The Honorable Chair of Speech.

Welcome, Judge.

And congratulations.

Thank you, sir.

May I begin?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Daly and Commissioners for welcoming me and my team here today.

We appreciate your willingness to work with us over that last seven months, both giving us grace as we learn and make changes, but also pushing us to do better.

We owe it to our community to constantly strive towards a better, more just system.

I cannot do this work alone, so I'm pleased to have other leaders in our court here with me today.

From the OCJ, we have Brensky Coleman, our CFO, interim chief of staff, Katie Calhoun, Kate Nolan, and Clifford Helm from our legal team, along with Mike Carroll, Megan Volker, Renata Steele, Charles Golbert, Remy Burton, Terry Mesa, Sarah Hemeter, and Mike McCarthy.

In addition to our departmental leadership, who many of you are familiar with, we also have Presiding Judge Rice of the Domestic Violence Division and newly appointed Deputy Presiding Judge Weaver of the Domestic Violence Division.

We also have Deputy Chief Judge Marubio, who oversees First Appearance Court, as well as the second district Skokie Courthouse.

Finally, we have Presiding Judge Ortiz, who oversees the pretrial division.

They are all sitting behind me.

I am very grateful for this team and the opportunity to bring the judiciary into this space and share additional insight about the work of my administration and the dedication of our judicial and non-judicial teams to the communities of Cook County.

When I assume the responsibilities of Chief Judge in December, one of my first priorities was to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the court's operations.

Rather than implementing change without first understanding the organization, my administration undertook a thorough review of departmental priorities, budgets, contracts, staffing, and operational practices.

This assessment allowed us to identify opportunities to improve efficiency, strengthen accountability, better align our resources, and enhance access to justice for the residents of Cook County.

Guided by that review, we established clear priorities and have made meaningful progress over the past several months.

In advance of today's meeting, we provided the Commissioners with a written summary of the initiatives and accomplishments achieved to date.

Recognizing that it has been a full agenda, I will not review each of those accomplishments individually.

Instead, I would like to highlight several initiatives that I believe are of particular interest to the board and that reflect our commitment to improving the administration of justice through thoughtful leadership, collaboration, and responsible stewardship of public resources.

But before we do so, let me begin with revenues.

The Office of the Public Guardian continues to demonstrate strong and steady performance in fee collection, maintaining its historical range of 2.4 million to 2.6 million.

For the first half of fiscal year 26, the Department has collected more than 1.2 million and remains on track to meet its year-end estimate.

Additionally, federal reimbursements to tied to our Title IVE initiative continue to grow, with more than 1.6 million already submitted or received as of May.

These federal dollars help sustain vital services for vulnerable youth and adults across Cookook County.

Turning to the State of Illinois revenue, we continue to work within the AOIC reimbursement schedule for probation and detention staff.

As required by statute, counties receive salary subsidies each month along with full reimbursement for, quote, grants in aid and quote pretrial service positions.

While we have experienced an unfavorable timing variance, we anticipate alignment as reimbursements reconcile later in the fiscal year.

On the expenditure side, our personnel budget shows a favorable variance driven largely by vacancies across the OCJ Adult Probation, Juvenile Probation, and the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.

While these vacancies have produced short-term budget savings, we continue active and strategic hiring to reinforce operations across all departments.

Contractual services also shows a favorable variance due to IT costs that will occur later in the fiscal year.

Operations and maintenance remains below projections, largely due to lower than forecasted electronic monitoring expenses.

Variances in contingencies in special purpose are linked to state reimbursement timing and transportation fund credits.

I am proud to highlight our ARPA initiative.

Under ARPA grant NT 715, the strengthened Chicago's Youth Juvenile Justice Collaborative continues to deliver impressive outcomes.

Since July of 22, more than 883 youth have been served, and 645 had successfully completed diversion programming.

A Chapin Hall evaluation found that 89% of participant youth had their charges dropped, and participants were 44% less likely than similar peers to face new charges within 12 months.

These outcomes reflect the success of our trauma informed community-based approach, and they reinforce why continuing this work through the end of fiscal year 26 and into 27 is critical.

We have also advanced several major fiscal year 26 initiatives, some of which I'll go into more detail about later in this presentation.

We have added bilingual ombudsman program launching this August to strengthen accessibility and transparency across court operations for residents who speak languages other than English.

Domestic violence court enhancements, expanded after our services in collaboration with community organizations, continue to improve safety, access, and support for survivors.

A legal advice help desk expansion, now serving nearly 4,800 residents across Cook County with enhanced staffing and service days.

We've hired a director of juvenile services, successfully onboarded to strengthen oversight and strategic direction for juvenile probation and the juvenile temporary detention center.

Across our departments specialized initiatives from complex litigation recoveries exceeding 4.2 million to major operational improvements in electronic monitoring, caseworker field work, and clinical case transfers demonstrate our system wide commitment to efficiency, safety, and justice.

On hiring, OCJ and its departments continue year-round recruitment, including participation in multiple job fairs.

Interpreter hiring remains a challenge, but recent changes to minimum qualifications have resulted in successful addition of several Spanish leaking language interpreters, with more candidates in the pipeline.

Other departments, including adult probation, juvenile probation, JTDC, and the public guardian, are actively filling vacancies and are on track to reduce openings significantly over the coming months.

Finally, regarding grants, OCJ manages a portfolio of 32 active awards totaling 21.8 million.

We have secured continuation funding for major programs, expanded housing support initiatives, and applied for competitive federal grants, including a 3.2 million proposed proposal to implement an electronic search warrant system across Cook County.

We continue to aggressively pursue opportunities to strengthen services, expand capacity, and innovate.

The Office of the Chief Judge remains deeply committed to fiscal responsibility, operational excellence, and meaningful service to the people of Cook County.

Our mid-year results reflect strong stewardship, impactful programs, and ongoing monetizations across all departments.

I also want to take the opportunity to provide more details regarding changes we made in my administration, particularly in juvenile justice, electronic monitoring, and domestic violence.

In the juvenile justice sphere, at the highest level, our juvenile justice initiatives are centered on three strategic priorities.

First, we are ensuring that we have the right leadership in places to advance our vision for a more accountable, transparent, and effective juvenile justice system.

Second, we are engaging nationally recognized and local subject matter experts to provide an objective assessment of our current operations, identify opportunities for improvement, and assist us in developing concrete, evidence-based strategies that reflect nationally recognized best practices.