Good afternoon, everyone.

It's 5 30 p.m.

on Wednesday, August 20th, 2025.

We're in the public assembly room of the City County Building.

Welcome to the public safety and criminal justice committee of the City County Council.

We do have a few budget hearings tonight.

There will be no vote tonight.

We'll have three presentations.

But before we do that, we'll do introductions of our counselors on the bottom row.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

My name is Michael Paul Hart, representing District 20.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Josh Bain, District 21.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman Paul Linet, representing District 22.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Brian Mower, District 25.

Thank you, Chairman Robinson, Dan Boots, District 3, Washington, Lawrence Townships.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair Brianne Delaney, District 2.

Good evening, Chairman Robinson.

Christo Carlino, District 11, West Side.

Good evening, everyone, and good evening, Mr.

Chair Keith Graves, District 9 on the Indianapolis East side.

Thank you, Councils and Lee Wy Robinson, District 1 and Chair of the Committee.

First up is a Marion County prosecutor in the Child Support Division, Prosecutor Ryan Mears, Miss Lita Scott, and Michael McGuire.

Prosecutor Mears, welcome.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

We each have a presentation before us, a hard copy.

There will be one on the uh screen, and we will do questions and answers at the conclusion of the presentation.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

So just uh starting out, this is to take a look at uh our leadership team, Dan Chicini is our chief trial deputy.

Miss Scott, who's our chief counsel sitting uh right next to me, Emily Shrocks, our chief of staff, Jennifer Joyce, the chief of the charging division, uh, and then uh Carlo Lopez, who's in charge of community outreach, Danette Kennedy, who's the supervisor of the criminal support staff, Linda Majors, the supervisor of special victims, domestic violence, and Rachel James is head of our juvenile division.

So just kind of looking at uh at who we are 66% of our staff are women, 78% of women occupy leadership positions uh in our in the prosecutor's office.

Uh that includes both child support and the criminal division side.

I feel uh incredibly grateful that we've been able to really increase the level of diversity in our office in terms of not only who appears in leadership but also who uh make up the 420, 430 individuals who work in the prosecutor's office at any given time.

So, as always, uh a conversation is about uh murder convictions and just kind of where we have been historically and where we are uh to this point this year.

Uh so far we've charged 31 murder trials to verdict this year.

Uh we're 28 for 31, which puts us at 90 percent.

Uh you can see those numbers tracked very closely over the last five or six years in terms of where we are at in terms of the number of trials as well as conviction rates.

Obviously, during COVID, we didn't do nearly as many trials as we're doing now.

We've done 31 murder trials uh so far this year.

We've got a couple going this week, and we have a number of trials, murder trials that are going next week.

Uh so we anticipate that our numbers gonna be uh either at or uh we should exceed the the number of homicide trials that we did in 2024, which is 48 trials, which is uh putting us back right up there to 2019 pre-pandemic numbers.

One of the things that I get asked a lot about in the community is is who's charged with homicide.

What does what does that look like?

We filed uh this is as of last week.

We had filed 52 homicide cases last year, or this year, I'm sorry.

Uh of those 52 cases, 26 of those individuals had never been arrested as an adult, which means that their first uh interaction with the criminal justice system was a murder charge.

That's 50 percent of the individuals that we've charged with murder.

In addition to that, if you account for individuals who only have a prior record of misdemeanor offenses, uh that was another six individuals, which would put you uh at 32 out of 52, uh, which is I believe 60, 61 percent.

And it just kind of reflects the growing trend that we are seeing in in homicide cases.

Uh, when I began my career as a prosecutor in 2006, many of our cases were were who done it, uh, who was the individual who was ultimately responsible.

And that has very much evolved over the last couple of years, and we just see more and more cases where uh we are able to pretty quickly identify the individual who's involved in the altercation, who's involved in the case.

Uh, but then it just comes down to a question of whether or not self-defense applies or not.

And that's a growing trend that we see pretty consistently.

It's led to increased solve rates amongst IMPD.

Uh, and as you can see from our cases, I think also a byproduct of this is we're having a lot of people uh join the criminal justice system or their first introduction to the criminal justice system is on a murder case because they are involved in these self-defense uh type altercations.

Of the three trials that we lost, all three of those cases were self-defense related.

So very oftentimes the there's not necessarily a material dispute in the facts.

It's how you apply the law to those facts.

And you know, it ultimately comes down to a question of reasonableness.

And so that's probably one of the areas of the laws that has changed the most since I've been in the prosecutor's office again since 2006 is that idea of reasonableness and what does that mean to people in the community.

We were able to win a self-defense case just last week.

We had a guilty verdict on that case where the defense was self-defense.

But the vast majority of cases that we see now in Marion County, when we take these cases to trial, the defense is very oftentimes self-defense and not issues of identity.

Sex crimes cases as it relates to uh child molest cases that have gone to trial this year.

Uh we've we've again had excellent results, 11 for 11.

Uh, I have to give a ton of credit to Linda Major and the rest of our supervisory team of sex crimes.

They are top-notch and are really just uh incredibly committed to this type of work.

This is some of the most difficult and challenging work that you can do uh when you're dealing with children who have been harmed.

And Linda and her team do an excellent job of making sure that they are not only compassionate and do everything that they can to help uh children who are in need, but also get them to the point where they're capable and able to step in into a courtroom and identifying the perpetrator uh who did unspeakable things to kids.

It is a long journey, and the criminal justice system asks a ton of kids who are being placed in these situations through no fault of their own.

And it really takes a tremendous investment to get a child ready to go to a jury trial.

And uh Linda and her team does an outstanding job of making sure that that occurs day in and and day out.

We feel very fortunate for the supervisors that we have.

Uh results in the courtroom just kind of reflect some of the things that uh we've been able to do over the last couple of years.

I mean, there's there's there's a number of cases that that have been of notes.

Uh one that I just wanted to touch on briefly was Raymond Childs.

That was an individual who uh was arrested and ultimately charged for killing six family members.

He went to jury trial and he was convicted and he received a sentence of 360 years, which is is noted up there.

Uh we've also had a number of cases that that are not homicide cases that have resulted in quite a bit of media attention for individuals who have maybe uh been involved in in multiple issues downtown or in Broad Ripple, and they've also received pretty uh significant sentences as well.

And again, that's you know, everybody trying to work together to make sure that we're in a position to hold people accountable.

I did want to note that uh we did have a serial killer case uh where we were able to conviction somebody this year, Bruce Minnenhall.

This is an individual who has been kind of identified as the truck stop serial killer.

Uh he was was went to trial and was convicted.

He's also been convicted in multiple other states.

Uh basically what he would do is he would go to rest areas or truck stops, uh find women who were vulnerable, oftentimes prostitutes, and he uh murdered a number of these women, all uh across the Midwest, and he was found guilty not only in Marion County but in other states as as well.

Uh I believe he's in another jurisdiction right now awaiting trial for an additional homicide case.

Uh but it was a case that was difficult to put together just because it was uh not figured out until many years after the fact.

And again, just just more uh cases which kind of illustrate the the the commitment that everybody in the office has to a number of these cases and and also just you know the it extends beyond murder cases and homicide cases.

I think a lot of times that's what uh the community latches on to, and there's a lot of conversation about that.

Uh but you know we also uh play very close attention to a number of other cases.

As you can see there, there was uh an individual by the name of Kevin Bennett who was convicted of rape and received 108 years because he was a serial rapist.

Uh we had a dealing uh fentanyl-causing deaths, an individual that we were able to convict of two different uh causing death cases, and it resulted in a 51-year prison sentence, uh, have an excellent relationship with the DEA, have an excellent relationship with IMPD, and are really able to put together those cases and leverage that law to hopefully be in a position to hold some of these dealers uh accountable.

You know, we've spend uh a lot of times talking about uh youth and and what can the prosecutor's office and what can other entities do in terms of having conversations with with young people and what can we do to try to make a difference uh in our community.

One of the things that I've learned from my consistent conversations with young people is that they very much uh certainly appreciate support and they want opportunities, but ultimately what's going to determine whether or not they're involved in gun violence is is oftentimes dictated by their peers.

And and so one of the things that we have tried to focus on is how can we build leaders in our community?

How can we get people in our community uh who are young people to be the voice of reason when confrontations occur as it relates to gun violence to help get people to turn away.

We did a podcast series uh future focused.

The first one got a lot of attention because Mike Epps was involved.

But I hope everybody uh pays attention to other episodes where it was local kids here from Marion County who came in and shared their stories of times and opportunities that they had involving gun violence.

Uh this this took place over at P30, which is on the east side, it might be in Councilor Graves district.

But it's a it's an incredible facility, and this podcast was actually produced by the kids.

So the kids actually they're developing real life skills.

They did it through an internship program that they had through their high school.

And so when you look at the the video, when you see how was the lighting done, who was doing the cameras, who was doing the editing, who was cutting all that together, uh that was done by the kids.

Uh they produced it, they edited it, they put all of those things together.

But they were also very kind and willing to share their experiences as it related to gun violence and maybe what they wanted to see from the community and what they wanted to see from the prosecutor's office, what their expectations were and things that we could do to make a difference.

And again, uh part of that the program and the idea was let's help build real life skills for kids so they have a transferable skill and will hopefully make them more marketable so they're employed and we don't see them in the criminal justice system.

Um the youth violence prevention fellows, which is very much designed as a leadership program.

Big shout out to the counselors who've been willing to participate and speak to our kids.

I know a number of people on this panel in the past have been willing to stop by and have conversations where it's all about meeting and interacting with kids, but also trying to build that leadership, not only introducing them to government and let them know how city government works, but also let them know that we need them to have the confidence to be leaders uh in our community.

And and we do a soccer camp and a basketball camp because again, we found that it's an excellent way uh to try to connect with kids in our community.

You know, we understand also that our that our role in the community extends very much uh beyond just uh you know prosecution, and and we have to consistently make sure that we're doing things to build trust in the community.

Uh you can have the greatest investigation in the world, but if no one's willing to come forward and step into court and talk about what happened, uh you're gonna be really limited as a prosecutor's office.

And so when we talk about we need the community in order to make a difference, uh we very much see and experience that every single day because if we're gonna be in a position to bring justice to people, we have to have people in the community willing to come forward and testify and share their experiences.

And that's something that uh we spend a lot of time on.

How can we build that level of trust and let people know that we care about everybody?

Uh, one of the programs that I I'm particularly uh happy with just because it was initiated by individuals who work in our office who uh are part of our program with a couple of nonprofits that we have, which is our different not less initiative, uh, which is individuals who work in the office who who maybe have a disability.

Uh, but they helped us out with our blue envelope program, and and the way that worked was we had uh envelopes that uh can be distributed to individuals who are suffering from autism.

And a lot of individuals are who suffer from this different disabilities are really concerned about that interaction with law enforcement because the lights, the sirens can be very triggering and they might respond in a way that uh is not indicative of someone who's trying to resist but might send the wrong uh signal to law enforcement.

And so these blue envelopes let uh the police immediately know that they're dealing with an individual who suffers from this these types of issues.

They're allowed to put their driver's license and insurance information in there and kind of gives the officer the heads up that hey, the the loud noises and the sensory issues might be part of contributing to the issue here.

Uh and it was an incredibly successful program, and and it really even extended beyond uh Marion County.

Uh, I'm very pleased to say that we met with Chief Bailey.

He could not have been a better partner on that, was uh met with Natalie Miller, who was the person in our office who was very much spearheading that program.

Uh the Arc of Indiana was a partner on that as well.

Uh and the thing that that we very quickly saw that there was a need for this beyond Marion County.

We had uh 79 people from 79 different cities and towns across the state reach out to participate in the blue envelope program.

We've distributed close to 500 blue envelopes to individuals who are asking us to receive that uh that information, and those are the types of things that we think that we can have a real difference uh in our community.

Our good faith initiative is something that uh gets a lot of attention through our child support, and uh Mr.

McGuire does a great job of running that program in terms of trying to get people back on track and paying child support.

Our second chance workshops, which take place throughout the city.

We try to do them at the township's offices.

We do our big one downtown here at Gambridge Field House.

We were able to serve 1,289 people to this point this year.

You can see kind of the breakdown of bail to female.

We have a really great expungement law in the state of Indiana, but access to justice is a problem a lot of people struggle with.

Just to be clear, we only do criminal convictions.

I know there's sometimes some confusion because there's a lot of people who are seeking out civil expungements, in particular for evictions.

We cannot help with that, and unfortunately, that's outside the realm of our area.

