york legislature has passed a two-year moratorium on the use of facial recognition in schools um in another section um 906 emergency medical training would it be possible to add some kind of diversity training um to perhaps after number one which is about the minimum standards for training emergency medical personnel basic life support all of these are good um but i've recently read of a woman of color who had a blood clot and she tried to get help in an emergency room and they kicked her out and they called the police and she ended up dying in the police car so i i think this would might be another place where more diversity training for the for the emt's would be a good thing um some other things that i would like added um and all of these are mentioned in the aclu n double acp 10 point plan um ending qualified immunity and on 61920 the governor of colorado signed sb 217 into law end of ending qualified immunity removing police from schools on 7720 the dc council moved to remove police from city schools by voting eight to five to disapute approve of the city school security contract another one also from the plan is limiting police involvement in low level offenses on 65 in 20 san marcos texas low level offenses in san marcos are now being punished with a citation instead of an arrest um and and san marcos is the first city in texas to implement a site and release ordinance making it a law for officers to issue citations for certain crimes the statute will limit san marcos police from arresting for misdemeanors like possession of small amounts of marijuana or driving with an invalid license um and here's a question about section nine um law enforcement agency duty to disclose um and right now um uh the requirement is is that the officers that okay the requirement of a current law enforcement agency disclose its analysis of its law enforcement officers performance at the agency as set forth in 20 vsa section 2362 a in section eight of this act shall not apply if there is a binding non-disclosure agreement prohibiting that disclosure that was executed prior to the effective date of that so while we have a moment um mike and how are you all ready to roll with your uh with your informational session and floor report i think we are and uh it should take about 15 minutes what do you think mike i i think the the four of us or the four tops are ready to go do you have a little four-part harmony going on there or working on that working on it right we discussed this briefly at our caucus and the massage therapist and the pharmacy just had tons of questions that we just weren't able to answer and we encouraged them to ask them on the floor that would be appropriate unexpected so uh rob would would you want to be part of the team answering those questions on massage actually i was part of the team to come up with the questions i thought no i think it's going to be extremely smooth sailing great i mean you're surrounded by a very talented and hard working committee that just makes everybody that presents look good don't we and humble so especially with harrison harrison inspires humility yeah so hi anna are you back with us i'm very sorry we our our area has just um switched to comcast and everybody is complaining and they just ducked out and i'm very sorry i couldn't i couldn't even reach you by phone everything just but it's back um and um thank you for your patience um i i'll these other two these are very quick if if i still have time to read these other ones absolutely okay thank you i'm sorry um so these are some things to think about for later bills on police reform and i do want to say one thing i was very pleased about with this bill was the addition of other people to the vermont criminal justice training council i've been to some of those meetings and it was it's really nice to see more it will be nice to see more diversity there of different people in different roles but these are some other ideas about boards and the law enforcement board law enforcement advisory board that's mentioned in those two earlier sections of 10 a 10 a seven and and my possible constituted more like massachusetts suggested independent and they they called they called an independent police officer standards and accreditation committee um and mass s 2800 section 221 is proposing an independent police officer standards and accreditation committee within the executive office of public safety and security consisting of 13 members including two from the aclu i mean i mean one from the aclu two from two different n double acp branches um a representative from the black and latina caucus um and a bunch of other people um and this this board i would really like the other the law enforcement advisory board um you know and i do understand we need law enforcement people on there but i think it's a time now to be putting some other people on there um also the the council advisory committee that was mentioned in 10 a number five about access to complaint information is too small um there's four people and according to the website the terms of the of the members have all expired which i'm sure hasn't really happened but the website says that um and again i would like to see that committee constituted more like the massachusetts one um another section of s 124 um 10 a four says that different agencies and interested parties will consult to identify a central point for reporting allegations of law enforcement officer misconduct which may be the council or another entity and how those allegations should be handled again i would like this central point to be something like the independent police officer standards and accreditation committee proposed by massachusetts um and what that they say um this committee shall have the power to receive complaints of officer misconduct from any person requesting officers appointing authority to conduct an investigation of a complaint of officer misconduct and conduct independent investigations and adjudications of complaints of officer misconduct um and the last one um um 10 a section 10 a of s 124 models of civil civilian oversight and this has the officer office of attorney general consulting with the council um hrc the league of cities and towns and other interested parties um to recommend um one or more models of civilian oversight and um here again um something like what massachusetts is proposing would give voting rights to social justice organizations rather than just consulting with them um and thank you very much for for the opportunity to speak with you thank you for scrambling to get back in touch with us after your technical glitch um many members does anyone have a question for ann schroeder mike marwicky go ahead right hi ann i want to thank you for taking the time hi mike and uh and also i i believe you're speaking on behalf of the windham county na acp is that right yes yes right and this these are suggestions that were uh brought together collectively by by the people working with the group yes well the committee um is is composed of myself and lindal bowl and and nodder hasim is is our chairperson and i did check in with our president um um before i before i um you know decided to do and he's he was the one who suggested that i testify because i'm sure you've seen stiffon gillum before probably at your committee or other committees and he suggested that i testify so they they've looked at this well thank you for taking the time and and i'm sorry the internet continues to be a problem we we're working on it but you know uh that's a longer story yeah well i hope you don't have comcast also where you are because we had to switch from southern vermont cable and it's just been really bad yeah well thank you for taking the time today thank you thank you mike and for being my rep uh john gannon thank you and thank you and for testifying today um with respect to to one of the things you testified about military equipment um i you know most of the military equipment coming into the state and i have a list of everything that has come into the state from 2000 to 2019 um a lot of it is not what at least i would consider