 Good morning everybody. Welcome to the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs. This Wednesday, February 7th, we are picking up our work with the new draft of our Sixth Slamist Ethics Bill. So Mr. Devlin, would you like to This is here. I think it might make sense to Maybe start with the summary and then we can kind of dig into the language itself. That sounds good for you. Thank you for having me, Chairman McCarthy. For the record, my name is The legislative council. For you, the committee members will have Draft 2.7 of the committee bill. I'm going to do it in this way. Ethics for references is 24-0229 and the bill summary as well. And the bill summary now includes a little bit extra information about existing disclosure requirements in the front page. And then anything that has changed since draft 1.4, the committee was reviewing In the previous weeks, has been indicated in green text on the Summary. So it's easy just to kind of skimper. Hopefully using the skimper Exactly what's been updated here. Chairman McCarthy, would you like me to Work my way systematically through the summary to hit all aspects of the Bill again or really just what's been updated since. Yeah, so I think it would probably make sense because we've been focused on Many other things to just do a quick high level on On what's in the whole draft because I think many of us may have kind of Yeah, forgotten at certain elements, but maybe The review will not be a waste of time. I'll just start off very high level with the purpose of the bill. This bill proposes to one required that certain county officers Both running for and holding office file and financial disclosures To modify disclosure requirements for certain elected officials Both running for and holding office Three creating penalties for delinquent disclosures for candidates And four state office, county office and state senators and state representatives Or granting the state ethics commission powers to investigate Hold hearings and issue warnings, reprimands and recommended actions So yeah, five create a full time exempt legal counsel position In the state ethics commission and reclassify the executive director of the State ethics commission from a part time to a full time exempt to the employee And finally add a member to the state ethics commission to be appointed By the Vermont legal cities and towns Jumping to the top of page two of the summer Part one of the bill pertains to candidate financial disclosure requirements Section one and a men's We now turn to the elections title Title 17 BSA 2414 Title candidates for state and legislative office disclosure form And this will require candidates for county offices to submit Financial disclosure forms in addition to candidates for state offices and the general assembly Here in this is an updated portion of the language County office will mean assistant judge of the Superior Court High bailiff, judge of probate, sheriff and state's attorney So those collected points So this updated draft has all of the elected county offices The candidates for those offices are included in the primaries of disclosure So we're just capturing everybody's running your office For those kind of seats in addition to us and statewide candidates Right Thank you remind me where the appointed folks lie Do they have something within the Another statute sorry the appointed folks I was thinking about a little bit more and this is for candidates This is the elections title or candidates would be running that make more sense They wouldn't be off if they're not running so they wouldn't be Cued to offer just The state officers And this is in part five do have to Provide annual disclosures however The county level appointed positions I'll double check I don't think that actually applies to those folks in this current draft though But I can look into that like So do you not think county appointed officials If there are even any active file disclosures Not all of the Pointed county officials Their duties don't pertain to fiscal matters to what degree that matters or not To the committee to determine whether they'd like to Ask for disclosures from those individuals but County clerks kind of deal with recounts Let's see what the county officer is actually a contracted job interestingly It's not actually a held position It's kind of tasked out That's good the other county positions I can certainly look into that though if you'd like some more It's okay thanks I just wasn't sure who was covered under this county Umbrella So it's not appointed people Section a of sorry subsection Section one will require these Those disclosures to include and I have Seven bullets here one sources of personal income Of more than five thousand dollars from an employer This is in current statute two if self-employed Sources of personal income from Two bullets here a the name of any client Tim could you look to me like you started out on one Document now I don't know where you are Sorry I'm at the top of page two of the summer of the summer Yes Yes it might have been confusing because you started off with the bullet Coming from page one and then you skip the existing duties and Everything is in the bill but that's a good point of just orienting Everybody so we're on the top of page two of the summers And apologies for that and if any Committee members would like me to Dive into the actual language themselves I'd be happy to I can refer everybody Subsection a let's see So the second item that will be required for disclosure forms If self-employed sources of personal income from A the names of any client whom the candidate knows Has business before any municipal or state office Department or agency during the previous 12 months provided that the disclosed Information is not confidential information so there's two things In green there to the qualifying aspects That the candidate is aware That their client had business before Municipal or state office department agency in the previous 12 months And also there's a confidentiality element to it now Where if they're otherwise prohibited from disclosing that They would be exempt from doing so in that context The self-employed sources of personal income from the names of clients From whom the candidate has received $10,000 or more in the previous 12 months Provided that the disclosed information is not confidential information So again that qualifier for confidential information The third disclosure requirement and this has been updated in the bill Is membership and position on any board or commission In the prior 12 months So I'm going to pause on that one in particular So we in the last half of the bill We're going from the current requirement which is that Boards and commissions that receive any state funds So organizations that receive state funds if you're on a board you have to report that already And then we the original suggested language Said in addition to that any boards that might Advise on the spending of state funds so if you're on an advisory council For instance and I think there was some confusion around That we had a committee discussion about it and my recommendation To a legislative council was let's just say If you're on a board just report that you're on the board that just make it easy Like have the statute just So any board or commission that you're on that has to do with State spending so that we've simplified the language significantly The next requirement for disclosure is number four Loans made to a company if the candidate owned more than 10% of the Company and if the loan was not commercially reasonable and made in the ordinary Course in business this is not changed since the last Version. Next five companies in which the candidate Just to like clarify it and I know it hasn't changed so Loans made to a company the candidate For its 10% board and if so Does that trigger Disclosure with the and if It needs to fill up the actual language here so this is the bill On page three Okay so this is three B it's the if it's Yes and that'd be details of a loan Company and division and If not commercially that is not commercially reasonable Okay so it would have to be Owned by a 10% Ownership interest and then also It'd be and so it'd be both the 10% and if it's Sorry but sure if that If it's not partially reasonable And the idea of Reasonable loan is not spelled out here Because it's not spelled out It could be litigated by the courts we could introduce further detail As to what exactly is meant by that I'd have to check to see if There's a broader understanding Throughout this title of what is commercially reasonable and financial disclosures If it has been litigated but I could certainly look into that Yeah so I'm going to come back to this when we have Director Silver because I feel like this particular provision Has I think it's gotten a lot Of attention and I'm not exactly sure how valuable it is it seems like A pretty rare thing but we're in any of these provisions My understanding is We're talking about what's going to be on the form and every single candidate Is going to have to make your disclosure and if they fail to report something It's not as if the ethics commission is like Investigating the veracity of all the financial disclosure forms It's an opportunity for candidates to make These things that are required to be on the form public Knowledge and ability they in good faith make a disclosure and It's not as if there's like an enforcement mechanism that goes through Each and everything that's disclosed it's about what's on the form and does The candidate for office actually Truthfully and in good faith fill out form I don't know that I think sometimes we're getting A little bit like I just wouldn't want any of us to Get confused when we have legislative counsel say I'm not sure that's been Litigated I mean I don't know that in Vermont really Any of these things have been litigated beyond like an advisory opinion about whether a particular thing May or may not have been a conflict of interest Or something like that I mean I think this would be my base but definition of commercial aid is also going to change depending on At some points in time but a lot of times it's going to be And at some points in time it's not right But if there are references out there to look but it's really going to be The point in time that it happened And so it's not really easy just to say Find largely reasonable you know here But it's something that people can ask us about And I think it's like the land disclosure is a question that I address In advance of the place So subsection A I'll continue there We'll also require disclosure of let's see this is bullet 5 Companies in which the candidate had an ownership or controlling interest in the previous 12 months That has had business with The state or municipality that has not changed since the last draft The next point has though And it's indicated in green texture A disclosure will require a description but not amount of publicly traded assets and Interests and trust valued at $25,000 or more And municipal bonds issued in the state of Vermont of any value These are to be reported to the best of the candidates knowledge Which permits a candidate to describe fine trust and similar assets So how did that dollar value get changed What was the basis for changing that and why $25,000 The conversation we had in the committee Soon to suggest that folks felt that that Press hold was low And I had Probably at least implied that they were going To change this in the next draft there are sort of two big things here Also, I'm stating Tim one is we increased From the original draft to $25,000 being the threshold And then we made it really explicit that you don't report the amount so Tim if I'm correct me if I'm wrong the way this will work now is the form Would say you know that if you have any individual Holdings above $25,000 or interest in the trust etc That you would have to report the fact of that So let's say I had you know for individual stocks they might be $200,000 one stock and $25,000 and $1 of another stock $500,000 of another and a million and another holding and I would Just report company A company B company C company D and all the public Would know is that I happen to have holdings and for companies That were likely You know in the implications that they're in in excess of that threshold So one argument that I'd be really open to is going back to the $10,000 threshold since we got rid of the amount because then actually the Implication is that you have that you may only have $10,000 Of that stock but what we were trying to do after the conversation we had Here was just make this less tedious okay I think the implication That anybody is going to be you know legislating Or doing something that's potentially A conflict of interest because they happen to have a individual stock holding Of $10,000 is to me that's not a super credible Implication from all of this but I think the idea here is That we're just trying to find a reasonable bottom threshold for What that is and you know I personally would be comfortable With $10,000 or $25,000 but we just picked a number That was one of the other benchmarks from you know Other states that was higher than $10,000 because of some of the feedback that we got from the original draft So is that correct that You wouldn't have to report the Dollar amount I think Representative McCarthy was illustrating that so that's Correct I didn't follow your reasoning for going back to $10,000 so the idea here is How much holding like so what value of an individual holding so let's say I have Apple stock for instance and I've got $15,000 worth of it We had $25,000 thresholds Then I wouldn't have to put Apple on the form The way this is constructed the language now it's really clear I don't have to put the amount regardless But the implication if I write Apple down To anyone reading the form because the threshold is $25,000 Would be that I have $25,000 for more in Apple So I actually think if one of our concerns is about you know The candidates for the General Assembly for instance feeling like gosh I really want to tell everybody about My personal finances I actually think there's an argument to be made that if we make the Threshold on the lower side and there's kind of more disclosure Of individual holdings for instance but you're saying A lot less about what the value of those things is if the threshold Is lower because if I write Apple on there and the threshold is 25 Then I'm really implying I've got at least $25,000 of that particular individual holding I totally see what you're saying now However you are getting more information out of people if the threshold Goes back down to $10,000 and frankly I think $25,000 is pretty low also So you are getting more information on people If you drop the threshold back down to $10,000 So I guess I still don't Really see The dollar amounts Being relevant except the lower the dollar amount The more you find out about a candidate I think and I know I've said this before that If you have a candidate who has like 80% of their holdings In a particular company maybe that's somebody you should be concerned about Maybe the public needs to know that kind of information Because that's almost like holding That's almost like having a controlling interest in a company It's a similar concept in my mind I mean you may not if you have 80% of your holdings In Microsoft you're not really a controlling interest In that company but it shows that that's something that you're Really interested in and really trying to make profit on I don't really like these dollar amounts I don't think they're truly relevant to what you're trying to get at Because folks who have $10,000 in a stock I mean at some of the stock prices that are out there There are hundreds of dollars per share So you could get up to $10,000 or even $25,000 pretty quickly And what does that tell you about that person? That person doesn't have a controlling interest in the company Likely Unless it's a very small company with very low value of stock So I don't think you're getting the kind of information that you really want Out of this, you really want to know if somebody's going to be sitting here in my seat At this table making decisions based on their personal holdings And I really don't think this type of Picky threshold is going to tell you that kind of information So I think we'll maybe put a pin in this I know it's been like one of the big topics of conversation So when we have Director Silver back up We'll hear from her and TJ about sort of the rationale behind The thresholds and what we're really getting at So I