But where we do feel pretty immediate need on housing, is there's a lot of people in our community who are struggling to get housing because of their criminal history.

And if they can take advantage of this expungement law, we want to make sure they have the resource and the ability to do that.

And so that's what we try to do, our second chance workshops.

The other thing that we try to do is we try to help people get their driver's license reinstated.

There's a number of people who have their driver's license suspended basically because they're poor.

And because they're poor, uh, they are now essentially being criminalized every time they go to work, every time they go to church, every time they go to school, and it creates unnecessary tension between people in the community and law enforcement because they're constantly looking over their shoulder, and it also serves as a huge barrier to someone gaining uh meaningful employment.

And so we work very hard to get that uh accomplished.

We would not be able to do that without people in the community stepping forward.

Uh I want to give a shout out to my friends at the public defender agency who have been incredible partners in our good faith initiative.

They are volunteering their time, they're helping us, and we also have the benefit of a number of attorneys from around the city who come forward to help us pull off uh events such as these, where we're able to serve a lot of people and hopefully get as many people driving on the street legally as possible, but also help people eliminate some of those barriers that are maybe holding them back from uh employment where maybe they're underemployed or unemployed, and and certainly it is a barrier to housing, and that's one of the things that we're very focused on on trying to reduce.

As it relates to grants, uh we have had a number of losses as it relates to grants.

Uh the two biggest ones were the APS grant and our uh diversion grant.

Uh both of those were state funded grants.

Both of those programs were eliminated at the state level, so it not only impacts Marion County, but it represents uh it also impacts the rest of the state.

Uh APS is being shifted, which is adult protective services, that was previously based in prosecutors' offices.

It's been outsourced to a third party agency.

And uh the diversion grant was a grant that was funded by the Department of Correction.

Uh that grant paid for both a prosecutor and a social worker to help with individuals uh to enter into a diversion program.

That uh grant was also a statewide grant that has been eliminated across the board.

Uh the elimination of those grants have uh ultimately will result in 10 positions being eliminated from the prosecutor's office.

Uh some of those individuals have been able to be uh relocated to different positions when within the office, uh, but we did have some individuals depart the prosecutor's office as these uh grants wind down, and there just wasn't a good fit for for some of those individuals.

Uh and so we understand that the the grant environment is somewhat challenging right now.

I know for some of our grants it's been difficult even to report uh the things that we've been required to report just based on changes that exist at the federal level.

We will certainly do our best to engage and participate uh with these grants, but uh the last state budget was was not particularly kind uh to grant funded programs, and the prosecutor's office experienced uh that loss uh as other prosecutors' offices did uh around the state.

So when you get down to the actual role numbers, I'll turn it over to Selita Scott.

So for our 2026 proposed budget is 35 million, twelve thousand four hundred and eighteen dollars.

We provided that breakdown by fund.

I'm not gonna read it to you as it is before you.

Um, but I do want to point out when we look at the characters in character one, twenty-eight million one hundred and ten thousand eight hundred and fifteen dollars is for character one, which supports our salaries for our staff.

I'll turn it over to Mike McGuire.

Uh good evening.

Thank you for having me this evening.

Uh, I'm very proud to be here to represent the 79 members of the child support division.

Uh, we're gonna present our budget, and our first slide is about our leadership team uh that uh helps our other employees navigate the child support system and help the families not only here in Marion County, uh, but also across the country that need their services here in Marion County and some of our families who need services in other states.

As of Monday, we had 37,032 open child support cases here in Marion County.

So what our job is is to assist parents in establishing paternity for children that are born out of wedlock, assist parents in establishing child support and medical support orders, and assist parents in enforcing and modifying those child support and medical support orders and provide assistance for parents in other states who may need our services and to provide assistance for families here who need services in another state.

So the proposed budget that we have been given is a reflection of the four characters.

You can see again, like the criminal division, we're predominantly our biggest expenses are in character one, which are personal services.

The council may remember that last year when it looked like everybody with flatline, we appeared to have an increase and it was a shift in how child support division was funded.

More of our budget was put into county general uh funding rather than incentive funding.

So that number of $7,072,132 does not represent all of the expenses that the child support division is anticipated to have in 2026.

In fact, that number is $8,146,811.

And we're gonna get into that in a minute on how that's funded.

So uh we talked about this a couple of years ago.

The first $758,490 that we spend of eligible 4D expenses is reimbursed by the state.

The remaining money that is spent in character or in county general funds is reimbursed at 66%.

So for um the example is in 24's budget, we were expecting a reimbursement of 2,000 or $2,983 and 360, excuse me, $2,983,363.

And with those changes uh that we made last year to the 2025 budget, and the same is being proposed here, uh, we're gonna see $4,167,004 just by changing which fund we used.

Uh so that is a better way to bring revenue.

30% is actually what ends up being paid.

So that county general fund, when by the time reimbursements come in, the county is only paying $2,146,638 of that $7,072,132.

So for us, or for the way I'm looking at it, it's a missed opportunity.

If we had put the entire $8 million in that we're doing, we would see more revenue, and I'll get to that in a moment.

But again, our funding comes from three streams for a child support expenses.

County General, uh, the county for D incentive fund and the prosecutor's incentive fund.

County General is allocated through the council.

The incentive funds are not allocated through the council.

Those are funds that are earned based on how well the state of Indiana does uh in terms of five federal performance factors and how well we do as a county.

We receive funding.

The county receives 22 percent, uh, the clerk's office receives 22 percent, and the prosecutor's office receives 33 percent of what comes into Indiana.

So we receive that throughout the year, and that is money that we can spend to enhance the program, or but we can't use it to supplant what the county is supposed to be providing.

So over the years, the child support division has used that money to for personal services to have more employees and those things.

So, as I said last year, uh we got more moved to county general so there would be a better retention of money coming back from the federal government.

And so if we did that, next slide.

If you see this is kind of the allocation that we're looking at for that, and I apologize for the typo that says 8,101, it should be that 8,146.

This is what we would have, and it would actually cost the county to get that four four million nine hundred and twenty-five thousand four hundred and ninety-four dollars.

The county would actually pay out three million two hundred and twenty-one thousand three seventeen.

And that is from what we showed on the slide that we would get from the county general fund plus the two incentive funds that are up there.

But what if we put it all in county general funds?

Next slide.

Then we would get back five million six hundred and thirty-four thousand seven hundred and eighty-two dollars, and it would end up counting the county two million five hundred and twelve thousand twenty-nine dollars.

And with that, we would get back more money, uh, an extra 709,288 dollars in reimbursement.

Now, I would point out that that means that county general would take a hit of 365,000 uh and some extra money there would be less in county general, but we would also retain that money that's gonna come out of the incentive fund that comes in every year, which is a little over a million dollars.

Those would go into the two funds that were for 4D services.

They can't be used by everybody, but this is a way to get more funds into the county and to keep those money here to be used in future years.

So as the as we talked about in grants in the criminal division, there aren't a whole lot of grants in child support.

There are occasionally the Office of Child Support Enforcement offers grants for fatherhood initiatives.

We're unclear if they're going to this year.

Uh and but we have been approached to take a look if we might be interested.

These are kind of programs that we cannot fund with Title 4D money, so that money has to come from somewhere else.

And my personal look, I would like to look at if we're going to do something, is it something that we can sustain?

But is it also something not only to help fathers but parents in general find employment, keep employment, maybe something to do with housing, but we are looking for those types of grants to do those things.

The other thing that we've talked about in the past and that we plan to do this year is coming up in 2026.

Hopefully at the end of 2025, is we'll have a mediation program which will assist families who are going to court to be able to settle their the whatever their issue is outside of the courtroom.

As long as they have 140 issue, I can use incentive money to pay for that particular program.

And we're allocating out of the prosecutor's office uh incentive fund about 150,000 each year to get those cases and to see what we can do with those.

Um with uh with that, we're also trying to continue to have our family resource days, our good faith initiative.

We have a new community outreach person so that we can go out into the community and continue to educate people on what services that we do have and what we can assist them with.

And then our performance metric was on our parents that work program.

Uh, and I believe, and I I could be incorrect.

This started years ago.

Uh, I think with the grant from the council, it was what's called back then it's a difference of uh of about 25 years.

It was called job or jail back then and on track.

Now it's our parents that work program.

Uh and last year we were estimating uh in 24, we did 197 uh individuals we helped.

This year we're thinking it's gonna be 220, and we're hoping for 230.

And these are people who are looking for employment to pay their child support, and we're trying to assist them by either getting them to an employer that may hire them or deal with those barriers that they may do, maybe they need to have a GED, maybe they need some help with uh resume writing and things, find it with other partners to get people employment.

Those who are working generally pay better, and and there are generally better relationships with their family as it relates to our second chance workshops in 2024.

We served over 1,400 people.

We're estimated to serve 1,500 um individuals, and our goal for 2026 is 1,600 individuals.

With that, um we'll take any questions you may have.

Thank you all for your presentation.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Prosecutor, for your team.

Uh comments or questions for the prosecutor.

Council Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Um, Mr.

McGuire, while you're there, can you maybe run back over uh the $709,000 missed opportunity and tell me what steps should have been taken uh so we can make sure that if we can capture that?

The the the difference is if you put all of our expenses in, then they're then all of the 4D expenses are eligible for that 66% reimbursement.

So uh, you know, part of ours is gonna be used out of incentive fund.

If the incentive fund was not being used for those expenses, then you would be able on the little over a million from the incentive funds, you would get 66% back on those.

Uh thank you.

I think I might understand a little better.

I might have to tap into our RCFO for a little deeper explanation because that um that's a big it sounds like a pretty big sum of money that well we didn't uh have uh an opportunity to capture.

Thank you, Councillor Additional Commerce.

So question for the prosecutor's office.

Counselor Delaney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um Mr.

Prosecutor, at the beginning of your speech you're talking about the murder rate as it came up, or um chief chief of staff or chief deputy Duncan um Scott.

What um you were talking about the fact that the the types of murders that you had seen have changed dramatically um since you became a prosecutor, and in conjunction to that statement, we've been hearing and that our murders are down and violent crime is down overall in the city.

And I know that over the past four or five years there's been an influx of federal dollars into the city.

Um I'm just curious uh if you wouldn't mind offering an opinion or if you have any evidence as to maybe the change in murders, is that part of the reason why they're going down?

Do you have any anecdotes?

Is there any connection between the two?

I'm just trying to look at, you know, as as the fiscal body of the county, getting to where I'm going with all of this, is the fiscal body of the county, right?

We're funding all of these programs to help try to bring down crime in the city, and maybe there's a connection, maybe there's not.

Um, but I just love to hear your thoughts kind of on the big picture of it all uh from the the types of murders that we're seeing to crime is down overall.

Is it is it a function of the money that we're pouring into it?

I'd just love to hear your opinion and thoughts.

You know, I I don't know that I'm necessarily willing to to draw a direct line because I I just don't know that we have the statistical evidence to to support that.

The the one thing that I will tell you is that when you know IMPD initially classified their their murder cases, it was domestic, it was uh drug deal gone bad, drug related, and basically armed robbery gone bad.

Those were the three categories.

Now we have a fourth category, which is by far our highest category, which is disputes.

Uh all of not all, but a significant percentage of what we are seeing now are just individuals arguing with one another.

Uh a lot of times it originates on social media, and individuals you know becoming very uh angry and frustrated with one another and resolving those conflicts through through violence.

And that's why we're seeing uh so many self-defense claims or cases being raised in in the courtroom.

It's the the issue that we most frequently litigate is the issue of self-defense, and it's it's also uh the what we have to evaluate the most during the screening process is is there a colorable self-defense claim here?

And so that's a very significant change because you know, 10 years ago we spent a lot of time trying to figure out who was the person involved.

Uh but thanks to modern technology, a lot of times if we are able to get someone to point us in the right direction, we're able to identify the person involved.

You're you know, everybody walks around with a G GPS device.

So we're we're able to say, no, you were there, we know who you were talking to before, after, and during we saw what you were searching on the internet, and then inevitably when they talk to the police, there's a conversation about well, the other person was armed or the other person pulled a gun first.

And so that's just more and more what we are seeing, and of the murders that uh we currently have pending, uh, I would say the a predominant issue in most of those cases is the issue of self-defense.

Uh meaning that most people or a lot of people are claiming that yes, I did it, but I had the legal right to do so.

Uh, and I think that's a reflection of our self-defense laws.

And I think it's a reflection of the fact that in most situations or in a lot of cases, both parties are armed, both the victim and the defendant are armed.

That's something that we frequently encounter.

