Homeless Issues Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, I'm going to call this meeting of the Public Protection and Judiciary Committee to order.

Carlos, if you can call the roll. Chair Furman? Here. Furman here. Supervisor Gray?

Gray here.

Gray here. Supervisor Larson? Not here yet. Supervisor Lewis?

Lewis here.

Lewis here. Supervisor Trucios? Trucios here. Trucios here. Supervisor Weldon? Here. Here. Odin here. And so by the young is excused chair we have a core.

Thank you very much. Our first item is consideration the minutes can I get a motion to move to any questions comments concerns with the minutes corrections. I'm not seeing any, so unless I hear otherwise, I'll assume approval by unanimous consent and move on to the referrals portion of our agenda for the evening. The next item is 2026, Res 100, authorizing agreement with House of Mercy LLC to house jail diversion program residents. I do believe we have somebody here. Hmm. from the Sheriff's Department. Sheriff, do you want to talk about this?

Yeah, I think it's pretty self-explanatory. It's just the name of the housing area changed from Sober Housing Limit or SLIM to the new name, and that's really just about it.

Hey, thank you. Any questions for the Sheriff's Department? I just have a quick one. Go ahead.

Sheriff, even though we haven't moved this yet, Is this a second contract with them, or is it longer than that?

I'm not sure exactly. This may be the second contract. I think simply we're just, since the naming of the LLC changed, we're just making that adjustment here with the contract.

Okay, I see. If Chief Nygaard, Deputy Nygaard's got something to add to that. So is this just an extension of an existing contract then with the name change, Chris, or?

Yeah, it's a continuation. It's to do another year with them, or what's the contract length? 24 years, I think. Oh, yeah, my bad. Yeah, it's a continuation. We use about, it's for 20 beds, and we fluctuate between 28 and 17 beds on average we use for the GL diversion program. So we've been higher than 20, but they guarantee 20.

Right, yeah, and the reason I was really asking, because there's a waiver on this, and so it's been bid out, I guess, once, and then we're, is that why we're able to waive a million-dollar contract for requesting a waiver?

From my memory, when we started this out, it was not a popular contract for anybody in the community to engage in, and it's... the housing is limited, who will participate to be on and also be on bus lines and have sober living where they don't have alcohol or drugs in the facility, but also allow us access to check on our people. So it's a really small list, basically Mercy House.

Okay, thanks. Hey, any other questions for the Sheriff's Department? Okay, entertain a motion. I'll move it. Okay, any discussion? Not seeing any, unless they hear otherwise, I'll assume approval by unanimous consent, and we'll move on to our next item. Carlos, did you see Supervisor Larson has joined us? I did, I noted her in entering, thank you. All right, our next item on our agenda is 2026, Resolution 103, authorizing an addendum G to a contract with RACOM for public safety communication system upgrades and licensing. I see Lewis is here. If you want to go ahead and give us just a brief explanation of what this is.

Thank you, Chip. So what we have here is in December, we were able to purchase some hardware for some end-of-life hardware equipment. mainly our symphonies and master threes, which are part of our radio components for the Dane comp system. Um, this, uh, addendum is to actually, uh, pay for the work of the on that app system. Um, so, uh, Basically the purchase was for capital expense. This is for operating expense, which is budgeted for in order to implement it. The third party licensing is a part that used to be part of the maintenance agreement, but we separated it out because we found that it was actually less expensive if we separated it out and went with RACOM straight through L3 Harris. And that third-party licensing is for things such as Cisco servers and things of that nature that's critical to the infrastructure of the server system.

Thank you. Any questions for the director?

Thanks, Director Brickler. Is this the radios we're talking about?

Correct. Yeah, it's the Danecom system. So these components are actually what sit on the consoles at our individual desks.

Dave Kuntz, Right, and these are the ones that go is it's just this is just our end of it right we're not paying for radios for for communities anymore because I know. Dave Kuntz, Too long. Dave Kuntz, yeah no the whole mess for years.

Dave Kuntz, Exactly, no, these are just straight components systems that sit on the communicators desks and allow the functionality of the radio system.

Dave Kuntz, And there's good communication and with the other agencies now with these. Dave Kuntz, radios are a big problem.

back. Yeah, correct. There's this system as well. What we do is that we we also make sure that we have enough spares in case we run into a situation where some of our area peace apps may need some some additional assistance. Well, well, you get their own parts for it. Thanks.

Thank you any other questions. I'm seeing any can I get a motion. I move. Thank you, Supervisor. Discussion? Not seeing any, unless I hear otherwise, I'll assume approval by unanimous consent and we'll move on to our next item. Our next item is 2026, Res. 106, Authorizing Acceptance of Grant Funding from the Wisconsin Department of Justice Office for Victim of Crime, Anti-terrorism, and Emergency Program. And I believe we have our Deputy Director of Victim Services here, if you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little about this item.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. I don't believe I've had the opportunity to introduce myself yet. My name is Brooke Barsina. I'm the Deputy Director of Crime Response Program in the DA's office. Formerly my supervisor, Julie Foley, retired last June. So this grant is to receive funds related to our response and direct services provided to survivors and victims of Abundant Life Christian School shooting back on December 16th, 2024. So this is a grant that is a federal level grant. So I'm happy to do my best to answer any questions or concerns folks might have. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Any questions? Not seeing any. Can I get a motion?

I'll make a motion.

Thank you. I assume it's a motion for approval. Thank you. Any discussion on this item? Not seeing any. Unless I hear otherwise, I will assume approval by unanimous consent. And thank you so much for coming this evening.

Thank you.

All right, so that is the business for this evening. I'll move on to presentations. Our first presentation is from the Clerk of Courts. If you wanna come on up. And introduce yourself and your slide deck will be up momentarily.

Sure, so I am Jeff Guzakian, the Dane County Clerk of Circuit Courts. Thanks for having me. Can you hear me okay? I can't hear myself. Oh, there we go, all right. So I would just run through just a little bit of background on our department, especially for some of our newer supervisors, and then our budget, and touching briefly on our budget and some of the challenges that we're looking at over the next many years forward. So I'm going to the next one. So unlike most departments, the Clerk of Courts is a state constitutionally mandated office. So similar to the county clerk, the treasurer, the sheriff, we're independent elected officials, kind of not under the county executive or the county board. And the Clerk of Courts roles are really very different across all 72 counties. Maybe you're looking at like Iron County or Menominee, they're really tiny and the clerk has maybe one or two other staff members and does literally everything from going into court and clerking for the judge to managing all of the administrative aspects and all the state reporting aspects to folks like us in Milwaukee, where we have over 100 staff that kind of specialize in the segmented areas of the law and of managing the court. And so it is kind of a very interesting and different role across the state. And because the position is elected and oversees a statutory department,

I'm sorry.

Is it not on? Yeah. Okay. How's that one, Stephanie? Is that any better? Or is it just not on?

Is that muted? I'd say if you sit here, but then you'll be able to see the screen better.

Thank you.

All right.

Can you hear me now, Stephanie?

Anybody?

The light is on, so that's better.

Yes, we can hear you now.

Okay, perfect. All right.

Thank you. Sorry about that. Let's see if you can start over.

Okay. Make sure all the online folks can hear us. We just got here. So yeah, just start from the top of this one. Just that, so that the clerk of court is a state constitutionally mandated office, similar to the county clerk and the treasurer and the sheriff. And just that the roles are very different across the state from the small county to a larger county in the scope of what my office does and the types of responsibilities. Not that we manage different tasks, but just that we have a lot more specialized staff in the larger counties. And because the position is elected and kind of oversees a statutory department that also comes under the purview of the judges, the way that we run court and the way that we run a department is also very different and very complex in terms of, you know, the legislature left quite a bit up to the Supreme Court to define. And so our office is kind of governed by statute. We're governed by Supreme Court rule. We're governed by local rule. We're governed by judicial authority and by the county budget. And so we have a lot of competing interactions that go into how we do our work. But the excerpt that's on the screen right now, I think is probably the most commonly understood kind of idea of what the clerk of court's office does, just in terms of keeping the criminal record of things that happen in court. But if you go on to the next slide. So really there are three major pillars about the work that we do. So we're managing kind of the budget and the administration of the courthouse. So I'm responsible as the administrator of the courthouse and the building and everything that goes on and all of our staff and everything that they do to kind of keep our justice system running, as well as kind of all of the reporting and everything that we need to do from a state and federal perspective, especially for our reimbursements. And then working with other public agencies, especially our bailiff's office with the sheriff's office and this other supporting agencies like child support and corporation council that kind of has interactions with a lot of what the court does. The second piece is the management of the court record. So the kind of the circulatory system of the court, everything that gets filed, everything that kind of comes in to generate new cases. And then what you think of in terms of court proceedings. So kind of everything that happens in a courtroom, the recording of all of those events and the judgments, the processing of orders and scheduling, kind of the things that keep the system moving. And then the third part of that is the management and the maintenance of the record. So just that exhibits are properly stored and held, that we're recording and maintaining everything that comes in, whether it's for one year or 100 years, and then making those documents available to the public, which is one of the most important in a time consuming parts of our job, we have an entire department devoted just to fulfilling records requests. And so while some county departments may see, one opens record request a year or somewhere in that range, we may get on the order of a couple of hundred a day. And so it's certainly a big piece there. And then we have beyond that, the generalized open records requests that come from being in Dane County and dealing with a lot of the major political and controversial state and kind of departmental related cases that hit our courts.