um military weapons i mean some of its trucks forklifts and things like that that are saving towns money do you have a opposition to towns purchasing surplus military trucks uh no that that i i guess you know the you obviously know a lot more about this representative gannon than i do is you know i mean i assume that military equipment would be a broad spectrum and and i think um what i think some of this is is of course the weapons the weaponry that we're seeing you know in the streets and other places and i think that's the main opposition because i mean i will say the most common item purchased or surplus item that the the towns and sheriff departments get are rifles um but there's very few instances of what at least i would consider outright military equipment i mean there is i think one instance in um burlington getting a uh uh vehicle that doesn't explode over mine so that that seems more like a something that's military grade um but most of the stuff is just stuff that's probably a lot less expensive for towns to get for their police departments um through the military so i'm just worried about the over breadth of just banning all surplus equipment well i'm i'm i'm glad to hear some of that of course you know as i said i don't know how much military equipment is is in vermont i've just seen the some problems with it and this is one of the things that was in the 10 point plan and some that other states are doing but i i'm appreciative to hear that you know this is not much of a problem in in vermont well that's what i was trying to get at is is it a problem because um because just looking at this list i'm just not seeing you know you know what i would consider serious military equipment coming into the state except for a few exceptions um well that yeah i am that's that's good to hear um but the you know the fact that it is in there in in section 10 a um that's why i started thinking about it and and the the committee started thinking about it um because it is going to be studied and and that's that's a good thing and but the fact that new york is just going right out and and and um and banning it new york probably i'm guessing has a lot more problems with this yep okay thank you thank you any other committee members have a question for and schroeder all right so we can say thank you so much and for uh for joining us i appreciate the specificity of um of your recommendations uh that's always helpful to to um understand exactly what folks mean when they uh when they make suggestions for uh for the bills that are in front of us so appreciate you taking the time you're welcome to stick around and listen to the remainder of the meeting um next i would like to go to the chair of the criminal justice training council um chris brickel is with us this morning and thank you so much for for joining um there's a lot of uh there's a lot of sections of the bill that pertain to the criminal justice training council so i wonder if you might um give us just a broad introduction to the council as it's currently um formulated and uh and then share with us your thoughts on uh s124 absolutely thank you for the invitation madam chair and for the record my name is chris brickel i am the minor association of chiefs of police representative to the remand criminal justice training council and as you all likely know um currently right now we have a an academy that's being run without an executive director and have been for a few months now um we also are doing as you all are uh meeting by zoom and having many more meetings than we normally are required to by statute in fact we've done that for probably the last two years i mean we're required to meet quarterly we usually meet at least monthly now um and have done that for some period of time and i also um asked Cindy Taylor batch just to join if you was able to today because i think sometimes when committee members have questions on um a specific item or a process on how something is done at the academy when you have the ability to talk to the person on the ground the director of um training that can give you how that training is actually laid out and the core contents behind that it may answer some more questions or maybe more helpful committee members um so as i looked at s124 and there's quite a bit in there and um let me first start off by saying that i think that there are a lot of things that uh council members all agree on like the addition of the new membership to the council um i have not heard any issues with the new membership um other than one uh and i understand the differences one um is one addition of a law enforcement officer appointed by the bsca and there were some members that looked at this as just another union position being added to the council uh yet i understand the other side of that in that the bsca has a section of law enforcement um a small section but a section nonetheless that are not represented on the council i'm not i believe is part of the reason that that position and that's added to that um but no no issues um with that at all i think i could reiterate what the commissioner and both uh chair of anderson said earlier on the reporting requirements um to be able to give the new executive director when that person is in place the ability to really assess what is working at the academy what training consists of and the requirements that are going to be um required of that new position to report back to both the senate and the house on on how things are working and what additions you would like to see done um i think as far as the the training uh let me broadly just say that um there are some things that the academy already does that i think that maybe committee members aren't real clear on so there are there are as far as like the path from level two to level three that is a topic that has been on discussion table with council members there has been a working group um on that trying to figure out the best way to implement that um there was actually a final product that was put together and was sent back to academy staff for them to have feedback on to see where they felt this process would work and they had some further recommendations that were supposed to come back to the working group but the end result was that this process wouldn't be able to take place until there was really some funding put into the academy's budget it would require additional people that would being looking looking at the portfolios that were presented to them it would require additional um staff to test out applicants that we were looking to go from level two to level three certification so without being able to have that additional staffing to fundamentally test people out and their practical skills and make sure that their certification level was already up to date and that their portfolio was complete it's not something we can just task members with when we don't have the staff to do it so while there's a majority of that work that's already done um I think that that can't really move forward without some more additional staff or funding for that to be able to have that component um as far as the section that refers to no um or reduced um training additional training with no overnight um additions to it so the academy already um offers training off site and again this is as staff is available to do it and this staff I can assure you after working much more closely with them over the last few months that I have bends over backwards at the drop of a hat to try to assist any agency that is struggling with getting somebody certified getting their training up to date um getting a course offered that may not be offered at the academy during the timeframe that that agency needs it so while they do a great job and they are offering training off site could we be doing it a lot better absolutely could we be making training um much simpler for someone from Newport that needs a certain training to be done that they don't have to send three or four people at overtime rates and come down and have them spend overnight just because of the logistics of the academy we absolutely can do that better