And so when you deal with those types of cases, uh, I don't know how a program maybe necessarily prevents someone in the heat of the moment from stepping away from that confrontation, but I know it's something that we're all focused on is how can we give people the tools, the resources, the confidence, and the skills to step away from that violence.

And when we talk about young people, the vast majority of what we see involving young people starts online.

It's social media feuds, it's social media beefs, and then it's like, hey, let's meet downtown, hey, let's meet at the mall.

Let's and or you know, you catch someone somewhere and and you feel like, oh, this is my opportunity.

And and so I I think there's an element of prevention involved there, especially as it relates to social media beefs.

Uh, but when you're just fighting over a parking spot, I don't know how you know those resources necessarily prevent someone from just having a short fuse.

Thank you.

I have so many more questions, but I will save everybody's time this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing.

I appreciate that.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Mr.

Prosecutor.

Counselor Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, prosecutor, for the this evening's presentation.

Just a couple of quick questions with respect to the your grant losses.

I see here it's roughly combined state and federals 812.

Does that sound accurate?

Yes.

How is that divided between the state and fed?

Uh I think that so the VOCA grants which support like our victim advocates and resources like that, those were not eliminated.

They were just significantly reduced.

The APS is the bulk of that, which was right around $500,000.

Uh, and that grant was all out eliminated.

Uh, and then our diversion program, which again was the Department of Corrections state funded uh program, that was 189,000.

So approximately 700,000 of that, those dollars are the state funded dollars that we lost.

The rest would be the reduction in the VOCA grant allocation at the federal level.

Okay, great.

Final question.

Um to your knowledge, are there any formal any formal connections or collaborations between your office and uh ICE or immigration enforcement on the federal level?

No, that we've we've had little or no conversations with them.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, counselor.

Additional comments or questions for the prosecutor, counselor Graves?

Thanks, Mr.

Chairman.

Hey, Mr.

Prosecutor, how's it going?

Good, how are you, sir?

My good friend there.

Um, just uh real quick question.

Um, can you talk about maybe what your office is doing to uh dispel the thought that there is a lot of disparities in charging and sentencing uh racial disparities where members of the black community typically are going to get harsher charges and harsher sentences.

Can you talk about that?

And it's is there any measurable way that you you guys keep an eye on that?

Yeah, I mean, one one of the things that we're very fortunate with is there's a lot of research institutions that want to pair up with us and provide us with that insight and that information to let us know uh are we doing a good job or not?

And and what uh what are we doing at the screening process or the intake process in terms of what our decision making process looks like?

And and so I feel very fortunate because we've we have partnerships with like the Vera Institute, which helps us evaluate that.

Uh we have partnerships with academic institutions, Stanford University has been a partner of of ours in the past uh to help us really try to understand okay, what are we doing in in the community?

Uh a couple of weeks ago, we uh presented our evidence and information that Vera uh provided to us in terms of why do we file so many types of resisting law enforcement cases.

Why why does the Marion County prosecutor's office file far more cases uh than peer cities or sister cities around the country?

And we had a community conversation about it.

Uh we we did it at uh Olivet Missionary Baptist Church, and we had uh a very transparent conversation about what the research revealed about our decision making process and what we did.

And so part of it is acknowledging that we're not perfect and that sometimes those discrepancies exist, and we want to make sure that we are continuously evaluating ourselves to make sure that those subtle biases are not influencing our decisions.

And so we want to be proactive with the community and say this this is what we're doing.

And and so what we're trying to do is let's evaluate how we file cases, let's evaluate how we prosecute cases, and then let's see you know where those disparities exist and and is there more to the story.

Uh and so those are huge undertakings that we don't necessarily have the the ability to do ourselves, which is why we've partnered up with different institutions of higher learning uh so they can help us do that assessment, and then I think it's on our obligation to to share it with the community.

And that's what we did a couple of weeks ago uh at all of that missionary Baptist Church.

That's awesome.

I really appreciate knowing that you have that partnership with that institution that's going to help I identify some of the some of the disparities that may be in play, and then you're actually looking to uh work those.

I like to make sure we throw in bond recommendations and things like that, because I think that there's a disparity there as well.

So uh I'd love to continue to learn more about how you guys are addressing some of those disparities that in our community, we feel that there are they're clear, and maybe we're just reading something differently.

But if we are reading it right, we'd love to know what you're doing to correct those things.

Thanks.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Renee.

Thank you, Ms.

Chairman.

Thank you, Ms.

Prosecutor and team, for being here this evening.

Um, you know, I'm I'm not um lost at the last few years um uh compensation was a challenge uh for really the entire enterprise.

And uh excuse me, it seemed to be a real challenge for the prosecutor's office as well as public defender agency, as I said, really the whole enterprise, but um you folks are oftentimes pooling young attorneys, you're trying to attract people into the agencies that you run, and so I was curious how that compensation maybe has uh impacted your numbers, where your numbers stand at.

Um I know IMPD is still suffering, but uh uh organization or an agency like business and neighborhood services told us this week that that they're only down to like 18 vacancies uh where they maybe had a hundred.

So I was just curious how you folks are doing uh staffing-wise, and I'll be asking our public defender the same question here in just a few moments.

Well, I'm gonna knock on wood as I say this, but we're in a good place.

Um, I first of all incredible incredibly grateful to the council because a couple of years ago we did have this conversation.

Our starting salary was 53,000, now it's 72, and people who were not previously applying to the office just because they saw the starting salary are now applying.

And so with the the incoming bar class that we have, and again I'm knocking on wood as I say this, we're not gonna have any staffing issues, and we're in a good spot uh in in terms of where we are with the enterprise uh as it relates to our number of open positions within the the prosecutor's office.

I will tell you when we have conversations about the budget I mentioned, we lost 10 people uh due to you know the grant positions being eliminated, some were reassigned, but some individuals did have to leave the office.

So I mean our our footprint in terms of the number of total employees has been reduced.

Uh but as it relates to attorneys, uh we certainly turned a corner in that starting salary of 72,000 has been incredibly helpful in terms of our ability to attract candidates who uh you want representing the community uh and you want working in the public defender agency, uh and so we feel very grateful for the resources that the council has given us.

Well, I'm glad to hear that, and and and I just always say I I know that uh uh these days in particular uh budgets are awfully tight, and there's uh greater restraints on uh on our finances here in the city, but as we continue to move along, I hope we're ever focused that we don't wind up in the same position that we found ourselves in where we're trying to significantly catch ourselves up in a short period of time.

So what I'll say to uh chief um public defender as well as yourself, as these next couple years go through, I really want to be cognizant that you know we're making sure that we're continuing to at least somewhat be competitive with our peers uh as not to disadvantage uh the agency or community.

I was curious if the chairman would allow just two more brief questions.

John Surnae.

Um with respects to some of these uh grant cuts, I was curious.

I had not heard that previously.

Um was there any real uh reason that uh your agency or other agencies were given uh as to why those cuts were made?

Were dollar shifted into other programs or were they eliminated entirely?

So the the state made the decision to to go away from the prosecutor-based model as it related to the the adult protective services grant.

And and so uh candidly they they thought they could do it cheaperly if they outsourced it to a third-party enterprise.

Uh I'm not entirely sure how that's gonna work because they don't have law enforcement powers and they don't have the ability to prosecute, but those are going to be the individuals responding to adult protective service cases now.

I know it puts a huge burden on IMPD just because the 10 people I mentioned were the ones who were kind of responding to those runs and those scenes, and now that burden's kind of shifting to IMPD a little bit just because this new a this new government quasi-government entity doesn't have police powers, and so they're really limited in in what they can do.

Uh as it relates to the to the DOC diversion program, that was just scrapped across across the board uh as as it kind of got down to nitty-gritty and then and the budget, that was one of the things that was cut.

Uh, and again, it wasn't just the Marion County Prosecutor's Office, it was every county uh that participated in that program that funded one prosecutor and and one social worker and that money was not reallocated, it was just it uh taken out of the budget as a whole.

Uh, my last question for the time being, so I can um not take up all of the meeting.

Um one of the things I I mentioned last year um was uh the importance and somewhat of appreciation of reaching out to some of our minority communities.

Um a lot of people maybe don't always think about Purry Township uh in that respect, but we're very proud of the growing uh Burmese and Chin community that we have down on the South Side.

And uh as I have interacted with them uh the last six or so years, um I was always interested to hear about their experience before they came to the United States and and came to Indianapolis and uh the fear of government and and the reluctance to work with government, and so as they've come in and uh assimilated into to our city that reluctancy still uh exist in some way, shape or form as they kind of learn or familiarize themselves with our our model.

I was just curious uh over this last year, how have you interacted with with uh those types of communities and continue to deepen those partnerships that I think are pretty critical?

Yeah, so we we've had a great relationship.

We've gone to a number of events down there.

Uh probably the most profound event that I went down there was was at the YMCA down there where there's a soccer league, I think, that that primarily uh involves individuals from the communities that that you just spoke about.

And you know, through those conversations, I know one of those individuals actually applied to to be a police officer uh and and was very proud of the fact that they were applying to to be a police officer.

Uh and so you know, you try to engage and and and help people understand that that we're here to help.

And we uh the best way to do that is to kind of meet people where they are.

Uh, and and so we try to do that.

Uh, I know Dan Shakener, chief trial deputy has been down there a couple of times as well, and I've made that trip uh down there uh to the to the YMCA a couple of times.

I think one of the times it was through OPHS, another time it was for uh a connection that we have in the community from a woman who used to work in the prosecutor's office who's Burmese, who's very uh integrated in the community, and she's pretty consistently invited me to events down there, and that was kind of how we were able to get involved uh with some of those conversations.

Uh, but it is a a growing population.

We have to learn how to serve everybody.

Uh, you know, one of the and and this you know kind of speaks to maybe an issue that's been more in counselor graves issue, but I mean, just to highlight the challenges.

I mean, we spend a lot of time trying to uh figure out you know how we can speak different lane languages uh in in our office, and and we uh have certainly uh trying to develop in-roads so we can find credible people who can help us translate and help us have conversations.

I know we're we've had a lot of issues here recently with uh Haitian Creole, people who can speak that language and make sure that we can have the that level of communication because it's sometimes hard to meet people when when there's bigger language barriers that kind of prevent just that informal communication.

Counsel, you good?

Thank you.

You okay.

Uh Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and thank you.

Um, Mr.

Prosecutor for the presentation tonight, and also your participation in our round table a few weeks ago.

I think your voice there was vital to the process, and um really led to a lot of the public safety package um initiatives that you've seen uh from some of us counselors.

So what one thing I've been trying to do is get a better idea of how the prosecutor's office, law enforcement, and the court system all interact because it seems like you know, you see someone that maybe gets off on a lenient uh plea deal or something like that.

The court system blames the prosecutor, prosecutor, you know, shifts blame over to this department, and then IMPDs are like, see, like we arrested him, now there's now he's just out on the street again.

And it's commonly referred to as you know the revolving door of criminal justice.

When you hear that term, what comes to your mind?

Well, I mean, I I don't necessarily I I think a lot of this is people who are intentionally trying to not figure out what the issue is.

Uh you know, when when I get asked questions about bail, I'm really confused as to why people are still asking those questions because the bail metric has been published online for years, and the bail process is not a secret.

Uh it's it it's published, and and so if you get arrested on a given offense, you know what your bail is going to be based based on the bail matrix.

Uh and and so when we have these conversations, you know, I I think there are opportunities to make improvements in in terms of process, and people might disagree with what a particular bond is on a particular case, or they might say, hey, this person's bond should have been revoked.

Uh sometimes it involves the flow of information.

Uh I'll give you a perfect example that that that happened with an individual.

He was arrested on a misdemeanor gun charge.

Uh, because he was mis arrested on a misdemeanor gun charge, he was able to post a hundred and fifty dollar cash bond.

When we got the case sometime later, uh we saw it and said this person should not have been arrested for a misdemeanor, they should have been arrested for a level five.

And we filed a motion for greater than standard bond.

Uh unfortunately, that person had already posted bond, and then that person was later accused and convicted of murder.

That's a process issue there.

Um had that person immediately been arrested for the level five felony, they would have had a different bond that would have had a different trajectory going through our court system, but because they were arrested on the misdemeanor, uh, they took a different path through through our court system.

That that's a process issue that I think we all need to have a conversation about, okay, what can we do to improve the process so outcomes like that do not occur, but there's also how does the flow of information work?

You know, when the police arrest someone, they have to write a report.

So that person's gonna start sitting in jail, and I'm sure the judges told you about how long people can sit in jail, and we're kind of dependent upon when we get that information.