think it's what we keep coming back to as people who are candidates ourselves And you know, we and people who run in the future If we pass this, we'll be asked to make these disclosures I think it's really hard for us to step out Side of this and say, hey, what is a reasonable amount of Disclosure that we make so that the public can't have faith We're seeking public interest in our own financial interests So it's not just about the controlling interests in a company It's also about what I'd be trying to make decisions Or is there even the appearance that I might be making decisions in my role as Not just a member of the General Assembly, but also, you know, a secretary in the administration That might, or there might be a conflict between my personal financial interests Even if I don't have a controlling interest in a company that may have, you know, significant investment And if I just disclose what my holdings are from the outset and everybody does that uniformly The thresholds are more about just setting a reasonable floor for when it would be relevant Other, you know, and how granular we need to get And I think there's a very reasonable debate about what actually makes sense in terms of that threshold Which is why we in this new draft suggested a higher floor For that disclosure of individual holdings Thank you. Before I forget my train of thought, would you mind if I just made a couple of comments? No, go ahead Thank you. So I really do feel like our position as elected representatives in the General Assembly Is quite different than someone who serves, like for instance as a secretary or commissioner In the executive branch Because of the decision making power that we have versus those people who may be signing contracts And secondly, I think we should be, and this is really where I'm going with this I think we should be much, much more concerned about who individual state representatives work for in our outside jobs And who our spouses work for in their outside jobs Because that to me constitutes the biggest conflict of interest in this building More so than any stock holding or bonds or anything else that anybody could possibly be forced to disclose I see so many conflicts that maybe they aren't really happening, but the appearance of And optics are everything in this job And if you want us to be truly transparent, we should know who works for a company that has A distinct interest in the type of legislation that we're passing in this building So that's where I'm coming from on this And this legislation doesn't, this legislation to me does not address that issue at all In current law, I think one of the reasons we don't see that reference is that right now Any source of income that you or your spouse or domestic partner has that's above $5,000 has to be Is required to be reported now in the current law, isn't that correct? That is correct as well as employment including the employer or business name and address So currently like the candidate spouse needs to be listed where they get their income from Yes, the candidate together with his or her spouse or domestic partner that totals more than $5,000 Okay forgive me because it's been two years since an election that I don't remember this, but so that's good That's good to know that that already exists That's just why we had to talk about this because it's part of the current I feel like none of that is ever really investigated by anybody You might have to report it, but when we're talking about the powers of investigation and potential censure That's where it gets a little bit vague to me because I don't really see that it makes much of a difference that you're disclosed So why force people to disclose their personal information if it's not going to be acted on I really do feel that people's financial information is quite personal And I feel like this is maybe a little bit of overreach in terms of people's personal liberty, but that's the position I come from You know, just by virtue of my political background So that's all I'm going to say So I'm going to make the Didn't want to have this out but I feel like it's illustrative of why disclosure is important and sort of how it plays out so When I was first in the state house, my employer was disclosed And a bill came up that was about the entire net meter and policy for the whole state And I voted for that bill on the floor along with something like 126 other people in the house, right And there was a good government group to complain to the speaker of the house and the house ethics panel that I shouldn't have taken that but And the ethics committee in the house looked at it and said there's no conflict of interest here Because that particular bill that both in fact affected everybody it's the same way that when a teacher votes on an education bill that we have a citizen legislature we have to be able to come here And as long as a bill doesn't impact a particular person's business any differently than with their competitor or group that they're in, that's not a conflict of interest, but it's really up for the voters to decide. And if I didn't have to disclose who my employer was or who my clients were, then there wouldn't be that opportunity for the public to be able to decide for themselves regardless of what the ethics panel was Whether or not the conflict mattered. And so I think there you're getting some things representative hang out about how much do we as servants of the public and people who are seeking the public trust need to put our personal information on the line. So we took some steps a few years ago, you know, starting to require a little bit more financial disclosure. We've set up to say that they're commissioning their statewide conflict of interest policy for that governance the general assembly and the executive branch, but the whole reason we're here with this bill is that we are still according to a letter that we got, I think we all got from that same group that actually sent me, you know, the complaint about my vote on the net meter and built in 11 years of 10 years ago. That same group of saying, ask this bill, because in the interest of the public they they want the public to know more about us than we currently disclose. And so finding out, you know, it's our job here to figure out where those lines are. And it is really hard and it feels like a lot more. And I think the more transparent we are, you know, to a reasonable degree, like I really don't think that we should have to disclose our 1040s. And that's why that's not on the table here today I think, you know, the ethics commission didn't put that in their recommendations for the general assembly. But when you start to get up to running for statewide office, we already decided that that was going to be a reasonable disclosure so these are all really good conversations about what the level of specificity is. Yeah, I really appreciate you bringing up that example because yes we did all get that letter and I don't totally agree with those folks. A little bit of an outlier there. I'm sure they would hope that I agreed with them 100%, but I don't really so, but I do appreciate you giving a real life example of that and that that is one of my frustrations here is that probably someone in that position should have just recruits themselves from the vote on, what is it rule 75 or something like that. And, and honestly, I'm not saying that to you personally anybody in that situation but I know that the state ethics group. It's, or the ethics group here in the general assembly said that it was okay. I don't necessarily agree with that either. But there's a lot that I don't agree with in this building so we'll just move on totally understand. So I have a few hands up we go represent waters evidence. Thanks. I just wanted to first acknowledge that 100% it feels strange to have to disclose something that's really private and personal, just in order to do with something that seems like you're also giving up a lot of things that are private personal to be here for a lot of people right. But the other thing I want to mention is I just remembered it's there's if you look at. If you look on our witness list and you look up Christina separate underneath her name with all the documents. There's one from January 24. That's a state financial disclosure chart. And it's interesting to look at because. It breaks it down every state and what they asked for from different do you remember seeing that I kind of forgotten about it. So some states are no, but then some of them are $1000. So, in that context, 25 seems pretty high, I think appropriately high in this case, but it. It's pretty low like 1000 5000 from the states that do have disclosure limits for investments, so thresholds for investment. So, just for some context. Yeah, I think if you look at a lot of those states they're larger in population than we are and they have more people to. Gather candidates from we're such a small state. Yeah. It feels more personal like a lot of people who run for office across the state. I know who they are. Do I really need to know that personal information about them? I don't know. But like if I lived in Arizona, for instance, I wouldn't know a lot of those people who are running for state representative there. So it would be less personal and more just like a business thing. I think we try to do a lot of things in this building that and this is something else I've really been wanting to say we try to do a lot of things in this building that are like other states. We follow the model of Colorado, Oregon, Washington State, California, a lot. Those states are so much bigger than us population wise we can't. We can't really compare ourselves to them. So, I know there are some smaller states on this list and I know what their, their limits are what they are, but I'm not one to just say, okay, let's follow the Rhode Island model. For instance, I just want us to be Vermont and be unique and be as transparent as we have to be. I don't want to go overboard like one of the questions I asked that. had to do with the number three that we just changed membership and position position on any board. It was originally saying any board you serve on that does whatever or receives or receives or makes decisions on money coming from the state. We didn't have any when I asked for an example of that. Nobody could give me an example of one of those boards that we might sit on, but other states have them that just specifically take the money that comes from the state and allocate it around but we didn't have one of those boards that you would sit on. Do you know what I was talking about? I gave a couple of examples, you know, most specifically the opioid settlements on this. Okay, maybe I wasn't here with that. There's examples during that testimony. That was one that sticks out in the top of my mind and really obvious example. There were. There were. There were. There were. There were. Okay. $50 million or more. Okay. Yeah. I was just going to ask somebody who says, oh, let's just follow the model of another state. I really want to. Where. Where we. Where we're coming from and why we're going there and why does this apply to. Issues with state representatives who have holdings that need to be disclosed and haven't been. I don't know of any right now, but if anybody can come up with some specific examples that would help me, that would be great. I think the overarching thing is it would be hard to know if we had issues without having a disclosure culture that's similar across the board. So how did we get here to wanting to legislate a problem that we haven't figured out exit. What I would say, without. Getting too deep into. The cases and it may be important for us to perhaps have some more people in, but. And I'm sure executive director said where it can speak to this, but. The state ethics commission gets a lot of complaints. About. Perceive conflict of interest or and. Right now, we've really been focusing. Much of our discussion here on the disclosure pieces, because I think. You know, there's a lot of. Agenda about how much we have to disclose as a public officials when we run for office or hold office, but. A big piece of this is for them to have the ability to actually. Respond to have a little bit more staff have the ability to have hearing so that they can respond to the complaints that they're already getting. Where right now they mostly have to say, you know, we don't have the power to dig into that. We, you know, can issue an advisory opinion on if something like that is actually true or whether or not it would be a true conflict, but. I think one of the more important than leaving them beyond disclosure that we're going to hear in the next parts of the bill. Is about, you know, how much power do you want the state ethics commission to have to actually deal with the very real complaints from Vermonters about whether or not officials in. You know, we've talked a little bit about local. We'll just kind of beginning in the companion language here, but on the statewide bill, we had a few years now where we've had a pretty consistent conflict of interest state court of ethics. You know, people across state government know about it from what we heard from Jay Johnson and general counsel from the administration was that they, you know, have even some tighter definitions of things than we've contemplated here so. Now that we've all got the experience with that, and the state ethics commission is in this quandary. You know, I think it might be good for the receiver to give us some examples of the kinds of things that Vermonters are bringing absolutely appreciate that. Yeah, I think that's where the idea of advancing this is to not only be able to deal with those things, but also to be able to say, hey, we take ethics seriously in Vermont. And I think you're absolutely right. We need the right size up for Vermont. But beginning of this, I said something to the effect when we first took up this draft language that we've had just kind of a, you know, we all trust good old, you know, person X that's in state government. And, and that's been the Vermont way for a long time. It's just to kind of have trust, but so many officials have violated that trust that the reason that other states have gone to this model of kind of a more universal disclosure is to be able to give the public more confidence that everybody's putting their cards on the table about what their interests are. So, go ahead. Thank you for that little lips. It identified for me, where I am in this process. Okay, I have no problem. So I will get submission, more less victory and power that would allow them to respond to a complaint with an actual investigation. I've heard of the tax filing issue last time I have less objection to disclosure for myself, I don't have any, really, but for my voice and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I still think that's invasive to somebody that really. It might be considered invasive on that level more so than I would want to feel comfortable with. I don't know if now is the time, but you know, and just listening to the discussion and stewing over number two of the self appointments person. I don't know if that now we go to the commissioners up to the front or. Yeah, why don't we. So that we have time to hear from the commissioner. Why don't why don't we just research the rest of what the kind of summary changes are and then I think it would be good for us to have that discussion with the commissioner about some of the kind of over the rationale for some of these pieces. And then, you know, if we seem to have consensus on wanting to modify this draft language further than we can make those requests for us to some sense. Yeah, no, because I just, like I say, stewing over and I put some concerns, you know, address to, you know, a small self-employed into myself. Just a couple of thoughts. I think that like the conflict of interest definition was based in a law. I'm correct. And so there's like a foundation for the reason that is defined that way. And so it's to me, it's like not very arbitrary. And then I just, I think like sometimes in this discussion that the protective factor. The candidates of being upfront with all this information is kind of lost in the, you know, the moment of potential scrutiny that people have on you and also the chance to build trust with your public ahead of time by showing them that you trust them with this information. So I actually think it actually like strengthens the political process and our ability to run for office. If I appreciate the direction that that would go, whatever amount is on there. So Tim, thank you for indulging us having committee discussion. I think that was good for us though to get some concerns on the table. So we'll, I think we were just probably getting into the final changes in part one. The last item that is requiring these disclosure forms to be number seven, the full name of the candidate spouse or domestic partner. And that has not changed this last draft. And we're here just like to quickly note that the same disclosure requirements have been added in section five later on the bill for executive officers and some county offices those that is individuals holding office as well. It's a mirrored in two different places. And then subsection C would enable candidates to redact their US individual income tax return form 1040s on that the candidate streets, can the street address and identifying information and signature of a paid preparer. And again, only state officers not legislators have to submit the partially redacted. 