I know that academy staff works much um with agencies that have those special needs to make that happen so that it's not a problem but that section of um when it says no non overnight training most training that's done off site does not have an over going to it the only training that really does is the residential academy where you're there for 16 weeks and that is really the only time other than if you are a further distance away and want to stay closer to the academy for a multi-day training that's the only time that overnight training is really required so those are just some minor things that I think need clarification just to make sure everybody's on the same page and understand those but um as far as the bill I think would it be would it be wiser to go through specific sections that that members may have questions on or uh haven't seen movement that you want to see moving on that maybe I can answer or Cindy can answer for you let's go to some committee questions and see where that leads us uh Jim Harrison thank you madam chair and thank you chief for joining us this morning um there's a section in uh or part of section 10a on the bill that requires a look from the console and the leab to look at the location of the academy um I'm wondering um you know because you're not too far away um is the academy like going to need to be replaced physically um you know is in disrepair have we not made investments there um or should we be looking to move it elsewhere I mean I'm just there's no good central spot in Vermont um I guess I would think it's you know better than being in Newport um maybe not for the people in Newport but um just like it's better than being in Browderboro um because that's not central either so I'm curious as to have you had any conversations about that we have had conversations about that and so I will give you my my viewpoint understanding that I am in Rutland County and I am close to the academy but what I can tell you about that facility is does it need work absolutely and there have been recent investments made in upgrading that facility but um I think it would be unwise to even think about moving the facility from its current location simply because of the fact that it is somewhat centrally located in the state even though we're in the southern portion of the state um there have been many upgrades made to that facility in the use of a driver's pad for defensive driving we also have made a lot of upgrades to the range down there so that there is um any agency can come down and use the range as long as they just scheduled the time to do that and many agencies do in fact do that um Cindy could probably speak better to the recent upgrades in the physical plant in and of itself but many agencies do come there and use that facility and it's already a state-owned building and the fire academy uses that joint and anytime that there's overflow that's needed to be used for space at the academy there's a good working relationship with the fire academy so that classes have been also taught over at the fire academy which has a large classroom space for overflow to be utilized there so um I don't know that there is a facility that would be better suited for police training that isn't already at Pittsburgh but there are other areas where potentially other um facilities could be used such as Norwich University such as Champlain College where um restroom portions of other things could be taught and made more available to other areas of the state with less impact on them trying to get to the academy for certain types of training okay no thank you so it it it sounds like um you know we made a week we're putting a lot in this bill to look at different parts of law enforcement and I just wonder if this is something that we can talk about another day um so thank you go ahead John actually I think Mike was before me so Mike's had his hand up but I don't think that he had a question I think that was from before it was okay um well thank you chief for testifying um yesterday we heard testimony from chief Pete who's you know the newly installed chief for Vermont Killier about the challenges in getting a waiver um to come into Vermont to be a law enforcement officer um is there anything we could do to improve that process um and to streamline it so that we can encourage um a more diverse um group of law enforcement officers in the state uh so in all fairness to answer your question um I think that Cindy Taylor Patch would be better suited to give you the details of how that process works but um in short let me brief answer saying that the process has been made to be as accommodating as it can be for that specific chief um and the real drawback to his process has been the fact that your current staff and the staffing levels that we have at the academy have been totally busy trying to teach a class of brand new recruits under COVID circumstances so that's one factor but if if the madam chair if you don't mind me deferring that answer to Cindy I think she could be far better answering that process that would be very helpful thank you go ahead Cindy sure um Drew Bloom actually oversees the waiver process but I can't speak to it we have to do an assessment of the officer's training background before we can grant a waiver prescription so that we're being very careful in issuing that and accepting the training from the other state I know that uh Drew is very quick in that part the part that becomes I think probably what you heard more about is how long it takes to start your training prescription and there are so few waiver officers that come into the state of Vermont that it's hard for us to have a robust uh response when that happens because they're just so few and far between so when we get one uh we work very hard to get the paperwork end of it done as soon as possible so that they can start participating in other training and one of the things that we've done to try and accommodate for that which um which he did was to attend the level two certification process so that at least some law enforcement authority can be granted while they work out the other pieces of their training so we do try to get them through that as soon as we possibly can so we can get them out and able to work and then they have a period of months where they can work to complete the whole process that's required for a level three equivalency so can I follow up on that um so you know if they're certified law enforcement officers in other state um why do they have to go through the training here in Vermont I mean you know we've just gone through a process in our committee um of trying to streamline um professionals from other states um coming into the state who have qualifications already yeah the great question and we really um fine tune what they are required to do here to stuff that's Vermont specific so we're not reteaching them how to do a traffic stop for example but we are teaching them about Vermont law uh criminal law motor vehicle law the specific way that we um like our use of force curriculum for example and things like that where there are Vermont nuances where um if they weren't made aware of them it would be detrimental to them in trying to practice law enforcement here in the state so um you know not looking to redo any of their their basic information but really focus on things that are specific and nuanced to the state of Vermont um you know use of force training for example we've certainly seen a number of officers come from other states where practices are very different than they are here in Vermont and we don't want folks um operating outside the scope of what we expect uh professionals in Vermont to be doing so um you know for their own sake and the sake of our communities we want to make sure they know exactly what is trained um and expected and that's why we have the the waiver training prescription process thank you great so chief back to you do you have um other observations on the bill that you'd like to share with us um i in my quick review again as well i'm unfortunate under the same situation as sheriff anderson has been um i i