Uh, and so there's a lot of different conversations that go into it, but I mean, pointing the finger and saying, hey, the judge isn't doing a very good job doesn't necessarily change the outcome.

And and so I think one of the things all of us I hope are focused on is what does that process look like and are there improvements that we can make to the to the process as a whole?

And a lot of those chain of events start when the arrest occurs, but the officers are dealing with incomplete information at best.

Uh a perfect example that will probably happen today is they arrest someone on a battery charge as a misdemeanor of level six, and then we talk to the victim three days later, and the victim's like, No, I went to the hospital.

I was really seriously injured, and we need to be charged a different charge, but that person's already bonded out because they were on that misdemeanor path.

And and so what can we do to improve that process and what can we do to improve that flow of information?

So not only the prosecutors have it, but the judges have it uh at the same time balancing the rights of people who are accused of crimes.

And you know, the public defender agency is gonna go after me, and they are uh fierce advocates and they do a good job of representing their clients.

Uh and I'm sure they have a perspective on what that process should look like and what the constitution requires of individuals who are being held on a charge.

So that does kind of tee up the next question, which has to do with processing.

When IMPD makes an arrest, when does the prosecutor's office get notified that there was an arrest?

Who makes the determination?

Okay, this person is being charged with a misdemeanor when we find out later it should actually be a felony.

Yeah, a lot of it depends on so you know there's basically a couple of different processes where if you're arrested on a misdemeanor, it's gonna be a little bit of time before the prosecutor's office is is notified.

Um if you are arrested on a homicide, you know, we have homicide prosecutors who work very closely with the homicide detectives.

That's a that's a conversation that's happening in real time.

Uh I mean the homicide detective is talking to the prosecutor saying, Hey, do we think you do you think we should arrest the suspect?

Common example, like I just talked about is self-defense.

This person's claiming self-defense, I don't really think it's self-defense.

What do you think about an outright arrest?

We have that conversation, and so you know, on the homicide cases, it's it's immediate.

On the misdemeanor cases, there's going to be a delay because again, you know, officer arrests someone, we don't do anything until we have a report.

Uh sometimes that report takes a long time, sometimes it doesn't take uh that long.

But then what's in that report and what information is included, and a lot of times, again, the officer's dealing with incomplete information, uh, where someone down the line is saying, Hey, you probably didn't see this, but this person actually has a conviction out of county that you might have missed, and so this should be enhanced to a felony.

Or actually, we talk to the victim, this case needs to be in you know increased because the the injury is more serious than we initially anticipated.

Uh and and so those are all things that are that that hopefully uh we're we're thinking about, but it's it's it's with the exception of murder cases, it's never contemporaneous.

Meaning if they you know if they arrest someone outside the city county building, we're not gonna know about it in in that moment in time.

There's gonna be a lag time, and a lot of that's dependent upon when that information is ultimately entered into the system and then sent over to the prosecutor's office.

Thank you.

And I just have maybe two or three more quick questions.

Is the prosecutor's office present at the bail hearing so if if you have a bail hearing, uh, presumably you're represented by counsel, and yes, the prosecutor's office would would be there.

Bail is automatically imposed.

So, you know, if you if if you leave here and get arrested tonight, uh you are gonna get a bail unless it's for murder or treason, uh, which I don't think is in your future today.

But you know, if you are arrested today, and let's say you're arrested on a misdemeanor, it's a hundred and fifty dollar bond, there's there's no hearing, that's just what the bond is on that particular offense.

Uh so when you say hearing, like when there's a hearing, if if if you get arrested and you don't have the 150 dollars, and the judge says I'm gonna sit this for a bail hearing, prosecutor's office is is going to be present.

But that initial imposition of bail that is made that that's that's based on the bail mate matrix, and it's not based on the prosecutor's office.

But you do have the ability to file for I can't remember the term you use, but a greater than greater than standard bond.

Yep.

What plays into that?

Well, I mean, there's the the bail matrix sets sets forth the factors that allow us to ask for a greater than standard bond in situations in which we could ask for the bond to be doubled.

Uh so it's actually laid out in in the bail schedule under these circumstances you can ask for greater than standard bond.

Okay.

And then just wrapping up here, when I was just reading this in um on Fox 59 the other day, but it was someone who had an unlawful possession of a firearm.

And I believe there was a plea deal, they were sentenced to six years, but four years of it was suspended.

Is that something that the prosecutor's office is actively working with?

Maybe the public defender's office or whoever their counsel is.

Is the prosecutor's office agreeing to that four-year suspension, or is that something that the judge does all on their own without consultation with you?

It's really court specific.

I mean, there's a lot of courts where we do a lot of open-term pleas, meaning uh, you know, we we're we're gonna make arguments.

The the prosecutor's office is gonna say, hey, we think this person needs to go to the department of correction for two years.

The public defender is gonna say, hey, we think this person needs to go on home detention.

Uh sometimes they're they're set term pleas, meaning both sides agree uh on specific terms.

And then obviously when you have a trial, the sentence is ultimately left entirely up to the judge.

And and so sometimes it's a a situation where we're making argument, uh, meaning, hey, the the terms are left open to the discretion of the court.

Well, you know, if there's a victim case, we'll bring in the victim, the victim impact statements obviously read into the record, the court needs to consider the input of the victim.

Uh and and so it really just depends on a specific case in terms of whether or not it's a set-term plea or it's an open-term plea where the judge ultimately gets to say, you know, uh I hey, I think you deserve three years, I think you deserve four years, I think you deserve two years, or I don't think you deserve anything at all.

Uh that's left up to the judge.

Okay.

I think I have a lot more questions, but I don't really want to take up too much more time tonight.

I mean, you know, I I think there's just so many cases that we've seen in Marion County over the past few years.

You know, uh I saw one the other day where it was someone who was arrested for the 49th time.

It was for public indecency, and two days before that he was arrested for felony trespassing.

And for none of those previous 48 cases he ever served a day in prison.

So I think that's you know, the balls are being dropped somewhere.

And I don't know if it we can blame just the prosecutor's office or the court system or if it's both, but I think it's the public defender.

I don't know.

We're gonna we can ask them, and they're gonna be asked the same questions.

But um I do think we have to do a better job at working together and having some kind of accountability for someone being released 48 times and never serving a day in prison.

Yeah, I'm uh I'd uh I'd be curious to follow up on that one.

Thank you, counselor, Mr.

Prosecutor, uh Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um just a couple things.

Uh one uh to follow up on the the round table, which I thought was a phenomenal discussion, and grateful that you participated.

Um very professional conversation, and you know, I'm in the business of just solving problems, right?

Come up with ideas we're gonna put in front of the council, and we did that uh with a couple ideas after that that meeting.

One of the things that has stood out to me, I put on the front page of the report is that your office deals with one in five cases in the state of Indiana.

Trials.

Trials, trials in the in the state of Indiana.

Um that got me thinking about your head count when we're looking at all these numbers reduction.

You kind of alluded to, it sounds like at least at least one prosecutor, deputy prosecutor was lost with some of those funding uh other grant programs.

But I'm curious, does the does your office have a two two two backlog problems?

One, do you have a case backlog problem?

And then on the other side, do you have a bandwidth problem with the courts because of that volume?

I I think right now, and you know, I'm you know, knocking on what does I say that we're we're we're in a good position.

You know, we are appropriately calibrated in terms of our staffing levels with the current caseloads that we have.

Uh if you go down to a misdemeanor of level six court, will those prosecutors say they're the hardest working people in the building?

They absolutely will.

And I'm sure the public defenders would say the exact same thing because they do have high caseloads.

Uh, but I don't think those caseloads are are so high that they're not in a position to do their job or give the level of attention that those cases uh warrant in and deserve.

Uh so I think right now we're we're in a a good spot in terms of just where the numbers are and where we are at staffing levels uh within the courts uh today.

Now that can change like you know, sometimes you go through situations where you have a bunch of resignations at a particular given time, and that totally changes the the complexion of of what your case loads can can look like in a given court.

Uh but right now uh we are cautiously optimistic with this incoming bar class that we are gonna be in a good position.

Uh but that can obviously change if people resign or if the caseloads increase.

Okay, so that's on the c on the capacity side of the amount of cases that you have.

How about on the other side when you're you're going to courts, is is the court giving you any backlog by trying to get in there and do the process.

No, I I I I wouldn't say that.

Uh you know, some courts move way quicker than others.

And if you look at the, you know, for us, uh it's it's we very much appreciate the opportunity to try cases when we think both sides are ready because we got to keep witnesses on board.

And the longer a case is pending, uh, that can sometimes become a challenge, in particular in crimes of violence.

Uh and and so, you know, we definitely appreciate a a pace where the public defenders get the opportunity to work these cases up.

Uh, we get the opportunity to work these cases up, have a really firm understanding we are in a position to try this case on the merits.

Uh some judges do that in a quicker fashion than others.

Uh, but I don't necessarily think there is a capacity problem like we had a couple of years ago where we just had a ton of cases that were just uh had not been resolved because of COVID.

I mean, I think everybody's worked really hard to get those numbers down to a manageable number.

And if you look at where we are now with our caseloads per prosecutor as opposed to where we were three or four years ago, I mean it's way less just because we're we're able to resolve cases at a pretty reasonable rate.

Okay.

And where I'm going with this is uh I think it was last year on the budget we put money towards a mayor's initiative that would fund uh federal prosecutors.

And I to my understanding, we only we only actually hired one of those, and there's still funding, presumably, I don't know if we're continuing that program into 2026 or if that's being proposed in 2026.

But if we're unable to hire those federal level prosecutors, where I was trying to get is it would it be beneficial for your office to have that that funding, or would it it doesn't sound like it?

Yeah, I mean I I mean so few cases end up in federal court, you know.

I mean, we the if you look at the volume and the price, you know, a an active assistant U.S.

attorney has 20 cases maybe, uh, an active major felony attorney has 60 to 70 cases.

Um and so I mean there's just no comparison to when when you talk about the volume, and so when you spread that out uh across nine courts, um it it just doesn't have a significant impact on on our workload.

Okay, and then last thing um the other thing we talked about in the round table, um it was residency requirements.

You sounded supportive of it at that time of eliminating it for uh Marion County uh employees just as an easy barrier to alleviate.

Uh do you still believe that today?

Yeah, so uh I I guess my answer is a little bit more nuanced than that.

I I like people who who live here who pay taxes here, and I think it's good for our relationship with the community when you see people, hey, I I go to school with that, you know, my kids go to school with that guy, I coach with that guy.

Uh I think those are all good things for our community.

Uh can it potentially be a barrier at times to hiring people?

Yes.

And and so I feel like there's there has to be a metal ground or common sense solution to these situations where we certainly are giving preference to Marion County residents.

We want people to live in Marion County, but should it be an absolute bar to people working in the prosecutor's office or or other government agencies?

I think that sometimes can be harsh.

Uh, in particular, you know, we are dealing with any of the state of Indiana has an attorney shortage.

Uh and and so right now, as we sit here, we're okay.

Uh, but a couple years from now, could I be coming here saying, hey, we need to waive this requirement because there's just not enough attorneys in Marion County?

Uh that could very easily be a possibility.

The other thing that I'm concerned about is like when if we just got rid of the residency requirement, is a lot of people who currently live in Marion County are gonna leave Marion County and go elsewhere, and and the people who work in the prosecutor's office, the people who work at the public defender agency, uh, these are the people we want living in our county because they make a ton of contributions uh not only through their public service through their work, but also just they care about the community that want to see the community do well, and I want to encourage as many of those people to live here, and if we give them the out, I am worried that we'll see an exodus of of people, and that does worry me.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Prosecutor.

Thank you.

Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Mr.

Prosecutor.

Quick follow-up from Councillor Hart's question.

Why do you think your employees would choose to leave Marion County if given the option?

I I don't know.

I think when you know, uh I well, actually I do know.

I think housing costs are cheaper in other areas.

Uh I think that's the primary thing I hear.

You know, when a lot of people start at the prosecutor's office, they're young and they're single and they don't have a family, and living downtown is awesome and great, and they're having fun, and then 10 years later they're married and they have a kid and they're like, uh, it's a little more expensive to live here than I realized.

Uh and so the number one thing that I hear from people is it's not the the entry level starting, it's hey, I've got a family now, housing costs are a little bit different than than maybe what I expected.

Uh and you know, I can get more house and more land if I move outside of Marion County, and and so uh that's that would be part of the concern.

No, it's interesting feedback.