And then the final piece of that too is jury management.

And so I'm responsible for how we summon and track our jurors, as well as how we kind of use them and keep them safe and comfortable and pay them. And it is also quite as extensive as the second largest county. We summon typically a pool of, or build a pool of about 16,000 people a year, and then someone anywhere from 100 to 300 people a week to fulfill our requirements. And so there's certainly a lot going into that. And we have a proposal in my budget this year, to have a 50% increase to what we're paying our jurors, which is one of the largest increases maybe that we've ever had, but certainly one of the only increase that we've had in quite some time. And really long overdue just in that we are the second, tied for the second to last in terms of what we pay our jurors. And so it certainly was a long time coming. Next slide, Stephanie. So Dane County is also somewhat unique in that it's one of about a dozen or so counties that adds the role of register and probate to clerk of court instead of having them as a separate office within the county. So similar to clerk of court, register and probate is responsible for records regarding probate matters. So you can see kind of on the left there, common types of court cases for the clerk. On the right, that's more common for the register and probate. Register and probate also deals with the records of the cases that have the longest retention time, which would be about 100 years for wills and about 150 years for adoption proceedings. And there's an interesting news article that just hit from the Wisconsin Bar Association talking about the expected growth that we have specifically in this area over the next 10 to 20 years because of the silver tsunami of baby boomers that are aging out with an expected 124 trillion with a T transfer of wealth across the United States in that time period. And so... The article also talked about the fact that this is also an area of law that's becoming increasingly more complex because of the complex family dynamics that exist, the increasing amount of wealth transfer that happens, and just the increase in divorce rate and other things that all add complication with the additional piece that there are not a heck of a lot of lawyers that practice extensively in this area. And so we do see a lot of pro se issues participants here, which adds complication for folks that don't necessarily understand what is a very complicated often very complicated system.

Next slide.

So in terms of our budget, the court as a whole represents around three and a half, 3.6% of the total operating budget for the county. You can see from these books taken from my office, we've been here for a while. And we're about the ninth largest department in the county, I think, in terms of overall expenses. And we're also in a little bit of an odd place. So kind of similar to what I was talking about a couple of slides earlier between our county and our state requirements, federal constitutional requirements. So while we have specific line items in our budget, essentially almost all of our department provides state constitutionally mandated services. And so even if you were to reduce a line, if we reduce our interpreter line in the budget, You know, you can do it, but it doesn't make a difference because the county is required to pay whatever it is that that cost is each year. And so we try to be, I think, as realistic as possible when we're setting our budget for the next budget season because so many of these items are statutorily mandated. The overall impact of our activities kind of stretches beyond that $17.5 million expense line for our department, just in that the court has a larger footprint that we report back to the state in terms of the security services as provided by the sheriff's office and all of the other departments that kind of go into court-related services that we interact with. So it ended up having about a $30 million overall impact from the court itself. Next slide. In terms of where our funding comes from, so we kind of broke it down into a couple of different areas. County GPR support certainly is still the largest area. We had a significant increase in state support last year, which was great, but we still know that there's a fairly significant gap statewide between what the counties pay and what the state pays and also what the counties receive and what the state receives in terms of court revenue. And a large portion of our fees and fines and forfeitures and things are earmarked back to the state. And so we've been trying to do some work balancing that out and have been successful in my advocacy to kind of bring in more support to the county. Additionally, we get some federal 4D revenue for some of the cases that we do with our family cases related to children. That's a fairly significant port. The other fairly significant part is our fees and fines and forfeitures and collections and all of those which kind of end up into the same area. And so fees and fines and collections are one big pool just because You know, some of this volume is driven by a lot of different factors and collected in different ways. And so, you know, some of it comes from decisions that are made by law enforcement or charging decisions that are made by the DA's office. Some of that is driven by individual municipalities or you as county legislators. where we've seen kind of significant changes in revenue to the clerk of court's office just based on what ordinances are in place or what the county is deciding should or shouldn't be kind of a focus of prosecution. And then some of it is direct revenue for things like filing fees that come directly into our office based on the statutory kind of set for those items. But all of it is kind of set in statute as revenue collected by the clerk of court's office. And you can kind of see that the majority of this area, you know, 4% to fees and fines, of which some of that is collected upfront, 9% to collections, which means that all of these other fees and fines and forfeitures and surcharges and things that are attached to the case from all of the prosecutions and things that come in, you know, about 75% of that revenue is not paid. You know, it's only collected by the expenses and staff time that our office puts in to make that possible. And so, you know, we've been making kind of big strides there as well in increasing our ability to process and our kind of backlog of COVID-related collections. And so we've gone from about $400,000 up to over a million dollars in our collections activity. So it's really a significant portion of revenue making sure that we're doing our part to not only bring revenue in for the clerk of courts office, but also to do restitution for victims and other things like that. Next slide. So this is another interesting breakdown that I thought too. So if you look at that top kind of reddish line, the dark red line, That's what I would say is county controlled expenses for my office. So primarily staff salaries and other things that I don't have direct control over the county wage scales. The bottom kind of reddish line, the more flat line is the expenses that I do have control over. So the operations of our department and all the things that we do in our programs and everything that we put together. And so if you look at that, in the last decade, our expenses have increased overall by about 50%, which is really significant. And not to say that's inappropriate or anything. I think we've seen a lot of inflationary activity over that period. We've certainly had a lot of need to stay competitive and increase our staff salaries. But just that when we're looking at what the county has control over versus what I have control over, the county portion has increased from $9 million to almost $14 million. The clerk of courts portion has increased from two and a half million to $3 million. And so, you know, you might be looking at that. It's saying, you know, well, I don't have control over the salaries, but I do certainly have control over our staff and adding new staff and the things we do there. But if you jump to the next slide here. you can see that our staff has also been essentially flat over that entire period of time. And so that is that increase that 80% of that increase is essentially driven by just wage increases that we've had. And so yeah, over the last 10 years, we've only increased our staff size by about 4%. Next slide. And so if you break down that staff, you can kind of see that there's a basic overview up on the screen there, but our breakdown is about 32 staff work in the branches directly for the judges. 23 in our Commissioner Center, including our commissioners, and 16 staff in our Probate and Records Center. I'm kind of noting again that the Register and Probate is a separate paid office and position in most counties, including Milwaukee and Waukesha. And then 40 in our Court Support Division, who primarily handle things like document intake and processing, case disposition, collection, and about 100 or so different activities. So I think that makes the Clerk of Courts Office the sixth largest department by staff, so in between Public Works and 911. And then if you go to the next slide. So in addition, again, we have a lot of interaction with other county departments in terms of what we do. So the sheriff's office plays a critical role in providing security for our office. We have just over 40 sworn staff that regularly work in our building in providing security for the judges and all of the issues and things that we run into there. And then, you know, we also work with the sheriff's office just on regular, you know, court-related activities in terms of, you know, hearings and appearances for jail residents, you know, processing foreclosure sales and serving parties with court documents as part of our requirements under statute, and also with the sheriff's office and really all law enforcement agencies in terms of processing warrants kind of 24-7, 365. The DA's office certainly was recently in our building, but has now moved out temporarily while we remodel their space and work with them on kind of the handoff for cases that are incoming, criminal cases that are incoming to the court. Pretrial services in the courthouse actually used to be part of the clerk's office until somewhat recently, and we still provide technology support for their office and work closely on paperwork with our initial appearance court and the things that they do there. And then Family Court and Child Supports with the Corporation Council are also both located somewhat in our building. Child Support more somewhat in the basement and Family Court Services runs their office entirely from our building. and certainly work closely with them on a number of different matters. And then we also facilitate a number of outside groups providing support to our patrons, the most prominent of which is the contract with the State Law Library to provide the Dane County Law Library services, which are regularly utilized by a number of patrons. And then... independent groups that kind of provide legal representation support so days has a clinic abuse clinic that they run in our office uw has a pro bono law service that they provide in the law library facilitates a couple of different groups like that as well.

Next slide.