look at this um bill several times and i don't see any real critical issues with it i do one of the concerns that i have again is around um body cameras and my agency has one has had body cameras for several years as well and i share the same concerns that you heard from sheriff anderson in the public information request the cost for storage for me personally here because i do not have cloud storage i have actual hard drive storage um my requirements to produce those videos um for the prosecution and defense in any kind of case that we have going on and then the redaction software which um can be very prohibitive if you don't have a subscription with a company to do that type of thing and overall um the actual administration of doing that um so as you can imagine uh i am i have a fairly small department a department of seven people um where i am the keeper of all of that data and that uh video information it's my responsibility to not only review what my officers do and how they interact with the public prevent and manage all of that software to to burn all of that video evidence and to burn any request for the public information i could literally have a full-time position to just deal with video but don't have that availability so when we start talking about policies on exactly when and where um video will be used when it will be turned off when it will be turned on who's going to be required to wear it um all of we follow the lea the um policy right now and we also look at because we are a member town of the vermont leagues in cities of towns they also have uh formal policies that we can follow again one with a body camera so we look at all the best practices and do what we feel is the best um model policy for us to follow but if we had a standard wide policy in several things you know use of force the body camera videos that would make things so much clear or law enforcement statewide and for the general public to be able to know what they can access how they can access it and when they can access it without having to go to several different agencies and having different policies they might have to contend with um i do see in this bill an overall push to do a lot of things universally which i fully support and i think the training council does as well um by not having to deal with several agencies in their different aspects of how they deal with things it makes it easier for the training council to check on issues of certification and um i will say that um as far as the process and i don't know if anybody has had any questions on law enforcement certification but or the process of um people making complaints all agencies in vermont are required to accept a complaint in any format essentially it can be a letter it can be anonymous it can be by email it can be by a phone call and then it's that agency has um responsibility to determine if that's a credible complaint and if so an investigation has to be done once that investigation is done within 10 days the executive um officer of that agency has to report to the council what those findings are and if the findings are that was not justified then the council is at least made aware but if there is a violation and let's say it's a category b where currently the council can only take action on a second offense then the council is advised that there is a violation of category b they make that annotation in their file and then that's documented within the academy's record so that we know when a second one comes through that this is now something that the council can take action on if they choose and then based upon that investigation and what factors come out in that investigation and what's determined to have happened the council will review that and then potentially have a hearing where evidence can be offered and then a decision is made on what type of sanction that the council is allowed to take based on the statutory availability of what we can take action on how colston uh thank you madam chair and thank you chief for testifying today um do you have any thoughts about what uh a model civilian oversight board could look like there are several conversations currently going on in the state um some among enforcement um about what is the best model for this are there groups that we have two groups of civilian oversight one north and one south do they have one in each county that um can look at oversight i think we need to my personal opinion is that we need to move beyond what we currently have in place where um by default if there is not a community oversight panel that it would default to a community's select board or a city council um as the oversight because as as hopeful as that process is it does present certain problems in that for instance my select board is completely intimate with each one of my officers and myself and my processes here and that could present conflicts in personalities or people that may not have a um an unbiased look that you would want to have when you're talking about police accountability so i do think the model of whatever that model looks like moving away from what we currently have without a real structure in place is probably a very wise option to be looking for um we have in stout in statute created the citizen advisory committee that's within the council's frame that's appointed by the governor now that framework that personnel has not been appointed as of yet and i believe likely for a couple reasons one because this is fairly new but there is so much activity going on and we want to make sure that everybody that should have a voice at the table does um about how that process takes place and be thoughtful about it rather than trying to just establish a committee because of the fact that it says that we have that now and we're right we're rushing because of all the unrest in the world that's going on and covid um i think that these are very thoughtful conversations that need to be carried out um in in length and with the proper people at the table that need to have the voices at the table thank you thank you so one question that has occurred to me um how does the training council establish who is chair did you arm wrestle for it no i probably would have lost that is decided upon um each year uh in december the council has a nominating process and a vote so that process is done by council members and the current makeup of the council is of full people so we always kind of put it out there a bit ahead of time that hey that people have an interest in running for a chair or a vice chair um we encourage that we encourage change in that position because i don't think it's good for any one person to stay in the position for any length of time um i i have to say that this past year has been for me um somewhat exciting because there is so much change going on and i'm i'm stretched a little thin right now but at the same time i've engaged with so many more people that i would not have um if we weren't going through the period of time that we are now and i'm i'm learning much more through that process so it's um it's making me much more aware of how critically important it is that these changes that affect the council um affect them in a positive way and that we have so many other people that not only should have but um desperately want a seat at the council to be able to have some voice in how law enforcement officers are trained in this state and how we interact with the citizens that were there to serve all right that was a long answer for every december i appreciate that thank you um and thank you for your service during this really tumultuous time i think uh all of us can identify with um feeling stretched a little thin but also appreciative of the uh the new challenges new skills and new opportunities opportunities jim harrison has a question if i could ask you to switch roles and be the chief of police and brandon um rather than chair of the training council um criminal justice council um we've heard a lot about dispatch fees um and chief humphries was with us the other day and mentioned brandon and said you have a larger department but yet