Department of Corrections Commissioner Mike Touchette speaks during a legislative hearing on the criminal justice system at the Statehouse on July 18. Photo by Mike Dougherty/VTDigger
The union that represents state employees slammed WCAX-TV Tuesday for reporting “simply false” comments by Department of Corrections commissioner Mike Touchette.
In the story, titled “Prison staffing not a problem in Vermont,” Touchette told WCAX that staffing is not as big of a challenge in Vermont as it is in many other states.
The VSEA strongly disagreed. President Dave Bellini noted that VSEA members have been providing testimony to lawmakers for years about “chronic issues of understaffing, forced overtime and temp use inside Vermont’s prisons.”
There are approximately 600 correctional officers in Vermont’s six facilities, which hold about 1,200 inmates.
“If the WCAX reporter had reached out to the people actually doing the work inside prisons—or VSEA—for comment, I can assure you he would have a completely different take on the situation,” Bellini said in a statement.
Roger Garrity, WCAX’s news director, described the story as a “pretty simple sidebar” to a national piece that looked at staffing levels at prisons around the country.
“It was kind of a ‘You might be wondering at home, Does Vermont have this staffing incongruity?’ And the answer is no,” Garrity said. “We were simply getting a datapoint from the corrections commissioner to use as a comparison, and we stand by that.”
Even so, Touchette sent an email to DOC employees Tuesday apologizing for how his comments may have been construed.
“My comments in this interview were in no way intended to diminish the realities of the Vermont correctional staffing needs,” he wrote. “I apologize if it was construed as failing to recognize that we still have a lot of work to do, because we do.”
In an interview, Touchette said despite his apology to staff, he stands by what he told WCAX.
“They were asking me to compare Vermont to other states, and we are not in the same situation that these other states are,” he said. “That being said, we still have a lot of overtime in this department, and that’s something we’re aggressively trying to work on.”
He said WCAX asked him about significant crises in other states and agencies, where there aren’t enough staff to operate units, which he said is far from Vermont’s situation.
But in his email to DOC employees, Touchette said staff are working too many hours.
“I recognize that this not only impacts your personal and family lives, but also makes doing the work even more difficult when you are tired,” Touchette wrote.
He said that upon becoming commissioner last year, recruitment and retention were some of his top priorities, and that that has stayed constant throughout his tenure.
VSEA board member (and DOC employee) Joe Silvestri said that he’s “pretty certain” Touchette understands the staffing reality a lot more than he let on to WCAX.
“We’ve communicated to him over and over that our prisons are not properly staffed and correctional officers are being forced to do mandated overtime regularly,” Silvestri said in a statement. “The commissioner stretched the truth here, and I think he knows it.”
Touchette said he didn’t think the WCAX story was inaccurate — though he acknowledged that he felt a need to respond to it after hearing that the VSEA had been fielding concerns from DOC staff.
“Without having context, I can fully appreciate how that came across to staff,” he said. “I try very hard to communicate with staff as best I can. This is just about transparency.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Union criticizes WCAX story on prison employee staffing.