Joint Budget Committee [Mar 13, 2026 - Upon Adjournment]

. Thank you. We are figure setting on the judicial department, starting with Ms. Bickle.

Was this what we just got emailed as well?

Okay. Yeah. There is another one.

Vice Chair Bridges.

Yes.

So I think given that they should be able to get going on the project, if they determine with the advisory vendor that they need to go out for a larger number, maybe you'll see something in June as a, you know, 1331, but I just don't think there's enough information at this point for you to add 3.2 million in cash funds when you don't even know what projects you're going to be doing.

Rep Taggart.

Rep. Tiger, that amount is two things. One is their discovery process, which they spent about a year on. And it determined that they had like 30 different systems that needed to be dealt with. And you do have 23 judicial districts. So there was a lot of figuring that out. And then right now it's about a 1.4 million cost with this advisory vendor who's going to help them figure out what are they going to target first, how to formulate the RFPs so that they get the, you know, products that they want. So that's what it's going for. The whole project is supposed to cost about 33 million. I don't know exactly. And it could be, my guess is, it will end up getting spread out over even more time.

Think of Madam Chair. I move staff rec IT cap 1.

You know, I did want to, as part of this, though, also just point out to you on pages, on page 15, I've given you quite a bit of write-up, but it is really important to note that the source for this is cash funds, but it is going to have real TABOR impacts. I mean, we are looking at, over a couple of years, increases in their cash revenue of $12.4 million. So that's significant and notable, and I do feel like this is worth it. I think their systems really are so archaic that they are not answering the need. And, you know, I think there was this, particularly in probation, there was this look recently about trying to get more information about, like, the impact of probation services. And among the findings were data could not be queried at the individual level And probation staff are currently using nine or ten different systems to track different pieces of client data and the result is poor quality data, duplicate data entry, and limited ability to use the data that exists. And the department's noted, I mean, some of this code goes back to codes invented in the 1950s. I mean, Fortran, COBOL, it's really, really old stuff. Do we see that? Do we see that?

Thanks.

Anyway, so that's just a note. I want you to think of it, be aware of this. This plane's a lot. Punk. All right, I'm moving to page 17, and I have been told that you, if, I'm going to try and move as expeditiously as possible, so slow me down if there's something you want to talk more about.

Sorry?

See, I'm moving too fast. 16, part of the request was for the IT cash fund uncommitted reserve waiver request. So if you remember, there's a limit of 16.5% on uncommitted reserves. This is again for this IT capital cash fund. They're trying to build up amounts in that cash fund so that they can spend it for this IT capital project. You can see on page 17, I gave you a replacement page 17 in front of you because I had several different versions of things that were submitted to me. But the bottom line here is that I really do think that they probably need that extended through 28-29 at least when the project's done. SO THE PLACEMENT PAGE SHOWS IT GETTING SPENT DOWN, BUT THIS COULD TAKE EVEN LONGER. THE RECOMMENDATION SAYS GIVEN THIS, THE STAFF RECOMMENDS EXTENDING THE I'M WAITING WITH BATED RECK.

Staff recommends these three tips to deal with stubborn belly fat. I'm sorry. There were many typos in this packet. I was working quick. I would say the version that's online has corrected at least some of those minor errors.

The recommendation, and it is in the first sentence, I'd recommend that you extend it until 28-29.

Thank you, Madam. I move the staff's enticing recommendation on judicial IT cash fund uncommitted reserves waiver request.

This is actually not really a request. It was a request. It was just saying, please do continue to annualize the action you took last year, which was the bill to add new judges. There should be 10 new judges and staff that will be coming online in 26, 27. But as part of this the word discussions I think the judicial branch my understanding is has some interest in the JBC possibly playing a larger role in the judge bill process And so one thing you could think about is talking with leadership about whether you want to change the current rule joint rule that says that judges' bills will be introduced on the first day of session, because it makes it hard for you to, for that to interact very well with the budget. So you could either just remove that or work with leadership to remove it, or you could think about an alternative deadline that was, like, closer to the long bill deadline. It must be done in the first 60 days. It just might make it a little easier for that, those figuring out how you want to proceed on judge bills.

Maybe it's just to give us ample time to consider it. My understanding is that this has, you know, been around, that requirement has been around for a long time, and it was frankly probably existed when members were here for a lot longer, and the Judiciary Committee wanted to play a big role in figuring out the judge bill components. But it is just, it's a very old requirement, and I don't, it's not clear to me from talking with the department that it has a particularly useful function now.

Yeah, there was something like that. I don't know.

This is solely about the judge bills are required to be introduced the first day of session. But they have to be done within the first 60 days.

We have that requirement too because, like we said, we suspended it last year because it was getting down to the wire. I'm sorry if I missed that one as well. Anyway, this was just like do you want, but are you interested in adjusting this? Because they had some interest in your thinking about that. There's also, you know, the other thing kind of obviously is that you really want to, regardless, the judicial branch should understand, it should definitely let you know about any judges' bills it wants in its November 1st request, right? That's either way you want to know about it earlier. I do think that did happen this last time around, but there's sort of, there's no formal requirement, and I don't think there necessarily needs to be, but you just should reiterate that. You need to know that.

Sure.

It's just rules, right?

But that's not why I raised my hand. I would like for us to consider that we would pause this. I'm not saying that we would have to run a bill and take back what was happening last year, but in appropriations in the Senate, we had this discussion, and that's why it also said subject to available appropriations, the bill increases. So I took that to mean that we, you know, if we approve the judges, we could still pause or push it out a year if we wanted to. And so I would suggest that we really think and consider that we pause this, because we don't have the money. And we're cutting everywhere else, and we can't afford to keep letting departments or branches have increases. I mean, we just can't. Everybody has to take a cut, and I don't see any place where we're getting cuts here. And this is going to increase substantially. So I know the law is that once it's passed, then there's a two-thirds thing. I'm not saying repeal the law or change the law. It passed. It happened. But now subject to available appropriations, I think we can push it out a year or even, you know, three-fourths of a year, something of that nature, and have it start at the very end of the next year so that we have some savings here. And that's my suggestion. Any takers?

Legal services, and I would say, Senator Korkmeyer, my initial read of it as well was, like it says, subject to available appropriations. So you can just reduce the appropriation. Legal services has been very clear that no, they do not feel that you can just not appropriate. They feel that you actually must run a bill and get two-thirds passed in both houses in order to change those provisions.

So I think we can do that. We're still appropriating in 26-27. We're not saying they're going to get less judges. We're not repealing any of that. We are just saying the appropriations doesn't start until a certain time in 26-27. I believe that we can do that.

And they haven't even filled all their other staff. Ms. Bickle. I do believe that the law that's been passed does say July 1st for the new judges. I am more than happy to engage with legal services around this again, but they were fairly clear that they didn't see this as an option. Maybe there's some possibility in terms of the judge's staffs, you know, but I think minimally the judges themselves, legal services thinks you would actually need to run a bill.

Well, from my perspective, this is already law, but they made it there R1, understanding the budget situation that we are in to say this is still our top priority. And Ms. Bickle will see how the rest of these items go is not recommending that we approve. There are two, and there are other requests for staff in here that are also not recommended by our staff. So I think that from the, and, you know, we heard in the hearing our Chief Justice came and reiterated that this item is their top priority. and I think we had an understanding of our budget situation when we passed it, which is why it was cut so significantly in the Senate to begin with, to give them the lesser request that they ultimately got. So I am in favor of doing nothing and allowing this to go forward. I don't know where everybody else is at. If you want to take a vote on defunding it, Rep Brown? Thank you, Madam Chair. I was convinced in the hearings and in the data that the department presented about sort of the caseload, if you will, of the courts, about how complex these cases are getting, how much time it's taking, and without sufficient resources, that means people are waiting longer and longer perhaps in jail for the adjudication of their cases And so I think for me this is something that we sort of have to do And, you know, I'm not convinced that reversing this policy would be in the best interests of Colorado at this point. Yeah, I mean, it is a, I was flipping a minute ago, but, and I don't know where they're going to sit, but it is a core function of government, and we can't starve one branch and tell them they can't do their job. And so, I just, I don't think that we should be revisiting that. I just want to say first of all, I'm not saying to revisit the legislation or the policy or the fact that there were this number of judges that were argued over pretty strenuously and we finally, I don't know that I ever actually agreed, but finally got to something different. That's fine. What I'm saying is to, it says in there, and we had this discussion in appropriations, we talked about availability of appropriations for year two. And we talked about whether or not if it was available, did we have to do year two? I'm not saying that they wouldn't get their new judges. I'm just saying maybe we cut it either at quarter time or half time. They could still get their judges. They could still get all of the other people, even though they haven't even filled all their other staff positions, but they could still get all their people still in 26, 27. I'm not saying going back on any of that. It's just when does the appropriations become available and how does that help us in this budget setting?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think great idea. Maybe we could go the other way because we're used to truing up on things. So maybe we could appropriate for half a year and then true up and see where they're at instead of having to essentially have what would be like almost like a negative supplemental. We would just true up. Maybe we could do it that way.

Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Bickle, I appreciate what you're saying. I just think it is not a good practice to receive general fund appropriations and then revert them to cash. And I understand we've got to figure out where we are today, but I think we need to stop that practice because that eliminates transparency for us when that starts to happen because we just see it then as a cash fund. And we all know that some cash funds start by general funds, But I just don think that a good practice and whether it needs legislation or something but going forward did that practice end

VICE CHAIR BRIDGES. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. I MOVE STAFF RECOMMENDATION ON R1 JUDICIAL OFFICERS. R2. R2. TRIAL AND APPELLATE COURT PROGRAMS. ARE THERE ANY OBJECTIONS? THAT PASSES ON A VOTE OF 6 TO 0.

This was a request from the department. So now this is page 22. And the department, you had a discussion. I did a briefing for you. You had a discussion with the department about kind of what to do generally about the cash fund situation in the department. The department has a ton of different cash funds. So just moving to the discussion on page 23, you know, I do think cash funds are really important in sort of stabilizing judicial expenses and when you've got downturns. It's a lot of money. There's a couple hundred million in cash fund appropriations. Those funds come from many different sources. There are things that look like user fees that are like that are like, you know, you're filing for divorce, you have to pay a user fee. There's other things that look like punitive fines on offenders. There's other components that are charges to offenders, but they're really designed to provide services for offenders. You've, like, many different types of things here. And they are subject to TABOR, so they drive out general funds. So for some things, if it seems like bad policy, well, you're not actually gaining anything from it. You sort of asked the department about, do you want to, where do you want to go from here? Because I'm not recommending there the conversation that you had last year, which was, let's just let them choose which funds to increase and do it by no more than the increase in population and inflation. I think you should be making deliberate decisions in this area. And the question is, if you're going to do that, like, how are you going to choose which fees you would address? So it seems to me a process is needed. That process could involve various kinds of advocates on different sides. I think maybe you need an advisory board. Exactly what that should look like right now, I don't know. And it's going to, the department said they were willing to work with you, but didn't, in the hearing at least, give you a lot of detail on exactly what they thought that should look like So there an argument that a bill would be a good idea I mean if you would like to go that way I would be willing to help you with it You could put this off and work on it more next year. I don't think it's an immediate problem, but it is a sort of structural problem that is, I think, worth thinking about and, you know, engaging in.

I think fine if they want to, if there's some work group, but I also agree that I don't think we should just turn this over to the judicial branch and that probably a lot more information is needed before somebody's going to consider adjustments.

I can talk with them, we can do an RFI if you would like, to sort of flesh out some ideas that they might have about how to go forward. That would, like, that, or I can just try and work with them more in the interim and see if I can come back to you with something that is more fleshed out that you could consider, be it for a bill or some kind of a process for how to move this forward.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So do we just deny their request? Is that what we should do here?

Yeah, I think that that works fine.

Yes, I would be happy to do that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move staff rec then, R14. Are there any objections?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move staff rec R17.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move staff initiated abuse discrepancy between. No. Oh, did I? R19. Page 25. Pass through request. Pass through request. It's at the bottom of the page. It turned way too far. All right. Thank you. I move R19 pass through request.

The record staffer. Staffer.

So we talked, and I have had outreach from some of the independent agencies, and they really don't want to do this. And I think it's a separation of powers issue, And I also think it's that they feel like they're already doing a good job of communicating, but that the executive branch isn't necessarily using the numbers that they give them. And I don think that they thought that the timelines were workable for them given when they get access to whatever information it is they need And so I be hard to put my name on a bill that would do something that they have multiple lines of opposition to.

Some of the independent agencies.

They don't want to have to coordinate with the governor's office over their budget requests.

I mean, what this would do is it would say you at least need to coordinate about your base budget So the governor's office knows what your base budget is, and also so you know exactly what the governor's office is asking for for common policies that would apply to you. And I know that agencies say, yes, we have good communication, but obviously we're, even though I, there's no bad will here at all. It's just somehow this communication has not been working that well. I know that, and there's issues about the format. And I will say the initial draft I distributed said, you know, you should submit something based on kind of deadlines and formats provided by the governor's office. At this point, I'm totally backing off that. My suggestion is that you can have the format negotiated between the governor's office and the agencies. and either you have deadlines negotiated between the governor's office and the agencies or you just put in statute that they're going to provide base budget information by early September. So then the governor's office has no control over that. And you're just going to take steps to try and ensure a better flow of information between all the parties so you have less discrepancy between what's coming to you from different sources. And I'm totally open to any other suggestions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Craig Harper, JBC staff. The one thing that I would note kind of in response to the independence concern is, as Ms. Bickle has reiterated, it wouldn't be any showing to the hand of what they were going to request. I think the source of frustration this year was we've had particularly big disconnects every year since I've been director. I don't know about before that between the governor's assumption and the judicial request. Prior to this year, I think it was really decision item based, which would go to the independence concern that if what's driving that big disconnect is the governor is assuming a 5% increase. but the agencies are asking for what would amount to a 10% increase through decision items. I think that's the separation of powers issue. The reason that this one was particularly frustrating is that the big change was entirely publicly available information. In fact it was the fiscal note for the judge bill that the level of information that that the piece that was missed is the governor office didn annualize the judges bill So we not asked I don think the request is to ask for preliminary sharing of anything that at the truly at the discretion of the agency Now, granted, I suppose judicial could have come in and said, please don't annualize the judges bill. Obviously, they went the opposite way and put an annualization as R1 to your previous discussion, so that is not where they came out. But the issue that Ms. Bickle is pointing to is really the information is already public. If it was legislation, then it's the fiscal note. That's how we annualize bills, and because that's what you all are basing your decisions on. if it's a decision item, then it would be the annualization in the figure setting packet or wherever it's reflected. So it should be publicly available. The frustration this year was really based on this information. Again, in prior years, it's been a different animal that I don't think we could have addressed without judicial telling the governor's office, hey, we're actually requesting double what you're expecting. And that's not what Ms. Pickle is proposing. Senator Mobley. So I understand that, and I guess if it's publicly available, can we run a bill that just says the executive branch has to do a better job of figuring out what's out there and what they should be putting in the request? Because that's where the thing fell down. And so if that's the problem, then let's fix that problem. I feel like we just stirred up a little bit of a hornet's nest on this other with this bill idea that feels like if it's already all out there, then why would we need to do it? Except for that somehow the governor's office doesn't seem to be able to get it into their budget.

I mean, I would just say my impression is that there's, while everybody says they work well together, there's clearly been some miscommunication in both directions and coming from different people. I would also note that in terms of the scale of the requests coming from the other agencies, if you look on page 31, it already says in law that all these separate entities are supposed to use the state agency budget submissions as guidelines for the submission of their budget to the JBC. So there is something in law already that they should be trying to sort of align to some extent with what's happening in the other agencies. It's not like there's no comment about that. In any case, it's entirely up to you if you want to do this, but I really was trying to begin, make some inroads on a problem that seems frustrating to the committee as well as to staff.

So have we ever done it where the judicial branch comes in the same time the governor comes in and presents their budget request to us?

Ms. Bickle.

The challenge for us, and maybe I wasn't following, is that what happens is, well, I don't know. Because as Ms. Bickle said, everyone says they get along, but clearly there is a disconnect here. Because what ends up happening is the governor presents a budget, and it doesn't recognize costs that should be part of that calculation, which means that it's on us to try and rectify a difference that, in my opinion, should be built in from the start. And it just makes everything harder. So I am open to this, but it doesn't sound like we have unanimity here about doing that.

Okay. Well, Rep Taggart.