your fees were proposed to be lower than his smaller department in fair haven and wondered if it had to do something with the type of reporting system that you both use do you have any insight um on that and what the impact will be on your department for dispatch fees uh i do and i can give you a little bit of the history on our town here um our town used to pay dispatching fees to the department of public safety for a number of years um and while at the time we were paying towns like fair haven castleton also within my county were paying nothing but getting the same service it got to the point that my select word said we're not paying anymore why are we paying when other agencies are not paying which put me as you can imagine in a predicament with the department of public safety um yet they continued to provide us our service now with looking at the fee structure that has been presented um i my town is being presented with a number that now is currently less than what we were paying several years ago so the fee structure has been kind of all over the place over the last few years and i don't know that i listened to the commissioner earlier say how it became about with their fee structure one of the critical pieces to that however is though the um so for the agency of fair haven for instance they use the spillman cad system my agency uses valport they are about the only two ads rms systems within the state that law enforcement agencies use i still pay to use both systems because i find some advantages to the spillman system that are not in valport but valfor is so much user friendly makes adjustments on the fly and allows me to do much more with my records management system and provide many more reports to the public more easily through my system so having said that when fair haven gets dispatched to a call the state police dispatch them they follow through with that officer through that call enter the information complainant information what the end result is and then they close out that call my agency they dispatch a call they give it to us and then they're done so we do the rest of the work we do it within our own pad rms system so the i believe that the fee structure that's out there now is based on the call rate for that town and i'm not sure exactly what the definition of call rate is because i don't have any control over what nine one one calls come in and then are directed to me and brand it for branded residents i also don't have any control over people that don't call my police department directly but call the local number which rings to the state police barracks and then they dispatch for us if someone is not in our office so there are variable factors that create what that fee structure is for that agency and there are a number of them that come to the conclusion of what that figure is so i don't know what their haven's figure is but mine was um almost half of what we were paying in the past for dispatching service thank you chief i'm probably more confused than ever but sorry it's a discussion for another day sorry thank you all right anything else um anything else you'd like to share with us chief uh i don't think so at this point but i also um would just like to make myself available if there are further questions or questions you would like responded to in writing uh something that comes up in other testimony that you hear that either sounds in conflict to what you heard today or does it make sense to you i'd be happy to come back at any time to answer those questions for you i appreciate that um we we have a few more more days next week to work on this bill so uh we may need to ask you to join us again thank you for your time today thank you so much for being here um uh Cindy Taylor patch i would love to welcome you to share your thoughts um i know that you have probably been following some of the previous meetings and i've taken a look at the bill and uh what what does the committee need to know from your perspective so um i definitely want to give folks the opportunity to ask questions about any of the training that we do whether it be basic training or in-service training as we've talked a little bit about we do off-site in-service training for those who are already in the field at a rate of usually about 20 classes or so or more a year obviously COVID restrictions at different locations have made that really challenging this year but just want to make sure that people do understand that we do go off-site and do training regularly for for officers working one thing i also wanted folks to know about that i saw in the bill specifically was the piece on page 15 about the the council in consultation with the racial disparities panel human rights commission aclu etc the piece about you know reviewing council curriculum in light of uh fair and impartial policing lenses and things like that we actually have that committee already that was developed in january um we have members of the rdap on on that um susanna davis is part of the group uh nwacp has to see at the table as well as law enforcement officers and council staff so um we did a welcome and sort of development of mission meeting in january and then when COVID happened it certainly slowed down our work but we have had a couple of meetings over the summer we have another one next week and part of the work that we've done is to have our instructors take a really deep look at where they're already addressing fair and impartial policing type learning objectives and brought that assessment back to the panel members for their their thoughts and also have them thinking about where they might do more and it's where it fits sort of organically into various different pieces of our curriculum so that the concepts are more um interwoven rather than you're only hearing about fair and impartial policing concepts and one for our block of training but that the concepts are throughout and um so we have collected that information um we have panel members sort of sitting with it now um to give their thoughts um atan does red and long go who's part of the the rdap as well and he's a co-director of fair and impartial policing for dps um is an instructor for us in that topic um and to be clear um that goes beyond issues of race and to sexual orientation gender and you name it socioeconomic status obviously being a big thing for us here in vermont so um we do have that that group already um we are waiting for the aclu and human rights commission to um have their designees present they were invited back in january and are working on assigning that to one of their staff members but the rest of us have been have been meeting and and working on that uh project for a while now so i wanted folks to know that and also wanted folks to know that um i was i've been here at the police academy for 18 years uh but in my past life was a mental health crisis clinician i have a master's degree in psychology so i was sort of a nontraditional uh pick for the position that i'm in as a director of training and just want you to know that i'm an instructor on crisis response for law enforcement have been for a long time and these issues are very important to me so um i hear the concerns about these issues of fair and impartial policing um you know loud and clear they're very important to me and i 100 believe in the philosophy of collaboration um that's what we did when we developed the mental health training that we have and we brought everybody to the table stakeholders from all different sorts of perspectives um to to work with us and you know we're all about that down here so you'll see no resistance from us on that Hal Colston has a question for you thank you madam chair and thank you Cindy for testifying about a month ago we hosted uh the legislature hosted uh several um public hearings that invited people from around the state for monitors to um to hear their thoughts and for me one of the one of the the striking themes was the lack of trust that for monitors now have with law enforcement um and i wonder how do you address that in in your training what's your strategy for trying to impart the