So if we're starting to get into issues and things that we look at, so the big one certainly is just our volume of cases. We process about 44,000 cases a year. And when I say this, this is new cases specifically. So this doesn't address things that are ongoing continuing matters. For example, a family case, if you have a child who is zero or one years old, we might carry on through litigation and other things that happen in that case for the full 18 years. of things going on there. So there's certainly lots of cases that extend beyond these 44,000 new cases that we take in. And at any given time, our judges are probably carrying a caseload of somewhere between about 800 and 1200 cases that they're actively working on and they may dispose of throughout the year and new ones will come on and things like that. And we process, actually, we just found out last year as we were kind of running through, we process about 2 million documents a year. And that kind of goes through mostly our CCAP e-filing system and the state case management system that we're required to use. Next slide. So interestingly, this is a projection from DOA, state DOA, and modified a little bit by the regional data group for Dane County and Madison. And it shows kind of the population projections over the next 25 years. And one thing that RGG pointed out was that DOA is historically and in every instance wildly low in terms of meeting reality for what their population projections are. So RDG kind of gives that red numbers there as they're more realistic, I think, expected population growth. And essentially what this shows is 100,000 people over the next 10 years, 275,000 people over the next 25 years, and that's about 887,000, which would put us 95% of the way to where Milwaukee County is today. And I think just in terms of Frame of reference of what we will look at in projections and in future planning, Milwaukee right now has 47 branches and 300 staff and sees about three times more cases than we do. And so I think we certainly would have an expectation that as the fastest growing county, not next year, but as we look at future planning, that we will expect significant growth in the court and in our case volume that you were just looking at and the things that we'll need to plan for for the future. Our building can support, I think, three additional judges. And so we'll see if we actually grow 300,000 people, what our needs will be will certainly change. And next slide. Next slide, Stephanie. One of the other big challenge areas that we're looking at too is the growth in pro se filing. And so this is folks that are not represented by an attorney. And you can kind of see for some of the more common areas, civil fines a little bit less because the complexity sometimes requires an attorney, but there are a significant number of instances where one party may not be represented. And in small claims cases, in most of the time, I think we see at least one party is not represented and filings are regularly handled on their own. And so you can see kind of from these graphs that even in the last couple of years, we've seen a relatively significant jump in this case type. So interesting, we may have seen a slight drop in certain areas of criminal case filings, but civil case filings and small case filings have jumped significantly. And with the new legislation that was passed this year, raising the kind of the bar for small claims monetary judgments from about $10,000 to I think it was $15,000 that we'll expect to see an even greater kind of increase as that threshold kind of from civil to small claims increases as well.

Go on to the next slide.

So I won't touch on each of these areas. You can kind of read them on your own. But certainly the biggest issue that we see from pro se filers is that there are a lot more work to deal with. It's folks that don't necessarily understand a complicated process and need a lot more handholding, who don't necessarily understand the fact that the clerk of courts can't provide legal advice to them. And so why we can give them the basics of kind of what forms they might need and And what the basic process is for certain types of filings, we can't really tell them what to put on it or if it's the right type of file for certain things. And so we can't give them any case strategy or anything that they might be looking for. And oftentimes they're filing things that really aren't correct. And so it might be not at the right time or it might be just extra information that's unnecessary. And I think one of the things that we'll touch on too on the next slide is driving this is the growth of artificial intelligence to support this process as well. And so actually, if you wanna jump to the next slide, we can just take a look at that right away. You know, not even kind of getting into some of the other pieces that are on here in terms of the concerns that the court and the judges will have to get into, but the biggest thing that the clerks are looking at and that we're trying to address right now is the volume of filings that become possible when I don't have to sit down and write a legitimate filing anymore. I can just have a computer do it for me and generate that almost instantly. And so we haven't thankfully yet in Dane County seen this, but in one other county, I think we have already in terms of the discussions that the clerks are having, had somebody who filed over 2000 motions in a day and so the ability for folks to generate this you know amount of content has significantly increased and we're at the the very entry point for what that's going to look like and how the court is going to have to be able to deal with these things and certainly the other piece of that you know not so much on the clerks is the number of filings that come through with you know pseudo legal terminology and presence. And so, you know, in years past, you used to receive a lot of pro se filings, especially from folks like sovereign citizens who are filing essentially nonsense. But, you know, it was very easy to identify because it has these kind of telltale hallmarks of these things that that don't make any sense from a legal perspective and kind of can be easily reviewed and dismissed versus The things that come in through AI have this immediate review and error and even referencing to case law and things that all make sense and look proper from an immediate review perspective, but when you dig into them, may be still underlined by the same nonsense that was coming in before. And so the amount of time that it takes to review those and see where they should go or make sure that they're getting to the right place and it goes up significantly with all of those items as well. And so those are all things that we're kind of looking at dealing with from administrative perspective, from a staff time perspective that are gonna increase the burden on the court that we haven't necessarily prepared for until this point. Next slide. So dropping back to a much more practical perspective, you know, one of the other major issues that we have dealt with over the past couple of years now is just our courthouse building itself. You know, we know kind of from the get-go that the building was not well constructed and that, you know, it kind of fell victim to the lowest common bidder aspect of this. and so you know we look at you know our elevators have had seven entrapments in the last couple uh in the last year where members of the public and members of our staff and judges have literally been stuck inside of an elevator that will not open uh i think we would considered from a basic perspective just not acceptable and so thankfully the facilities is included in their 27 budget a capital project to at least retrofit our staff elevator that has had the most issues but you know this also extends to the elevators for our secure elevators for our bailiffs transporting folks that are in custody The other kind of I would say almost more significant issue is with our air conditioning HVAC systems. So we just completed a project to replace our two chillers and our cooling towers for the building. They essentially were down for almost a year. We were running off of a chiller on the street that didn't work properly. We had two weeks before they installed them this year where temperatures in the courthouse reached almost 90 degrees. And so our ability to conduct court You know, the safety of our staff when you have volatile folks thrown into an environment where it's 90 degrees and nobody is comfortable and nobody is happy, you know, and they are already not excited about being there and the proceedings that are going on and the previous issues that may have led to the criminal prosecution, you know, creates a really volatile environment as well. Since our new chillers were installed, and so I'm putting this, we still dealt with a number of issues. We're still looking at control system issues, and that doesn't even address the major problems that we have with the air handlers that were not sized properly for our building to begin with. And so we still, you can see, we have 144 HVAC work orders that were submitted about in the last year. for working temperatures that are above 80 degrees in the courthouse, and it's just non-functional for our staff. And it's been a complaint that we've addressed with them, with facilities. It's been something that we've fielded from our employee groups, just as something that we want to deal with. We are doing our best to deal with, and I'm just not sure what other resources are needed or available, but certainly would... you know, push for more, not less, kind of coming out of that area. And just since this slide was written, we've submitted an additional 17 tickets for issues. And that staff now, you know, working in conditions that are both 80 degrees, but also staff that are working in conditions that are 60 degrees. And so, you know, all sorts of problems that we continue to have there. Additionally, you know, and Facilities has this on their radar, and we're kind of thankful for the work that they're doing there. But in the last kind of two months, we had a safety railing on our stairwell that collapsed. It fell off the side. This thing probably weighs about 500 pounds, and it landed kind of right in one of the kind of stairway break areas or gathering areas for folks. And, you know, our bailiff's office kind of commented that had it been a workday and not a weekend, and had anybody been in that area, we would have probably had a major injury from that landing on somebody. And so, you know, it's basic maintenance and things that need to happen in the courthouse. The other big one is water intrusion. And it kind of comes back to both how our building was built, but also issues that we've had with a county vendor that did the replacement for a roof membrane. So kind of about two and a half years ago, our roof was not leaking. We had our roof membrane replaced under regular schedule. And ever since then, we've had major water intrusion from our eighth floor ongoing. The county addressed that. The facility has hired an outside engineer to come address the problem and look at it. We had the original contractor remediate that. And then last week I submitted two more tickets for having water intrusion back in our building again, So all of these ongoing issues that just kind of haven't been addressed, I think we would just be looking for any sort of additional support to make sure that our building is just functional for what we do and kind of representative of the type of activities that go on in our building and not kind of something that's falling apart. Next slide. So one of the other big areas that we've talked about last year and this year is certainly the growth in our language needs. And so this slide right here is kind of just representative of one bilingual staff member. We just got approval for a new bilingual staff member kind of for the first time on our phone staff. We just added another one because of the volume that they go through. This is one person's activity over a one-month period. not including her regular duties to address all of our non-bilingual staff, our non-bilingual or regular English speaking callers. And so you can see the kind of the volume that comes in the court. We've had a 41% increase just over the last five years. We've gone from $150,000 in cost to $300,000 in cost over the last 10 years. And other counties have seen that growth increase by 200 to 300%. And so we're on the low end of what that looks like. And that's in part due to the fact that we are essentially, we're one of the only, and now I think are one of two counties that have a staff interpreter able to provide services. And we're certainly the only county that has three bodies of interpreters on staff kind of helping to provide those services. And so we would see that as a critical service moving forward, but also something that continues to be a growing need and a growing expense for what we do. Next slide. The other kind of big one too, and really recent events have put a real highlight on this, is our courthouse security and safety. We are open to the public. We are kind of statutorily and constitutionally required to be open to the public. And it seems like we are one of the few county buildings that is open to public because we have no or very limited number of remote staff. And this is one of the items that the DA's office has identified. It's one of the items that we've identified, our bailiff's office have identified, is that the volume of folks that come to our building regularly with mental health issues because there is nowhere else for them in the county to go to see people in person. We kind of have become a stopping point for this and the DA's office I think especially has identified this as an issue because they're getting folks who are maybe facing criminal charges, probably shouldn't be interacting with the DA's office directly, but end up at our building because these are the people that they can talk to in person. And so our bailiff's office provides exceptional security, but they are often understaffed. We have one family court services, our second floor, that deals with all of our family cases, all of our commissioners. We have one bailiff for every single judge, typically. We have one bailiff for all 11 of our commissioners, and that's not a full-time staff position, that there are gaps in when they're on the floor for family court services. And we've kind of identified in the literature and the research that family court, again, by the nature of the proceedings, you know, the fact that it deals with folks that may lose custody of their children is one of the most volatile areas of practice in our building. And so... you know, it's the group of our staff that has most often hit their duress button and called the Bayless office. And, you know, again, you know, we know for sure that our sheriff's office, you know, struggles in terms of getting staff and keeping staff and having to pay overtime, you know, in order to meet all of their obligations. And so this is a significant concern with us too, that we have you know, bailiff staff that is able to provide the appropriate level of staffing for the protection that's needed. you know, especially as we look at, you know, the kind of the political climate, you know, the unprecedented rhetoric that we're seeing at the federal level, the threats from ICE, you know, what happened in Milwaukee with their judge, you know, and just the increase in general nationwide to the threats to judges and public officials. You know, it's a top issue for the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the last two years. You know, Act 235 just passed because of the issues that we've seen with threats against judges. and you know again as we kind of see what happened in madison um you know with the shooting you know, the natural reaction to that has been, you know, public protest and we've seen protests at the courthouse, you know, and so we wanna make sure that we are keeping all of our staff safe, all of our patrons safe and making sure that folks get a fair chance and then see themselves getting a fair chance at justice in the courts and that comes part and parcel with making sure that we are a safe and secure and kind of independent facility.