I think their objections were multifaceted, and I don't want to speak for them. I just,

REASONABLE. AND WE'VE HAD THESE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT HOW IT SHOULD BE KNOWABLE AT THE POINT IN TIME THAT THEY HAVE TO MAKE THIS SUBMISSION. YES, AND MADAM CHAIR, I WOULD JUST NOTE, I MEAN, THERE'S SOME VERY STRANGE THINGS THAT HAPPEN WHERE THE AGENCIES FEEL THAT THEY HAVE SUBMITTED ALL OF THE INFORMATION AND THEN IT'S STILL NOT CLEAR TO ME IF THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE isn't able to access it because it's in a separate piece of the system that they're not supposed to access or they've chosen not to access it. There's sort of repeated things like that, and that's why even though it seems like this should not be that challenging, it has been. So if you're willing to go to draft, we'll see if there's some version of this that people can live with because this seems to me very commonsensical to just make sure that everybody is clear on what the base is by a date certain, and that there's communication. Okay. Vice Chair Bridges.

That passes on a vote of 5-0 with Brown excused. Okay. So now we're moving to page 31, which is annualization correction to a request from last year, which was the probation officers. You provided an increase. It was described as addressing the Aurora domestic violence changes in the Aurora municipal courts, that they were no longer going to prosecute domestic violence offenses and that that was going to shift costs to you and to the state. It was hard to say that that was inappropriate because almost no other judicial districts were doing that, prosecuting domestic violence in their local courts. So you added staff, but I went back and I checked, carefully checked all the records, and I think the department had misunderstood what your action was, or at least the second year impact of your decision. So I'm recommending correcting that. You added, as I understood it, 8.8 FTE who were kind of staggered over the course of the year. AND SO THAT DOES NEED TO BE ANNUALIZED, BUT YOUR ACTION LAST YEAR DID NOT INCLUDE ADDING ADDITIONAL STAFF IN 26-27. SO I NOT INCLUDED THAT IN THE FIGURES HERE I DID ALSO WANT TO NOTE BECAUSE IT WAS A LITTLE TROUBLING THAT ALTHOUGH THE REQUEST WAS ABOUT AURORA DOMESTIC VIOLENCE I did also want to note because it was a little troubling that although the request was about Aurora domestic violence in the end because they felt so short across the system probation actually just put those additional staff through its model and so those staff were actually distributed throughout the state I just needed to point that out to you since that was not the rationale presented for your action. You didn't even put into Aurora.

Yes. Senator Kirkhweir.

Ms. Bickle. So, Senator Krookmeyer, in the end, what they got was 8.8 FTE. They thought they were getting more, but in fact, what you gave them was 8.8 FTE based on staff added in 2526. But yes, it is true. They ended up using those, putting them through their probation model, and therefore they did put staff in some other districts as well. Senator Kirkmeyer.

Ms. Bickle. I would have to look. One or two. One or two? I mean, I do not know exactly, and I will have to ask them, so I don't know. So off the top of my head, I did know.

So your recommendation is to add an additional 5.6, or am I missing something, or to reduce down to 5.6? My recommendation is the second year impact of what you did last year, right? They had expected you would be adding more staff this year, and I said, no, that wasn't what your action was. but they have presumably hired these staff already in 2526. There's 8.8 FTE that were added in 42526, so this is the second year impact, and my figures are a correction to their number. So it is more money, but it is quite a bit less than they had requested.

I don't know how they would handle that. I MEAN, MY ASSUMPTION IS THAT THEY HAVE IN FACT ADDED THESE NEW STAFF. AND TO BE FAIR TO THEM, I ACTUALLY THINK PROBATION IS UNDER STRESS AND THEY DO NEED ADDITIONAL STAFF BASED ON THEIR STAFFING MODELS. MS. YES, SENATOR COUTWARE.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's a correction to their annualization. What I would recommend, if you would like to, in effect, make them come back, say that your motion is no annualization for this additional staff last year, and either nothing will get added or they'll come back and have a further conversation with you about it, which I think would be really appropriate just to, I was not, I brought this to your attention because it disturbed me as well. But I can understand both sides of this, so I think it would be good if they would come in and talk to you.

Is there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5 to 0 with Brown excused. So now we are moving to page 33. So I'm proposing some work for at least one of you, if you would like, and potentially myself. If during one of the frustrations with this assignment, one of the challenges is that you, bills pass, courts respond to them, then they come in with a staffing model that says we don't have enough judges to cover to deal with the cases that have come. And so I've been asking the department, you know, since the summer sort of, are there things that we could do that would be good government and that would reduce caseload potentially? And one of the things that bubbled up pretty dramatically, I thought, was eviction law, because there's been a lot of change to eviction law lately, and apparently it is mechanically in two separate pieces of statute which create a nightmare for everybody, Plaintiffs, defendants, and judges, because everybody's having difficulty interpreting what the law actually is. And it's driving a lot of time and workload. And I had suggested to you during briefings that you might want to talk to your colleagues. Thus far, there does not appear to be anybody sponsoring a bill in this arena. I think it's a highly technical bill to put these two different pieces of statute together. AND I WONDERED IF ANY OF YOU WOULD BE WILLING TO SPONSOR A BILL ON THIS TOPIC THAT WE COULD WORK ON OVER THE SUMMER. I APPRECIATE YOU BRINGING THIS UP. I SHARED YOUR BRIEFING WITH SOME COLLEAGUES ACROSS THE STREET. I WOULD SAY IT IS ACTUALLY FAR BEYOND HIGHLY TECHNICAL. AND THAT THIS WOULD BE FAIRLY SIGNIFICANT STAKEHOLDING THAT WOULD BE REQUIRED TO ENGAGE I, you know, I'm not here to stop anybody from trying to run legislation,

Madam Chair, I totally agree, which is why I was really hoping somebody else would pick this up. But I was kind of hoping that maybe you could at least get a draft done over the summer and hand it off to somebody else if nobody on the committee was really interested in it to deal with that stakeholding But at least you could start the initial process of what does it look like when we push two pieces of statute together and sort of get the ball rolling on it.

OH, I'M JUST WONDERING IF THERE ARE ANY TAKERS, NOT I. I HAD MY FINGER ON MY NOSE FROM THE BEGINNING. OKAY. WELL, MS. BICKELE, APPRECIATE THE OFFER. I SEE NO TAKERS TODAY, BUT I WILL BRING IT UP TO MY COLLEAGUES ACROSS THE STREET AGAIN THAT THE SUGGESTION HAS BEEN MADE AGAIN, IF ANYBODY IS INTERESTED IN TAKING IT.

Okay.

Okay. Okay, next item, page 34. Oh, wait, Rep Taggart.

Are we on the last one? Is he volunteering?

I'm not putting you there.

Well, how about this? When we find ourselves back across the street, we can chat with some of our colleagues together and you can get a sense of where they're at on this. I know you've got enough to do, so I have a little bit more detail. I think if we just showed them this, that Ms. Bickle has already presented that will give you enough of a, I shared the briefing that Ms. Bickle did with folks. So I mean, I think they were familiar and had thoughts.

So moving on to the RFI on competency data. You know, this is, sorry. It's an RFI. That's all this is. This is, as you know, a tremendously difficult, complex area that you and everybody else has been working on for quite a while. You've got a data hub thing going on with competency data as well. Well, bottom line is I have been in the court system has been helpful in giving me whatever data they could about from their data systems about things like what are the sources of the different offenses that are ending up putting people into incompetent to proceed proceedings. And if you go to page 36 and particularly page 37, and you note that CR is a criminal case, JD is juvenile, M is a misdemeanor, and T is traffic court, this sort of shows, like particularly on page 37, what are the unique cases with incompetent to proceed filings. And, you know, there is a significant chunk of those that are misdemeanors and even some traffic offenses. And you've got an enormous problem with the clog of people on the competency waiting list. And all I'm, the department has been cooperative in trying to work with me just to bring you more data and to bring more data generally to this question so we can start to address it. And so all this request is, is it's digging in a little more on some data they gave me that they think they can pull out of their systems but they think will take some time. The one change to this request would be that right now it says, do the data show the impact of the competency diversion programs yet? and the department says they really won't be ready for that in the fall. They just won't have the data for that purpose. So I would strike that one sentence, but I think otherwise this is something the department is willing to work on that I think will contribute to the ongoing discussions in this area. I'm sorry, it's late. You good with this? Senator Mobley?

MS. BICCLE. MS. So there's multiple different things going on, which includes in particular this project I think you might talk about in Mr. Thompson's presentation, where the DU Evaluation Action Lab is a data hub project to try and pull data from multiple sources. The courts are going to end up being part of that. Their data systems are so old, though. Mostly what they're going to have is static data. So I've been in contact with both parties, and this is particularly directed to the court system, but it will hopefully ultimately move into that work that's being done with the action lab, which is where the HICPA or whatever data would be collected.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5-0 with Brown excused.