Um I represent a corner district, so um we're competing against Hendrix County and Morgan County where I live, so Plainfield, Brownsburg, Avon, all the way down to Mooresville.

Um I've actually found the opposite to be true.

Oh, really?

Where the housing is actually more expensive in the donut counties, and I think that might just be population growth as population growth is skyrocketing in donut counties, and it's not as much here in Marion County.

I feel like it's maybe a supply and demand thing where you know people are almost forced to live in Marion County because they can't afford to leave.

I mean I'm prosecutor, Mr.

Prosecutor.

We're good.

Okay.

Yeah, we're not gonna have a housing discussion tonight.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Counselor Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

A couple just clarification questions.

I thought uh, Mr.

Prosecutor, because you're a separately elected office that you were not subject to the residency requirement.

Am I mistaken?

Well, Dan, you're blowing my cover here when I tell all my employees that they need to live in Marion County.

Okay.

Legally, though.

I mean, legally, yeah, there's there's there's a leeway there.

I'm sorry.

Yes, legally, you are correct.

Okay.

Um then these are just yes or no questions.

Is prosecutor responsible for whether or not a defendant gets bail or not?

No.

Is there prosecutor responsible for setting the level of any bond that a defendant may get?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor.

Final comments for the prosecutor.

Anyone in the audience care to speak to this uh budget hearing of the um 2026 budget for the prosecutor?

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate you, you and your staff.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Up next is the Marion County Public Defenders Agency's budget by Mr.

Ray Casanova.

And Rebecca Matzinger.

You two want to come forward, please.

Thank you.

Welcome to each of you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Good evening to everyone.

Thank you, Mr.

Prosecutor.

Have a good one.

The first slide I'd like to talk about tonight is the agency overview.

This lays out an overview of our of our staff of our agency, and I'd like to talk just briefly about a couple of issues that are on that agency overview.

I'd like to talk just briefly about the Marion County Public Defender Board.

The board is the first requirement set by the Indiana Commission on Court appointed attorneys for reimbursement for the City of Indianapolis and Marion County.

These are requirements that are set by the Indiana Public Defender Commission.

And if we comply with those requirements, the county is reimbursed 40% of our budget in capital and non-capital cases and 50% of our budget in capital cases.

That's to ensure that the representation focuses on the best interests of the client.

This year we had 12 certified grad interns.

We had 21 certified summer interns, and we had 18 1L summer interns.

Those interns come in in early spring and May, and they stay in our office, and they are an important part of the way we recruit for staff in our office.

Our policy has been that we want to encourage law students who are interested in a career in indigent defense to come to our office so that we can train, supervise, and promote them up through our office, and thereby their focus is on their clients rather than on any other aspect of their work.

We also recruit from about 11 different law schools, so that our intern class, our certified grad intern class, our attorney intern class brings a great deal of diversity to our office.

I'd also like to point out that we have a social work division.

We have about 30 social workers in that division, and we also recruit from various schools as well, and interns from social work and our supervisors in the social work division also provide supervision so that social workers coming in with a bachelor's degree can use that supervision and the hours in our office to get a master's or a licensed social work certification or a licensed clinical worker sort of certification.

And that that group of social workers is important to our connection with the community.

We have 17 contractors in major felonies, 17 contractors and appeals, nine contractors in our family reunification division, four in our lower felony division, three in our problem solving, and two in our juvenile division.

Those contractors are important and they give us a great deal of flexibility in managing our office.

They help in managing caseloads.

They also help that, for example, when we have turnover or vacancies in our full-time staff, they can be available to help cover those cases that are left behind.

They also provide coverage for conflict cases.

The next slide is agency staffing, and this is I'd like to give an overview of our current budget and our 2026 budget and the impact that the 2026 budget is going to have on our office.

Later on in the presentation, Becky will present more specifics of the budget.

But if you look at that chart on the left-hand side, if you look at the column under total FTEs, it shows 314 and a half FTEs.

That's the total number of full-time equivalent positions that we have in our office, but not all of those positions are currently funded.

If you look at under the column filled, and you see that 260 number, that is currently the number of full-time equivalent positions in our office that are currently funded and filled.

The other important thing I want to point out is if you look at the attorney, that horizontal over to the 25 of vacant, of those 25 vacant positions, only five of those are funded.

And that's significant.

Those five fundant vacant positions are currently in our major felony division and they are attorney four positions.

Attorney 4 positions, so you understand the commission would require those attorneys are handling cases ranging from level four felonies to murders, so they're handling significant litigation.

The commission, again, the Indiana Commission on Court Appointed Attorneys that establishes reimbursement and the guidelines that we need to comply with for reimbursement requires that an attorney for attorney handling those types of cases have three years of criminal litigation experience and they have completed at least three level five felony jury trials to completion.

So those are people, particularly when our philosophy is to recruit and to promote from within.

Our preference is to promote from within.

The problem we currently have right now is that we do not have any one in our lower felony divisions that are qualified to be promoted to an attorney for position.

So for those five vacant positions, we are going to have to look outside of the office in order to fill those positions.

We are working to fill those positions.

If we can fill those positions, then our major felony division as it is currently staffed, would be fully staffed.

And our filled full-time funded FTE number would move to 265.

That's important.

And the other thing I want to include want to say is that 265 or that 260 includes the 12 certified grad interns that came in into our office in May and sat for the bar in July.

And if they pass the bar would begin in our office in the misdemeanor division at the beginning of October.

So I want to make you aware of that number to understand the impact that the 2026 budget cuts are going to have on our office.

The 2026 budget cuts will result in reducing our full-time equivalent funded FTEs by 10.

So obviously we would want to keep our office continually staffed at 265.

But with the budget cut for 2026, if we did that, we would ultimately run into about a $700,000 deficit.

The way that we have to deal with that deficit is by slow walking vacancies, filling vacancies.

So we have to constantly be mindful throughout the year of running projections in terms of where we're losing people and whether or not we can afford to lose those people in particular divisions in order that we stay compliant with the caseload standards set by the Indiana Commission on Court appointed attorneys.

The other significant impact that the budget cut is going to have is on the funding that we typically use for experts, for contractors, and for the death penalty case that we currently have pending.

There is a death penalty case currently pending in Marion County.

That death penalty case is currently set for trial about a year from now.

I have litigated death penalty cases.

Those cases require tremendous resources in order to be able to provide the representations that is needed for somebody charged with a capital offense.

The way that we are going to deal with filling the gap for funding experts, for funding our contractors, and for funding our pending capital case is through use of our Title IV funds.

Title IVE is another form of reimbursement that we receive from the federal government.

It is based upon the work that our attorneys do in our TPR Chins division, that is attorneys handling termination of parental rights, cases involving children in need of services.

But to cover those other expenses that I've mentioned, experts, contractors, and the demands that are going to be needed for the capital defense.

So we we do have significant challenges facing us based on the budget cuts that we currently have.

We want to be sure that we can continue to comply with commission standards and that if we are slow walking filling budget vacancies or staffing vacancies that we do so in a way that does not jeopardize compliance with caseload standards that does not jeopardize reimbursement.

Again, the reimbursement, and we'll talk, I'll have a slide further on.

The reimbursement that we received from the commission in 2024 was 10.3 million dollars.

I expect in 2025, just based upon the reimbursement that we received for the first two quarters of this year for that reimbursement amount to come closer to 11 million dollars.

That reimbursement is critical and has been critical to the operation of this agency since since its inception 33 years ago.

It's critical to our ability to provide quality representation to the citizens of Marion County who find themselves accused of a crime, the indigen and partially indigenous citizens of Marion County.

And it's critical to our ability to run the office.

So I do want to make the council mindful of the challenges that we have going forward in 2026 with the budget cuts, that we will have to try to deal with those budget cuts by slow walking filling vacancies as they as they become vacant in 2026, and also using that Title IV funds to deal with funding other services like experts, uh contractors, and helping to fund our death penalty cases.

If we could move to the next slide.

So not just here in Indianapolis or Indiana, but we also recruit in Ohio, in DC.

We've had recruits from Louisiana, we've had recruits from Michigan.

So we do have a recruiting class throughout the country that helps diversify our staff.

They do provide a cost savings to the county.

And this is again something that we may be able to rely upon and dealing with the budget shortages in 2026.

So the 12, for example, the 12 certified grad interns that came into that we recruited into our office and that and that took the bar in July, and if they pass the bar, they will begin in our misdemeanor division in the beginning of the fourth quarter in October.

Their salary is funded in our budget from the beginning of the year, but we only begin paying it out when they actually start working as a licensed attorney in the fourth quarter.

So that represents a savings to the county.

It also represents a saving in our budget that we can use when we're looking at trying to slow walk filling positions in order to avoid that deficit that we are looking at in 2026.

The other important thing that we did in 2024 and continued in 2025 is that we were able to provide funding for our third year law students while they're here before they pass the bar.

That's critical in attracting law students, particularly out of out of state or out of county law students to come here so they have money to cover the cost of staying here while they're going through our training program and while they're taking the bar before they become licensed attorneys in the beginning of the fourth quarter.

The other programmatic success that I would like to point out is our juvenile early intervention team.

This was initially based on a grant we received from the Indian Commission on Court Appointed Attorneys.

And basically it funded staff in our juvenile division so that they were able to make contact with juveniles who were at risk of being charged or had just been charged in the juvenile system, and working with them and their families to try to, as well as the prosecutors, to try to avoid them receiving a period of pretrial detention.

And we've been very successful at that, and it's indicated that when we are successful in doing that, we're also very successful in if their case is filed and they do result and it does result in a true finding or a conviction, they're very less likely to end up serving any time.

And that's very important, particularly in juveniles, because it does help with reducing recidivism rates.

Additionally, our social workers through the IDS grant that we'll talk about a little bit later, also work with our clients who are coming out of prison in reconnecting them with services and also helping them with housing, which again very much helps with them avoiding recidivism rates.

So those are successes that we'd like to point out.

This next slide is basically a depiction of the revenue that has been generated to the county through the reimbursement from the Indiana Commission on Court appointed attorneys.

This reimbursement has been in effect since the agency was created in 1993.

This chart only shows from 2008.

But what I wanted to demonstrate by this is just the steady increase in that reimbursement amount.

In 2024, it was 10.3 million.

And as I mentioned earlier, I expect in 2025, based upon the first two quarters of reimbursement, that that reimbursement amount will be closer to 11 million dollars.

And it's critical again that we continue to have this reimbursement to the county, and uh we need to be sure to address the challenges that we're going to be facing with the budget cut in 2026 so that we can continue to remain in compliance with caseload standards so we can continue to have that reimbursement.

The next slide is community engagement and outreach.

I'd just like to talk briefly about that aspect of our agency.

Again, I think I've already mentioned mentioned continuing partnerships with universities that offer internships and training, both in our social work division, in our attorney division, and as well, I did not mention in our paralegal division.

This helps connect our office with the professional schools, not only in Indianapolis, but in Indiana.

And the equal justice works and diversity job fairs that we participate in also helps in recruiting and recruiting a diverse staff within our office.

We participated in summer celebration and the pride parade.

And we have also continued our partnership with the neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic offering expungements.

We've had a partnership with the neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic for I think five to six years now.

They have office space in our building, we uh in our offices, and we allow them equipment as well to run the clinic and assist with with those expungements.

Um we also uh participating this year in the Growth Opportunity 5 grant.

That's a grant that provides referral for clients ages 18 to 24.

We've had some previous connection with the criminal justice system, uh, teaching them conflict resolution skills, preparing them for a career in work in the world of work, identifying career interests, and just helping them being able to provide or to being able to generate an income through work and uh remaining connected with their family and their community.

Um in addition, we have worked with our social media accounts to help educate the public about public defense and advertised job opportunities.

Our goals and priorities for 2026, um obviously we want to continue to promote our constitutional mandate as set out by the Sixth Amendment to serve the indigent and partially indigenous of Marion County, irrespective of race, gender, or sexual orientation who find themselves accused of a crime.

In order to be able to do that, we have to continue to receive reimbursement from the commission.

That ensures the quality representation we've been able to provide throughout the history of this agency, both at the cap at the at the non-capital and capital level.

And that's again related to those five vacant attorney four positions that I mentioned earlier.

Um we either have to do that by attracting uh attorneys from the outside who are interested in a full-time position in our office, or uh by attracting and expanding our contract staff.

Um we are also wanting to continue our juvenile division early intervention team, and uh also continue uh the work through our IDS grant in integrating clients back into the community and reduce with the goal of reducing recidivism.

The other important thing that I I do want to point out and talk uh about is the residency requirement.

