Good afternoon, everyone.

Good afternoon.

My name is Wenika Fisher, and I have the honor of chairing public safety health and human services for the Prince Georges County Council.

Today we continue with our budget hearing sessions for fiscal year 2027.

And today we'll be going over the I'm changing the order a little bit.

Uh the budgets for the administrative charging committee, our fire emergency medical services department, and then our department of social services.

First, we'll start with our administrative charging committee.

Um, but before I continue, I forgot I got a call to order to the committee.

So, madam clerk, if you can call the role.

Councilmember Fisher present.

Councilmember Hunter present councilmember Oyada.

Councilmember Burroughs.

We have four at present.

We are acting in full committee.

And now I will turn to Mr.

Nathaniel Tutt, who is our amazing committee director to introduce our first agency, the administrative charging committee, and you can come to the table, those that will be presenting.

Thank you, madam sheriff.

First, as you said, the administrative charging committee, and that's led by director, Miss Isabel Williams, who's joined us at the table.

And on page 12, you'll find the report uh for the from the agency.

And uh next will be Mr.

Malcolm Moody, who will provide an overview.

Uh good afternoon, uh Chair Fisher and the rest of the council.

My name is Malcolm Moody, budget and policy analyst.

Uh, and then I'm going to start with the administrative charging committee uh committees uh presentation.

And then uh on the okay, there we go.

And then uh on this slide, I'm just going uh to highlight the organizational structure, which is on the left, and then the uh top right, which uh shows the main mission for the ACC, and then the bottom right, which also shows the uh core services.

This information is in the budget book.

This next slide is on the strategic focus for the ACC, and then uh some of the strategic focuses for fiscal year 27 uh 2027 for the ACC are uh improving turnaround times for findings, streamlining the review process, and strengthening collaboration with key stakeholders.

This slide is uh focusing on the fiscal year 2020 2027 budget for the ACC, and they at the top is a multi-year chart of the expenditures by fund type, and then below is the uh fiscal year 2027 proposed budget, which is broken down, and you see it's proposed at 1.4 million, and then the proposed budget is a uh it's decreased from the fiscal year 2026 budget by uh seven percent.

The next slide is covering the general funds for this uh for the proposed fiscal year 2027, and then uh the amount proposed is uh 1.3 million, and then this is an increase of 3.4 percent or 42,300 from the fiscal year 2026 budget, and the uh general fund compensation is proposed at 700 745,500, and this is an increase of 41,500 from the fiscal year 2026 budget, and this helps fund uh eight full-time positions.

And you'll also see on this chart uh this slide that the um operating has decreased in the uh net decreases due to revised projections for trial staff in case hearings, and then the operating expenses uh also the operating expenses help support trial prep trial board uh judges, stipends, and community awareness events, and then uh fringe benefits have also increased.

This next slide is uh highlighting the staffing and grant funding for the uh ACC.

And you'll see the grant funding compensation is uh proposed at 150,000, which is a 50, it's a 50 percent decrease from the fiscal year 2026 budget, and this is due to a reduction in the violence intervention and prevention program in the uh operating grant expenses or use of support program operational expenses.

Uh and I already uh noted the full full-time uh eight full-time positions in the previous slide.

And then this slide is going over state legislation.

Uh none of the state legislation uh made it to the governor's desks, but it was potentially going to affect the ACC if it did.

Uh I just wanted to include it in the slide.

And then on this uh last slide is just highlighting the uh these are essentially the biggest concerns for the ACC.

Uh the top one I wanted to note was the uh vacancies, which are awaiting necessary approvals, and then the also funding.

Uh funding is not fully accommodating the growing costs for the administrative law judges.

Uh funding is not fully accommodating the growing costs for the administrative law judges, and you also see additional uh concerns such as grant funding expiring, uh case load volume, which is increasing every year, and then there's a strain on resources uh during the administrative hearing board process as funding levels tied in.

And then finally, there's also reviewed cases that have resulted in reduced penalties.

That ends my presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Moody.

Now we'll turn to Ms.

Williams, uh, our program manager for the administrative car charging committee.

Thank you, Chair Fisher.

Um, Mr.

Moody did a great job summarizing our agency, so I do not really have anything to add unless there are any questions.

Colleagues, do you have any questions?

The only thing that I would ask um Miss Williams, what do you think that you might need in this budget that is not here that the council sees?

Um, I think the council does a great job of trying to assist us in um meeting a lot of our needs.

Right now, we're just trying to be creative in finding ways to accommodate things.

Um the council uh included funding for our case management system in the prior budget.

So right now we're just trying to get that up and running.

And so um, one thing I will note is that there was federal funding in the prior budget that's sunsetting um that we're going that we're hoping to use for IT interns to help get our case management system up and running.

So my hope is that we can maybe find collaborative ways to um plug that funding gap when that federal funding sunsets.

When is that when is that gonna sunset?