importance of building trust with with the citizens of vermont yeah i can speak to that certainly we have a program that um i think it's for recruits primarily but i think we were in discussions with the group that i mentioned and how we also bring that more into leadership and supervisory training but as an example i spent a whole day with major justin stedman of fish and wildlife talking with the new recruit class of this concept of guardianship and just a foundation of what it is to be a law enforcement officer in the state of vermont that we believe very much in a guardian mentality that we're caretakers of the community even when people misbehave we're still you know to be their caretaker and and getting unpointed in the right direction that we're looking to modify behavior not punish people we spent a long time talking about the need to take care of oneself and be physically and mentally fit so that you can do your best work for your community and we talk about the concepts of procedural justice and how even sometimes when people do um receive a punishment so to speak if they receive a ticket for example if they feel listened to and they feel heard and that they were treated with respect even though they might have to pay a fine they still feel better about their relationship with law enforcement versus um you know maybe let them go maybe don't give a ticket but you don't treat them while you don't listen and you're not respectful um that even though they don't have to pay that fine they don't feel good about the interaction so we spent some time talking about research related to that and practice related to that and the concept of you know police legitimacy that you know every law enforcement agency had in the state of vermont um you know they have so much work to do they don't get all the the face time with the community that the officers on the road do and these new recruits are going to be doing in a short number of months and how important it is that they really spend a lot of time focusing on how to get that concept of police legitimacy you know as part of their everyday work so you know stopping in maybe at your local convenience store and just you know chatting with people say hello be available we talk about the concept of you know contact theory if they're people in your community that um you know are sort of outside your your norm population so to speak now what are you doing to get out there and meet them where they are and hear what their concerns are and just to start to build a relationship so um really emphasizing those concepts where now if something goes bad in your department you need that um that trust in the bank with your community to survive it and so like I said we spend a whole day with new recruit classes talking about that and we'll you know continue to try to spread that same information out into our supervisor and leadership programs we've got a little bit within service on that as well but certainly have a long way to go if I could just follow up um how do you know that that training is effective yeah it's uh it's a great question and I wish that I had a better tool to answer that question for you than I have right now um we're hopeful and I think um you know some of the red flags that we might see to tell us if it's not working is the issues around professional regulation you know what are we seeing going on in our communities um I feel pretty good about what's going on in Vermont compared to other places but as far as having you know data on the effectiveness it's something that would require you know somebody to work on that to collect that kind of information develop tools for that and we don't have that ability here right now thank you anyone else have questions for Cindy Taylor patch right Cindy any other sections of the bill that you want to flag for us I think you know I just agree with the you know commissioners concern that we need a little time for our new executive director to get started so that we can get uh rolling on some of the topics that are you know you've highlighted as being important um you know we have a lot of work done we just need to be able to get that person up to speed so we can get that further down the road and um like I said I'm happy at any time to answer questions about basic training or in-service um our biggest concern with what seems to be a feeling of offering basic training off-site would be you know what that location might be you know right now we only we can use different locations for you know a day or a few days at a time but the volume of training that would be required you know our questions would be what's the space that we're going to use and who's going to staff it because if I have to send staff off-site to multiple locations and send instructors basically duplicating the number of instructors we would need right now that would be an enormous burden so we just want to be clear about the need for a significant amount of increase in resources if we were directed to have to do that great committee any other questions for Cindy Taylor patch thank you so much for being with us this morning um yeah we will certainly be in touch if we need to get you on um on our agenda again as we close out this bill thank you great uh so committee any uh any lingering questions that you have for chief brickel all right I don't see anybody diving to their little blue hands so uh thank you so much to Cindy and uh and Chris for being with us this morning we we definitely appreciate you sharing your perspective and expertise with us we have a few minutes left I guess almost 30 minutes left of our allotted committee time today and since we have um since we have a bit of a gap in our agenda I had reached out to the speaker to ask if it would be okay if we moved the two charters that were passed back in March that are fairly vanilla and non-controversial ones that we uh have have been over uh at least with legislative council in some meetings in order to understand that they are pretty run of the mill and um and standard uh so that we can review them and I think fold them into one bill and send them on their way so uh in advance of that I asked um let's see Bob Hooper and Warren Kitzmiller I think or the two committee members I asked to be um to be in charge of making sure these are pretty standard um and so we've asked Tucker to join us this morning and Tucker boy I tell you it has been a long time since we saw you so thanks for being with us today and um please take us through H 952 all right hello and for the record Tucker Anderson legislative council uh I'm going to share the bill for you here so I can give you a uh quick recap of some of the provisions that you have covered before uh this is presented as a strike all amendment to H 952 uh the city of Burlington Charter amendments uh we'll start with uh Burlington's amendments and an overview of what is contained here uh the first three sections that we will go over are amendments uh to uh ballot nomination deadlines section three is being amended uh to require prior to being the petitions for nomination for special elections must be filed nine weeks in advance so you'll see here at the end of the section starting on line four uh that we are setting aside general law and that the petitions shall be filed with the clerk in accordance with the charter not later than five p.m on the ninth Monday preceding the day of the election uh if you go to 17 vsa section 2681 subdivision a1a you'll see that under general law that is a six-week requirement so this bumps it from six weeks to nine weeks for uh the nominations of municipal officers by special election section six uh similar idea uh establishing specific deadlines um for uh special elections here um the petition has to be filed with a cao not later than 60 days prior to the election and i'll note ahead of time that many of the sections that we're going to go through do uh deadlines in general law the loan exception being that uh first section around the nine-week petition filing deadline section 22 is uh similarly amended we covered this last time as well um for