Um we are subject to the residency requirement.

Um the prosecutor's office is not uh as an elected official uh they do not have the same residency requirements that we do.

Um that has been very difficult for our office, very difficult in our ability to uh attract and retain uh attorneys in our office, uh, and to give you some idea of how this is detrimental to our office.

There is a waiver in the ordinance of the residency requirement.

Um we have uh made arguments and to get those waivers and to just give you an example.

The beginning of this year, we had an attorney in our uh TPR Chins division who very much wanted to stay in our office, to continue working in our office, but wasn't able to because of the residency requirement.

We argued very strongly for him to receive an exemption, but that exemption was denied and he had to leave the office.

The problem was when he left the office, he left behind about 114 open cases that had to then be taken over by the remaining staff in our TPR Chins division.

That's an additional burden that is difficult on our attorneys, and it's something that we need to be mindful of, particularly in 2026 when one of the ways that we are going to have to deal with the budget deficit is by looking at slow walking, uh filling open positions.

If we had relief from the residency requirement, and I am only suggesting that it be extended to the to the donut counties, or if we had a more liberal waiver for public defenders from the residency requirement, it would be very helpful in allowing us to avoid the situation we had earlier this year with our attorney, and also to avoid the situation that we've had coming up throughout several years now and losing attorneys.

That would be very helpful in our ability to attract attorneys into our office and to keep and retain attorneys in our office.

The next slide is the budget breakdown.

In the next few slides, Becky will be talking to you in more detail about the budget.

Hi, good evening.

This shows the budget breakdown for the Marion County Public Defender Agency and the changes from the 25 2025 to 2026 budgets.

As you can see, County General was reduced by 470,000 dollars, which will impact the number of staff we can hire for 2026, and that also required us to ship some of our contractual expenses to the federal grants fund.

Overall, our budget was reduced from 2025 by 81,000.

This is the listing of here.

Oh this lists our revenue sources coming from county general, supplemental public defender, and federal and state grants.

County general consists of the 40 percent of non-capital case reimbursement and 50 percent reimbursement of capital cases from the Indiana Commission on court appointed attorneys.

The only cases that are not reimbursable are misdemeanor cases.

Again, there's an increase in federal grants due to the contractual expenses we'll be taking on in that fund, and then state grants.

That's a grant that we typically get through the State Department of Correction passed through the mayor's mayor's superior court.

This is our listing of our grants for 2026.

As Ray already mentioned, the interdisciplinary defense system or IDS project is ARPA funding passed through the state and managed by community solutions, a partner that we work with.

This funds one of our attorneys and three social workers, and they assist our incarcerated clients with re-entry plans.

Currently, the federal piece of this project will expire in September of 26, and there's also local dollars designated by Lilly Foundation for another two years after that.

The Quality of Life Program is a justice and mental health program that was recently extended through September of 2026, and I anticipate will be asking for a second extension next year.

This currently funds a social worker and our contract with adult and child.

The Title IV funding, that's determined by the rate of TPR Chin's caseloads, and that will cover our TPR Chin's contracts and other contractual expenses for 2026.

The JAG grant or justice assistance grant, that's those are funds administered by the Office of Finance and Management.

Currently, we're using those funds to scan our client files, the old files stored at the GRM facility and providing bus passes to clients.

Currently, we do not know if that funding will be renewed in 2026.

State grants historically, this is funded to attorneys for our problem solving division, at least partial funding for them.

We were informed recently that most likely that funding will not be renewed for 2026.

However, we have available unspent JAG dollars that we can remedy that with this is our budget breakdown for character one by fund.

Our county general is decreasing by 258,000 dollars.

What is built into the county general character one is a 2.6% cost of living adjustment and health insurance increases?

Because of that impact, we will be unable to fund 10 FTEs next year.

The supplemental public defender fund, those are just one-time cost for additional staffing or payroll, and there's no change for 2026.

Federal grants that funds our quality of life, social worker, and the IDS team.

That covers our office supplies also.

County generals saw a change of uh reduction of 212,000 dollars.

This incorporates our chargebacks, which are 63 percent of our character three funding.

Because of that reduction and the cost increases with the ISA chargebacks, we needed to shift our contractual expenses to federal grants shown as an increase of $534,000.

I do have something in there for the county grants of $15,000.

We previously received some grant funding through the Annie Casey Foundation the past couple of years.

So that appropriation is there should there be other opportunities that arise.

And in character four equipment, this funds our office and IT equipment furniture and things like that.

So there's no change for 2026.

And with that, we'll take any questions from the council.

Thank you both for your presentation, comments or questions for the public defender.

Counselor Renee.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you to the public defender agency uh for presenting and the work that you folks do every day in the community.

Um we also appreciate uh your understanding uh with the budget uh that you folks uh were given this year.

Obviously, it's a divot difficult year for many agencies, and uh, we understand that you understand that.

We appreciate your understanding in that.

My real question really only relates to uh the mention of the residency requirement.

Uh I was just curious with respects to the waiver, uh, who is that submitted to and who ultimately would determine to approve or deny it?

It's submitted to the mayor's office, and uh we've made that argument to the mayor's chief of staff.

Um, and uh he is the one who makes the determination as to whether or not the waiver is granted or not.

Thank you.

Council Bang.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you for your transparency on this important issue.

Mr.

Casnobut, just um quick follow-up on the staffing, and given the one understaffed, we have to use the contract attorneys and everything.

Are the contract attorneys more expensive than if we used in-house attorneys?

Like is their cost pro is there like hourly rate like double or one and a half times how much we can pay someone that's on staff?

We do not pay them an hourly rate.

Uh we pay them essentially at about half the rate that we pay our full-time attorneys.

They are overall less expensive because they do not have a benefits package to include in the cost of them.

Our preference is for full-time attorneys for a couple of reasons.

First of all, full-time attorneys, we have better ability to supervise.

We have better ability to train.

Uh, and uh it is the community within, particularly within the individual divisions that's very helpful when you have uh full-time staff that have offices very close together.

We have structured the uh the seating in our offices so that uh all people in a particular division or a particular team are together.

Our uh so we prefer full-time and we also prefer full-time because of our philosophy to uh find people coming out of law school or interested in indigent defense and promoting them up through our office and training them through our training program.

So uh they are less expensive.

Um it's something that we have to default to, and we had to default to in 2023 in expanding our contract staff to help deal with uh caseloads, particularly in major felony.

We would prefer a full-time staff, but uh that's just something we may have to look at doing giving the budget restrictions we have in 2026.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Additional comments of course for the public defender.

Counselor Delaney.

The as you stated that you have parity with the prosecutor's office, the prosecutor stated that they are doing a really great job of being fully staffed.

You're saying that you're not.

Can you explain not that you have a direct answer as to the disparity in staffing, but I understood it to say that he was hiring from inside the county only.

Um, and maybe that's something that I misheard, and I know his office isn't here, but if if there's a if you could offer any kind of thought on the you know, if I guess if you're entry level folks are earning about the same.

Thank you.

Uh the issue right now with vacancies is not at the entry level or the misdemeanor level, and the issue of vacancies is not at the lower felony level.

Uh the issues of vacancies that are most immediate right now are in the major felony division.

That's where we have the five vacant attorney for positions.

Um we uh we asked for additional funds in our budget that we did not get for 2026 to actually expand our major felony division by eight additional attorney four positions on top of the five vacant ones.

Um because of the difficulty with the budget that uh that was denied.

Uh I think it's critical that we fill those five vacant attorney four positions.

Um I think it's critical to keep uh those positions filled to at least keep the major felony division operating at a caseload level where it is currently operating.

Um you know, the other thing, and I I think it's important, you know, we want to the commission sets caseload standards for us that we need to comply with.

We do not, and we never have run our attorneys at the maximum of those caseload standards.

Um, ten years ago the goal was to run them at 80 percent of maximum.

Uh right now the goal is to run them at 70 percent or less than that of maximum.

It's because of the nature of the cases they're handling.

Uh additionally uh we recognize that when we do have situations of turnover, particularly in the major felony division, if somebody leaves, they will leave behind a caseload that then has to be picked up by the attorneys still in that team.

Uh that's that's the reason that we created or tried to create some redundancy on these teams.

So each of the major felony courts has a team lead who is typically who is an attorney for two other attorney fours, it then has an attorney that handles basically level five cases.

There is then a contractor that handles level five cases, uh, a team lead from lower felony also assists with those level five cases.

And the reason that's important is having worked myself for 10 years in major felony.

Uh if you can resolve kind of those lower level felonies, it just allows you more energy and time to focus on uh the higher level felonies, which are typically murders, they're typically the sex crimes that that are very demanding.

Um addition to that, we we also have a contractor.

Uh so we have expanded the staff.

Uh it's just that uh you know we uh need to comply with caseload standards, and right now uh we need to address those vacancies that that need to be addressed in major felony.

Okay, I think as a whole, as a body here with my colleagues, we do have some confusion about what exactly the prosecutor's office can and does do legally versus what you are able to do, and I think that we can look at that independently with some email communication and things like that.

So thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Council Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Mr.

Casanova, good to see you again.

And as you know, the public defenders always had kind of a soft spot or my heart has a soft spot for your agency.

Um question on the status of the union contract.

Um has that been signed yet?

Um it has not, and I I guess respectfully, since those negotiations are ongoing, there is a confidentiality agreement that I have, so I don't know how much I can comment on them.

Understand.

Um to your knowledge, are there any incentive programs available from either the state or any federal source whereby in the medical field, if you go to medical school and you work at a VA hospital for X years, you get most of your student loans paid off.

Anything that you've heard of in a similar vein for uh law students and that might work in the public sector?

Uh we do have loan forgiveness uh that uh and if uh uh that's available for for our staff as well.

Um and uh uh I think it's is it repayment of of student loans?

Yes, public service forgiveness after years of payments.

Right.

We do have that currently in our office.

Um, but that is all that we currently have with regard to uh uh repayment of student loans.

And who's the source behind that that pays off the student loan?

Is it's the federal federal government so they'll reimburse the lender or whomever and went and write off the student loan?

I believe so, yes.

Do you find that very effective or as an incentive to help with recruiting?

Um I it is, it certainly is an incentive for recruiting.

I think the other thing, I believe that there may be some pending legislation.

Uh I don't know if it was in 2025 with regard to um providing additional uh forgiveness for loans, and I'm not I apologize, I don't know what the status of that is.

All right.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you for your uh response to the union contract information too.

Uh we respect your thoughts and lack of response for that.

Thank you for doing that.

Distant comments or questions.

Anyone in the audience can speak to the public defenders presentation.

You you have a list, Mr.

Stowers at all, or Ms.

Clerk.

Okay.

State your name for the record, please.

Hi, I'm Lucy Frick.

I'm an attorney with the Marion County Public Defender Agency.

I'm in our major felony division.

I've been with the agency for 10 years.

We have to uh read a statement first um from our clerk.

Thank you, Ms.

Clark.

Thank you, Mr.

Towers.

Thank you.

Before we open the floor to public comments, we would like to remind committee members and the public of a few ground rules.

So everyone can have a fair chance to speak and be heard.

It is important that we each observe the following rules.

First, each speaker will be limited to two minutes.

Second, any public comments must reasonably relate to the agenda item under consideration.

There's speakers who stray from the item under consideration or become unduly repetitious, may be asked to move on to their next point or conclude their comments.

Finally, attendees who cause disruptions that prevent the committee from proceeding through tonight's agenda in a reasonably effective manner will be removed.

Please remember that some types of threatening speech or enticement to violence are not protected by the first amendment at all.

We will deal with those issues if they come up, but we do not think they will.

And now, Mr.

Chair, if committee member asks for consent to adopt these rules, we can proceed to public comment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Clerk.

May I state your name for the record, please?

Hi, I'm Lucy Frick.

I'm an attorney with the Marion County Public Defender Agency.

Time is up.

Thank you.

I have my timer going.

I'm watching.

Um I gave you one second.

Oh, sure.

Okay.

Uh I'm Lucy Frick.

I'm an attorney with the major felony.

Uh, I'm an attorney at the Marion County Public Defender Agency.

I've been with the agency for 10 years.

I'm in our major felony division.

I am a team lead.

Uh, I'm not management, but I have a uh guidance role.

I supervise not formally as a manager, but I I help supervise and uh give guidance to our younger, less experienced attorneys.

Um I have two quick comments.

Um we are dying in the major felony division.

We cannot keep up with our caseloads.

We are not at pre-COVID caseload standards.

Um if you care about public safety, I am asking you to care about us.