What would you like to do? I was thinking if everybody is okay, we'll go maybe another 20 minutes, then we'll take an hour of a break, and then we'll come back. Is that all right?

Okay. Okay. 20 more minutes. Okay. So page 37 is departmental indirect cost adjustments. And I think this is an area that's going to continue to need ongoing work. At this point what I've recommended is the department's request for indirect cost adjustments, which drive more general fund, but I have offset that at least in part with money in the indirect cost excess recovery fund. So you still are going to have about a $400,000 increase based on their analysis that they'll be collecting less indirect costs, but I've done what I could to offset that.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5 to 0. With Brown excused. So now we're through all of the ones that dealt with multiple divisions, and we're finally at the first division, which is the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals on page 39. Let's see how far we can get. Okay. There's a couple of relatively minor ones here. There's R18 is a true up of law library reappropriated funds. These are monies that come from the Department of Law. They're willing to pay. It's like a $33,000 increase. All right.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5-0 with Brown excused. R20, Office of Attorney Regulation Council pass-through. This is continuously appropriated funds, and the attempt is to make the amount more accurate.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5-0 with Brown excused.

That passes on a vote of 5 to 0 with Brown excused. All right. So now we're jumping to Division 2, which is the State Court's administration, where there's a lot of other decision items as well, but some larger than others. So R4 is on page 45. AND SO THIS IS FOR, THEY WERE ASKING FOR FTE, THREE FTE FOR JUDICIAL RISK MANAGEMENT, ONE FOR TO INCREASE STATE'S PROBATE COURT CAPACITY. MY RECOMMENDATION IS AGAINST THOSE, GIVEN STATE BUDGET CONSTRAINTS. AND, YOU KNOW, ONE THING I'LL JUST NOTE ABOUT THIS, THIS IS STATE COURT'S ADMINISTRATOR'S OFFICE IS HUGE AND IT'S GROWN A LOT. SO IF YOU GO TO PAGE 47, You can see since 2019, there's actually been a 43% increase in FTE in the main kind of general administration line item. Now, the dollars have not gone up as much, but that's still a pretty impressive increase. And I've also included on pages 47, 48, 49, more information about all these different divisions and sections in the state court administrator's office. The vast majority of those are in a single line item, though some are also in a separate line item. So you've got general oversight. You've got court services, human resources, 45 staff, financial services, 71 staff. Okay. Anyway, there's a lot.

Thank you. Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5-0 with Brown excuse.

And vacancies.

One of the interesting things about this department is it actually sticks to your FTE requirements, even though the courts are what has said that FTE are actually not something that you appropriate, but they actually stick to it. So, but they can still, even if they were sticking to it, if there's a vacancy, they could choose to reassign a position. And if this is the most important thing they're working on right now, move, change of position. Okay. Okay. R6 is ITS infrastructure. The R5. I'm sorry, did I just miss it? Yes, I did. Well, except for there's not really an R5 request. It was like an info-only request saying that they would be, you know, for 20% of their staff, looking at this process by determining how they compare to market rates. And, you know, I've just noted, please remember our budget. Like, maybe we're not going to be able to get to market rates. R6, ITS.

I mean I don know exactly why that happened but obviously there were a lot of there was many changes throughout state government to staff salaries for 24 and I think they just scooped a lot of their staff into that process but couldn maybe complete it for the final 20 but that is really a guess Okay. R6 ITS infrastructure, this is a major increase in IT expenses. It is something that you have now gotten a letter from the JTC saying, yes, they support this. It addresses inflation. It includes putting audiovisual on an actual life cycle plan in the courtroom, so they're replaced every nine years. It includes lots of license costs for collaboration platform, data center, hardware refresh, which would be a more temporary increase, but their hardware is outdated as well, and increased costs, platform costs for managing cybersecurity threats. So the table that begins on page 52 shows you both their base expenses and what are the components of the increase and how much money those are. The one item that I'll just note, they do, for the data center refresh, they say it's multi-year spending authority and it was a little unclear to me. Are they looking for a roll forward footnote? If they are, I'll come back to you with clarification on that one.

They've now, that was one of the handout I gave you, actually. They finally voted, I don't know, yesterday maybe to approve this. When this went to print, they hadn't taken the vote.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5 to 0 with Brown excuse. R7 is the statewide judicial security plan. This is really the action that you took during supplementals where you even moved this up a little bit early. You added a cash-funded term-limited position to assist the Chief Justice with working with counties and other parties to really address county security needs. So there's a second-year impact of that,

Great. Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5 to 0 with Brown excused. R8, the car center operations and controlled maintenance. A department did a lot of good work figuring out who's paying how much for this. You know, there's about $28 million a year that goes into paying for the COPs for the judicial center plus the ongoing maintenance and operations. And there was work last year to spread that more accurately to different parties. There's additional true up this year. And the department is also taking some money out of the Justice Center maintenance fund. There's some reserve there. The bottom line, once you're done on net, is you get savings across multiple agencies of 1.6 million general fund. That's in part because of who's occupying the building and changes to that because we have the Department of Law moving in while you have the Office of the Public Defender moving out of the building. I think Mr. Thompson will be talking to you perhaps more about that, but bottom line is I recommend AND THE UPDATED FIGURES THEY'VE PROVIDED. AND THOSE GRANT TOTALS ARE SHOWN ON PAGE 57. SO YOU HAVE THIS YEAR A SAVINGS OF 1.6 MILLION GENERAL FUND ACROSS ALL AGENCIES. THE FOLLOWING YEAR IT FALLS TO A SAVINGS OF ABOUT 1.2 MILLION. BUT I THINK THEY'VE DONE THE NECESSARY WORK TO FIGURE OUT THE COSTS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. That passes on a vote of 5-0 with Brown excuse. Okay. Yes, we are now to your favor. Oh, there's the chairs. I think I'm ready to roll. Madam Chair? Well, does any... I'm ready to roll. Madam Chair? Well, does any... Ms. Bickle, the quick and dirty.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move Staff Rec R9 slash BA1. Are there any objections?

Thank you Madam Chair I move our attend staff rec. Are there any objections? I don't want another bill next year to fix something else that we miss in this bill.

Senator Kirkmar. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I noticed they didn increase FTE here which is good news But is there a way we could just increase only by a million dollars instead of even 1 I don know where the 2 million came from

Well, I mean, I understand there probably needs to be some kind of increase, but how come their cash fund didn't increase?

So that's why I was asking if maybe they could put more cash fund in. Because their cash fund is only at like $135,000 and they didn't increase it. So I don't know where that's coming from.

MADAM CHAIR, COULD WE JUST GO WITH THE MILLION AND THEY CAN ALWAYS DO A COMEBACK AND TELL US WHY THAT DOESN'T WORK.

VICE CHAIR BRIDGETS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move a million and come back if they need it for R15. 12.

May I ask a quick question? Thank you. So why can't this be funded out of the Prop KK dollars? Family violence justice grants. Wouldn't that make sense?