1044. And now that we've added those county officials were also not requiring different there. So it's just statewide candidates or state officers that have the file. We have more forms than just the time for people. Um, as far as what's requiring disclosure or, well, just as far as file tax. Depends on the individual, I'm sure. But the, the only reason we're matching this is the issues happens to be the being modified as far as looking at the data here. Part two of the bill contains two in office financial disclosure requirements and this is section two through five. Section two will amend three VSA 1201 definitions by migrating certain definitions elsewhere in the chapter. To the definitions second kind of grouping together all the terms to be defined and throughout the chapter. In particular, it will migrate conflict of interest and public servants. There's a new definition for county officer. Meaning individual holding office of, sorry, there's a typo on the summary update that the definition of executive officer has been amended to include. Deputy under a state out there, which in effect will require annual disclosures from deputies of the treasurer, secretary of state, auditor of accounts and attorney general. In addition to the current agency, secretaries and deputies, department commissioners and deputies. So right now under current statute, the deputies of the, essentially, the governor's branch of the executive. They're required to file disclosure system expanded to the other executives. So, and their deputies there. The, let's see this section also has the definition of government conduct regulated by law. The creating or permitting to persist of any unlawful employment practices, pursuant to such a fair employment laws, including discrimination and sexual harassment. And this will enable the state ethics commission to refer and to track complaints of this content. Section three. Migrates that definition of public servants section for migrates the definition of conflict of interest in definition section. Section five. And this has been updated somewhat. Pull amendment three VSA section 1211 executive officers disclosure to require the same additional information to be disclosed for in office executive officers and county officers as candidates. For those offices in section one above is that mirroring of disclosure requirements for candidates and those in office, except here. County office. And in this section will mean the high bailiff in states attorneys. The difference being that probate judges and assistant judges will have to offer certain information disclosure while running for office, but not well actually in office. Also to note here that shares were given their own conflict of interest and disclosure requirements and act 30, which was Senate bill 17. Last year. And that's why I included here. Part three of the bill pertains to delinquent disclosures for candidates for state office, county office, state Senate and state representative. State Senator and state representative. Section six as a new section to be 17 PSA 2415. This is in the elections code. To be titled failure to file penalties. And this will be regarding penalties for candidates for state kind of website of offices who do not properly file their financial disclosures. Subsection speed through C will create the penalty structure. Secretary state will notify the state ethics commission, which will issue a notice of delinquency to the candidate. Can I shall have 5 working days from the date of the issuance of the notice to cure the delinquency is properly file those disclosures. After which the can it will pay $10 a day with a maximum penalty going up to $1,000. Can you go through quickly with the language in the bill where you say penalties for candidates who do not properly file their financial disclosures. What does properly mean in this context. Sure. Let me so section five. Oh, sorry. Next year. It's not. Sorry. It's on page 15 of the belt. Failure to file penalties. So, let's see the new language in subsection a of 2415 will state if any disclosure required of a candidate. So, the date of those offices is not filed in time in the time and manner set forth. And these other cross certain sections in those pertain to the dates in which various offices have to file things for both in various elections. So, time. So, the date of those guidelines and the manner set forth really gets to the completion of the form for the most part. Making sure you don't the candidate doesn't leave anything like the most part. Presumably would mean a matter of truthfulness as well to expose accurate information. I can certainly triple check and get to the explicit language of these cross open sessions who like, but I'm fairly certain they say some things. There's somewhere in there asking for. That the candidate would have to certify that the information being profit is accurate. That might be already absurd. I think it is. Yeah. It's not like there's a penalty if you mistype and you write $14 instead of $15 or something like it's. No, you just didn't hand in your form at all. And if you did, maybe there's much in information is missing. But whether the statute silenced, you know, so one space or 50% spaces that apply. Okay, let's see. So section E in part three. This is section seven subsection you sorry about makes any intentionally fraudulent statements on disclosure form a false claim pursuant to 13 PSA 30 16 which will be referred to the attorney general or states attorney for enforcement and represent. This kind of gets to maybe a little bit further. This would be egregious conduct here. Very much intentionally filing inaccurate information with the purpose of see me making a false statement. This section seems like it's all pretty much a shall. I think that most of us probably don't hire a professional treasurer and I know that my personal one had. Probably getting into the state secretary states. I've done this a couple of times. Where's the, who's not my fault section in here. The of subscription you the intentionally fraudulent statements. No, or the. I mean, by the filing. Who are the, you're right. It is a. It's best to think of it in a shall as candidates will be required to submit their materials by the certain deadline. Or. Then be subject to the 10 other day by after the certain processes follow there. I think what might alleviate representative was concerned is the process that has to be followed for that. So can you just. We might even want to look at the. The bill language itself, as opposed to the summary to lay that out. So the. This is on page 15 of the bill. The process here. What I would like to share with you this point is that the office of secretary state. Will receive the information they'll be the ones to kind of clock if something is has been turned in by a certain deadline. They'll inform the state ethics commission. And it will be up to the state ethics commission to send out a notice informing the candidate that they haven't provided the reps. If there is a form there will be a period in which the candidate will be like, oh. Okay, let me go ahead and submit that. And if it's submitted. And everything is information is complete on that. Then there's no penalty level at that point. And the. Bill includes you will be considered. There's a, there's secretary state says, here, here are the 50 candidates that haven't submitted a form by the initial deadline. State ethics commission provides a notice to those candidates. And then from the time they get the notice, the. Candidates have in the current traffic bill five days to cure that don't even see before any penalty be assessed. And then after that. The state ethics commission can reduce or we have any penalty impose. Tim, I think that's the bottom of 16. Yes. Yeah. Yep, that's right. That's in subdivision for the commissions may reduce or waive any penalty. See, if there's demonstrate good cause. As determined by the commission and their sole discretion. Yeah, my point is much simpler. I think then. Yes. If my recollection of what has happened in the past is that. Everybody sort of way to kill. What the proper classifies the last minute and then something shows fluly with the second stage violence system. It's set up basically that now you will automatically would get referred to ethics to do. The notice and everything else. And if you don't have and have access to JP real quickly, you're in that loop. I don't know that that's. Necessarily cognizant of sometimes the system we haven't forgotten work where they're supposed to. Yeah, so I think actually the in the drafting of the bill. I think we're all involved in this language so we can hear from director separate and I represented water sevens was helping to shepherd some of this into draft language, but. The idea here is not that. I think we're trying to create a mechanism where people get punished. It's that right now. Candidates don't take our violence seriously they just don't. I think I understand that sometimes the technology doesn't work. And that's why there's a cure period. There's the opportunity if you're really experiencing trouble that you can say, hey, state ethics permission. I just the it issues that the secretary states offices having crazy. And the other thing is, if you don't pay the fine, like what, you know, it's, it's really in the end, it's sort of public shaming and embarrassment for a candidate who doesn't file, but right now, there's just no mechanism of enforcement at all for the files. And so there are a lot of candidates who just don't take it seriously. And, and that is frustrating to so many Vermonters and we're going to have the secretary state office coming on this tomorrow afternoon. And I think they'll tell us how many times they get complaints from people about like, I can see that this candidate for office X has long signs and advertising and all the stuff. They're going to go to look for who's funding their campaign and they haven't filed their disclosures. It's just like, it's infuriating the Vermonters and it makes me feel as somebody who really does my best to file on time when what am I doing this for if half of the other candidates in the state aren't taking it seriously. I mean, for my part, my second campaign, I didn't do any fundraising or spending so I didn't know I had to file and basically skipped an entire election. So I found out that that's how that is worded. And as part of this, can we have the Secretary of State, everybody who's filed and going to be on a primary or whatever ballot gets a letter from Secretary of State saying here the obligations what you need to do. Let's talk to them about that. I kind of feel like at a certain point, like you just go on Secretary of State's website, there's a handbook for a candidate explains it very clearly. And so I want to, I want to hold that thought and we should talk to, whether we hear from Lauren or Will tomorrow I'm not, I can't remember 100%, but we should talk to Secretary of State's office about that. If I was going to guess, I'm guessing that what they would say is like at a certain point it kind of needs to be on like if you're running for public office that you at least will visit our website and see what we say you have to do. So that's Yeah. Okay, I don't want to put people in a situation where there's anything standing up in front of a fishing game club and one of the wise ass people from somewhere stands up and says, can you tell me how many times you've been currently asked something simple like this. I don't know if you want to let less. That person have I guess my thought when you said that is this is that I don't believe, as representative Carthage has said I don't believe that this is being put in place in order to punish or expose or, or embarrassed for make vulnerable candidate. I think part of part of the job is yeah people might stand up at a public meeting and say hey I saw that you have over $100,000 and Google stock. Why are you voting on this that's part of our job it's part of our life, doing this job. If, if I think saying that we shouldn't be held responsible for our own behavior and our own compliance with laws is should be put aside for fear of people calling us on it. And if I may walk to work. I'm not going that far. That's not my concern. I agree with the chair that's 10 amount to that Google if you don't file a form such but this seems to just be an opportunity for people who want to file something on the web. That says, you know, you've been referred for five times and there's no no clarification of why. Am I wrong, Chairman McCarthy that that there wouldn't be a list published of just random these people are being reported for an ethics violation without saying file late like they're said. It's not just like a generic. So we have two different entities. Commission and ethics Commission and the Secretary of State's office. I'm not sure this bill does not require the commission to post anything I am not sure that the Secretary of State's office publishes a list of late recipients it may appear they would have a database that would be searchable that said. I have a line where people would expect to find something at a certain point in time where it may appear blank. That would be indicator. These are public records as well. So if there's no list, there would still be subjects in the public records act to the degree which that the information may be partially or entirely with help of full the subject to the exceptions and one PC 317 C. This bill doesn't require either Secretary of State or ethics Commission to publish a list of offenders. What it is not confidential, quote unquote information can be probably easily discerned. Right. There's also the issue of this. This would be a negative record right because it's the promise. There's an absence of record being produced here. The easiest way to deal with it is just to file your filing and if you miss it, you've got a cure period and if you're really having trouble, you can ask the state ethics Commission. You know, give them good cause and they can say I'm not going to let me any. Yeah, and this is a for my part anyway, a continuous. I'm just trying to talk to you what's for something to do the way it's supposed to and then all of a sudden you're in a school for. It's doesn't happen often I match, but it certainly happens. Well, I think that the, the challenges that candidates have faced with the campaign finance system does create issues I mean that that's their times when it's work great for almost every final candidate and I think we should ask the secretary states office tomorrow. I know that they've made improvements to that over the years and you know kind of how often are they what percentage of candidates has trouble filing how long does it take to fix those issues because what we may want to really think about is is the cure window too short. You know, should it be two weeks and set of five days or something like that. And on the other hand, I think there's a public interest during especially during the end of the campaign and getting that information quickly as possible. We don't want to just extend that indefinitely so those are, you know, those are policy decisions that we can make and draft in front of. Be like an on your off here. We should make it one consistent. Is that is that too cute by half. It's easier by making it way more complicated. The next question people use. Yes, yes, yes, no. All right. I think you're going to comment on that. One is a flood. So now I'm on an online by the system for exactly officers that's like their days off as you use financial school just for candidates. So my son around