special elections uh the cao has to prepare all official ballots at least 45 days prior to the election um i did hear from our subject matter expert in the area of elections who informed me that this does align with general law but that in general uh most of the ballots are actually prepared 46 days in advance uh 45 days is established i believe by uh federal law requirements vermont does it a day ahead of time and there is some thought that statute should be generally amended to reflect that to 46 days burlington is putting 45 here and from what i understand that's totally fine finally they're adding a new section to their charter to authorize uh a tax on the grand list and appropriate um establishment of a fund the housing trust fund apparently it's already established in the city code what we're dealing with here is the authorization for a uh a levied tax on the grand list and then an appropriation to that fund based on that tax and that is all for burlington great should i move on to barry uh let's see if anyone's diving for their little blue hand i don't see any hands coming up um go ahead and jog through barry and we'll come back to questions if we need to the barry city charter amendments are in two categories they're very quick uh the first is a general amendment of the section of the charter that deals with um business and contracts between the city and city officials the amendment strikes uh the previous language that prohibited any contract between the city and a city official or employee in excess of five hundred dollars so it strikes that in excess of five hundred dollars uh line and instead ties the prohibition on business and contracts between officials employees in the city uh to their procurement policy or the conflict of interest policy that is adopted by the city council uh the second group here is a set of repeals um first they are repealing their charter provision related to the uh office of grand juror so uh the grand juror provisions were repealed from general law and uh well we'll say removed from general law uh two or three sessions ago so this will bring barry city in line with general law concerning the former office of grand juror and finally they are repealing their article of the charter which had two or three sections that dealt with their specific charter provisions around their housing board of review and security deposits to kind of very quickly cover what happens when you repeal a charter provision their specific charter provisions around this housing board of review and security deposits will go away so they will no longer be controlled by those specific provisions but the general law around housing boards of review and security deposits will now control uh conduct of rental housing business within barry city to the extent that it applies and that is all excellent committee members any questions tucker you have done such a thorough job of explaining it that um nobody even has a question all right um i would entertain um a motion but um before we do that we need to designate who is going to be our clerk of the day since uh as you all remember marcia is uh busy helping her mom through some uh some uh medical stuff this week so who would like to be who would like to to record the vote on this don't all jump at once all right mic mic are you volunteering to be the clerk of the day uh right i was just scratching my nose but i will volunteer thank you let me get a well we'll give you a moment to uh to get a piece of paper out and record the motion um that i hope we will receive momentarily to vote out h nine fifty two favorably i so move all right any committee discussion questions about either of the burlington or barry city charter proposals all right mic let us know when you're ready all right um representative gannon yes representative gannon votes yes um copeland hanses yes marwicky votes yes lecler yes yes yes uh representative brownell yes i'm representative colston yes i'm representative hooper yes representative kits miller yes and representative plastic yes okay so we have a vote of ten one ten zero one excellent thank you for that good work mic you you stepped in and and did an admirable job of shuffling the did you go by zoom tile as you were reading people's names no i'm on the committee website okay great for the webpage super um andrea will send you a record of action that you can fill out to be able to be able to make this official and um so we have uh we have two folks who are kind of teaming up to report this and so you guys need to shoot rock paper scissors and decide which one of you is the lead to uh to deliver the uh the notice to the clerk's office that we have voted this out and i assume there's nothing here that would trigger it to go to any other committee it's going to come to the floor is that correct tucker there's no figure assessment that would trigger it to go to ways and means so i am not certain as to whether it will trigger an automatic send to uh house ways and means but the burlington charter does have that authority for the uh housing authority trust fund tax on the grand list so that may you know trigger a movement but i am not certain uh that sounds great so bob hooper that's your section of the bill so be prepared if you uh if you get sent to ways and means to uh to present that there any other questions from committee members on uh on what we're doing here on this great um okay so i i hope you all got my um my happy little email yesterday reminding you that that we are in the the last uh the last leg the home stretch of this i was going to say marathon but it really actually is a triathlon because i feel like we've been we've been meeting forever in this 2020 legislative session and we've been doing this in a variety of uh different formats and ways um and as we bring uh our final bill of the year to a close i just want to make sure that in building the agenda for next week that anyone who feels like they've got perspectives they need to hear um has let me know that so i don't have uh i don't have the agenda finalized for next week but if you're accounting legislative days um you will know that we need to have 124 out of our committee um next week and uh and so that will be my aim and that's what i'm driving towards um uh so let's open this up to committee discussion for oh uh warren has a question go ahead warren mostly i just wanted to see if if andrea could get in touch with the two berry reps peter anthony and tommy waltz as as well as carol dawes berry city clerk i would think that all three of them might want to just offer some brief testimony on on this proposal if we can squeeze them in for some time next week on which on which proposal 952 i'm sorry oh sorry um so we uh we have already voted that out oh that's what we just did okay i mean i i think the committee will recall that we did hear from carol dawes um back at the beginning i want to say we even heard from her in person before we stopped meeting um but she had she had been of the mind that we that that it wasn't um it wasn't critically important to to do that charter change before uh before we took care of other covet and budget related issues which is why we find ourselves in september uh finally getting back to the uh to the berry city charter so the berry city members were uh reps are very happy to know that uh that we were going to try to squeeze this in and so um that's part of the reason why the speaker gave us permission to do yet another bill i think uh i think this committee will do more bills during the september session than um than the other committees combined i don't know very close to it i do recall carol and i think peter anthony testifying madam chair prior to covet so i yeah i call back that's right that's back in the dawn of time i'd forgotten about all that i know we've been through a lot since then it's uh yeah long year um so open to committee discussion uh or actually any other questions well all you people with the really good memories when did we take this testimony uh sometime after well maybe tucker knows march so carol uh was with us actually on a few