Part of the security fence at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield seen on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, right?  If someone charged with a violent crime is deemed a threat to public safety, they might be he ld without bail. And if that person is also incompetent to stand trial, they could remain in prison for years until they pass a competency evaluation.  But the state currently lacks a process to restore their competency — sometimes leaving people to languish in jail even though they haven’t been convicted of a crime.  Lawmakers in the Senate Judiciary Committee are grappling with a bill, S.193, that would allow defendants found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity to be committed to a locked facility under the purview of the Vermont Department of Corrections.  The idea is to offer someone in the locked facility medical treatment with the hope they might eventually be able to stand trial. That facility could be a unit, or number of beds, within a state prison. But for some lawmakers, it’s hard to parse the idea that the process might happen within a prison. “When we’re talking about treatment best practices, those don’t happen in prisons,” Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, said in committee Thursday.  As proposed, someone could be held in the locked facility if they pose a threat to public safety and don’t meet the clinical threshold to be committed to a hospital run by the Vermont Department of Mental Health. They would also need to have committed a serious crime that carries a punishment up to life in prison.  If the bill became law, the Corrections Department could provide the proposed competency restoration services with its for-profit health care contractor Wellpath, said Jon Murad, the department’s commissioner. It’s a service the company already provides in other states, he said.  Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, said he understood Vyhovsky’s concerns and had gone back and forth on the topic. “But if I think about it rationally, they’re going to be in a highly secure setting in both places, so both are, in effect, a jail,” he said. The distinction between a stand-alone locked facility and one that’s connected to a prison isn’t going to matter in the end, Baruth said.  Sen. Nader Hashim, D-Windham, the committee’s chair, pointed out that people covered under the bill are often currently held in state prisons anyway. The important distinction is the treatment people are being provided, he said.  — Charlotte Oliver In the know The House and Senate elected Henry “Hank” Harder as the next leader of the Vermont National Guard on Thursday.  He’ll take on the job as the guard’s fleet of F-35 fighter jets has been in the public eye for its role, under controversial federal orders, in some of President Donald Trump’s most significant military operations in recent months. Harder is a retired Air National Guard general. In his new position, which is called the state’s adjutant general, he’ll oversee both the Air Guard and the Army National Guard. The Shelburne resident has also served since 2024 as deputy adjutant general under the man he’s replacing, Maj. Gen. Gregory Knight. Knight’s decision to retire after seven years on the job created an open race for his successor. Harder overwhelmingly beat out one other candidate in Thursday’s election — Army National Guard Col. Roger “Brent” Zeigler — by 147 votes to 23. Read more about the election here. — Shaun Robinson While the adjutant general election was the headline vote during Thursday’s joint House and Senate assembly, a second joint election, held shortly after, was more of a nail-biter.  Three legislators were vying for two seats on the board of the Vermont State Colleges System: Rep. John Kascenska, R-Burke; Rep. David Durfee, D-Shaftsbury; and Rep. Jana Brown, D-Richmond. Kascenska got the most votes handily, with 110. But Durfee beat out Brown by only a single vote — scoring 87 votes to Brown’s 86. — Shaun Robinson Bernie takes Silicon Valley U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is in California this week during the Senate’s recess to discuss the future of artificial intelligence with industry leaders — with a particular focus on how it will impact working people and the economy. “Congress and the American people are totally unprepared for the extraordinary transformations that AI and robotics are going to make in our country and, in fact, throughout the world in the next few years,” Sanders said on a press call last week. “We have seen the development of electricity, the automobile, radio, TV, computers, the internet — all of which were very significant. But all of those technologies pale in comparison to the impact, in my view, that AI and robotics will have on our world.” Sanders trip included plans to talk to AI executives about how the rapid development of the technology could negatively affect the American people. He declined to comment on which industry leaders he would be meeting with. In October, Sanders released a report that found that AI could replace up to 97 million jobs in 10 years and that AI companies admit their goal is to lower labor costs by cutting human jobs. Read the full story, written by our partners at NOTUS, here. What’s in a name? Wednesday’s Senate floor discussion of Ticklenaked Pond — chronicled in the day’s Final Reading — left some legislators and reporters wondering how, exactly, the Ryegate body of water’s unusual name came to be. Thankfully, the Bradford Journal Opinion, whose journalists seem to be readers of this newsletter, provided an answer in its own e-mailing on Thursday. “For what it’s worth, most believe the unusual name is derived from ‘tickeneket,’ the Algonquin word for ‘place of little beavers,’” the JO reported. The more you know! — Shaun Robinson Department of corrections Yesterday’s newsletter incorrectly identified the organization Jackie Folsom works for. She is a lobbyist for the Vermont Fairs and Field Days Association. Read the story on VTDigger here: Why people incompetent to stand trial could receive treatment in Vermont’s prisons. ...read more read less