with links and one to your look you can see how easy it could be to file online. But just a second, we're not going to if you were to get a value in line where we need to get a list of people are actually late and that's not that bad. So if you have a reason why you can you can file a time that's typically acceptable less than they were going to say, okay, as long as you get the notice within those five days as long as you can do it, then you're all good. If for some reason you're stuck from doing it because of that technology to, you know, not function somewhere else. What have we got left that we haven't done one for the bill has to do with expansion of state ethics commissions powers and this is where most of the new ink appears on here. The following sections will expand the commission's powers, enabling it to investigate old hearings and make non binding recommendations. These sections have been updated to provide additional detail process and you can see there's a lot of green text indicating what has changed. I will skip down to section 10, which adds a new section regarding investigations enables the committee to investigate alleged unethical conduct occurring within the prior two years to built in statute limitations there with or without receiving a complaint investigations must conclude within three months and it may result in an investigation report and subsequent commission hearing if there is finding that probable cause to believe sorry that there is probable constant believe that the public servants conduct constitutes an unethical violations new section 11 adds a new section regarding hearings before the commission. This enables the commission to hold public hearings for the purpose of gathering evidence and testimony and making determinations if like. If wanted, both the public servant and any complainant will be afforded an opportunity to be at the hearing present evidence respond to evidence and arguing all issues related to the alleged unethical misconduct. Section 12 will add a new section and do with warnings, recommends and recommended actions. This enables the commission to issue those warnings reprimand and reprimands and recommended actions than 30 days of the last hearing. The recommendations may include not be limited to facilitated mediation. In addition, additional training and education referrals to counseling and wellness support or other remedial actions and just like direct emphasize that these would be only recommendations. Section 13 as a new section and do with procedure and rulemaking. The commission to adopt rules regarding procedural and evidentiary aspects of the investigations and hearings also grants the commission. The power to issue subpoenas and minister oaths in connection with the investigation hearings. Type of about correct. Section 14 will add a new section regarding records and confidentiality. And these records relating to the commission's handling of complaints alleged unethical conduct investigations and proceedings are exempt from the public records act. And shall be kept confidential. That's the starting place. And then there's exceptions to that being investigation reports. In a hearing, sorry, if a hearing is found to be warranted as if there's probable cause determined to be the case. Two evidence produced in the open and public portions of the commission hearings. As you just know that the commission hearings to be subject to the open meetings loss. So there's possibility for those to go into executive sessions and circumstances already spelled out a lot. And three would additional records exempted from confidentiality. That is would be public would be any warnings, reprimands or recommendations issued by the commission and supporting documents as determined by the commission so that any product. And I'd like to note here that there is no appeals process namely because there's no binding final decision. No expulsion from office or fine or loss of property right etc. And that is really that there's nothing to appeal. That last no completely threw me what do you mean there's no binding final decision does the commission not issue a decision on their hearings. They may issue a determination with the form of which it is that it's a recommendation doesn't have to be followed by the public official. So if they say, we're here the. So if there's an issue or reprimand is just a declaration, and then a recommendation should it be, let's say, we recommend that there be facilitated mediation between the parties to hash out the differences and find reconciliation on matter. And neither party has to actually participate in that they don't want to. Why do all this if you're not going to come to a conclusion that somebody did something really egregious and needs to take action to rectify that. I didn't have executive director so we're talking about the sort of virtue of doing this. I'm going to now that's great might as well just do it in context and kind of. I think ideas are going to be there be findings that would be based on the nation's on so there would be a conclusion. And so right now the issue and a lot of people come to us looking for actuality. And so. So, for instance, if there was a complaining who was bringing a complaint against an executive branch official. Secretary deputy commissioner etc that could go to the Department of Human Resources for an administrative remedy. If you might find facts make recommendations, you might be able to alleviate concern because or say that something doesn't rise to the level of conflict of interest. But right now the way it's since today before this bill to state ethics commission can issue advisory opinions on sort of just the plain request from people but you don't really have any ability to hold hearings or investigate today. And by their opinions are only, we can only send requests from people when it's requested by their own behavior, so we can't take them in the form of an issue advisory related to complaint. So what this would do is provide a level of transparency what we do have findings that we make public. And also just find that for target objectivity that, you know, is missing in the process now that a lot of people are concerned about so not saying that you know people on the street are probably not objectively, but I think there's concern out there. But we hear from people who are interested in finding something that will be attributed to the public that goes directly back to their home agency. So in this scenario, we would hand the investigation of recommendations for patients who would handle that course report. So how who's the home agency and what happens to a state legislator. So go back to that one of the panels. And then what. Which is what they do now. Right. So, you know, to be honest, I'm going to talk about being a leader, you know, in the initial stages, we're going to be very careful just in terms of resources about what types of cases we accept for investigation. So we're really going to be looking at cases where there is no viable for the girl alternative. I think I can go through it. I think maybe better when I testify. Now, we're going to be looking at cases that also where I do the code of ethics, rather than, you know, a mix of code of ethics and other personal policies or other policies that exist. And when there really is not a viable avenue for personal investigation, because there are cases where there's no investigation or enforcement. I'm still not seeing a solution to whatever problem you're trying to solve. I'm not seeing a problem and I'm not seeing a solution here. So maybe your testimony later will help me. Put a pen and come back to it represents a breakaway. Yesterday, the people that put 10s and us are here in the car. Not using us things in the idea. The wording section 10. Thank you. The wording section 10 with with or without receiving a complaint. Prior to that, unethical behavior is alleged by somebody. Something some entity. This body is going to have the ability to self. Self initiate. Yes. As currently and they can receive a complaint and then initiate an investigation. Or if no complaint is received, but for example, something is in the paper. They take it upon themselves to initiate an investigation. So representative Byron shows up in a pink pickup truck. And there's no disclosure on his form that says he's been selling Mary Kay for a while. I appreciate you know them to do something to the extent that. That conduct would cost to unethical. He'd lack of disclosure. Perhaps I'm not sure it's about the details. And I can say that I'm just going to start by being investigated while there being some others. So the way that you just described is something that that I think is visually unlikely to investigate given limited resources. And I'm like, that would be a situation where she is. Is there a record of. Complaintance or are they confidential. The everything is confidential until there's certain stages, which. Certain documents may become public. Everything is confidential until after an investigation is completed. Then if the commission determines that a hearing is warranted. And the investment is drafted. And that is made public. And also notices. Provided to the parties is going to come. Scheduled those people as well. Then if. But if it's no hearing is warranted, then the parties are notified by us remains confidential. Public reference act. Public hearing for the hearing hearings for public. With the potential of some of the hearings being conducted in an executive session. Much like regular open means law, public records would play as normal there. If in then, so any evidence introduced publicly public, how could you get the rest. Then any recommendations will also be public records. Well, but the de facto here is set. As confidential and actually there's some preambulatory language that gets to the confidentiality. And that is on. Sorry. Later for the bill, this is. Here we are page 26. That speaks to the intent. There is an intense section of sexual 14. Free VSA 21 31 new section be added. And. It's okay with Charles read through this year. I think it's provides some good. Context for this conversation here. As the intent of the section to both protect the reputation of public servants from public disclosure of privilege complaints against them. And to fulfill the public's right to know any unethical conduct committed by a public servant that results in issued warnings, reprimands or recommended actions. And then we get into the substance of the law. Thank you. The sea. And then I should just say quickly that the remainder of the bill parts five through nine have been unchanged with the exception of section 18, which is at some. What's almost, I think, really a technical correction. It's just correcting a statutory cross. I'd be happy to go through that. Yes, but what I think I'd like to do is just take 10 minutes or so before we break and switch gears to have executive director separate maybe respond to some of the thoughts that we had today, and then we're going to pick this back up tomorrow. I think it was important to get some of the concerns on the table so feels like a bit of a slog, but I think it was, I think we're making progress here on at least identifying where the. Spots are that we're going to have to. I'll try, I'll try and be like, and TJ is also here, I think, sir. Questions as well. And so I just say when it comes to financial disclosure language, I think that we didn't really have any comments on the changes. I think it looks pretty good. Our two minor comments would just be $25,000 is on the high side. So if you were to consider anything I might consider learning a bit because $10,000 tends to be the upper limit. And also there's some language that talks about when it comes to disclosing. Let's see, investments held by a candidate or a candidate spouser to the best of the candidates knowledge, the phrasing could kind of create a loophole. People are saying, well, I'm not going to open my book this year from the broker, so therefore I don't know. So we would suggest potentially tightening, take that language a little bit and TJ has some examples, but I think talking about, you know, the concept of impossibility. Also, the concept of people concept of known or should have known just so that we're not creating a situation where people can quite easily get out of that by just deciding correctly not to look into their finances or, you know, and choosing not to talk to my spouse about this particular matter. So those were really our only comments when it came to the financial disclosure language. I'll say that we're really happy to see that county office now includes the office of assistant judge. Hi bill and a great judge. We don't think that there should be exceptions to financial disclosure if you're covering one category of candidate in this case candidates for county office. It should count everyone. And I can give you actually an example because I know people were looking for examples or financial exposures can be useful. So about a year ago to get a complaint from somebody a tenant in a multi unit building. The building had been purchased by a new landlord who was creating conditions where they felt were trying to drive the existing tenants out would live there for a long time, so that they could raise the rent. And the tenants were considering bringing a lawsuit against the landlord for the conditions that existed. And apparently the landlord repeatedly referenced a local judge who was his business partner. Whether it was in this particular endeavor or not in this particular endeavor. We don't know was he really a business partner. We don't know, but they use that repeatedly as a threat. I'm just telling this person, according to the person you called me that if you bring this lawsuit it's not going to go anywhere because it's going to be before the judge was my business partner, or he just knows everyone in the court house and so they're not going to do anything with it. Whether this was, you know, a valid thing for some saying whether there's truth behind the land we're saying we just don't know but if there had been a financial disclosure out there. That was publicly available then at least we would have known whether we'd have some clues as to whether there was merit to statements of the landlord was making. So moving on, we, I did before you move on on the financial disclosure piece and no representative had a question about the specifically about for self and public people. Thanks to consumers around the client language on the disclosure. Right and thank you. And I appreciate that we put in there for whom the candidate notes. Because, you know, in my small business as a contractor, I definitely don't question an individual. Possibly top or over $10,000 and say, you know, do you have any so, so I'm glad to see that piece. I think that piece is in there for other folks. It could certainly be a way out. So I didn't. I'm going down to the section B. Naming the client who I have received $10,000 or more on a job. I guess the first question I asked is what what could with just a person's name do. And I guess second of all, I can give you an example maybe. If I had to divulge individual's name. What right does that individual have to say that they want to want my their name divulge and I can maybe give you an example of an individual who was very low income had a grant to have all their windows and doors replaced or was going to do the job or was going to do the job and they and if I told them that I would have to disclose their name in regards to that job. We said, I don't want people knowing that I had a grant because of my low income to replace all the doors. Right. And I say, you know, that type of situation where there are grants recipient. Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself. Did you have anything that you'd like to say there because I think you're more of an expert than I am when it comes to these kind of questions. No, and it's a that's an excellent question. The way that other states have dealt with that is to have carve outs for confidentiality if those types of circumstances come up, or have the client weigh in on whether they want their information disclosed. At the end of the day though, in my experience those those situations are relatively rare in terms of reporting where there's a bona fide reason that the client doesn't want the name disclosed. No plant really wants their name disclosed, but it's the the bona fide reason behind it that that is the rarity. Well, if I could just follow up. They live in a very rural North East Kingdom of Vermont and there's plenty of characters that don't want their name or address or anything divulge for any reason. I mean, you know, as a listener that people basically threatened me to not have a nine. One address. Well, again, I think it should be understood as far as what, you know, rural characters sometimes we have to do. Maybe it may be to the detriment of some, you know, rural small contractors or whomever to not receive a job is they don't, they don't want their name divulge so again it is a concern. Yes. One of the things I heard loud and clear from representative Hango was this idea that the employer of public service like us is something that is important for the public to know and I'm wondering. If there's a way for self employed people to kind of get at, you know, who are their employers without necessarily capturing, you know, every person that you know if I build houses is important for the disclosure to know like everybody that I did a small employer or are we really talking about is it to, is it do we really want to focus for the purposes of this legislation on the, you know, for instance like an attorney that works in legislature that has a client that has business before a commission or, you know, is bidding on state contracts or something like that. I mean, that's obvious. Those are obviously the cases what they were really trying to get out not necessarily somebody who is like receive a small grant from the state to improve their house and then you're somehow looking at as a contractor. I do think one way to potentially address, address that is, you could consider raising the limit of $10,000 to actually situations where there's more money at stake and you're more likely to bring in, not bringing those kind of like smaller situations where you're naming, you know, every client you put in windows for. But again, it's also you, you have to know that the client has business with the state and that's what we're getting at here we're not asking you to go out and survey everyone, and you also don't have to expose the nature of that business. And so that's, that's an extra layer of protection here where you're not, you know, only the name you're not saying why they receive money from the state you're not receiving revealing anything about what you what you did for them so it's just the name and so yeah. Yeah. So, thinking about a neighbor in my town, who builds homes for a living. And we live near a ski resort. So a lot of people have second homes were also on the Canadian border. A lot of people have second homes. What, what if that neighbor who's the builder builds a home and homes are not cheap these days so it's obviously going to trigger whatever threshold we set per dollar amount for someone. And all we know is the contract that we have with this person. We don't know this person personally who's building the second home. We don't ask questions what do you, what do you do for a living and who do you work for and what what contracts have you gotten what if that person happens to have had business with the state of Vermont and clearly they're well off enough that probably their business is very profitable. And they've actually had a big contract with the state of Vermont but we we the builder my neighbor has absolutely no idea that this person got a contract from the state of Vermont for instance. And you don't have to disclose it under the language as right now if you don't know then you don't have to disclose it, but it feels like that builder now has to ask their clients. Well, what do you do for a living and what, what contracts have you had with the state I mean, I just, yeah, there's, that comes out afterwards then then the. I think so, according to languages here now. That's not something that you have to ask so I wouldn't feel any pressure to have to ask if it's something where you will have a very you know arms link relationship this person you don't know anything about them. And then you don't need to do a deep dive into their, their personal life when you're filling out a financial disclosure form. I understand the concern that later we either be his perception, and that somebody might complain that the financial disclosure wasn't pulled up properly because they assume that you should have known. However, in that case, the reason that you're going to give is that, no, I did not know we have a very arms link relationship. I did not ask them this question and I was not aware of it at the time. Okay, so back to my neighbor who's running for the legislature sorry to forgot to say that. That person, what if they do know, and they do know that their client, what has business with the state but they don't know the extent of that business with the state, are they supposed to ask. Under the financial disclosure you don't have to disclose the nature of the business just the fact that they do have nature. They do have business with the state. Because what you're looking at here is the nature of your relationship so you understand that they do business with the state, but you're not you don't have to go further than that for the purposes of this disclosure. You just want to know that they have business with the state if that's all that you know, then that's enough. Okay, so then that person the client who's building the home. Why would they want to expose themselves to the public and have the person running for the legislature who's a builder build their house why wouldn't they just choose somebody else so they don't have to go through all that and have their name put out there in. I mean, really, this is an invasion of some people's privacy, who have nothing to do with the candidate running for office, just like I think representative Cooper might have alluded to a spouse or domestic partner who is not the person running for public office. Why does that person have to have their personal business exposed to the public. What, what relevance is that the right reason is that the financial interests are intertwined. I understand that, however, I think we're harkening back to an the old days when one spouse had control over the finances of another and one and that spouses and typically it was women that spouse would be beholden to the, the husband who had the financial control and I feel like this is going back in time and saying just because my spouse makes money doing such and such that's influencing me and my decisions and I really take offense to that type of situation and I'm going to go back to the client building the house. Sort of a similar thing. They even want to get involved in this. You want to move on. I really want to move on. So let's make that comment quick. I want to wrap this up take a break and get on to our next thing I promise we will pick this right back up tomorrow. So, so let's say you don't have to disclose what a person had for business with the state of the municipality and all that okay you didn't know. But again you go back to the next clause it says you've got to put your name in there, as far as the amount well if somebody found that name and they knew that that individual was. And I won't use a name but you know somebody prominent in the renewable energy field or whatever. Yeah, they could they could then open up a case I'm assuming basically saying that I believe representative Italy working for this individual is now, you know, going to going to gain specifically from working for this individual and you have an investigation I would think, into, I mean if somebody else outside, you know, they saw that name and they said hey I know who that person is and I know all about him and anyway I just. I think you're actually getting a part of the purpose of the disclosure fund is to capture the situations where you have, you know, you have a client where you receive a significant amount of income from them, and they have their own personal significant financial interest and so the idea is to make sure that you know there's no conflict of interest in official actions that you're taking. So it's to identify the potential conflict of interest it's not looking at you generally speaking because you potentially, you know represent someone's interest. It's if you have a specific course of action in front of you that could affect that person. Is there a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. And so then you would be looking into that very specific set of facts but not something just very general. So, I think what we'll do is put pause on our ethics discussion for today since we have witnesses coming in already on our next topic representative. Thank you if you're ending this discussion there was still one unanswered question that I had from back when the director was sitting behind me. The complaints are bringing that you're hearing are bringing the need for this legislation forward. What specific complaints about people running for the state legislature specifically at the state legislature or more generally speaking. No, specifically for the state legislature because we're adding in the piece that state led representatives. And executive officers so it'll apply to everyone who already has to file an disclosure, not just. Right, but we're specifically adding in a group of folks, a group of candidates who do not currently exist in statute. For county officials to me. No, I'm talking about state representatives. Well, they already have to file a financial exposure. So it's just bringing in the it's changing the nature of the information. Okay, so exposure, but not just candidates. It's also applies to executive officers and share X and everyone who already has to buy. Okay, so what complaints are you hearing that specifically brought those changes forward in this legislation. Sure. I mean, so there's two reasons we're looking at these changes. One is we're looking to upgrade, you know, our ethics framework right now because we're not is that a very basic fixed phase, but financial disclosure is very much related to the ideas of preferential treatment, which is a value would be a violation of ethics and conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest, and that those are the majority of the things that we get into our office are related to those two, two topics, I'd say at least 70% possibly more. Thank you for coming. And I just want to go on the record saying I'm all for this. I think it's a tear upon us to get out in front of this, not to wait until there's a problem. I'm all for this. I appreciate the work you've put into this. And I hope we can move forward with it. I'm going to continue to move forward. I appreciate that representative of the data set up tomorrow. I think I want all of us to take a look at the draft language, the summary. If there are specific ideas, concerns, thoughts, I think there's the potential we can clarify and tighten up the kind of client information that we're looking at. I still think there's a little bit of confusion around that loan language. So I think we might want to dig into that tomorrow and then when we come back next week, potentially see some changes there. You know, I appreciate everybody wrestling with some of the harder things here, but to represent where with this point, I think there's a lot of advantage for all of us across state government. I just wanted to remind everybody from was when we had Jay Johnson was really representing the administration point of view on here. She made it pretty clear that we're, we would not face, we would not get the kind of support that she was able to voice from the if we were only having the increased disclosure requirements apply to the executive branch. So what our task before us, I think if we're going to maintain that level of collaboration with the administration is to say what is sort of good universally for all public servants, whether they're legislative or the executive branch and for candidates for some of those elected judicial branch positions, which we've brought in in the strap. So those are the kind of things that we'll all need to think about. We do have to switch gears. So I didn't know we would have as robust a committee discussion as we did today, but I think it was really valuable. I know that we'll continue to perhaps as we work through some of these ideas and some of the pain points that we've identified here, but we'll be back at this with some more testimony and discussion tomorrow. So committee, let's take a 10 minute break. So welcome back to the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs. We're doing half of our morning here and taking up the report back on the report. We're talking about workhouse security that we had ordered in 2017. Well, I'm going to introduce yourself for the record. Thank you so much. I'm a part of the Terry Corson State Court Administrator, and I'm joined by our director of security at the judiciary, Robert Schell. Good morning. Robert, we had submitted the report back when it was due to December 1, 2023. I did attach a copy of it as well, but we're basically going to summarize the report for you and then we're here to answer any questions. I was going to provide some background to the report and then Rob was going to talk about the specifics of the three recommendations that were made at New Directive in terms of the report. I'm going to read mostly. He's our Chief of Finance and Administration. He's here to answer any questions about the budget numbers. One of the requests was a budget request in conjunction with the director. And then Judge Zoni is going to give just a judge's perspective on courthouse security in general. We're going to do and want to read time certainly for the persons with whom we consulted in preparing the report and putting the sheriffs association, the SCA, and I think in any participating for the state attorneys and sheriffs office. They were the primary stakeholders, but we thought we kind of just explain it as best we could and then see what questions you might have. Sounds great. I think everybody should have your slide by now. So S17 included a variety of components, but there was one specifically directed to the judiciary and it directed us to submit this report by December one that address three specific topics. The first one is the number of sheriff deputies needed for reasonable court security operations to any recommendation regarding the creation of a classified position that would be needed to achieve that recommendation for security levels. And three, whatever the corresponding budget request would be for those for those recommendations. So, again, by way of just brief background and I don't know if you had a chance to review the report. I think we have a sense of memo that just kind of summarizes the report that Andrea has and then we have these slides that even further summarize it so it's hopefully they are enough different formats to follow. In essence, the Vermont Supreme Court is responsible for a court has security both heard of a month constitution at in a variety of different statutes. And certainly sheriff deputies have provided the primary means of security for courthouses for centuries, and then more recently in recent decades because of basically workhorse reduction in sheriff forces, we've had to supplement courthouse security with private security and with also state court officers. So right now there's a combination of those three different types of personnel. In 2014 the legislature directed the judiciary to do a courthouse security assessment. And I wasn't with the judiciary then but I'll get the sense from the legislation that they were looking to actually reduce costs for courthouse security. So in conjunction with that directive we had the National Center of State Courts do an overview of courthouse security, an overview of courthouse security assessment. But the assessment basically had the opposite conclusion it said that there are there are serious challenges here, then you need to increase security versus decrease it. I think there was an effort to potentially reduce security costs and a suggestion that will make me don't need security if there isn't a hearing happening in the courthouse that day that was I think the premise for this assessment. But the assessment did lead to very appointed recommendations in terms of adequate courthouse security. And we did make, I said we I wasn't with the judiciary now the requests were made to increase courthouse security. Those requests were not approved. The legislature did significantly increase the amount of salary paid to sheriffs in the last couple of years. And we were able to incorporate a number of the security measures that were recommended in the