occasions and briefly touched upon the charter provisions the first time was actually at the very beginning of the session the committee had taken up a charter cleanup bill you may recall the 200 some odd pages that was involved in that but carol had come in to talk about wanting to have a gender neutral charter and she brought up the upcoming charter vote at that time and i would assume that she came back sometime in between then and town meeting day to discuss it again and then it was uh maybe mid to late march i can't remember if it was a phone call or otherwise that she contacted the committee about staying action um because it wasn't crucial i don't have any exact dates for you but if that jogs anyone's memory on how it played out march 11 that would be my guess yeah why not i was looking more towards more northern climes but i can talk to you outside this environment thank you all right a committee discussion back to s124 um as i build the agenda for next week are there any um specific individuals you would like to hear from again who who maybe we had in but you'd like to get from are there general categories of perspectives that you feel we haven't covered yet that you would like to have us seek testimony on jim harrison yeah thank you um serah i don't know if it's necessary or not but um representative shaw from pittsford um had offered to testify obviously he has concerns about discussion of moving the police academy given that um their committee has made some investments in it um so uh he is certainly available if we wanted to continue to leave the study of options in there um obviously um those of us in the area might argue that if we've made investments and there's no going to be perfect central location um the idea is to go more towards finding um options to train in other locations but not necessary and not necessarily make the trip when you don't have to and i do think the academy and terminal training uh justice council is trying to do that thank you um mike berwicky i don't have a specific but a more general comment to make here and it's that i hope we can emphasize within this bill that this is part of a much larger process we're involved in uh even even larger and longer than this session and that uh we're already looking ahead to next session on how we can continue to build on this work and that we're going to be scaffolding building on each piece of work to go to the next and this is one part of that yes i appreciate that um and uh you you are correct that this is not a one and done other questions rabba claire suggestions uh thank you madam chair the first thing i want to say is i i am very appreciative of the um the variety and diversity of the testimony we received around this um i i think you and others have done a very good job of trying to get as many different perspectives in on this as as you can so a question i have is um just going forward here are are we looking to address everything in this legislation i mean like say dispatch or is the intent to sort of narrow this to some of the areas that there's well more agreement than not i'm just curious to know what yours and others intentions are here because i mean there's some really heavy lifting left out there to be done and um recognizing that there are some things that we want to get done but what are we looking to get done well specifically with respect to dispatch um i think uh that's that is a section of the bill that's crying for um an adjustment um not necessarily being extracted from the bill but uh but being adjusted uh you know it's clear that we've uh that there's a lot uh there's a lot more complicating factors out there um with respect to dispatch and um and i think we we want to make sure that we're setting up a scenario where a proposal comes back to the legislature for our uh for our vetting and approval um that would be my assessment of what we've heard from to have testified and with respect to the other parts of the bill um you know i i haven't heard anybody saying we need to ditch you know a b or c section of the bill uh if there are sections of the bill that you feel you need to hear more perspectives on that's uh that's really the purpose of of having this discussion no yeah no i think we've done i mean i'm just like sitting thinking about like these citizens advisory boards um i think actually uh the representative from Manuski had i think made a comment about maybe having some boards but at a higher level like a county level or something along that lines and it does sound like that we certainly need to have more committee discussion but i think we've got enough specifics that we could maybe start heading in a direction i guess but thank you jim harrison so i'm looking at the summary and not the bill but i know in 2019 we made a criminal offense on um i don't remember if it was relation to the unauthorized use of force like uh chokehold um and we put sunsets we delayed implementation dates and we put sunset because we wanted to revisit it is that something we're revisiting it or is judiciary as part of 119 revisiting um that is a great question and i'm gonna ask either betzian or john to remind me if they have a sense of whether that's um is something that the judiciary committee is working on because i lost track of that anybody remember i i do not know if they're working on it or not but um jim is correct that there are sunsets in 2019 um all right betzian so there's still 119 that's uh on use of force and i think that's now in house judiciary and that would seem related to um i'm looking at your s2 19 as enacted and that uh making it a crime uh for law enforcement to use uh prohibited restraint that is set to sunset on july 1 2021 and the uh justifiable homicide is also scheduled for repeal on july 1 2021 those are normally things uh that would be judiciary related for normal committee um jurisdictions of course it's up to you on whatever you want to however you would want to handle it yep i will loop back with um with the chair of house judiciary and make sure that this is um this is something that they are focused on and if not i will report back to you and we will decide what we want to do with that thanks jim all right any other questions on various sections of 124 places where you'd like to hear other perspectives betzian hello i just wanted to um bring something up when you're done with the s124 conversation you got it um last call on 124 before we shift gears with the last 30 seconds or a minute we have all right go ahead betzian just wanted to give you a heads up that senate gov ops uh voted out yesterday a committee bill that contains lessons learned uh based on some of the provisions of law that were enacted specifically to address address the covid emergency situation and so just and tucker being here reminded me to remind or to give you that update um it is i don't know if it's going to be taken up today in the senate or might wait until next week um it it will just get introduced today um so it is it would put into permanent statutory law provisions that could be used in future states of emergency so just wanted to put that on your radar for if you will want to consider that before adjournment fascinating okay so um and who drafted that bill tucker and i both it was a joint effort because it deals with open meetings municipalities elections professional regulation and uh share for emergency funding all right well we will keep an eye on any gaps in our schedule next week to have uh have the one two punch of um of our two favorite uh ledge council folks in in these areas to give us a run through on what the senate is sending us all right uh that is time and does anybody in the committee have any lingering questions all right well we have a little bit of time before we go to house floor and may it not be quite as long as it was yesterday um and uh so great work this week committee we have covered a lot of ground we've heard from a lot of a lot of different perspectives and and i really appreciate your attention and focus on this really important issue so uh great job this week and see you on the floor later today