Could we approve the reduction right now and then see about Prop KK?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay. And then can we get a list of what's coming out of Prop KK and how the waterfall effect works? Well, there's no waterfall because they're short. So it's only going to the victim services piece, and it's not even the full 30 that it was supposed to get. And there's nothing in there about prevention. Yeah. Something I asked about. But so these are family violence justice grants. So. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, how these grants started. I mean. When did they start? They started in 1999. And what the program does is it provides civil legal services to indigent residents who are victims of family violence. And the money is, most of it is being done by Colorado Legal Services, which provides legal services in almost every county. So the money gets spread around the state. Then it gets, the department gets billed based on actual services provided. So I would say, just having dealt with the Department of Ed before, it's kind of nice that it's actually really all over the state. Okay.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5-0 with Brown excused. If only more people would get divorced. This is R-15. That was R-15, yeah. Sorry, I may have said 16. I meant 15. Okay, R-15. We're turning on to, yeah. All right, good. The next item is R-16, though. That's on page 72. and this is the grants to the underfunded courthouses. You do about $3 million a year, get spent on them. You cut, but they've had a buildup of money in that fund, which is its own fund, and with projects that were expected to happen and then didn't happen, it looks like, excuse me, you could drop the general fund appropriation down by $500,000 AND STILL DO $3 MILLION A YEAR FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS BECAUSE OF THE MONEY THAT'S SITTING IN THE FUND. SO THAT'S MY RECOMMENDATION. AND IN ADDITION, THE DEPARTMENT HAD ASKED YOU FOR EXTRA SPENDING AUTHORITY BECAUSE OF ISSUES WITH GETTING MONEY OUT THE DOOR, AND I'M NOT RECOMMENDING THAT BECAUSE I THINK IT'S JUST GOING TO CONFUSE THE PICTURE THAT THERE'S ACTUALLY $3 MILLION PER YEAR IN GRANTS. BUT I AM RECOMMENDING INSTEAD A FOOTNOTE THAT WOULD ALLOW ROLL FORWARD FOR THESE PROJECTS, JUST LIKE YOU DO FOR ALL KINDS OF LIKE BEST GRANTS AND OTHER THINGS THAT ARE CAPITAL TYPE PROJECTS, WHICH THESE ARE. SO ON PAGE 73, I HAVE A FOOTNOTE RECOMMENDATION THAT WOULD ALLOW FOR ROLL FORWARD FOR PROJECT GRANTS. AND I THINK THAT WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM THAT THEY WERE TRYING TO SOLVE WITH EXTRA SPENDING. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. NOW I MOVE R16 STAFFER ARE THERE ANY OBJECTIONS That passes on a vote of 5 which round excused BA technical corrections which I recommend they really pretty minor to more accurately reflect the spending authority That's page 74 and 75. Okay, Vice Chair, I move staff rec BA-3 technical corrections. Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 5-0 with Brown excused. Then we've got one more technical correction, and we can stop whenever you want. That is the department's health-life dental request was built in a way that added a double count of a lot of money. And so I just want you to be aware that I've taken out the double count. It would be, no matter what, it will not require this extra 3.4 million to restore the 2526 HLD. Vice Chair Bridges.

So now we have a staff initiated proposal to reduce profession, to eliminate paying for professional licenses. So this is a real thing. It's like a cut to staff, to benefits. I THINK FOR SOME STAFF. I THINK IF YOU WANT TO DO THIS, IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO DO IT ACROSS OTHER AGENCIES AS WELL. THERE'S APPROPRIATION IN LAW. THERE'S APPROPRIATION IN THE PUBLIC DEFENDER'S OFFICE WHERE, IF YOU WANT. YOU KNOW, THIS WAS JUST LIKE LOOKING FOR CRUMS. WHAT'S A NO FOR NOW? DON'T WANT TO DO IT? OKAY. FOR NOW. WE'LL SEE. WELL, DO YOU NEED US TO TAKE ANY ACTION ON IT? I DON'T THINK. I THINK YOU CAN JUST SAY YOU'RE NOT TAKING ACTION. OKAY. GREAT. Line item detail? Okay. Yep. Anything to point out? No. Okay. Vice Chair Bridges.

Okay. So the joint budget committee will stand in recess until 1.30. What date are we on now after that? With that, you're jumping to Division 3, which is 101. 101, thank you. Yeah. You get to it. Move right along. Okay. Any way the way.

Huh?

No.

We are continuing figure setting for the Judicial Department. We're on page 101, Ms. Bickle?

Just to, does this include like ORPG and...

So that's all separate too.

That's totally separate.

Correct.

But the same thing, right, that we're talking about,

That's correct.

Correct.

There's nothing in this that is not relative to the 5% assumption?

Yeah.

Correct.

I'm just trying to understand what is driving the other increases here

Is it case growth or it's case growth?

Right, there's bills that are coming in from the court saying

for indigents and civil cases or if we jump to,

Ruth Haggart. Thank you, Madam Chair. I get a little bit confused, and I realize the $5 per hour and the 5% are more or less equal right now. But it is $5. It was that was it is $5. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's my that was just a typo. Okay. Okay. Yeah, but it would be an also an approval for the other things that are outside of the $5 increase. What is the total of that, Ms. Bickle?

Yeah, just going to page 102.

Because I figured that if you were going to change the law on that $5 increase,

and you would do that during Mr. Thompson's presentation.

Senator Kirkmeyer. Are you giving an increase per hour then to the Court of Courtenay Council and the non-Court?

of this increase as I understand it is really driven by caseload.

this.

representative and it may be

an hourly rate.

FTE. It's like things that they have

But all of this

102

the attorney rate

appointed counsel.

$5 an hour increase.

The $430 is the $5 increase.

but basically they have to procure services.

Okay, I got it.

Various kinds of like expert witnesses in a mental health case.

Okay.

Senator Mowgli. Is it possible that we can lower it without running a bill because it says...

More than $5 each year.

We don't change the law.

Okay, so we could pick a different number without running a bill.

Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay.

Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move line item detail based appropriation staff recommendation, trial courts. Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0.

We are now jumping to page 110. And this is probation and related services. So R3 was the probation program's request. The department has requested 12.5 FTE. and it had also proposed that in addition, so the new staff were to be funded with cash funds and then in addition it was proposing a tradeoff between general fund and cash funds of basically 1.5 million. So my recommendation is no new FTE, but do do a temporary refinance of 1.5 million for approximately two years. Exactly how long that refinance will last will depend a lot on what's going on with these cash funds because this cash fund has some similar challenges to the last one discussed. So on page 111 you'll see the discussion of the request for FTE. I, in fact, do think that they could use additional FTE. I don't think, if we believe these caseload models, then it sure looks like they really need additional FTE and their FTE are under stress. Their calculation is that to go up to full staffing would be 321.5 FTE. And so what they say is we're just trying to bite off a little bit each year. and I think that would be totally reasonable, but this is not the year to bite off even a little bit, so I have not recommended it.

All right, Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move staff record three. Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0.

So the department had requested as a supplemental and budget amendment increases from the Offender Services Fund for Offender Treatment and Services There You did part of their request During supplementals, there was a sort of fund source change, and you reduced general fund. My recommendation for this year is you kind of continue that, so you're going to be offsetting. You've eliminated any general fund in this line item, and you've increased what are called cost recoveries for the offender services. And then, but I am recommending partially the request for an increase from the offender services fund for offender treatment services. So I'm recommending $500,000 increase on that. I'm recommending it for now on a temporary basis because of uncertainties about the situation in this cash fund. But I think I might not have done the best job during supplementals explaining the need for this fund and the need for these services, so I'm going to try this again. There's a $50 per month amount that offenders are supposed to pay when they're on probation. That money is then mostly used in this line item to provide services for offenders, and particularly services for those offenders who cannot pay for their own services. So, and the department frames it, I think, correctly as they are using the funds to ensure that probationers are not revoked from probation just because they can't afford the cost of their services. And so you can see a bunch of these different requirements that proportioners, depending on what their crime is, may be required to do. You know, your analysis, right? Drug testing, substance abuse treatment, domestic violence treatment. There's a whole list of different things that may be part of somebody's, what they're required to do to not be prevent from probation. The department distributes this money to the different judicial districts. The judicial districts have a fair amount of flexibility in terms of their use of the funds, but the funds do need to be used for these services. So some provide services on a sliding scale. They've got variations, but they do have to be used for these particular types of services. If you go to page 116, you can see the major ways that this money is spent for offender services. So adult sex offender assessments, domestic violence treatment, drug treatment services, substance abuse treatment, all of those things are the kinds of things this money goes for. There's been, because their data systems are in such terrible shape, they really cannot say that spending a dollar on this is, you know, guaranteed to provide X outcome because the data just is terrible. But they do, from this study that they did recently, we at least know more about how the money is getting used. So moving to page 117. Sorry.

A lot of stuff is going down.

I assume you just talking to us today about the yellow stuff Is that right Well not really I was kind of highlighting where some of the bigger dollar amounts were was really what I was focusing on The pattern of expenditure is really interesting, and I can explain that to you. Apparently what happened is word sort of spread. There was a change to law that allowed essentially taper, intercept of tax refunds and Tabor refunds to be captured into the cash funds for offender services. That drove up the amount of money that was available for a while. And everybody thought, oh look, there's a whole lot of money. Then the law changed temporarily and the local agencies overspent by a lot because they thought there would be more money than there was. It was just very poor communication with the local judicial districts. They overspent and they ended up, the department actually needed to transfer like $3 million into this line item to keep it whole. Then they were all told, you cannot spend. You are overspending, stop it. At which point the spending went down again. So it's pretty clear that they're able to spend every dollar that you send to them, but it does need to be accurately communicated to them how much money they are allowed to spend. So the, but there is a real use for this money. It is serving the needs of probationers. And interestingly to me, like some of what this study showed, so the districts are giving about, there's about $438 to about $1,100 per probationers that districts are receiving. Rural districts get more. There, about 75 to 90 percent of probationers are getting some benefit from this money. Offenders must pay costs that are not covered by this. And so across the, there was six judicial districts where this, there was research done. In those, districts' clients surveyed 52 percent of probationers reported paying for services out of pocket. and of those, the majority, 58%, said that they paid up to $100, in other words, less than $100 a month. The other 42% were spending over $100 per month out of their own pocket. So, you know, the effort here is to particularly help clients that really can't afford this. Again, lots of different policies around judicial districts, But in addition to this money that is being provided through the Offender Services Fund and some other treatment funds, probationers are paying out of their own pockets as well.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move Staff Rec. BA.2. Are there any objections?