assessment as well, including the digitization of courthouse monitors screens screening devices at every entrance every public entrance to courthouses whether it's the metal detections or the X-ray machines the lines. Dress buttons incident reporting system. A variety of measures have been taken have taken place to bring well they work very hard and very creatively with law enforcement, including for example the federal courts, which are very well resourced if they are upgrading their their extra machines. So in conjunction with the S-17 directive that said that we're to report to you on the numbers of courthouse security staffing and any new classified positions, Rob and I visited each of the 23 state courthouses over the past something that was a very, very useful exercise to be able to speak with court staff, speak with judges, speak with local stakeholders in terms of the security situation in each courthouse. And as you can imagine, there is quite a bit. We have courthouses where you know in terms of business courthouses that have 400 cases a year up to courthouses that have 9,000 cases a year. So there's a lot of difference and variation and we recognize that security circumstances very so it was really useful to go to each courthouse assess their situation get their recommendations. I mean it was also very helpful to consult with the Sheriffs Association with the Vermont State Employees Association with the Department of Sheriffs and States Attorneys as well to get their perspectives. And we want to thank them very much for we have a series of meetings with them, series of drafts different options discussed and we were extremely collaborative and collaborative and it was really a pleasure working with them. Once we had then a draft about which we had general consensus, we then did also meet with other frequent court users stakeholders, BGS, Department of Corrections, Department of Mental Health, Department of Children and Families, Vermont Bar Association, Vermont Legal Aid, Office of Child Support, those groups that oftentimes have representatives in the courts. So they've all reviewed what was ultimately submitted to you on December 1 and we really, you know, thank you for the impetus to go through that exercise. In the course of gathering all of that input, I wanted to just kind of highlight the basic factors that inform the recommendations. One has to do with security personnel roles, which you wouldn't necessarily have any familiarity with if you're not, you know, at the courthouse day in and day out. But there are three major levels, if you will, of security roles. One is the screener and that's the person who's at the main entrance. They play a very critical role and that is to prevent weaponry from entering the courthouse or anything that could be used, you know, to cause harm. It's kind of like the first line of the fence and that would be the screener. And then in the courtrooms themselves, as hearings are taking place, a court officer presents to ensure that there's decorum to ensure that if everybody's, you know, getting out of turn that they can control it, they respond to it appropriately. And then the other role is from what is called a robber and that would be security personnel who's around the building inside the building and outside the building, able to respond as needed within the building. Also, we may have, for example, people who turn themselves in at the courthouse to be able to take people into custody if need be or in a judge's direction. So those are the three main types of security roles. Then there are different levels of security risk. And just kind of in a nutshell, it's primarily in first of all, persons in custody that you would have typically the most risk. They have an incentive to want to escape, for example. Transport deputies do accompany anybody that's in custody for whatever type, hearing, criminal, family, probate, civil, whatever the person is there for. The other, but primarily incidents, if you look at the incident reports, it's more in criminal hearings and family hearings that you have the highest incidence. And that includes also juvenile, juvenile is part of the family docket. Civil, it can depend. You might have, for example, a layman or a tenant case or certainly in a stalking case where there would be a risk, a hair, mental threats, probate, judicial bureau, environmental division, much less so. But recognizing that the circumstances could vary such that security personnel might be needed in any, in any division, in any type, hearing, in any type day. And that's one thing that Rob and his team, you know, are tuned into every day, checking in to see if there's any need to be a tenant to the need for greater security in this courthouse for whatever reason that particular day. The other level can vary in terms of type of hearing. Now that we're in the remote hearing world, you have in person hearings, you have remote hearings and you have hybrid where some people are in person, some persons are remote. Certainly in person hearings would pose the highest potential threat. If it's a remote hearing, much less, if any. So that's also a factor in terms of determining what is needed. Ultimately, it's up to the judge in each individual courtroom to determine what level of security is needed. So for example, if it's somebody in a civil docket, or normally you wouldn't have a court officer in each and every hearing, if they anticipate because of the litigants involved, or the nature of the case, or their hearing, they may say we need additional security and that's what Rob steps in to figure out, you know, where can we call people. So those are, that's kind of it in a nutshell, the factors, and just in general, we have a court officer, a security officer in every criminal and family hearing, in person or hybrid. If it's civil probate, do you should be our environment and definition is any hearing as needed and typically judge directed court staff may also, you know, tip off saying, okay, they anticipate some issues here just from whatever interactions they had with the litigants up to that case. So that's kind of the background for what practice went into a determination of what level of staffing is needed, what level of security works. So based on all the input from speaking with meeting with the judges, the court staff and the stakeholders. Can now kind of give you an overview about the three recommendations, the first having to do with recommendation regarding the number of security positions and roles, and then the second one regarding a classified position. Thank you, Terry. Just for some additional background prior to COVID just about a half a million visitors came to our Vermont courts. After COVID, where we initiated the new hybrid of promoting. We now see a increasing at an increasing rate. End of the years to our courts. It's a much lesser percentage currently. However, what we've also noted is that there are incident report numbers that suggest threatening behavior or incidents where security had a circumstance that was identified as an issue have continued to cry. So for the period of 2023, we received 910 reported incidents from security personnel related to courthouse operations. Now those can range from issues with structural mechanics of the building that could impact security to screening issues to actual confrontations disorderly conduct violence within the courtroom. From from litigants as part of court procedures. So the risks are still much very present for us. If we look back even to 2018, we had 311 reported incidents. So, our reporting mechanisms have certainly been fine tuned to being more comprehensive in 2024, but what I am seeing in terms of our risk numbers is that those are steadily increasing. So, I think the men's rent with that and with our statewide tour and with all the valued input. We arrived at some conclusions where we needed to. Re reorganize our protected capacities within the courts. So, at this point, we're looking at 47 armed uniformed sheriff deputies. Now, when we talk about sheriff deputies, these are certified law enforcement officers capable of indebted and Zana rest powers. These are essential elements to have within our courts. As Terry had spoken to we have individuals who present on warrants were taken into custody. And we have disorderly conduct of violence where we need law enforcement intervention and having those officers on site is important. Balancing that and in those roles of the rover as Terry talked about earlier is an essential element because there's so much variation in courts for the needs within our buildings from individuals to working in the custody who are placed in a detention area to re issuing citations site and release circumstances for individuals who presented the court on say a warrant and then they're released. We need a law enforcement capability and the rover position of Isaac and allows us and provides us that latitude to provide those services. Additionally, we do have some circumstances in the state where we do have deputy sheriffs working within the court rooms, which has historically worked well. And those are mechanisms we would seek to, in some degrees continue, but there's a balance to that where we're really interested in shifting the law enforcement presence to the front of the access points to the court houses, where the risks would present if someone were wanting to to to be frank attack a courthouse. So the recommendation is that we would increase some of our armed uniformed deputy sheriffs from numbers and Greg can speak to this and in a few minutes. And then we would also balance that with 33 judiciary, what we call plain closed courts. And these are state employees who received special training for court operations and the court functions within the courthouse court operations is the front of the house and the back of the house. There's training operations and protection and roving, and then there's the courtroom operations, which is a complex process of ensuring that the litigants lawyers, the judge, the jury, the visitors and court staff, all are coordinated in a manner within the hearing, and that security is maintained at all times within these hearings. So with that, Justin, we additionally have another model where we do to coven had to implement a series of what we refer to as regional court security officers who travel around the state based on security needs that can arise on a schedule a week before or within hours of an occurrence. So with coven, we still have the routine individuals who are sick or unavailable. And then we have additional court hearings, jury draws and jury trials, which are resource. And so this resource of having five personnel who are able to travel around the state and they're enforced today and are often in different courts on a daily basis has become an absolutely highly successful venture on the part of the judiciary and it's something that it's definitely recommended within s 17. And this part is that we have one, two existing court security managers who have some regional responsibilities, primarily Costello and Greenport, and they also oversee training and operational training of new sheriff's deputies, new private security currently, and all of our new state of Vermont employees, as we're able to hire them. We are my mission at the at the judiciary is to free a defined court standard for all levels of security that we have in the building. And whether that's a contract or sheriff's deputy all the way through a state committee, we won't have the abilities to have the same expectations of their skills and abilities. So we do have training managers who are out there. Now providing remote as well as in person training on a consistent basis to support the court's security effort. So, so that was the first recommendation in terms of number of personnel and then the second one is the new classified position. So, similar to law enforcement and in all of security would continue to have a significant challenge in higher and that goes on today in the past week, we've had, for example, three individuals who would apply for state classified security positions, pursue other jobs because we need to have a more solid level position to provide them. So, part of this recommendation would be to hire at a new pay grade level, specific court security, these specific court security positions, and have a training expectation that they complete a larger capacity of security training that we are prior to or in less than what we offer today to our current state of a month personnel. Additionally to that, we're seeking to enhance their capabilities for what's called non useful use of their capabilities to have statutory protections so that in the function of their job, which they do today, with the same risk and danger levels, they have the capacity is to provide protection to the visitors to themselves to the courtroom and to sell within the building. So this is a new expansion. It would be in the non lethal use of force. We're not trying to create a law enforcement entity, we would utilize law enforcement level training to support this new position, which I think, again, given our risk levels is something that makes complete sense. And the state court officers would strictly have a security role in hearings in courtrooms in hearings. It would also include a component which right now is lacking whereby if there's not a hearing, the hearing gets to me that the hearing stands early, they are also authorized to fulfill administrative functions, so that there's no dead time. They're trying to do the security that's their primary function but if they're assigned to a hearing to a courthouse, and there are no hearings for whatever reason because it happens hearings and early or they might continue whatever, but they have the ability to perform administrative tasks. And we would I'm thinking, experiment something that you can pick up, put down quickly but be productive during that time. So that's built into this new classified position to offer that level of productivity and flexibility. So that's the second, the second point that the third has to do with the budget request related to those recommendations. And you have the figures that basically would result in 18 new positions and I don't know if Greg wanted to get into specifics or if you wanted us to kind of delve into the total budget that we're talking about. We can see from the slide deck, because I was certainly skipping ahead, as you were talking, it's always the danger of giving us the slides, I recognize that. But I think it might be good to orient the committee to just, you know, what we're looking at here and what the answer is for across the hall. Did you want Greg to come up for that? And maybe Greg and then Judge Zoni, because Judge Zoni was then going to talk about the judge perspective for security. Yeah, I think that sounds great. So Greg, do you want to come up first and just walk us through the class? Oh yeah, please. I appreciate that, endorse that fully. Hello, my name is Greg Mosley, Chief of Finance and Administration. Tom Zoni, Chief Superior. In terms of the position numbers of the budget, kind of open to whatever questions you may have, this does increase the footprint of our statewide security force for all of our courthouses. We have 23 courthouses. Most counties have two, some have one, Washington has three. And we currently have 69 FTEs, and Terry mentioned that some of those are deputies, some of those are employees, and some of those are private security, but 69 total FTEs. This recommendation would be to increase that by a net of 18 positions to 88 FTEs for 23 courthouses. We are recommending that we not use private security guards. That is supplemental and used only when necessary when you can't get employees or deputies where we've done. So this recommendation proposes no private spirit. And we currently spend in our budget $6.8 million on either positions or contracts for security. These recommendations would increase that by about $2 million. So we need $8 million total. And I just take questions, I think. We're looking at a month or so. Sure. Thanks for coming in. Mark, this is part of the interview. In County, we went through a transition several years ago where it wasn't the kind of money needed to continue to pay the sheriffs who were providing the security. And so private burn was brought in. I think there's now sheriff's deputies in the courthouse now. But what I hear you saying is that wouldn't be the case. Private would not be in there and I forget the name of the company. Security. And this would then be state