Next slide.

So one of the other pieces that I just want to touch on too is how successful we have been in terms of bringing in additional revenue. So last year and this year, we've kind of had two successful years of items that are driven by myself as a chair of our advocacy committee for the Wisconsin Circle Court Clerks Association. in increasing our funding to the court. So, you know, that we added shared revenue in the form of our court support kind of that comes from the Director of State Courts Office, that we added $10 million to all counties, or $10 million between all counties. you know, that increases our support, that meant that we were able to meet our budgetary obligations last year. This year, we worked with the legislature to pass additional updates to our court fees, some of which hadn't been kind of looked at in 40 years since they were implemented. And so, you know, that gave us a little bit of additional room within our budget to kind of meet all of our obligations and pieces there. And so, you know, I'll be continuing to work next year with the legislature and in whatever form that the legislature has after all of the elections to push for additional support and making sure that we can continue to meet our growth and and kind of address that 80-20 split between the county and the state in terms of where those costs are allocated. And finally, the last slide is just again, thank you for having me. And we already were able to host a number of new supervisors. We're happy to have you come by. And certainly, like we said, the court is open to the public and you're welcome to come observe cases. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you so much. Go ahead and start with questions in the room. Does anybody have any questions? I do.

Thanks, Jeff. A couple of things. Let me just kind of go through some notes here. Excuse me. From the million dollars about you said in collections, is that mostly court or you said it's more for litigants, victims?

So it's primarily fees, fines and forfeitures that aren't collected up front. Right. So some of that is, you know, if you have the ability to pay and get out and do that. then that will just be collected and doesn't have to go through collections and just comes through whatever the assignment process is from the judicial decision or the charging decision or whatever it may be that it assigns you those amounts. But the majority of what we have to bring back in is not collected up front and comes kind of back through collections.

Is the staff doing that?

Yes. Okay. Staff is doing that, or then we pass that off with our staff process to our third-party collector, which is the state collection agency. If it's going on for so long and we haven't been able to collect, then everything goes out.

You said a different subject of the building, and I was elected, the building was open, but just new. The water was an issue, leaking windows right from the start. Still have a problem with that too. No, I saw that. I'm saying maybe the DA wants to stay out. But do you have three empty courtrooms still?

So we have zero empty courtrooms right now. We have three spaces that were originally shelled courtrooms that are intended for future use as courtrooms. Currently, one is being used for storage, one is being used for pretrial services, and one is now going to be repurposed into the new space for the DA's office as part of their reconstruction.

Okay, so then you really only have one? That can be used again. Yes. Yeah. Restorages. Yeah. And so those increases in in caseloads and cases comparing to Milwaukee, when you said that, that's still. a little bit of ways away before.

Right. Yeah. I think that the projection from the director's office based on our current caseload doesn't show an immediate need for a new judge. And so we wouldn't expect this to be a, you know, it's not, not a this year budget, not an extra budget. But I think again, as we're looking at those population projections and seeing what those numbers look like, you know, we can't build a building overnight either. And so, you know, if that's what it comes down to, you know, I think we'll, we'll certainly have to be planning for the future and,

Oh, on just overall construction issues and building, is any of that coming out of your budget? I don't want to get into too much budget, but... Or is that all facilities kind of like?

Yeah, so I think the HVAC replacement and those things all have historically come either out of public works budgets or facilities management budgets. Certainly the DA's office reconstruction is a different project piece and comes out of their capital project.

Is there something going on right now? Or is that the jail wraparound? Well, is that just... Well, I thought when I was coming up, there was scaffolding and fencing right at the corner.

Yeah, so the pieces that are out in front right now would be related to the reconstruction on a third floor for the DA's office, the fourth floor piece of that as well.

And then with the AI filings and the pro se, what responsibility does your office have once... you've identified the document and where it goes. Isn't that really up to the parties to sort that mess out?

So a lot of it is up to the judges more than anything else to review the documents. But the volume of case filing, and as we look at the potential for that to go up and how to identify where something should go, all falls onto the clerk of court's office.

Oh, even that's an issue.

Yeah, yeah. Just like the wrong... Right, yes. It often are, especially with the pro se filers, our office statutorily isn't necessarily able to reject a filing based on an error or based on a misfiling, but we certainly like to work with parties to make corrections before we accept those filings just to make the process smoother both for them and for our judges and for the internal process of review after it has to come in. And maybe they get thrown back at you, right?

Sort of like the upfront's better than at the end. And then do you have, have you scanned all old documents? Is that? I would love to do that. Yeah, we have. Because everything's electronic.

We spend about $60,000 to $70,000 a year storing records at the State Records Center. in Madison. And, you know, I equate that, which it works now, I think, for my generation and probably your generation, but not so much for the younger generation of kids that come through our office. My reference is, you know, it reminds me of the ending scene from Indiana Jones and the ark, where they're putting the ark away in that giant facility. And that's essentially our records. that are over there that we have, you know, 20 foot tall shelves that are just boxes and boxes and boxes of paper records. I would love to be able to scan that. You know, I think the cost for that would be prohibitively expensive right now. More than this. We are looking at and we still hold records in the courthouse. We hold records in the CCB now. You know, some of those smaller amounts, we might look to backscan some of those and possibly then even be able to repurpose some of the office space that that's taking up here. But in terms of our overall record storage, I think the plan for the most part, unless the AI technology changes or something changes there, will be to just let it age out.

And then a couple more. It's okay. On the language issues. Can AI sort of help that where people are using their phones now?

That's a really good question, and it's something that the legislature explored this session. I would say no. The AI is going to advance incredibly rapidly. I think it's going to be to the point where it's probably 90%, 95% there. The difference is, you know, one, it needs to be 100% there, and it needs to be 100% there in all of the languages that we would be able to support to really be useful in a court setting. You know, we are already using the technology somewhat where, you know, all of our front desk clerks have a handheld device that they're able to use and it's not, even that right now is not as good as any of our interpreters or even any of our bilingual staff. And so it's kind of a backup item that we have available just to deal with volume. But even if we're looking at the advancement in the technology, again, like that handheld device will get better and it'll get faster and it'll be more helpful for those window interactions. It's not going to be appropriate for the legal language of a courtroom setting, the aspects that aren't able to be captured like body language and the things right now that factor into how interpreters work, especially when you're considering you know, the grave nature of putting somebody away for life, you know, and those aspects of what are criminal cases and, you know, high profile, you know, civil cases and all those things. So, and that's not even including the aspect of, you know, the slowness at which the court adopts new changes and new technology and things there. And so I would say, yeah, My expectation is not any time within the next decade or so would would that even be a relevant kind of aspect for us.

I got. Is that are the fees the same County to County I filing. Yes, yes, if these are set in statute also as you said we're going to change yeah there you're getting more more revenue in.

We addressed with the legislature this session to review the statutory fees, again, which haven't been addressed in 40 years. And so those would change.

Thanks, sir. Thank you, Supervisor Lewis. No questions? Any questions online? Doesn't look like it. Thank you so much for coming here this evening. We appreciate it.

Fantastic presentation. Thank you.

All right, our next presentation of the evening is from our district attorney so welcome.