And then I think we're just, we've got line item detail. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move line item detail and base appropriation staff recommendation. probation and related services. Are there any objections?

And I think in addition to this list I did want to note there that new footnote on page 73 for underfunded to allow roll forward for underfunded courthouses So this list in addition to that And I would also note that some of these figures like if you do salary survey for example the numbers in footnote 53, which identify the salary levels for all the different judges, will go up. Right now what we've got, so this is sort of a tentative figure. IT'S WHAT WE HAVE IS THE 25-26 SALARIES AND THOSE EITHER IF THEY'RE GOING TO STAY FLAT OR WHATEVER YOU END UP DOING FOR THE REST OF STATE GOVERNMENT THIS THESE FIGURES WILL ADJUST AS WELL UM

All righty. So now I just wanted to point you to the additional balancing options discussion, which is on page 130.

Senator Kempner? You know. Thank you, Madam Chair. I like, first one I like is that, it's like one, two, three, we already talked about the Violence Grant stuff and the other ones. The, reduce the General Fund Appropriations to the Eviction Legal Defense Grant Fund, and I think we should do it by $400,000. And hopefully this is correct. But we are doing apparently $1.1 million of general fund, and that becomes reappropriated funds. And then we're adding in this year a request to add in $400,000 of cash funds. So I'm wondering why we can't reduce our general fund by $400,000. I'm looking on A9, where it says Eviction Legal Defense Grant Program.

Maybe I did. Let me see. Well, you have a reduction of $220,000.

they actually did $1.1 million of grant programs. And I'm asking if we can't just leave it the same at 1.1 million using $400 of cash funds and $700,000 of general fund essentially.

SO THEN WE, SENATOR KIRKMIER. SO WE COULD REDUCE OUR GENERAL FUND APPROPRIATION THEN BY 400,000 AND THEY'D STILL get 1.1 million for grants, same as what they got last year?

Well, I don't. Well, you have 220. Reprov. Yeah, I appreciate the, we're obviously going to have to be creative, and we're also going to have to continue to make some significant cuts. I don't know that I'm ready to do this just today.

Senator Kirkmeyer. So what I'm saying doesn't weaken it. it just keeps it the same as what they actually spent the previous year. That doesn't feel super clear to me, actually. So if Ms. Bickle, you want to sort of investigate what are these reserves or whatever.

Senator Kirkmeyer. You're good with what? And on the correctional treatment cash fund, I think we should do that. I mean, I don't know why we maybe couldn't go for more, but I think we should do that. It's still more. Well, I guess I don't... Senator Babbley? I don't recall what that's used for. I'm sure it's in here. I just don't know. So is this to provide treatment for people who are in corrections?

And knowing the challenges that you've had in the Department of Corrections with getting people out of corrections based on whether they have access to treatment, I didn't, I was a little cautious about this, but it's partly because I don't, I can't pretend that I know all of the programs very well, but I can give you what I've got on it. Okay. I mean, the total is 25 million?

Well, I'm happy to look at it. You know, maybe we can come back to these options at the end. I'll find it.

I'd like to. No. Okay.

There's a bottom line. There's a little bit of stuff you can do, but it's really the whole ball of waxes come on policies, I think.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. FOREIGN MINDS OF THE JURICAL DEPARTMENT. I WILL JUST GO AHEAD AND JUMP INTO PAGE ONE. ON PAGE ONE THERE'S THE BEGINNING OF THE TABLE THAT SUMMARIZES ALL OF THE JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT. AS MS. BICKLE POINTED OUT, HER OVERVIEW TABLE ONLY HAD HER SECTIONS IN IT. SO THIS IS CLOSER TO WHAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO SEE WITH YOUR FINAL DECISIONS IN THE LONG BILL NARRATIVE. On page three is just the parts of the independent agencies and judicial that I'll be making recommendations on today. And you'll see at the bottom of the table on page four that it's about an increase of 7.1% general fund. I don't think it's really worth the committee's time to go through the major differences between the requests right now, since I'll be discussing them individually. So let's jump into the first one on page five. That's staff initiated one, adjust the child welfare for legal representation line item. This is a line item that exists in the Department of Human Services, and it reflects the Title IV E funds that are flowing through DHS that ultimately end up in OCR and ORPC. For the past couple years, we've been over-appropriating, over-estimating the appropriation to that line item to encourage these agencies to use more of it. And I think during that period of time they have, the committee's approved recommendations that increase the Title IV-E funds appropriated to those agencies. And so my recommendation now is to make sure that the appropriation in DHS matches the amounts that are being appropriated in these two entities.

That passes on a vote of 6-0. All right. And now to get back to the discussion that you guys were just having,

Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move the staff rec is that we choose or the staff rec here is? The staff rec is that you run legislation. So I would say that you would reject staff recommendation and approve an increase of X dollar amount. I move to reject staff recommendation and instead mark the increase at $5. Total. Isn't that what we were talking about? Oh, $5 total? Five is the max. So that's like a penny? Total for the line item. Yeah, for the line item. A total increase of $5. Which is essentially zero, but without running legislation. Okay, I guess I...

So we're just going to increase total appropriation by five bucks. Thank you, Madam Chair. In case my motion was unclear, which sounds like it was, total appropriation for that line of $5, not $5 per person, which would be the full $4.682 million. Okay. And we don't have to worry about that being there's no increase next year because we're not running a bill. Correct. Yeah. Yes, the same thing next year. Yeah. We'll have to revisit it. If we're in this situation next year, it might also be $5 total again. Okay. All right. Are there any objections?

And Madam Chair, next year it will show up just as an annualization again for that bill, but we might be talking about it again, so you know what to look for.

This is a combined request from the State Public Defender and Alternate Defense Council related to the CBI DNA misconduct. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR $2 MILLION GENERAL FUND SPENDING AUTHORITY. THE APPROPRIATION WOULD APPEAR IN THE PUBLIC DEFENDER'S BUDGET, BUT IT IS BEING ACCESSED BY BOTH THE PUBLIC DEFENDER AND ALTERNATE DEFENSE COUNCIL. THEY ALREADY HAVE AN AGREEMENT IN PLACE THAT ALLOWS THIS TO HAPPEN, AND IT IS BASED ON WHERE THE CASES ACTUALLY END UP. UNLIKE TYPICAL REPRESENTATION OF INDIGENT CLIENTS WHERE THE STATE PUBLIC DEFENDER USUALLY GETS ABOUT 80% OF THE CLIENTS AND ALTERNATE DEFENSE COUNCIL USUALLY SEES ABOUT 20% OF THOSE. IT'S KIND OF FLIP-FLOPPED FOR THESE CASES BECAUSE THE PUBLIC DEFENDER REPRESENTED A LOT OF THESE CASES WHEN THEY INITIALLY WENT THROUGH. AND SO WE'RE SEEING THAT IT'S IMPACTING THE ALTERNATE DEFENSE COUNCIL COSTS MORE, BUT THAT DOESN'T CHANGE MY RECOMMENDATION THAT THE APPROPRIATION SHOULD APPEAR IN THE STATE PUBLIC DEFENDER'S OFFICE. I'M ALSO RECOMMENDING THAT THE FUNDING BE APPROVED BECAUSE THE STATE PUBLIC DEFENDER AND ALTERNATE DEFENSE COUNCIL ARE ALREADY GETTING THESE CASES IN. THIS IS A REALLY CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATE FOR HOW MUCH IT'S GOING TO COST. I WOULDN'T BE SURPRISED IF WE'D SEE A SUPPLEMENTAL RELATED TO THESE. BUT WE'RE TRYING TO JUST GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO GET STARTED ON WORKING THESE CASES. OKAY. I SEE THE I. JUST SEEING. AT SOME POINT. So staff rec is to approve the request.

Are there any objections?

Okay, thank you. All right. So that will take us to... Sorry, Rep Taggart's got a question.

