Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the session of the Government Operations and Fiscal Policy Committee.

We are glad to be joined this morning by our Vice President, Councilmember Balcom.

Today we have a number of uh budgets, department budgets to review, and in particular later today.

Um this morning, we're also going to be reviewing our debt service, um, which uh council member Katz always reminds us.

If it was actually a department, um it would be one of our largest.

Uh property, the third, uh, our property tax rate, income tax rate, working families, income supplement.

Um, and so we'll we'll take care of that, we'll look at all of those uh later this morning.

But first, we are going to start with our office of the county attorney.

And I will turn it over to our staff to walk us through.

All right, good morning.

Uh so we have the county attorney's uh FY27 budget for review today.

The executives recommending an increase of 581,250 dollars or 5.4% from the previously approved budget.

Uh the increase is primarily driven by compensation, uh about 463,919 uh for compensation adjustments, as well as some $20,000 for required expenses such as print and mail.

There's also a request of 21,938 for a legal research subscription service.

That's essentially a cost increase.

Uh it is listed in the budget as an enhancement, but it is an existing service based upon uh responses we've gotten from the department.

There's one item for the reconciliation list, uh MODIS 23,172.

This is to uh essentially uh subscribe to an AI powered document uh uh search tool for Microsoft to help uh the office in terms of uh organizing its legal documentation that it does have currently.

So that is being recommended for reclist.

Uh beyond that, it's essentially a same services budget and the OBET tool score for the department for 20 FY27 is a four demonstrating an emergent commit uh sorry, a five demonstrating an emergent uh commitment to advancing racial equity and social justice.

Other than that, that is uh pretty much the highlights.

Mr.

Marcos, do you want to say anything?

Good morning, John Markovs County Attorney.

Good morning, John Marcos, County Attorney.

Thank you, uh Council members for entertaining the budget this morning.

Uh our continued partnership with the council and supporting your policies is the number one goal of the county attorney's office.

I think we're doing a fabulous job with that and trying to support our all the council efforts to protect our community, make it a safe place.

Uh with respect to the budget, pretty much is a just continued use.

Uh there is the one reconciliation item.

You know, we're in a constant state of warfare right now.

There's been an awful lot of conflict and resources used to deal with the conflicts that are facing the county government.

You know, at the end of the day, it's your decision what you want to do with the reconciliation.

Um it would help us.

The the reconciliation item is a document review tool.

So we've had about, I would say 60 percent turnover in about six years.

Uh everybody that was on the defined benefit plan has essentially left the county attorney's office.

We've had very little otherwise attrition.

It's been retirements.

So one of the things I've tried to do is create a documents file and be able to access things.

The problem with that is you have to put everything in.

It takes person hours to do that.

So using AI generated tools, we're able to go through our Office 365 database and pull the documents that we want, whatever the subject matter might be.

So it's a resource saver.

Um but again, if it needs to be delayed at the need of the council, I understand that.

So again, thank you for the support.

I want to thank Naeem and Payne for their efforts uh at OMB and here at Council for all their efforts working on what I think is a relatively straightforward budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um and Mr.

Markovs, if you could um just speak to the work of the department on uh its OBIT analysis and you know, I think uh particularly for this committee when we when we see a five, we're interested in uh what work is being done.

Uh an emergent commitment uh is uh, you know, uh there's a commitment there, but we'd like to see uh what are some concrete things the um you all are working on in the county attorney's office.

So I take umbrage with the five.

I I never understood it.

We've had this discussion at Go committee before.

I don't understand why we get scored at five.

We're an internal-facing organization that supports all the efforts of council and the executive branch and all of the departments.

So I think we should be getting a top score uh in that regard.

With respect to internal uh components, uh that office is now more diverse than it has ever been in the history of the county attorney's office.

I'm the eighth county attorney.