You may begin whenever you're ready. Thank you, I'm ish blows and the county district attorney at any time there are questions please just. I think that's the most important part of this. I'm not going to go verbatim through the slides. You should be able to look at those, but I will point out some highlights. Stephanie, you can hit the first one. This is basically a breakdown of sort of the office. We are sort of a state and county office, which makes it a little different than most. The state took over payment for the prosecutors in the 90s to help smaller counties. I guess I would say hurt the larger counties we are the second largest fastest growing County and have been for some time. In 1986 I think we had 26 funded prosecutors now we have 29. We got 2 prosecutors over the last 2 bienniums when the state increased prosecutor numbers across the state. That basically has us at about half of what we should be if you look at the current population and say one prosecutor should cover about 10,000 in population. Since Dane County is right now just over 590,000, we should be just under 60 prosecutors. I think had we stayed county, we likely would have grown with population. I don't think we would be at 60 prosecutors right now. We'd probably be somewhere between 45 and 50. The state obviously works on a biennial budget, so every biennium I put in a request to the state. Since 2010, when I took office as the district attorney, I think I've asked between 10 and 12 positions. We are currently asking for 10 more prosecutor positions this biennium. The reason that number has gone to 10 is because we've gotten two over the last couple bienniums. So instead of asking for 12, we're still asking for 10. If you look at the county side, we have about 78.8 positions that are full-time. We have about nine contract employees that actually supplement crime response and allow us to go 24-7, 365 days a year. That is a difference. that I don't think you will see in any other county. with our crime response program. The county is funded through GPR mainly. We do have some grants. We have a TAD grant that funds a portion of one of our case managers in deferred prosecution. We have grants that are coming in through Crime Victim Services. One is the funding you actually just approved receiving from the feds. for our response to Abundant Life Christian School and that active shooter situation. All right, next slide. So obviously we are operating with fewer prosecutors than I believe we should to adequately serve our population. How do we do that? We do that with help from the county through paralegals, administrative legal assistance. Right now, we have 11 paralegals. We have two vacancies currently. We are trying to get those filled. We have 10 administrative legal assistants. Right now, we have each paralegal assigned to three prosecutors. When you have fewer prosecutors, you need more support for those prosecutors so that some of the work that they have to do can be done by others to support them and free them up. Right now, I think the last, and I would have to check because some of these actually come off or get moved. We had about eight homicide trials scheduled within the courts for this year moving forward that we're going to have to actually take prosecutors out of, in a sense, rotation for a week or more, depending on how long the case is going. And a lot of the stuff that they would handle otherwise will be handled just by other people in the office. That will end up being a few prosecutors that have multiple cases within that group and then other prosecutor teams. So that will take one to two prosecutors out per trial moving forward. So just so you have an idea. We actually probably start out on the prosecutor side down two to three prosecutors a day just because of leave that they have for vacations, whatnot. That's not even counting when they have sick kids or something else happens. That's just covering vacation. So it's sort of like our county employees... They have a lot of leave, and I am grateful that they do have leave, but we have to cover their work when they're out. I think it's great that our county employees now have more time for parental leave, but with less funding for LTEs, we have almost no ability to actually get body and to stop gaps, some of that. We have been able to do some of that before now, but obviously the budget is the way it is and we aren't able to hire LTEs unless we actually have the LTE funding in our budget line. The last box on there is talking about our law student interns. Historically, we've been able to have three law student interns from the UW Law School prosecution project. They, I think, were about $2,500 stipend a summer. Very low. And so we were able to get three out of what we had budgeted. This last year, I believe the Public Defenders Program started paying their interns $10,000 for their summer internships, and so the prosecution project moved their stipend up to $7,500, which meant this year we had one summer intern. This is actually a vital program for us in that it allows us to give vital experience to law students but it also allows them to understand what a prosecution project what a prosecutor's office does whether they like it they get an opportunity to have real cases that they are assigned they can practice law under the supervision of a licensed attorney so they can go to court they can really get down to what it means to be a prosecutor. I actually was one of those interns and was able to then apply for the DA's office, an opening when I graduated, and that historically has been a way that we have been able to and hire a number of our new attorneys, which has been very helpful because a lot of those positions that the state gave to the prosecutors have gone empty because a lot of offices haven't been able to hire or retain people in those vacancies. Next slide. This is basically our budgeted positions. It's a bit confusing. I think it's a photo. We actually had to add a couple boxes. So go to the next slide, which is our org chart, which I think is actually probably easier to sort of look through and figure out where our positions are. I'm on the left, obviously, people reporting to me and then the breakdown of what you see throughout that. Next slide. So our victim witness unit gets reimbursement. This comes through the state and a lot of it is for services that they provide to our victims within the cases. It's surcharge. It is some federal funds that come through settlements. Some of those pools have gone down. So the rate that we get reimbursed doesn't always stay at one solid percentage point. If you look at the next box down, we actually, from January to May of this year, got $449,000 and change. That was about 50% reimbursement for the 12 positions that are actually identified as reimbursable. Joint Finance and the state did... have a request and they filled that, which brought that percentage up to 54 to 55% and gave us an extra 42,000 and change. That reimbursement rate has been higher in the past. And I think the state under Governor Evers in their last budget was trying to get that reimbursement rate up to 75%. That did not go through the state budget. So we are where we are. But historically, it has been about 50 to 55% for the last number of years. That is a big benefit. I will note that obviously, since the state is paying for our prosecutors, that's about 4 million and change a year. You can go back to that very first slide. Don't go back to the first slide, but that's where that information is if you want to see it in the slides. Next slide. This talks about the victim-witness unit. Obviously, services are mandated through Wisconsin Constitution now with the acceptance or passage of Marcy's Law. A lot of those rights that are now within the Constitution under Marcy's Law were already present in Wisconsin. We were the first state in the union to have a Bill of Rights for adults and child victims under Chapter 950 and 973. funding source um our crime response program is basically gpr funded there are some grants one you approved acceptance of those funds tonight we have another one uh a skip grant that was a hundred thousand that was earmarked for um gun violence reduction uh and then there's a justice assistant assistance grant as well for about ten thousand that goes to um services for victims All right. Our victim witness unit has served 12,000 victims. last year and this year to date we've served just under 7,000, 6,958. The numbers of victims that we served did take a significant jump after Marcy's Law. The reason for that is victims' rights vested at the time of victimization. So before even we've gotten reports, their rights as victims has vested. Before Marcy's Law, Victim's rights, in a sense, started after we charged a case and after the initial appearance. Now, since those rights have vested at time of victimization, any referral we get, we need to be reaching out to victims to try and inform them of their rights, inform them how they can be heard at the initial appearance. And that is even before we've made a charging decision. Now, about... 30% of cases may not be actually charged at the level they are referred in. They may be moved to a ticket. They may be declined outright. That information is conveyed to victims as well through letters from our victim witness unit. Now, we do have a crime response unit as well, and that really reaches out to victims well before we've gotten a referral. And some of that will come up in just a minute. The next slide. So this talks about some of the services that our Victim Witness Unit will provide to victims. Obviously, a big one is going to be notification of charges, of court dates. It's going to be working with them to get crime victim compensation applications in. It's going to be safety planning. It's going to be making sure that there is somebody there to answer questions or connect with them if they have to come to court through court appearances, through trials. It's going to be somebody who's also working with trial teams, who's going to be working in and amongst the law enforcement to ensure that victims' rights are front and center for all the parties that are working together to try and address the violations within the criminal justice system. They also work with victims to set up restorative justice, either through victim offender dialogue. We've done that. They've worked with our office as partners setting up, right now, the community court, which we are trying to get up and running with the community restorative court. They were integral parts of that planning and implementation. They're also present at Safe Harbor for the interviews of children and making sure that we are hopefully doing the best we can when we're dealing with those sensitive crimes. And they work to actually coordinate with community partners. If there are resources that we can't provide, we can sometimes connect victims to resources in the community with other groups who actually can provide them what is needed. Next slide. Crime Response is our 24-7 operation. It has Luckily been brought on to hard money as of I want to say probably two budgets ago just before this new administration came in which meant that we are on much more solid footing. I don't necessarily say that crime response is mandated. It is not necessarily mandated, but it is something that puts us apart from the majority of victim services in the state and in the country. I'm not aware of many or any other places that have a 24-7 component to their DA's office and their crime victim's response. They work with law enforcement. Law enforcement can reach out and contact them at any hour and try and connect victims with emergency resources. If a victim's home is a crime scene, they can work to help connect them to crime scene cleanup. After the police are done with evidence collection, they can work with them for emergency housing. In a sense, they try and make sure that we can treat victims with dignity and respect, and get them what is needed immediately so that they can feel safe. We do have fobs that victims can be connected with, which will help. There used to be a VARTA alarm, which was a box that they'd place in their home. which, if activated, would allow law enforcement to know to come directly to that location for victim safety issues. Now that FOB actually works in connection with their phones and travels with them. So it's, I think, a much better system. Obviously, it touched on the mass violence response. We would not have been able to respond to Abundant Life the way we did had our crime response program not been trained, been training and working with our community partners on our mass violence response. protocol. Brooke Barsina, who's our new director for crime response, this was part of her thesis in school. Julie Foley, who was the director just