Senator Mobley? Yeah, I don't disagree with Rep Taggart. We should look at that. But I think we are going to have a lot of opportunities in the future to... God, I hope not. I think we are. It sounds like things are only going to get worse. But that might be something we could try to figure out going forward. Okay.

Last year, a bill was run to set up an e-discovery task force, which met over the summer and submitted its report to me in the legislature in January. At this time, I'm recommending the committee not take any action on it, but I am planning on working with the stakeholders over the interim to come up with some legislative options. I think there's some low-hanging fruits that are out there that we can use to tackle some of the rising costs of e-discovery. AND ONE OF THOSE THINGS IS REQUIRING A STATEWIDE CONTRACT WITH PROVIDERS OF THE BODY CAM AND OTHER SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE. I JUST WITH THE LATENESS OF THE REPORT AND THE REPORT WAS PROBABLY CLOSE TO 100 PAGES LONG I didn have a chance to read the whole thing before I could get to you guys And so I want to have some time over the interim to work with agencies to come up with those legislative priorities. And the Office of Public Defender had what seemed like the nearest time frame that something needed to change. And as long as we get something going during supplementals next year, it won't impact their ability to contract.

Rep Taggart. I just want to say thank you. This was something I pressed pretty hard on last year, and I'm really pleased that it's moving along because these costs are going up exponentially, and if we can find a statewide solution that can flatten that curve a little bit, that's wonderful.

Wow.

I just, I'm curious what is that, how does that work? Like if you have all these cases and then you don have the attorneys to work the cases then are you starting to stack up cases so that you create a backlog And then I don know is that that just feels like maybe that short I not sure because you have to then hold on to all the data around that case for that much longer and all the things that go with it. And it's harder then to run the case when all the witness testimony and all of that is kind of old and So I'm just curious about that, whether that actually saves us money.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Mobley, I mean, it saves us money in that we're not appropriating funding for it. But you're right that it will stack up cases. There's speedy trial issues that may arise. SO SOME OF THOSE CASES, IF DEFENDANTS DON'T AGREE TO WAIVE THEIR SPEEDY TRIAL RIGHTS, MIGHT HAVE TO GET BUMPED UP IN FRONT OF ONES THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN PENDING. I MEAN, THERE'S ISSUES BEHIND THIS ONE. IF IT WASN'T THIS YEAR, I WOULD HAVE RECOMMENDED APPROVING THE REQUEST. BUT I FELT LIKE I NEEDED TO GIVE THE JBC OPTIONS THAT WERE NOT FULLY INCREASING WHAT'S BEING REQUESTED. SO I, DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION? I'M JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND. THESE FOLKS ARE RELATED TO JUST THE AURORA, THE NEW, OKAY. BUT WE HEARD THAT THEY ONLY USED THE TWO, THEY ONLY HIRED TWO JUDGES. PROBATION OFFICERS. PROBATION OFFICERS. IS THIS, HOW WELL DOES THIS MESH WITH WHAT THEY HAVE DONE IN TERMS OF STAFFING FOR THE COURT?

AFTER LEARNING MORE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE PROVED INCREASES LAST YEAR, I THINK IT MIGHT BE WISE TO ALSO ATTACH A FOOTNOTE TO THIS APPROPRIATION THAT SPECIFIES THAT THESE ARE FOR THE AURORA FOR THE 17th AND 18th JUDICIAL DISTRICT RELATED TO AURORA DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. BECAUSE OTHERWISE IT WOULD JUST BE GOING INTO THEIR NORMAL OPERATOR PERSONAL SERVICES AND OPERATING LINE ITEMS. AND THEORETICALLY THEY COULD ALSO ACT LIKE THE JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT OR THE PROBATION DEPARTMENT DID AND DO IT. I DON'T GET THE IMPRESSION THAT THAT'S WHAT THEY WILL DO. I sincerely think they need these attorneys in those districts. I assume that's how they're going to do it, but a footnote would probably give us a little bit more assurance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move staff recommendation OSBDR1.

With the footnote, obviously, yeah.

Thank you. I think we all know what we're talking about, but just for the record, I will point out that there's a couple of instances where the S and the P for OSPD have been switched. So OPSD. on page 7, page 12, page 13, page 14. But I think it was just something that got copied and pasted. Mr Thompson I just wanted to say that just for the record Thank you I will have to train my AI to better proof for me

I guess I just would ask the same question. Then will we come back in year two and still be then behind? And I get this is a little bit different, but it just seems like we're still going to end up in a situation where they'll never be able to get caught up. They'll never be able to true up because every year they'll still be behind. But maybe that's just the way it always is. I don't know.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move staff rec OPSDR3.

What's the parking situation there?

Just it's been a persistent. Yeah, I know that I pay, you know, I pay for parking out of my own paycheck. and I assume a lot of other state employees do too. So I'm not sure if that should really come into consideration here.

Thank you, Madam Chair. If something were to happen to that building, the one that we can't do anything with. The Centennial Building. The Centennial Building. Is it insured?

Jeez.

Good public defenders are defending that guy now.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move OSPD BA 3 staff rec.

That was for professional licenses.

Rep Taggart. Thank you, Madam Chair. On this particular one, I wrote a note to myself on page 26 and going over to 27.

I did.

It's been a long week.

I didn highlight page 27 We can because we care There is still a appropriation for the Ralph Carr What's that all about?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Decker, that is great observational skills. It actually has a simple answer.

So technically, the state public defender's office is occupying space in the Ralph Carr Center now. But insurance is paying for the space that they're actually occupying in the 710 space. So they're still paying their appropriation as if they're occupying the space. This amount is for the first six months. And so this is for the beginning of the fiscal year through December. And then in January, when the Department of Law is expected to expand into their old space, the Department of Law is taking over that appropriation. So it's about half a year's appropriation there. And they're not paying anything for their space, but they are paying the $4.99, $4.34 for the pleasure of not paying anything in that other space.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0. Okay, that takes us on to Page 35, Office of Alternate Defense Counsel It's up to the committee whether or not they'd like me to talk about the lobbyists at each section Or if you just want to read those Yeah, so So in 2425, they had a hired lobbyist that would cost about $40,000. It was paid for from vacancy savings. No contract has been entered into in 2526, but at the time of writing, they were considering hiring one for the second half of the legislative session.

I didn't. All right. All right. So that takes us on to page 36. This is the R1 caseload increase. The recommendation or the request is for $3.6 million general fund based on their caseload projections and case costs increases. I'm recommending that the committee approve $2 million. I think, I believe that the $3.6 million is the right amount. Again, I am trying to cut these hairs as short as possible. AND SO I SHARED THIS RECOMMENDATION WITH ALTERNATE DEFENSE COUNCIL AND THEY WERE COMFORTABLE TAKING THE STAFF RECOMMENDATION FOR THE $2 MILLION INCREASE, KNOWING THAT THAT MIGHT DRIVE A SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST NEXT YEAR, BUT I'D RATHER NOT HAVE EXTRA GENERAL FUND DOLLARS NOT BEING SPENT SOMEWHERE AND HAVE TO DO A SUPPLEMENTAL CHANGE THAN OVERAPPROPRIATE.