We are the folks that are connecting some of the lower level felonies uh with all kinds of services, uh mental health treatments, uh, drug treatment housing.

Um I don't need to preach to this choir.

Public uh safety is a massively complex problem.

We will not solve it alone with the public defender agency and the Marion County prosecutor's office, uh, but we are trying our level best.

Um we give much better representation.

We give much more um thoughtful, more compassionate representation when we are appropriately staffed.

I do not remember the last time that we were appropriately staffed in the major felony division.

Um my caseload alone is over 30, and I'm lower than my colleagues because I'm a team lead and I have to um help my younger, less experienced attorneys.

Um that's all I'll say on that front.

We are desperate for more funding, we are desperate for more attorneys.

Uh the contractors range, some of them are wonderful, we're lucky to have them.

Um as I'm sure everyone is aware, there just is an attorney shortage in Indiana, so I think we struggle to get competent prosecute uh contractors.

The last thing I'll say, we don't have a union contract because Mr.

Casanova refuses to sign a contract for us.

We have been in contract negotiations since I think they started in earnest in February of 2024, and we have not gotten a contract in that time.

We are not asking for anything unusual.

We are asking for um really run-of-the-mill uh requests that just about every other union office asks for.

So that's where we are.

We are desperate for a union contract.

Um I myself will leave the agency if we don't have a contract soon because I can't keep working in a place that does not uh value me or my well-being.

Thank you so much for your comments.

Anyone else care to speak to the public defenders?

Come forward, please.

State tonight for the record.

My name is Raul Delarosa.

Proceed.

Oh, sorry.

Um we're here today about a budget for 2026, and we've organized into a union here at the public defender agency.

The union contract negotiations are still ongoing.

The result of those negotiations is still unknown.

We don't know exactly what the pay, what the benefits, the retirement contributions, that whole umbrella of expenses that's labeled public defender agency.

That's still sort of up in the air, and it's going to be affected by whatever that contract is.

I'm not here advocating for a specific figure or dollar amount.

I'm just saying that it seems difficult to set a budget for next year when everybody it affects has a contract that's still not settled.

So I I don't know how how that's gonna balance out, but it it's important to all of us working there.

Uh tiny little last thing.

The idea that a 2.6 cost of living adjustment is actually keeping up with inflation doesn't fly.

Uh my grocery bills are tripled and I'm still buying the same or less.

I see nodding heads.

You you know you know what I'm talking about.

And uh as far as loan forgiveness, I believe that that program is on hold.

I know several attorneys that have qualified for it or are about to qualify, and they're receiving emails saying, yeah, we don't know if we're actually gonna be able to forgive your loans, but that's a federal Donald Trump issue, not a Indiana issue.

So that answers your question about incentives.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments and for coming down this evening.

Additional comments.

Hi.

Uh I'm Evan Dominguez.

I'm also in the major felony unit uh as a team lead.

Um I wanted to echo my colleagues' sentiments here, but I also wanted to talk about a couple of other couple of other things.

Number one, we talk about um student loan forgiveness, and Mr.

De La Rosa is correct.

There that program at this point it seems to be in flux.

I know my current status, I'm two years away from potential loan forgiveness, but that has been delayed several times because of gaps in um policy.

So um one of the things that the prosecutor's office receives is uh they get a monthly stipend, and I know this because my wife works at the prosecutor's office, um, receives a monthly monthly stipend that to help with uh student loan forgiveness, I assume with budget cuts.

Uh seems only to the uh and I'm looking through you're giving a budget increase, I believe, of 20 million dollars to IMPD and cutting our funding.

Um Counselor Bain, I believe you you asked about a person who is arrested 48 times and then hadn't done a lick of prison time.

And um what I hear when you ask that question is someone who has a deep seated mental health issue in a city who f fails spectacularly at helping people with those types of issues.

We see many homeless camps being uh torn down.

We see people on the streets uh who are not who are not being helped.

Um so that is something that I would hope that this body works on funding and and helping better.

Uh the last thing I'll say is that what the issue is is not, as Mr.

Casanova said, is not the um bottom level of our office, but at the but at the top level, which I am a part of.

The reason my colleagues are not being retained is for a number of issues.

Number part of parts of those issues, and if I may just finish my thought, I appreciate it.

Um part of those issues are uh issues with harassment, parts of those issues are issues with pay, parts of those issues are issues with uh just fundamentally being respected by our bosses.

Um now on most of I love my colleagues deeply.

I love my supervisors deeply.

I've told them many times that I would jump through walls for them.

Um but uh we need recognition uh of our decent of our importance in this in this county and in our um wrap it up, made about 15 more seconds.

Thank you, and in and in our courts.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Additional comments or questions from those in the audience.

Thank you, Mr.

Casanova.

Appreciate you both.

Okay, have a great day.

Thank you.

And the final presentation this evening is the Marion Community Corrections and Mr.

Scott Hole and Justin Garcia.

Thank you all for coming down this evening.

Thank you.

Our CFO, and we will go ahead and jump right into our presentation.

Um just a quick I'm not gonna read every one of these uh screens, but just a quick overview about our agency.

Uh we do work on community-based um supervision utilizing electronic monitoring.

Uh we currently have just over 3,400 clients that we are supervising here in Marion County.

Um, that includes pretrial and uh work release as well as uh post-conviction uh electronic monitoring.

Uh in 2024, we supervised the total of 7,000 different uh individuals throughout that year.

Dealt with over 53,000 alerts.

Um, and when we talk about those alerts and that that number alone, that's just counting at night and weekends and holidays.

That's just what our call center dealt with uh during the course of 2024.

So that 20 that call center is is a pretty unique aspect to Marion County, and and allows us to address a lot more issues than we normally would uh between 8 and 430.

From a staffing perspective, uh we have five divisions within uh community corrections, our community supervision or or post-conviction, electronic monitoring, pretrial supervision, residential supervision, work release facility at Duvall, operations, which is our call center, and our processing, uh, and then finance and and accreditation, our administrative staff.

So we're located across three buildings uh within Marion County.

Most of our staff are here in this building.

Uh case management on the first floor, and and our administrative staff on the fifth floor.

Uh we have a small footprint out at the community justice campus in the courthouse, and then Duvall Residential Center, which I will address a little bit more late later.

Uh we have a total of 204 positions budgeted for roughly 200, and uh 179 currently filled.

We have been working uh diligently to not just attract staff but uh retain staff.

The retention part has been a uh some of the the our strongest emphasis.

One of the things I really want, besides the trainings that we talk about here through new training initiatives, appreciation and workplace, diversity, our mission vision, values, and employee engagement.

One of the things we really have have stressed is getting staff to larger conferences to network with other agencies of departments across the state and across the nation.

Very proud to say that last year, 15 different individuals or nearly a third of our staff attended either a statewide or a national conference.

The national conferences I'm talking about are either the American Probation and Parole Association or the American Correctional Association, the two agencies we are most actively engaged with.

Some of our programming and fiscal successes.

So issues such as thinking for a change, core correctional practices, mental health first aid.

It also allows us to provide these services to our partners, such as probation and their clients as well, and we don't charge them.

So we served over a 166 clients last year coming from not just our agency but probation and the prosecutor.

In addition, of those staff that have those certifications, we've had 10 different staff chosen by those national associations to provide eight separate trainings last year.

In community engagement and outreach, again, won't read the whole thing, but we have worked hard to work in the community, specifically with keeping Indianapolis Beautiful and Second Helpings, donating a large number of hours there.

We've partnered with ACC Indy for translation services, getting additional documents that we that we utilize, translated not just into Spanish, but as was mentioned earlier, our growing Burmese population.

Community partnerships, we continue with the welcome home initiative that we've talked about in the last couple years, providing both food and hygiene items to clients in need.

Kind of our electronic services, digitize a lot of the things we do.

Unfortunately, we are still pretty uh paper-based as an agency, and we want to continue to expand uh some of our offerings in an electronic format from processing and and signing people up for services to empower apps for uh victim services, uh finalizing a GIS map with our information services agency.

Uh currently it's in place for our staff to be able to utilize, but we want to expand that where we can provide that app free of charge to our clients, which would show them where services are throughout the county uh right there at the click of a button.

Um continue to invest in our staff development through trainings and getting staff to uh to conferences and then continue with our fiscal responsibility you know by training staff in-house and and not having to pay for outside trainings to come in.

And we believe if we continue to do that, our our completion rates will continue to improve, uh improving public safety and reducing recidivism.

So the other things we are working towards are increasing our incentives and sentence modifications.

Uh what I mean by that is if someone's doing well in the program and and making progress towards uh completing their sentence, that we have a program in place that allows them to take some time off on the end if they're participating in programming and doing so diligently.

Um we are currently, and this is kind of our biggest priority right now, um, thanks to this council uh providing uh some funding.

We're working with OFM right now on a facility assessment of Duvall.

Um the age and condition of Deval warrants a new facility, is my blunt um statement on this.

Uh last year in 2024, we spent over 70,000 in unexpected repairs or replacements uh for um equipment that that is just breaking down.

We have already spent over 110,000 dollars here in 2025.

This is again for things like um different kitchen equipment for um air conditioning units for um plumbing issues, and this isn't even counting known issues that we have that we are able to band-aid at this time and move move forward with, such as replacing the roof uh of Duvall, which would be approximately 1.3 million dollars, um, replacing a walk-in freezer that would be between 50 and 60,000, and a uh right now we are renting a generator for the facility to repair or or to replace the generator that we have would be another 50 to 60,000.

And with that, I'll let Justin kind of go over the the specific numbers uh uh in our budget.

So I'm not gonna read these uh word for word, but I will kind of give some highlights.

Yeah.

Uh so for 2026, our uh projected budget is 22 million uh 492,408 dollars.

That's split between uh seven funds.

Three of those funds uh account for 93 percent uh of that total projected budget.

Okay, this next slide uh basically just breaks it down uh by character and year.

Uh so for 2026, we're looking at uh 462,000 uh dollar difference from from 2025.

And I'll kind of get into where that difference comes from.

A majority of it uh is gonna be character three.

This next slide uh is our revenue.

Uh we are projecting a little over a million dollars in revenue for 2026.

Uh about 99% of that revenue comes from uh user fees from our electronic monitoring and work release clients and residents, uh, and an additional 85,000 comes from our community transition program.

Uh our fees are structured to support fairness, uh basically by uh utilizing financial analysis worksheets uh and taking into account current poverty rates.

Also uh residents at Deval uh do receive 30 days of agency to assist with the transition followed by a financial analysis worksheet.

This next slide is uh our grants.

So currently we received two grants.

I receive a grant from the Indiana Department of Correction, um, and also uh the Justice Assistance grant.

Those grants total just a little over uh six million dollars.

We also have a uh full-time grant specialist who has been working daily on trying to locate additional grants.

Um that area has gotten a lot harder, uh, especially this year.

Um, and we're trying to work through those issues, trying to locate federal and state grants that are still available, just to be franked.

This next slide uh is our character one breakdown.

Character one is gonna account for 66% of our total budget.

Uh this year we're seeing a difference, uh, an actual increase of just under $80,000.

This is mainly in part uh to coal adjustments and also health insurance increases.

We did have to um compli with the 4% reserve that was requested of us in order to do so.

Uh we reduced four active positions at a savings of $303,000, and then also removed an additional $220,000 based off of our attrition rate, uh, which is currently at 11%.

Uh those do raise some concerns uh for our character one budget, mainly uh being uh if the attrition rate does reduce, uh we could have issues with with funding in our character one.

Also may cause issues with overtime.

Uh we have to limit those opportunities, uh, which could cause safety issues at Duvall as well as our 24-hour client services.

And furthermore, kind of, and this is just kind of worst case scenario.

If we could see additional staffing reductions uh due to some of the funding constraints.

Right now, that's that's not even a conversation, but just kind of looking in the future of caseloads, attrition, if all that kind of hit at once, um, we would be in a bad spot.

This next slide uh as character two did see a slight decrease uh in character two.

Uh this is less than one percent of our budget.

I won't spend a lot of time on that slide.

Character three is our next slide.

This accounts for 33% of our total budget.

We are seeing a decrease of just under 480,000 in uh character character three.

Uh most of that was due to uh decrease uh to comply with the 4% reserve.

Um that decrease was a total of uh just under 500,000.

Concerns with our character three budget.

Uh it's gonna limit our ability to increase opportunities not only for our employees uh but also for our clients.

Also, and Scott kind of alluded to this, but we have a lot of concerns about Duvall uh and a lot of the repair costs out at that facility.