before Brooke came on, supported that, supported Brooke. They went out to Vegas and helped with the mass shooting there. They took what they learned there and through trainings and worked with our community partners to try and make sure that if and when something like that happened, we were ready. I think our response, I'm not going to say it was perfect, but it was It was a lot better than I think some other places have been able to do, not because they didn't want to, but just because we had practiced and we had put a lot of that stuff in place. And we learned a lot from that incident. So, but that is something that's not mandated. And that's something if we lose funding and are directed only to do mandated services, we will not be able to respond in that manner. I'm not saying that we would ever try and stop and say that we wouldn't respond, we will. But that is something that when we're directed just to do mandated services, that's something that is not listed as a mandated service. All right, next slide. One thing I should note, this is going to be on deferred prosecution. The victim witness unit to date this year has collected, I believe, 119,000 dollars in change for restitution. Deferred prosecution to date has collected 92,000 plus in restitution for victims. So this year, total, our office has collected over 200,000 in restitution for victims right now. That goes a long way to helping repair the arm and helping to put victims closer to where they were prior to their victimization. It never makes them whole, but it goes a long way. Deferred prosecution helps us settle cases. It helps us allow people, some young, some middle, and some older, come into the system and get out of the system without a conviction. get out of the system if they want to accept responsibility, if they want to help repair the harm, and hopefully get connected to some resources, whether that's treatment or counseling. and not have to have a conviction that follows them for the rest of their life. That's pretty much the biggest part that they do. They right now are part of our diversion assessment. We are actually looking at every case for 17 to 35 year olds that come into our office and trying to figure out if those individuals are going to be potentially eligible for either community restorative court, deferred prosecution, and now the community court. That review, that assessment is something that would not have happened prior to beginning of this year when we officially started doing that. We were reviewing cases for 17 to 25-year-olds for community restorative court. We have expanded that to 35 now, and we are referring up to 35 to community restorative court if they're eligible. we've now had deferred prosecution looking at those cases to figure out in real time are those individuals potentially eligible for deferred prosecution or community court now in the past deferred prosecution was offered to offenders basically as an option for an attorney after talking to a defense attorney, usually, because most of the time in police reports, you're not seeing somebody take full responsibility. If someone isn't taking responsibility or isn't willing to take responsibility, they're not eligible for a diversion. So in a lot of cases, it took time for that person to meet up with an attorney, for the attorney to talk to the prosecutor to say, I think this person is willing to accept responsibility. Would you offer deferred prosecution? That added time to how long somebody had an open case, how long they were within the process. And that adds to the time that they're on CCAP. this review now allows the prosecutor in real time if they're decided to charge to also know there are notes in the file that this person might be eligible for this diversion that means they can send that offer out much sooner they can be looking to get the information needed potentially or sign that person up for uh an assessment with a deferred prosecution counselor and for us it also is allowing us to try and get cases to the community court as soon as possible now we're looking not to have one big pool. We're looking to have separate pots. Community Restorative Court is basically a pre-charge situation, if at all possible. We have sent post-charge cases to Community Restorative Court. We did that with protests with George Floyd. We did post-charge because we didn't want to send someone pre-charge and then find out they were in another building further up the street and have that then come in and kick them out. So we waited until we had most cases charged so we could have the full picture, and then, where appropriate, sent them to community restorative court, deferred prosecution, et cetera. And now we have community court, which is going to be looking, hopefully, at more justice-involved people with a longer history that may not be appropriate for CRC or deferred prosecution, but we're still trying to give them an option with community court. All right, next slide. This gives you just the breakdown of sort of what we have in deferred prosecution. We currently have a director, Melvin Jewett, who is here. We have nine deferred prosecution case managers, one clerk four because they historically were accepting fees. We no longer accept fees for deferred prosecution. Best practice is not to necessarily have people in the system have to try and pay for the system as well, which is why we got rid of those fees a number of years ago. We have a clerk three position that is currently frozen. And we have right now one clerk three position as an LTE. You can see the breakdown in the budget, 1.5 million in general for the GPR position. And we do have a TAD grant that comes in that pays for part of our opiate counselor and helps pay for our involvement with Population Health, UW Population Health that does the research around the opiate program. We do have... some studies on the opiate program and its impact on recidivism it's actually done very well for those people that successfully get through it and we have through population health been able to track that over the years numbers in that program have um gone way down i don't necessarily know that we know exactly why our numbers in drug court are very low um Some of it may be interactions with Mari, getting people to counseling before they come into the system. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But I don't think drug use at this point is actually down in the community. So we will still be looking to try and address numbers as always. We used to run in that program when it first started between 35 and 45 open cases within that program at any given time, which was why at one point we actually got a grant to bring on a second substance abuse counselor for that. And then our numbers started to dwindle. Next slide. So IT is huge. We have an RMS system that is for every state office of the prosecutors. There are 71 elected prosecutors statewide. There's not 72 because one office covers two counties due to population. But Protect is our RMS system. We currently get about 80% of the cases that come in now have digital evidence, whether that be body cams for some of the smaller agencies, squad cams, closed circuit TV, cell phone, video, you name it. Those things are coming in. There's a list on the bottom of this slide about what that digital media is. But having to bring that in, having to store it, having to get it out for discovery, having to then break it up for trial exhibits has been something that our three IT people, two IT specialists and then a management position, have been trying to handle has been almost unmanageable. I think that unit should probably be at least double that size. They also live in a dual world because we're on the state system for email and protect, but we interface with the county. So luckily, county IT does help support us. We are currently implementing a digital evidence system. Again, we have 11... we had 12 but since we had a snafu within our budget two seasons ago we were thinking we were purchasing a digital evidence system it ended up making much more sense to get services from a provider. So now that is an operating expense versus a capital expense. So we had to cough up a position to try and cover that first year. And that provider did not satisfy. So we had to get rid of that contract. Luckily, it was on a year-to-year basis. We were able to get rid of that and get onto Axon, which is evidence.com, which is... working well, and we are currently uploading probably 300 plus cases a day into the system. Hopefully, once we get those up, we will then be able to move that digital media out and also track it when defense is able to look at it and make sure that it's secure so it's not tampered with before it gets to trial, that sort of thing. So they're training, they're setting up systems for law enforcement, our office, and then hopefully defense has just been huge, but that's been the biggest weight that they have. Our system, PROTECT, was not made in a sense to mine data, but we've been trying and it's been getting better, but it's still not where we can produce data for you and for others as we would like. that often. It's just much more complicated than just asking it a question. Since there are directives from the state and from the county regarding AI, we're still also navigating that because there are going to be some situations where AI is probably going to be very beneficial for managing digital evidence. Next slide. This is just highlighting an issue that came up last year. The employee groups in deferred prosecution were able to get an SW21 promotional opportunity. The problem is we have SW20s in two units, in victim witness, where those positions are also reimbursed. They are not able to get that promotional opportunity, which would be reimbursed for those at least 12 positions. If they were eligible we're just highlighting that we think with the budget cuts. We are target amount will be. Basically 3 positions within the DA's office. Those 3 positions will outstretch our target amount so there should be funding to implement this promotional opportunity office wide so we do not have a disparity between units. all right next slide um this is just showing And noting that we do create revenue. It is through fees through our forfeitures. Law enforcement agencies that do not have a municipal court send us their forfeitures, which would be speeding tickets or other tickets that are non-criminal. Sorry for the acronyms, but WPS would be Wisconsin State Patrol. SCPD would be Capitol Police. DCSO would be our Dane County Sheriff's Office. UWPD should be explanatory. It's the UW Police Department and the DNR, Department of Natural Resources. They do not have municipal courts, so we handle all their forfeitures. All of that revenue that would come through those tickets would go into the clerk's budget. I do not track that, but the last time we did figure out how much that was, it was roughly about, on average, $750,000. I'm sure they're using it very wisely, but it just goes to show that we don't necessarily have revenue coming in That we get credit for it goes in a different place next slide So our open house I would say come by our floor, but it is pretty much gutted I'm not saying don't check it out, but we aren't there. The best thing for you to do to see us in action would be to come to court and sit in on a trial. I think that's the time when you're going to see a prosecutor, you're going to see paralegals, you're going to see victim witness, you'll see law enforcement, you'll be able to see the interaction. That's, in a sense, what they do. If we know you're coming, I or someone else would be happy to come in and try and answer any questions. We probably wouldn't want to interrupt the trial team immediately, but I'm sure also that if you were present, if there was a break in a trial, the court might actually... answer questions for you judges are happy to do that on other days there are preliminary hearings which you could watch it's probably best to try and find an actual trial because then you know something is happening and it's not just going to be a waiver but that's probably the best idea to really see what is going on within the DA's office when we get to the third floor we would be happy to give you a tour the fourth floor is going to be for a period of time until the third floor is operational again. It's going to be a conglomeration of a little bit of everything. Attorneys are going to have to use some of that space, deferred prosecution, our front desk, some investigators. That will be our front-facing area. It should be done hopefully maybe in September. And then hopefully we are ahead of schedule on the third floor because demolition was able to occur or at least be started because we were able to vacate the majority of that floor as of June. All right, any questions?