money paying for this, or rather than was the money previously coming from the county. Okay, the funding for courthouse security outcomes and state general fund. I'm just trying to make sure we don't run to another situation where we bring in the sheriff. And at some point, I guess, whatever the budget constraints were they forced that to change. That happened around 2016. And we contracted for firm to come in. It started just in Wyndham, but they are now operating in four or five counties at about six different courthouses because of other gaps that have been present. And right now, you know, in Wyndham, they're operating pretty well. There's there's an economy scale. There's I think five positions. Security guards. There's a supervisor and it's working well, but there's other places in the state where they might just one person at a courthouse. And, you know, that's not the situation. And if I could follow up just to say that. I think coming from a perspective of someone who worked in family services and is still a guardian and buying them in court. What I understand is, let's say a child has to be brought into custody at a hearing. Private security people are not able to do that. They have to call if there's not a certified law officer there at the time. Is that accurate? Yeah, the guards do not hold people in custody. They can restrain in a situation, but we really need law enforcement to write it. So that is, that's what I meant to get from it to having them there whereas law enforcement can take care of those situations right then and then. That's exactly right. Sorry, I'm so sorry I skipped over representative Cooper my policy representative and make sure I'm doing air traffic control here. Thank you. I don't agree willing to this. The people that are on private security and the anticipated state employees. What training at this point are they certified in any way do they carry anything? Are they anything other than the person that sits up in the left hand side of court and watches things go on to they have any ability to well. Anything that's happening inside the program. And the second part of the question is, several years ago, somebody was murdered in the court house parking lot in there. What substantive changes have been made that would have prevented that. Well, the first part of your question. Our employees are the state employees do not carry weapons. They're not certified to carry weapons. They, in a private job, we might have been a police officer or something and have been trained but that's true. That's not something that he provide. She don't carry weapons. They are trained in de-escalation in court procedures. They are trained to run the security equipment at the front the screening equipment. And that's it. They're not armed. The private security guards are armed. They do carry a weapon. They are certified. The secretary of state. They've gone through significant training in restraints and hand shots and guns. And they are armed. Ten of them throughout the state. And then, of course, there's the county deputies. Do you want to say an armed of not restricting myself to a fire? Yeah, we, our employees do not carry tasers, batons, anything like that. And the second part. What was the second part? Well, more important. A couple of years ago, somebody was murdered. What have we done to change that? I put down a state office building. I don't believe there was a place in the courthouse parking lot right out there. So in terms of the courthouse, we do have eyes outside the courthouse. Now we have this, the new security cameras cover parking lots sidewalks, all of the entranceways. And our rovers where we have them are able to roam around the building covered grounds. And that's that's the extent I think of our exterior monitoring and that's not that sometimes. No, that's a digital camera system. Yeah. Central. Yes. Yes. So we do a digital camera systems that now exterior and internal public surveillance areas and their, their access points within the buildings where those are monitored and there's, there's more than one building. So at this point, you're differentiating between a courthouse that's in a state building as opposed to a standalone courthouse in terms of your. This is the security level for all. And some of the courthouses have executive branch agencies within now. Yeah, the particular incident you mentioned happened in the state office that was not a courthouse. So there, I don't have any information about the security that they've taken or the changes that they think. Thank you. This may be a question for the director security, but I think you had mentioned 311 incidents since 2018, is that correct? In 2018, we recorded 311. And that has progressively increased essentially through 2024. For this year we have 263 present that have been in file. In 2023, we had 910 prior to that during COVID 2022, they were 301. 2021 was 103 and then 2022 6 which is again a COVID adjustment for remodeling 2019. We had 715 logged security incident reports. Can you give me a range of those incidents? I mean, from severe to not so severe? Yes, we have, we collect a variety of data points with security incident reports, anything from inappropriate communications disorderly conduct, any infractions from an individual or persons towards a court that would represent a threat are recorded. Other security incidents could be, if we had a screening system failure, that presents a potential breach if we had an escape. And if we, we also now have expanded our monitoring to the whole, right? So while we do get incident reports regarding disorderly behaviors, those could actually occur. Outside of the courthouse entirely. So we receive threats nationally, internationally, locally from an array of individuals. Thank you. I think if there aren't any burning questions from committee that will hear from other folks, Judge Zoni, did you want to offer more testimony on this before we let you out of the chair? Just sort of the touch base on when we look at security, oftentimes you don't need it until you do, right? It's like many other things. We hear about, we have reports, we don't have people who have assaulted judges in the courtroom, like we saw it where, in Nevada. Seven million people have watched that video so far, and I suspect many around the table have seen it, whether it's on the evening news or on social media. And what happened in that case was the individual was being sentenced, and he decided that he was going to go after the judge. He comes over the bench. He somehow was able to get around the table, jumps over and starts beating on the judge and has to be pulled off. His rationale for that stated after the event was he was having a bad day and wanted to kill the judge. We have in our courts every day individuals who are coming to court, and it's not usually by choice. People don't wake up and go, I can't wait to go to court today. It's going to be a golden day. People are there because we're dealing with extremely critical and important issues involving child custody, we're involving criminal justice. We have victims coming in, and we have an obligation to assure the security of every one of those individuals coming into our building, as well as the staff and the judges who work in those buildings. That begins at the front door. If someone's coming into that building, and they just, and they might have a gun on them or they have other weapons on them. At that moment, it's critical to be able to ascertain whether they have a weapon or and are coming in. If they are caught at that door. There are times where people who were coming in to do something bad at that moment, even someone who may be experiencing mental issues, may recognize the difference between well I got one choice I can either fight my way through to go where I wanted, or fight my way out or the other way. So it isn't just because we find the weapons doesn't always mean that everything is going to go smoothly. Then when we're in the room judges make decisions that might take someone's children away from that we issue orders that require people to leave their house we put people in jail. Those are stressful emotional moments and people will get escalated. There can be outbursts. About a decade ago I was in court I imposed bail on a gentleman who apparently wasn't happy with my decision. While wearing handcuffs, he flipped over the table, thankfully there were two sheriffs standing next to him, and they were able to stop him. But that wasn't so much in my mind. Oh, they're going to come harm me. I was worried about the state's attorney standing five feet away, the victim in the courtroom standing back and other individuals. And so when we talk about security, I think it's important to keep in mind that every day we deal with issues, and it's not just about the judges. It's about the staff and it's about everyone who comes in because we have an obligation to them. We don't want to have what occurred in Nevada or in Mississippi several years ago when a judge was attacked in the court. The problem we run into, obviously, is that when someone leaves as representative points out something horrible and tragic can happen outside of the court. But we do what we can. As Rob mentioned, there are cameras. If we have someone in the courthouse who there's escalated circumstance, security will walk them out to your car. And the sheriffs we have will assist them in trying to maintain their safety there. And one of the reasons why we don't have the types of incidents that you see in other areas is because we are vigilant. We also have judges who are trained to de-escalation to try to have a common compassionate approach to bring people down when they might be escalated. But if that doesn't work, the security approach that we take is critical. And the S17 report outlines a strategy and policies that would assure the safety going forward as best we can for everyone who enters our buildings and works in them. So thank you for your consideration. Thank you for being here. And before I just wanted the committee to know the levels that expectations here, you know, this were at the beginning of obviously presentations across the hall on FY 25 budget. This is obviously something we asked for feedback on from the stakeholder. The judiciary is given their testimony. We're going to have some of the other partners and state that there's comment on this proposal next and we'll be asked of course to kind of weigh in on the budget recommendation to our colleagues across the hall. We're going to have that discussion today. But so I just wanted to make sure we kind of got the general concepts were reminded about why we asked for this and I think you've gotten a good sense from Jeff Sonay and his colleagues of what the ask is and a reminder why now and so I'm hoping that we're able to come to a conclusion and give a good recommendation over the next couple of weeks. And if we want to have some of these folks back to participate in the discussion about the future of warehouse security and we should be doing it where happy to schedule more time for this in the future. If we feel like that's needed before we make a recommendation. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. So, next up, Sheriff Anderson and thank you. Happy to take the witness chair. Welcome back. Thank you. Mr chair committee. Good morning to the record Mark Anderson. I'm chair of Wyndham County and here in my capacity as the president of Vermont Sheriff's Association. I know that this committee has heard it but I'm going to say it. Everything was shares is complex. We'll start there. I'm actually going to read a full from a book called team of teams for by a retired Army general about the words complexity and complexes that relates to this topic. Edward Lorenz who's a meteorologist and something else I forget what study that might be he said of butterfly effect is a physical manifestation of the predominant of complexity, not complexity in the sense that we use the term in daily life, a catch all four things that are not simple or intuitive, but complexity, any more restrictive technical and bathroom sense. And the complexity is difficult to define. And those who study often fall back on Supreme Court Justice Potter stewards comment on obscenity. I know what when I see it. Things are complex are such as living ecosystems, national economies, they have a diverse array of connected elements that interact frequently, because of this density of linkages complex six systems fluctuate extremely and exhibit unpredictability. And here, a small disturbance in one place could trigger a series of responses to build into unexpected and severe outcomes in another place, because of the billions of tiny interaction, the origin and the outcome, simply put, complicated. We can build like an organizational chart we can see the connections and complexity. It's a ball of yarn. And so when I talk about the reasons why 2016 we had. The department withdrawal from providing court security. And later on, we talked about the different complexities that are the macro issues of sheriff's departments. You know about retirement. I'm not going to talk about today other than to say that is one piece of yarn in this ball. You know about labor shortages across all of Vermont. And it's a piece of a macro economic issue that is affecting everyone. So when I'm competing to employ deputy sheriffs. I'm competing with what brother PD is. But the Vermont State of Lucerne. But Montpelier PD is paying, even though they are 100 miles away from where I am. So all of these things start to interact with each other as we talked about why. Save everything else about complexity and I'm happy to go into details. Just to say, I'm not sure if association supports the judiciary's proposal. We want to provide security to core houses. We're not obligated to in fact, nowhere in the Constitution doesn't give us the responsibility to do that. It does give the judiciary the responsibility to do. Because we agree to be there because we want to we see it as part of the mission that we serve. The economic issues that troubled my department, the judiciary, I believe we've done work over the last several years to improve that and my department returned to providing security and brother row about three years ago to because we were able to recognize that paying $26 to the sheriff's department to pay a reasonable wage. Retirement, health care, taxes, equipment, training and on and on out. And so we work with the legislature and the judiciary to improve those circumstances. In other words, an investment was made into court security that helped improve the situations have we solved all of them. I don't think so. But this is part of the work that we get to do to recognize problems and solve those things. We during 17 last year we talked about a proposal that would have state deputies. The work that we did after leaving this committee last year with the judiciary with BSEA with a variety of stakeholders. It started to become clear that we were talking about another complex that involved a variety of different factors that then brought us back to the judiciary's proposal that has been presented to you. We work with the judiciary to identify efficiencies and so if we talk in a bottom line sense we have a revenue column that's the tax coming in to pay for the service. We have an expense column that's deputies being employed to provide the service, but then we have a third column which is resource allocation. And so are there times where deputies shares were used to do administrative tasks that don't require them. Yeah, we wanted to be efficient with the resource that was applied. Is that the best use of a deputies time? No. And so as we talked with the judiciary and said it's really hard for me to hire a .25 full time equivalent employee. People who come into law enforcement on a job. It's a career that are looking for 40 hours a week. I'll talk with the judiciary about holidays. Well, contract employees don't normally get holidays. That's part of the contract. So, well, that's fine, but I'm still employing 1.0 FTEs who would anticipate sick time, vacation time, holidays like any state employee. And so as we started to navigate through a variety of federal and state labor law or labor expectations, we started to come back to a system that was collaborative with the judiciary, collaborative with our employees in our departments to deliver a service that's reasonable for the owners of our court system. I'm kind of the why guy here. I'm happy to talk about proposals of what, but I think it's really the judiciary's