Character 4.

Uh this is less than also less than one percent of our budget.

We're seeing a decrease of $50,000, mainly uh due to a loss of cumulative capital funds uh that were we utilized last couple years uh to purchase new vehicles.

All of our our vehicle fleet is fully upgraded, so we no longer have those needs.

A couple of uh performance metrics that that we've tracked regularly, not just for this body and and for this uh presentation, but also for the uh Department of Corrections who audits us.

Um we have been working to decrease our caseload sizes, obviously, lower caseload sizes equals uh better service to our clients.

Um, and we've been able to hit uh close to the numbers that we're looking for, but uh the attrition does still keep us a little bit higher than when what we would like.

Uh we have been improving our training hours uh as we've kind of already talked about.

The biggest thing we've done uh from 24 to 25 is uh really increased our peer reviews, uh really stretching back if we go to back to 2023.

We started that that quality assurance team or got them kind of ramped back up in 2020 at the end of 23 because we had only done five peer reviews in uh that year in 2024 that jumped up to 52 uh with the average score of those um staff that were audited at 85 percent.

So far this year, we've already completed 50, uh, and again with an average score of about 80.

Uh so we're hoping to continue to improve both of those numbers.

Uh just a couple final notes uh as an overview.

Again, serving over 7,000 clients in in 2024.

Um we we've done a lot of really good things individually.

Charles Kelly, one of our managers, continues to put on a leadership development uh class internally.

Um it's a program that he developed and has since been selected to present that both state and nationally.

Uh so we're very uh happy about that.

Our completion rate in 2024 was 76 percent.

Um so that what that means is at the end of their sentence, if an individual was sentenced to two years with community corrections, 76% of those individuals finished their sentence with us without either committing a new offense or being revoked due to technical violations.

Um obviously it's a number we want to continue to improve upon, but I am pretty proud of the fact that 76% of individuals are completing that program.

Isaac Olarunissimo, um, one of the lieutenants out at Duvall, one of our corrections officers was the residential employee of the year statewide for uh the for our statewide association.

Kyle Michler, uh, our manager over our call center and processing staff was um selected to participate in a leadership institute.

Um, one thing that's important to note about that, that's a very competitive program where they select individuals from all over the nation and only about 20 to 30 people in each class each year.

And it when Kyle finishes that program, he'll be the third person from our agency to have completed that institute in the last eight years.

Captain Jeffrey Sutt has graduated from the statewide leadership academy through the Indiana Department of Corrections and is kind of finishing a secondary program that they put on, kind of a grad school version of that leadership academy.

We continue to decrease our critical incidents as an agency.

But in 2024, we conducted 47 home visits with them, which resulted in 34 arrests, 59 guns being confiscated, and over 45,000 grams of drugs seized.

Out at Duvall, we served over 600 clients over the course of the year, averaging about 120 clients per day.

So this isn't necessarily what you may typically view as a overdose where someone is passing out or requires significant medical attention, even if someone is just sick, increased heart rate, something along those lines, relatively minor, we still track that, and they only have 18 of those incidents throughout the year.

We we feel is a pretty significant number.

And we only had six use of force incidents during the course of the year.

And once again, we we have a pretty broad policy of what we call use of force.

So if one of our corrections officers lays hands on an individual, even if they're not striking them, but just grabbing them to move them from one location to another, we count that as a use of force.

We've not had any that violated policy, and again, only six times were we having to be in a situation where we had to put hands on a resident due to what was occurring.

Again, a number that's continuing to go down, and and we are pretty pleased with when you consider about the number of interactions that we have during the course of a day, let alone a year.

And the age and condition of that facility, the expenses that that we are putting towards it, and as Justin mentioned, uh the the reserves, if everything holds holds normal, those reserves will not have a tremendous negative impact on our ability to serve our clients or or work with our staff.

But the unknowns regarding Duvall are massive.

And as I as I've already talked about, in just over in just under two years, we've spent nearly 200,000 over and above normal cost.

And I understand the the tight fiscal times, believe me, I I understand that, but I also know that the building is not getting newer, and those costs will continue because it's just the nature of that facility.

We have great maintenance staff who do a tremendous job of trying to preventative maintenance that building, but um at the end of the day, a 20-year-old old pole barn converted into a work release facility just has natural limitations, and I won't continue to harp on that, but it is that is our priority and focus as we move forward as an agency.

One last thing I do want to address that uh a question that was brought up during a prior presentation regarding the grant funds that were cut statewide from the Department of Corrections.

Those funds actually come through the Marion County Community Corrections Advisory Board is a countywide grant that is mostly funding Marion County Community Corrections, but is split to other agencies such as the prosecutor as well as the sheriff probation and superior courts.

And that grant was cut by seven million dollars statewide.

Here in Marion County, that impact was uh a little over one million dollars, about 1.2 spread out over all of those agencies.

Um as the prosecutor said, his uh his prosecutor's diversion program was zeroed out completely, as well as probation, pretrial services, and jail treatment program.

Those programs were all zeroed out, and um, and then the problem-solving courts all saw reductions as well, which actually impacted us because the funding that was cut from those re-ent uh from those various problem solving courts were case management positions from our agency will not impact our staffing.

We will continue to do so, but that funding was cut.

Um, and I believe the questions where the reason for that was actually not a legislative decision.

Um when we looked into this, this was actually a situation where the Indiana Department of Corrections uh internally made the decision to to cut from that grant.

Um ultimately that I can't speak to all the reasons why that was, but I do know that there are cost overruns in a in a prison that's being built, and and I think that's having a huge impact on their budget in a negative way.

So uh with that, I am open to any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Hull.

We appreciate you, man.

You and your staff for all the great work you do in our city and for our residents.

Comments are question for the director.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh I'm just curious, uh, Director Hall.

Uh, is is your office uh mandatory by state statute?

It is well, it's not mandatory, so it's created by state statute.

Each county has the option of creating a community corrections um agency.

Um it is their choice.

So, for example, in the state of Indiana, there are now because one county just came online, 90 of the 92 counties have community corrections.

Uh it's 78 different programs, uh 78 different agencies.

There are a handful of agencies that are comprised of multiple counties because of the size.

For example, Ohio and Switzerland are a combined program.

Uh Pike and Gibson.

I there's a handful of programs where they are combined, uh, multiple counties.

So it is not a requirement, um, but it is defined and and how we would operate is defined by state statute.

Okay, and the reason I'm asking is just as you know, we talk about uh reductions in property taxes, budget cuts, needs of various uh departments and agencies.

Um it just kind of struck me as I was sitting here, you know, and I'm hopefully you can ask it about why you know why doesn't this exist with you like the share, like what the type of work you guys do, you know, with the sheriff's office in the CJC or shoot even with like OPHS or or the courts.

I'm just curious why there's not a consolidation effort there.

I I think I might be a little bit confused, but um, as far as like the services that we provide.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, well, you know, everyone handles it differently, but across the state, electronic monitoring is is handled by community corrections.

Um, work release is strictly a uh community corrections function.

So I suppose there is you know, there isn't anything that's stopping other entities from taking over uh electronic monitoring.

Probation did handle electronic monitoring for pretrial and condition of probation cases for a period of time.

Um my taking over as director, it was um given back to me.

And and so it's it's a bigger lift than maybe some some people realize the amount of of information and and kind of effort that goes into those devices, and like I said, the 53,000 alerts that are generated just overnight during the course of a year uh is pretty significant.

So I do think that consolidation, if it if it were an option, it would just be a shifting of cost more so than a consolidation because uh at the end of the day, the the numbers of clients that we're serving, the number of alerts that those are generated, they're not gonna be able to be handled by by lesser uh by a lesser number of of staff.

You'd just be they might have a different title.

Okay.

Thank you for explaining that.

Thank you, Counselor.

Additional comments.

Council Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you.

Um Director Hull for your presentation, CFO Garcia as well.

Um just a couple quick questions.

The what is the status of the Naval Center assessment?

And what's gonna be the end product and when might we expect that?

Uh I I don't have a good timeline on that.

I know that uh I believe it's the purchasing department just selected the vendor that'll be utilized for that.

I I don't know the name of that group, but I know that is just recently been finalized, and I'm hoping to hear about a uh a date for them to come and visit the facility soon.

Um I know in in speaking with the controller uh and they had some internal movement staff wise, the person that was uh overseeing the project is has moved on and it's a new person.

So I think that probably delayed them some, but I know it is something that they are trying to move as quickly as possible.

All right, and then uh finally the just for my own clarification, digital kiosks that are in the um township offices.

Those are explain their purpose and and who manages those.

Oh I'm confused whether that's probation or OCC.

Those are probation um uh kiosk.

Now we are able to accept payments.

Um the kiosk have been set up to be able to accept various payments onto them uh besides just probation payments.

So we get very, very uh out of the township ones of virtually nothing, but there is a kiosk, one of those kiosks is here in the lobby of the city county building, and um people are able to make payments through that um for their user fees with us.

And what typically make up those user fees?

Are they child support or the monitoring fees?

There is uh as part of being on electronic monitoring, there is a daily fee um that is that is charged.

It's between zero and eight dollars.

Um again, this goes to what um Mr.

Garcia was talking about as far as a a fee analysis that can be done with short of that fee analysis, and that requires obviously the the client providing us various information.

That basic fee is set on uh poverty standards.

So if you are 200% or over of federal poverty limit, then you pay the full fee of eight dollars.

If you are between 150 and 200, it is four dollars.

And if you're um below a hundred and fifty and and or declared indigent by the courts, then it's set at zero.

Okay, and those those fees accumulate.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Additional comments or questions.

Council Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chairman.

Thanks for the presentation uh this evening.

Um Mr.

Garcia, on that um character three budget decrease, you mentioned the effects were limited ability to increase opportunities for employee employees and programming for clients.

You also mentioned the limited ability to increase participation in XBE.

Can you explain that?

Uh our limited participation in XBE?

Yes.

So I mean anytime we're we're looking at contracts, we we obviously uh usually there's a formal process.

Um sometimes those processes the way they play out, it just comes down to uh cost that are associated with some of those contracts.

We have quite a few contracts.

Uh we always try to prioritize XBE.

Uh pretty proud of our participation with XBE.

We'd like to continue doing that, but sometimes, as I said, when you're looking at these different contracts, it just comes down to to the services that are provided and the cost associated with the services.

And sometimes when when your budget's limited, sometimes you just have to go with the cheapest cost.

And no, so you're saying that there are no XBE uh businesses have come in at a low enough rate uh in such a rate that you're you're now finding that this budget shortage is creating um a reason to no longer uh use minority and and and women-owned businesses and dis uh and better known businesses.

No, no, no.

That is a concern that we have uh moving forward based on the budget constraints.

Uh so no, that's always been a priority for the agency.

Uh and that would that's basically a concern that we have moving forward.

What yeah, I mean, really, what we're talking about is we can't increase the number of contracts that we're awarding because we won't have the budget to add new contracts.

I mean, the at this point, if the budget is flat or cut, um in character three, we can't increase the number of contracts.

been a priority for the agency uh and that would that's basically a concern that we have moving forward what yeah I mean really what we're talking about is we can't increase the number of contracts that we're awarding because we won't have the budget to add new contracts the I mean the at this point if the budget is flat or cut um in character three we can't increase the number of contracts we're we're only I think it's interesting that that there I'm sure you guys found cuts necessary across the budget spectrum but that pointing out the XBE was interesting um also I my understanding is that these SBXB participants they're competing with just like anyone else um they just are identified as XBE so you guys can get credit for using SBE participants not necessarily saying that they are getting something icing on some cake they are the cake I I don't understand any any anything other than that I mean I think it's probably just semantics or confusion but what we're talking about is not being able to expand the number of contracts that we're awarding we we have the the contracts that are already in place but we have no ability to I mean there are there are services that different providers provide some of those are XBE some of them aren't but with our budget constraint we're not going to be able to go into an additional training program or add this new service regardless of who's providing it because the funds won't be there and that's that is the question has come up in past years how are we going to expand our our XBE percentage and and that was kind of where this question or or this that line was directed at we're not able to we're not going to be able to expand that moving forward because the the budget isn't that character three cut isn't going to allow an expansion of contracts period.

Well forgive me but my understanding is that the XBEs were were competing for the business opportunities just like everybody else but you pointed that out and that was just interesting to me thanks Mr.

Chairman thank you counselor final comments anyone in the audience could speak to the community corrections budget thank you so much Mr.

Hall appreciate you committee members thank you so much for your time this evening have a great night we are adjourned