Thank you so much. We'll take questions now. Supervisor Belger, I believe you have a question. So what else to start if they want? Supervisor Lewis, any questions?

Any questions online?

Not seeing any. If you guys change your mind, let me know. And Supervisor Feldron, you're up.

Thanks. Thanks for the presentation. I'm looking at the clerk of course again. With the LTE, so do you have limits? I think you had none, but then you mentioned the LTE later in your presentation. So do you have some limits?

We have very little funding for LTEs. Actual dedicated funding, I think victim witness may have $12,000 for the year. So, yeah, that doesn't go very far. I think a lot of that funding is used for an employee who comes in for possibly two hours a day every day to get out communications to victims, basically our initial letter to victims. But most units don't have a lot of funding. I think historically when we've looked at LTE funding across the board there has been an ability for departments to use LTE's and then obviously as the year goes we're going to have some some funds that may not be spent if we have a vacancy. I think the county does calculate some ability that there is going to be some savings across the board for vacancies, but that may not cover it all. And so there would be funds to be able to move over to support an LTE position. But now if we do not have allocated funds for an LTE, we aren't able to bring an LTE on. So it's just not able to fill a hole that comes up immediately.

And that's with staff positions you were talking about, when people are on leave?

Yes. So like now, paternity leave is going to be six months. So the county will give three, then the employee would use leave, and that's usually six months, and that's great. So that's something that we are happy to do, but it is hard now to cover that leave if we don't have an ability to have an LTE come in.

On the victim witness reimbursement, So you're at 50%? Is that what the legislature granted, or is it supposed to be 100%?

No, by statute, it can only go up to 90%. But in my tenure, it's never been at 90%. I think they did try and actually get it up to potentially 75%. I think the state was going to put $4 to $5 million into the pot that was going to pay for that reimbursement. That got knocked down in the budget process. So it's... during my tenure always been probably between 50 and 60%. And then they added another 42,000, which got us up to 54% thus far this year.

On the Marcy's, do you have people that are just dedicated to Marcy's law, victims now, or is that part of some of those other victim witnesses you were saying?

We don't necessarily have anyone, I would say, just dedicated. Everyone is dedicated. Because Marcy's Law didn't really change what we did in the sense of trying to service victims. What it did was add that front end, basically every referral coming in, we now have to reach out to, we have to give information to. There are benefits because we are contacting victims sooner. We are engaging them sooner. We are, I believe, if you looked over time, probably keeping them more engaged as a whole, but it wasn't funded. And the only reason we were able to keep up is when it was implemented was during COVID. And we in Dane County in the courthouse went remote for 18 months. So when Marcy's Law hit, we didn't have in-person court. We didn't have trials. So all of that back end, in the victim witness unit could be moved to the front end and we could basically put in services that got contact with victims that basically reached out on now every case versus only about 70% of the cases because that was what was being charged. We have now have systems in place to try and, and crime response is a big fill there to try and reach out for that initial intake before the case has actually come through IA and then been assigned to a victim witness specialist and sort of a prosecutor.

Do they have a say in that 30% I think you referenced about that you don't charge?

Do they have a say?

Do victims have a say? Yeah. Because of Marcy's law, do they get... To me, I look at it as like a triangle now.

They don't necessarily get a say. We would communicate with them. We would... We regularly have meetings with victims or families when we do not issue charges. Right. Because obviously that is a very... big decision and it has a great impact. But if we don't believe we can prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, we ethically cannot issue it. So we have to have some of those very tough conversations. But all victims would have that opportunity to come in and confer, to speak to us, to get that information. The difference is our outreach happens now in every referral we get. Now, crime response is obviously reaching out to some cases before there's even a referral. And on some of those cases, they're reaching out and there's never going to be a referral. Because the police may not have... been able to come to a resolution in their investigation to actually get to whoever they believe may have done the violation. So that case might not come up. There are some cases, obviously, if the person dies, the perpetrator, that case isn't coming up. So crime response would be interacting with those victims as well. But there's never going to be a prosecution.

victim services at that point right. Well, it would never get to victim witness, but it would it would get to crime response and just one more is to on body cams after the shooting and I'm sure if we have a pilot program going I think right. You would be responsible, your office, for all that new footage, all right, from the sheriff's office, or would you? Obviously, that would be worked out.

For any law enforcement agency, if they have body cameras or squad cameras, that would be digital evidence. That would be sent to us. They would have to store it. Their storage is typically based on whether or not a case is issued. I think most of their policies are probably right now on average 120 days to be flagged and then moved into permanent storage if we are issuing. I think the UW is moving to 90 days just because they have a volume issue with the amount of digital evidence they are going to have. Madison and the sheriff went through, I believe, pilot programs with body camera footage and body cameras. We've always said, obviously, I'm not going to turn down evidence. But there are different issues that, frankly, came up with the decision makers as to when and if they should purchase body cameras. I think body cameras are likely to be coming for those two agencies. Those two agencies generate about 70% of our business. So that will be a serious uptick in the number of digital media. You know, if every officer that responds has a body camera, potentially has squad video, just managing that, connecting that to a case and then making sure that we get that out to defense is going to be big. But then to basically take that and condense it into trial exhibits is also going to be something that we hope that this new system is going to actually help us with a great deal.

Can you just send that out to the defense then, Roa? I was just thinking when you said that, it just kind of popped in.

We need to make sure that they get the actual video. We also need to make sure that they don't tamper with the video. We then obviously will create a file exhibit for the court. They get to see it. And yeah, we'd have to make sure that there are safeguards in place that frankly, ensure that what we are putting forward to the court hasn't been unduly compressed that causes, you know, either artifacts or, in a sense, misinformation. So, yeah, the system is going to have to be robust and it's going to cost us. But I think it's going to pay off in the long run because we will have better ability just to manage the vast amounts of digital evidence that are coming in now.

That's what I was asking because I missed staff time and what we're looking at.

Another aspect with that system, we will potentially, we wouldn't do it in every situation, but we would potentially be able to then set that system up to receive video from the community. I think 911 is going to have that capability as well soon, and hopefully they will be able to educate all of you and the community on that. But I think that was one thing we learned from communications with Minnesota regarding what they were experiencing with federal agents up there. They were able to capture a lot of that. video and digital evidence from their community because of their digital evidence system we would have that capability once we are up and running potentially we would not just leave an open gate but we we would be able to to request some some video from the community if if need be right thanks thank you supervisor other questions from other committee members okay um i have a couple um

Can you tell us what are the major legal and constitutional requirements are that the office must provide related to Mercy's Law? I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not really... What are the major things that law requires? Well...

It's clear in, obviously, Chapter 950 and Marcy's Law, now embedded in our Constitution, that we're supposed to basically treat victims with dignity and respect. We're supposed to basically make sure that they have privacy. We're supposed to educate them or inform them of their rights. We're supposed to help them exercise those rights where possible. And frankly, in situations where those rights are violated, we're supposed to be able to give them the information they need to report those violations. We have had violations. We went for a long time without any. But there are going to be times where, you know, one violation we were informed of, we had no control over. So an offender was on GPS, that offender was taken off GPS, or there was a violation with GPS, I can't recall specifically which one, that victim did not get immediate notification. We do not control the GPS monitoring. We do not control information that alerts us to either the violation or tampering, yet we were told that we, in a sense, violated because we did not have an ability to inform that victim of the violation. We since have learned that pretrial services will have the ability potentially to do that. I think it is a $20,000 fix into their contract system with their GPS provider that would allow victims to get notification immediately from the provider if they set up those notifications within the system. We are advocating for that in the budget so that hopefully we would not get a violation, especially in a situation that we do not control. But for the most part, it is what we typically do. Work with them to educate them about their rights, accompany them to court, work to ensure that their privacy is paramount, and a lot of it is notification. So if a case, a high-profile case is typically where this would happen, comes into the office and it is completed, there may be news media, there may be Discovery Channel wants to do a story. They're going to do a story. We find out about it. We will alert that victim. We will alert the victim to post-conviction motions that may be coming from an offender. We just try to make sure that they know about every aspect of the system that is happening that's going to impact them. They do have a right to speak at every court appearance where their rights could be impacted. Safety is one of those. So bail hearings, your initial appearance. If bail is going to be taken up by the court. whatever modifications that the person, the defendant is asking for, the victim needs to know and hopefully have an ability to speak to the court if they want to. If they don't get notice of the court hearing, they obviously don't have an ability to inform the court and their safety could be impacted. The impetus behind Marcy's law was that an offender was released, that offender So release happened without the victim's knowledge. That offender then went and killed the victim. Very sad. I'm not saying that we could have technically prevented that, but had the victim been able to speak to the court, maybe the court does not release the offender. Maybe other things are put in place to help that victim safety plan or at least know that they need to potentially be more aware of their surroundings. But that's sort of the impetus. It's outlined. We can get you that statute. But it's something that we've also been doing for years through Chapter 950 prior to the push to implement Marcy's Law and incorporate it into the Constitution.