position or I should say responsibility identify the security needs. And so we're here to support their needs. We're here to push forward. And I'm happy to answer any questions. So, thank you for the testimony. And it looks like there's 7.07 new sheriff sitting required here. Realistically, and you mentioned it in the past, but you're not. Hard to come up with new employees. So what, what do you think about that? So, a few things you heard the judiciary speak about the different positions. And so part of the resource allocation is identifying where do we need swarm on force. The rover position makes a lot of sense because they are responsive to issues as they come up in the courthouse. The front door security, I can train general law enforcement to handle that aspect and we work with the judiciary to add additional training to front door security. A court officer requires some nuance training. And we've also historically worked with the judiciary to obtain that training, but it's more of a niche skill set to teach. And so working to identify what made sense through this proposal that the judiciary put forward, we have aligned law enforcement into the full time equivalent positions that we can take general law enforcement training. And with a far lower footprint apply the judiciary specifics to that person. It's easier for us to recruit and retain the individual. I mentioned the retirement bill. We are hopeful that the retirement bill that's before this committee will proceed. We think that that will also be beneficial in helping us retain people as the. My treasurer's office mentioned the pension systems designed to be a retention tool. So we are helpful. That's an issue that affects roughly half the departments in the state. So some departments are. Okay. And some departments are saying we're really open for this. We have, we have had good communications with the judiciary and being able to explain what our pressures are to say this year we are at this amount of money and this is what it costs to stay in business. We just learned Bravo PD raised their rates for their initial hiring and next year I might have a different conversation that needs to be had and so this is part of that ball of yarn that keeps getting tugged on it is seen across the state. One agency starts offering a sign on bonus. I'm competing to repeat my employer. So there's some macro level issues that affect law enforcement but they also affect other businesses. What we know is that when we offer good wages and we offer sustainable benefits when we treat people well in the context of employment but also in the well or in the context of good training and support from within their organization. We see retention. So I'm hopeful law enforcement as it starts to build momentum in hiring. We see that industry improve. Thanks. Representative Cooper and then I want to make sure we have time for our other witnesses. I'm trying to speak quickly. And we talked about the actual ego in New York City going to subway you got turns police you go to the. We're talking about actually establishing some kind of force. That would be trained at a level that they can accomplish. Except for the court officer probably to ask but still be certified authority and not necessarily. It's a flinched. employee of you or employee of the court. Have we talked about it I don't recall. But I'm happy to talk about it now. The part of the discussions that we had were to create state deputies that would incorporate. We're saying it would identify better access to benefits pay and process that would help us recruit and retain. Part of the issue that we ran into was a constitutional issue and that the judiciary is responsible for the court security. And we fall with our state transport deputies which we're trying to mold that to be a state court officers or state court deputies. We're trying to basically say well let's repeat that system which came into a constitutional conflict with the executive branch telling the judiciary what to do. And so that was one piece. Then we said, what if we consider putting the state deputies under the judiciary. And so chairs would operate in an executive branch and in a judicial branch in terms of supervising the employees, but the two separate branches of government will be responsible for the employees. And as we were looking at it we're saying the cost to set up the infrastructure to do that doesn't quite make sense because now we're duplicating where we already have the services on one side that we're now carrying over and so. The logical concept to create a service that would provide this such as a judicial marshal. I mean, it's possible, but then it comes with the cost that comes with it where the pragmatic self said. Okay, but it probably is just easier and more approachable to come back with this proposal. Thank you very much chef Anderson, I'm sure we'll have more conversation about this topic or thanks for being with us. Thank you very much. Are you coming up or you and Tom. Okay, great. Big phone a friend if I need to. Sounds great. Just didn't want to leave anybody out. Morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify for the record of Steve Howard and the executive director of the Vermont State Employees Association. I want to thank the committee. First of all, I just want to say having a previous career that brought me every day to work in the cost of a courthouse. I understand personally how important this issue is. And it's something that is on the top of each of our members minds, particularly in the world that we live in that is becoming more and rattled. As they try to do the work that they're assigned to do. I want to thank the committee for your attention to this critical issue on security of state employees and judicial employees is probably the most significant responsibility that employer has. And I just want to say, I think I want to be clear that VSE a the members of the VSE a believe that the current that the level of security in the courthouses and in state office buildings in general, representative Hooper made reference to the tragedy and bearing is seriously lacking. But it's inadequate. It's haphazard that's disorganized and it's not prioritized by the management. And so I'm grateful that the committee is willing to take this issue up, even as it just pertains to the courthouses but it's certainly an issue that could be expanded beyond that to all of the state office buildings throughout the state. And we have, we are supporting a bill h 147 that's currently in the House institutions committee that we think does adequately address safety and security in both the courthouses and in the state office buildings that essentially Hooper suggested and expands the Capitol police to all state employees so that our members would have the same level of party that legislators have when they're doing the important functions of carrying out the laws that lawmakers support. I would say that we're very happy to see that we're moving away from private security. I think very clearly from our members perspective, the experiment with secure toss was a failure. They did not have any confidence in in the safety and security provided by secure toss and they're grateful and happy to see that there's a movement in another direction away from secure toss. We certainly support the additional allocation of deputy sheriffs and of the judicial officer to positions that are recommended in the report we support additional security personnel in the courthouses, along with the three supervisors for the, for the judicial officers. I think where we diverge a bit from the rest of the of the stakeholders is in our view that the report doesn't actually deliver on what this committee and what the legislature requested, which was a recommendation regarding any needed creation of classified positions responsible for courthouse security services. And here's the key, similar to classified positions of transport deputies. Not a lot of leeway in that direction. You don't see that recommendation in this report and VSA strongly supports. While we do support the additional staff we strongly support assigning the deputy sheriffs to the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs. And we support providing that department with additional staffing resources in order to carry out this responsibility. The judiciary can choose to meet its responsibility constitutionally any way it wishes to. In the courthouses across the state, the judiciary also has responsibility for maintaining those courthouses and who does that bgs staff that works for the executive, because that's how they have chosen to meet their responsibility. And so they can do that with security as well. I want to just comment a little bit on why our members feel so strongly that this. But these positions be state positions and that they be allocated to the department and not just to the judiciary. First of all, our members. I think I've been very clear with us that they don't have a lot of confidence in the judiciary. And their ability to take the security situation security environment will work. We're operating in seriously. Just a few examples of late that reinforce that position. One, one of recent a recent situation in the Costello where a person was allowed into the screen into the building and allowed to stay over it allowed into the building and then stayed overnight in the courthouse. Was discovered by a bgs janitor at 4am in the courthouse scared her half to death. She was there by herself. And that's an example of a very serious breach of security only made worse when the management of the courthouse may light of it and joked about it with an email to all of the staff. Not exactly building confidence among our members that that administrator took that their safety and security seriously. You may have read about the state's attorneys in Chittendon County being evacuated from their from the courthouse as a result of the serious threat. Our members reported that it took an hour and a half before anybody else in the courthouse knew what was going on. Meanwhile, the person who made the threat was still at large. Nobody communicated to judiciary staff. What was going on the judges seem perplexed as to what was going on. And people were coming and going from the building without really knowing what was happening. And so that again is an example of the lack of communication and the lack of seriousness that leaves our members to believe that we need another entity. To manage the safety and security of not just our members in the courthouses but public that comes into the courthouses. We also have received complaints from members who serve as judicial assistants, primarily administrative staff that manage the WebEx for for hearings and do, you know, really administrative tasks. We've got, we've gotten calls from judicial assistants who have been asked to secure courtrooms had no idea how to secure a courtroom. They don't know how they're supposed to protect the judge, but they've been told by the management to go to it. So this is a very serious situation that we're very grateful that this committee is willing to take a look at in a long term way. And we hope that we can build upon some of the recommendations in the report of additional resources. But we also believe that the original position that was contemplated in the in the in the legislation that passed was for similar to state transport deputies and we support that. One of the reasons we do is because of what you heard Sheriff Anderson talk about a little bit here today, and was the testimony the Sheriff's Association last year, and it'd be very difficult to fill these positions, if they're contracted physicians. And that really the resources of the state are needed in order to attract those folks who wish to make this a career an example of the retirement that Sheriff raised a very important issue. State transport deputies are in group C. They already have the retirement age and benefits that the Sheriff see. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, we have a very successful model. And we also understand that the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs needs additional resources. We support those resources. We think they need to have whether it is necessary in order to make sure that our members have the highest level of security they can have and that our members have confidence that they are safe when they go to work in a courthouse. That they are safe when they attend a hearing at the courthouse and more importantly that the Vermonters who are where they serve in those courthouses are also safe. So generally we found working with the judiciary this report very positive. We found it to be a very positive process. But our, our conclusion is different. I think in this one aspect. We believe that the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs should expand the state transport. Program in order to provide sources. Thank you very much. Questions for Mr Howard. So, I don't see a testimony here. My testimony that I can provide to just doing some notes, but I can be happy to be helpful. Thank you very much. And committee if we can just hang on for just a few minutes. I wanted to give any from the Department of State's attorneys the sheriffs the opportunity to give us their thoughts on the recommendations and then I'm sure we can have folks back as we approach the proposal. Good morning committee. Thanks for inviting me in. And thank you for letting me testify remotely I had foot surgery so I'm still hobbling around. The position of the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs is that we fully support the judiciary's recommendation for how this security would be laid out. So, similar to our 14 elected sheriffs we also support the judiciary in this report so that's the, that's the short version of this I do want to mention two or three other quick points. The Department of State's attorneys does not want to take on additional transport or security deputies we do not have the capacity. I think you know, as a government operations committee that our central office is very thinly staffed. And we, regardless of, you know, taking this on I also agree with judge zone and the folks at the judiciary who have talked about the separation of powers issues from the judiciary to the executive branch and then to our folks. I think that does become a problem I trust the judiciary and, and judge zone and Terry and Corson ace and Rob shell to be able to manage this. So we fully support them. I would also want to just make one correction which is in the situation where our Chittenden Chittenden States attorney staff was escorted out of the building. That situation was fully involved the Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services safety and security staff. So, if there was a breakdown in communication it was not because there were no state employees involved in this discussion. In fact, they were involved from the get go with as soon as that situation became known. So, you know, just to summarize, we fully fully support the recommendation that has come to you from the Vermont judiciary. And just as a side note, we very much look forward to coming to your committee to talk, talk about our budget. And as you're taking up criminal, the criminal justice system staffing. Thank you. Thanks. I know we're running a little over time, but I wanted to quick to just ask Annie about. It seems like we were thinking when we passed 17 act 30 that the statewide transportation deputies might be a model I'm hearing pretty clearly from you that the. The stakeholders kind of moved beyond that model and I think the report, you know, does into the details, but I just wanted to confirm that. The position from desass is that, you know, we should go with this report, which has a variety of different recommendations as opposed to. Yes. Yes. Yes, Mr. share. Exactly. And it was described by Terry croissants that the stakeholders were very much involved and that's absolutely true. The sheriffs and our department were met met the judiciary met with us on a number of occasions. They shared all their information. We had meetings direct directly with Greg mostly who went over numbers. I feel like it was very, very, very thoroughly vetted and so I have, I have full confidence in what the judiciary has put forward to your committee. Great. Well, I'm sure we'll be seeing many of you back on this issue and others as we pick up some other public safety work as well. We'll break for today committee. We have a really stacked 1 to 3. So please be in your seats at one o'clock.