It's helpful. Thank you. So your office reaches out to, sends letters through the Victim Witness Program and offers further services, et cetera. Do you have a rough idea of how often victims take advantage of those further services?

Well, I think when I noted that we had 12,000 victims served, those are the cases where we obviously have reached out, but those are also the cases where we've actually engaged with victims. It's not just letters. Crime response actually, we send out letters, but crime response actually has to try and email, text, call victims. do whatever we can because that window, especially if someone's in custody for us, it used to be about four days before an initial appearance. It's now 24 or 48 hours. If someone is arrested before eight o'clock, let's say on Monday, they're going to be a must go for Tuesday. So we don't have an ability for the mail to actually get to somebody. So that's why we do repeatedly reach out to law enforcement and hope that they are getting the best contact information, whether that be an email, whether that be a cell phone. Um, so that we can try and ensure that we have actually done our due diligence to actually get a victim their notification and potentially their ability to speak at the court hearing that would impact their safety and their rights.

So 12,000 and change victims served in 2025, then how many cases were there then? How many cases in 2025?

You know, I can get you the specific number of cases that we have. Let me see. I think we did have some of that information. And those victims, that wouldn't just be 12,000 times. You're going to have multiple contacts with victims throughout the duration of a case. A case lasts... anywhere from nine months to a year if it's going to go to trial. It can settle anytime, obviously, if the offender wishes to settle that. That is the one thing I don't think that I have in... here would be the actual case counts and filings that we have. I can actually supplement that for you. We actually have seen an uptick in the last couple of years where we actually have more felony filings than misdemeanor filings. We used to have a lot more misdemeanor in traffic. Some of those filings have gone down just because we consolidated misdemeanors in traffic out of the same incident. We used to run a traffic file and a misdemeanor file even out of the same incident, but that was just more work overall. So some of those have been consolidated. A number of lower level violations are also sent back to agencies for them to handle in their municipal courts as tickets, or we are making them tickets obviously for those agencies that do not have municipal courts.

The nine contracted positions for after-hours and mental health, are those contracted through another organization or are they hired directly by the county?

I think our contracts are through the county. They're funded through the county for professionals within the community.

So they're county employees or they're organizations that are providing those services?

No, it's not organizations. It is specific individuals for those nine individuals, and they will be after-hours on call. I don't know the number of days they may be on call or what their rotation would be, but those nine individuals allow us to be 24-7.

Okay, and then I just had one other... One other question. You talked about the different programs like community court and DVP. What matrix do you use to determine who's eligible for what?

Well, we don't necessarily have a matrix. I wouldn't say that there is X number of boxes you can tick. We do look at criminal histories. We do look at the severity. We do look at the type of case. And right now the biggest thing at least for deferred prosecution for the most part in community court is whether or not there's going to be a charge. There are a number of cases obviously that we do not charge and I do not think it's appropriate to identify somebody for diversion and then bring the person into the system when we wouldn't have charged to begin with. So these things are happening sort of parallel and at the same time, but we don't want the fact that someone might be a good candidate for a diversion program to mean that that person now has to be pulled into the system if we weren't going to charge already. So that question has to sort of wait. We look and say, this person likely could be eligible for this diversion. Prosecutor, what is your decision? If your decision is we are not charging for whatever reason, likely we don't feel we can prove it. Sometimes the violation is such that it's not. If prosecutors don't have time, they can look at a case and say, I have the elements to prove. If you have a newer prosecutor that has less time, they're probably going to say, I can prove this case. I have my elements, charge it, move it. More experienced prosecutor is likely to look at it, say, can I approve it, and then get to the next question of, should I charge it? This, Milwaukee got, I think, $750,000 to study their misdemeanor violations for possession of THC and, I think, cocaine and then drug paraphernalia. What they found is their younger prosecutors were prosecuting every joint. every pipe, every small amount of marijuana and or cocaine. At first you might say, well, they're addressing the violation, they can prove the case, those are all misdemeanors. The problem is second subsequent for possession of THC, no matter how little, the second subsequent's a felony. So if that person was charged with a joint, they get charged or caught again with another joint, now they're looking at a felony possession. versus a misdemeanor or a ticket. That doesn't necessarily happen here because we sort of have looked and said, personal use, we are not going to criminalize right now. And that means we are not charging if you have a quantity that's sort of under what we typically would think would associate a person with delivery. So I sort of say that because I think a lot of people think when you have more prosecutors, more people go to prison. And I think when you have more prosecutors, you give prosecutors more time to keep the humanity within the system, to speak with victims, to understand what they need to feel safe, to understand what they need to repair the harm, and also to look at a case and say, all right, this person was stupid. They're standing on the street corner smoking marijuana. It's still not legal, but if we pulled that person into the system, what are we going to do with that person? And that's really the question. Is that person hurting somebody? Is that person's violation a problem? Now, the flip side of that is a lot of the violent robberies and or homicides we do see do come in and around trafficking of marijuana because the amount of money associated with the dealing of marijuana is very high. Large amounts, large amounts of money, guns and violence, that does occur. Does it equate to us charging every person for a joint and or a pipe? I think the community sort of said, We don't think you should charge people for personal use, and that's sort of where we are at this point.

Thank you. I have one question for you. When you talked about only having maybe half the number of prosecutors we really need based on our population, what is the retention like and the amount of experience our prosecutors have?

Well, that is a really good question. So when I started in the office back in 98, you almost couldn't get into the DA's office. Like, there were not vacancies. I lucked out. A prosecutor left to go to DOJ to prosecute sex predator cases, which created an opening, which I was able to then come in right out of law school. You couldn't get through the traffic and misdemeanor unit because the felony unit prosecutors were never leaving. When I became DA, well, actually when we moved into the courthouse in 2006 is when people started retiring, but they were retiring with 35 plus years of experience. We were then, when I came in, losing people with 30 plus years of experience and gaining possibly three to five years. It just, that's how it was. People... were having trouble moving through the pay range now that they were state employees. That did impact retention, but we had had such experience, most of those people were already at the top of the pay range. So they did have an ability to stay and they were making a living wage. Over the years, when you weren't moving through the pay range and we were retiring large amounts of experience, we were still able to gain people likely through our internships for summer. They love what they do. They love... representing the state and helping to keep our community safe. The volume of what they're having to deal with for new prosecutors. It was just this is how it is for older more seasoned prosecutors that did come in. We had some come in to our vacancies. I think we had one person who stayed literally a week. Literally a seasoned prosecutor. He came here. He said, this is no, I cannot practice this way. He turned around and left. We had another state for two weeks. But for the most part, if we can get people in, they love the job. It is hard to have a work like balance. And many of our young prosecutors are young and they are looking to start a family and or. pay off student loans, et cetera. So it is difficult to stay, especially when they can jump to a different state agency and probably get a $20,000 to $30,000 raise and have less work than we have. Because we basically, whatever comes in, we have to keep. We aren't like the Public Defender's Office that have funds to push to the private bar. So whatever comes in, if we're going to charge it, we have to handle it. So long story short, Up until just recently, last five or six years, I did have three individuals who had left come back. All those individuals had been prior deputies in our office. Some came back from other state agencies, so they actually had a higher rate of pay, and when they transferred back, they could keep that rate of pay. And one went private, and then we were able to, in a situation with the state, get a hiring above the minimum, a HAM, and we could bring that person back at a rate that they could afford to come in and continue to work, which was a huge boost to us, allowed us, other than the management staff we currently had, have other resources for brand-new prosecutors to be able to bounce things off of, to learn from, and to... to just have more experience to help train them and teach them. So it's a double-edged sword, but I think people love the job. I think it can grind them into the ground. But we're always trying to get more bodies and better conditions for our state employees as well. And the county has been beneficial by increasing our support through more paralegals, more assistant. We reclassed our clerk fours, I think threes and fours to ALAs. So that helped the county staff. And that's really one of the areas that has really helped us because that experience with our county staff is able to allow the attorneys and new attorneys not to make basic mistakes and to be able to learn the system better.

Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you so much for coming here this evening. Appreciate your presentation and answering all our questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey. Just a note on future meetings. Our next regular business meeting is September 22nd. And then in October, as promised, we still have a meeting every Tuesday. There will be budget meetings and regular business on October 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, and then November 10th, regular business. If there's anything special people want to see on the agenda, we have one more presentation left, which is Sheriff's Department. But otherwise, we've gotten all of our department orientations in. And if there are other topics that people want to see here, certainly let me know and we'll talk about it. Talk about figuring that out. So any questions about our future meeting schedule? All right. Public comment on items not on the agenda? We do not have any. Such other business as allowed by law? There is none. I would entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion.

All right. Thank you so much. Have a good night, everybody.