That passes on a vote of 6-0. And then line item. I move line item detail and base appropriation staff rec for the same. Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0. Madam Chair that will take us to OCR OCR currently neither contracts with a lobbyist or maintains one and they respond to legislative inquiries with other full staff What page? 48, yes. I will get back into the rhythm of telling you what page number we're on. No, you're fine. So their first request is on page 49. THIS IS A REQUEST TO REDUCE THEIR COURT APPOINTED COUNCIL LINE ITEM BY 871,000 GENERAL FUND. I CHECKED IN WITH THEM TO SEE IF THEIR UPDATED PROJECTIONS HAD CHANGED THIS AT ALL AND THEY'RE STILL FEELING PRETTY GOOD THAT THIS REDUCTION IS SOMETHING THAT THEY CAN TAKE. I'M RECOMMENDING THAT THE COMMITTEE APPROVE THIS CHANGE. I GO INTO KIND OF ALL THE DIFFERENT COSTS AND DRIVERS THAT ARE OCCURRING AND THEN ON PAGE 51, There's a summary chart that shows caseload trends by type since 2002. Okay. Vice Chair Bridges.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0. So now we'll move on to the Office of Respondent Parents Counsel, which is on page 61. ORPC neither contracts with a lobbyist or maintains one. They also do respond to legislative inquiries with FTE that are assigned other duties. THEIR FIRST REQUEST STARTS ON PAGE 62. THIS IS R1BA1 ALIGN APPROPRIATIONS WITH ESTIMATES. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR NET REDUCTION OF 720,000 TOTAL FUNDS, INCLUDING 770,000 GENERAL FUND. A SUMMARY OF THE REQUEST AND RECOMMENDATION CAN BE SEEN ON THE MIDDLE OF PAGE 62. I'M RECOMMENDING THE COMMITTEE APPROVE THE REQUEST. This had come up in other places, but I haven't talked about it at all in my document. But there are some questions about whether a recent Supreme Court decision was factored into the request to reduce by this amount. And ORPC only had one month of data after that Supreme Court decision. IT'S THE RMP DECISION THAT BASICALLY SAID THAT GUARDIAN AD LITEMS AND COUNCIL FOR YOUTH DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO OBJECT TO A DISMISSAL THAT'S IN A DEPENDENCY AND NEGLECT CASE. PRIOR TO THAT DECISION, GUARDIAN AD LITEMS BUT NOT COUNCIL FOR YOUTH HAD AUTHORITY TO OBJECT TO THOSE THAT WAS GRANTED THROUGH A 40-YEAR-OLD APPEALS CASE. NEVER, IT WAS NEVER SOMETHING THAT WAS STATUTORILY GRANTED. AND WHEN COUNCIL FOR YOUTH WERE CREATED THREE YEARS AGO, THEY WERE NOT EXPRESSLY GRANTED THAT AUTHORITY. And so based on the Supreme Court decision and the little bit of data that the ORPC had, they did not factor those changes in because they believed that that was already what was happening. And so I recommending that we approve the requested change noting that if any statutory changes grant that authority to guardian ad litems or counsel for youth it will likely drive a cost in ORPC Rep Brown Thank you Madam Chair So just to reiterate your analysis is that the department did not submit these reductions because of the RMP decision, but that you do believe that if we are to sort of fix the court decision, if you will, that it will drive some additional costs in ORPC?

AND THEN IF WE CHANGE STATUTE TO GO BACK TO ALLOW FOR THAT TO CONTINUE, WHY WOULD THAT CHANGE A COST? COUNCIL FOR YOUTH NEVER HAD THE AUTHORITY TO DO THIS. THEY WEREN'T GRANTED IN STATUTE. THE ONLY ENTITIES THAT WERE GRANTED THAT AUTHORITY PRIOR TO THAT DECISION WERE GUARDIAN ADLITEMS. COUNCIL FOR YOUTH HAVE ONLY EXISTED FOR THREE YEARS. I think that there's also a question of how guardian ad litems are advocating on behalf of the best interest of the child. Council for Youth are advocating on their client based on their client's wishes. So I think that there's a very likely chance that if council for youth are allowed to object to these dismissals, that it's going to have a higher volume than the guardian ad litems ever saw, because the guardian ad litems were always looking out for the best interest of the youth. And I think that not every youth is looking out for the best interest of himself.

And thank you, Representative Brown. ORPC reached out to their contractors and opened a survey for three days when they got this fiscal note, and they got some responses, but obviously you're not going to get a fully comprehensive list of responses in that three days. 88% of the responses believe there would be some cost increase. I really think that the fiscal note process is where that actual dollar amount is going to be figured out. So I don't have an estimate for it now. You're right that it is very low volume. But also in this survey, just as an example, objections were raised in, I don't know, 20 counties. These preliminary hearings were provided in two counties, and like 10 counties allowed the guardian ad litem to prosecute the trial after the objection. And that's another question that really comes up with these counsel for youth objecting to the dependency and neglect dismissal is who is going to prosecute the dependency and neglect case at that point in time? because the county has already said we don't believe there's a case. So, yeah, thank you.

Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Brown, I think that there is a fundamental disagreement between the two agencies on what the impact is actually going to be. As you can tell, I kind of tend to agree with ORPC. And I think that really where the fundamental disagreement is, is whether or not Council for Youth ever had this authority. I think OCR believes they always had this authority. And I agree with the Supreme Court and ORPC. that they never had this authority. And so there was never costs that were added for ORPCs to contractors to work, dependency and neglect cases that were being objected to by Council for Youth.

Yes, and one thing that I just wanted to be clear on was that when we were presented with this particular reduction, because I think what I've been told is ORPC has asserted that this reduction, that they requested it as a reflection of that case. And that what we are clear on is that is not true, not what happened, and if that is something that they are representing, that they should stop doing that. Madam Chair, I double-checked with ORPC earlier this week, and they said absolutely did not factor in the RMP decision into this decrease. Their decision item narrative makes no mention of it. OCR's decision item does mention it, though. And so based on just those facts, I would say that this request does not factor it in.

Thank you. All right. Vice Chair Bridges.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0. That takes us to line item detail. Madam Chair. Representative Brown.

Give me just a minute to think about it. It would either be in operating expenses as like some sort of, you know, contract expense, or in personal services as a professional contract expense. I think those would be the most likely places that that would show up. They also have the parent advocates line item that really helps the parent advocates. I don't know if this person could have been considered a parent advocate, AND MAYBE IT COULD COME FROM THERE. THAT'S REALLY MY TAKE ON IT. BUT IT REALLY IS A GUESS FOR ME AT THIS POINT IN TIME. OKAY, THANK YOU.

WELL, MAYBE WE CAN APPROVE THE LINE ITEM DETAIL, AND IN THE MEANTIME, MR. THOMPSON, YOU MIGHT CONFIRM WHETHER OR NOT THAT EXPENDITURE WAS MADE, AND IF IT WAS, THEN WE CAN REVISIT THE LINE ITEM DETAIL. Madam Chair, if we went down the path of the footnote, I would probably recommend putting it on the agency line item instead of a specific line item because then it would apply to all the line items. But I'll do some more investigation and put together a comeback on that for you guys. And I would encourage, like if I have been given incorrect information and the agency would like to clarify publicly either with me personally or on the record, I would certainly welcome that. So I apologize if I misunderstand what has gone on, but just want to make sure that we are using our state dollars appropriately.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0. So that takes us to the Office of the Child Protection Ombudsman on page 74. In 2526, OCPO did allocate $20,000 general fund from its operating budget to hire a contract lobbyist. It also relies on the Ombudsman and Deputy Ombudsman to fulfill any needs arising from the General Assembly. THE OFFICE OF CHILD PROTECTION OBUDSMAN DID NOT MAKE ANY BUDGET REQUESTS THIS YEAR, AND SO IT'S JUST ANNUALIZATIONS AND LINE ITEM DETAIL. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. I MOVE LINE ITEM DETAIL AND BASE APPROPRIATION STAFF REC FOR OFFICE OF THE CHILD PROTECTION OBUDSMAN ARE THERE ANY OBJECTIONS THAT PASSES ON A VOTE OF 6 TO 0 For Office of the Child Protection Ombudsman Are there any objections That passes on a vote of 6 Okay, that takes us to the Independent Ethics Commission on page 77. The Independent Ethics Commission currently neither contracts with a lobbyist nor maintains one on staff. They really only have one and a half people working there.

VICE CHAIR BRIDGESS.

ARE THERE ANY OBJECTIONS? THAT PASSES ON A VOTE OF 6-0. OH, I'M SO SORRY. THIS JUST HAPPENED. 5-0 WITH A MOBLE EXCUSED.

AND ANOTHER SMALL REQUEST FROM IEC, THIS IS ON PAGE 79. THERE ARE TWO IS IT ACCESSIBILITY MAINTENANCE CONTRACT. A COUPLE YEARS AGO THE COMMITTEE APPROVED SOME FUDDING TO ALLOW IECs TO HIRE A CONTRACTOR TO GET THEIR WEBSITE IN ORDER TO COMPLY WITH 211110, THE IT ACCESSIBILITY BILL THAT'S BEEN DRIVING COSTS ALL OVER THE STATE. THAT'S BEEN COMPLETED BUT THERE IS GOING TO BE A MAINTENANCE CONTRACT SO THAT NEW DOCUMENTS THAT GET ADDED TO IT CONTINUE TO MAINTAIN THEIR ACCESSIBILITY. AND SO THAT'S AN INCREASE OF $12,000. AND I'M RECOMMENDING THAT THE COMMITTEE APPROVE THE REQUEST.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. I MOVE STAFF RECOMMENDATION IECR 2.

AND THAT TAKES US TO LINE ITEM DETAIL. THEY HAVE TWO LINE ITEMS, AND I DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO FLAG FOR YOU THERE.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. I move line item detail and base appropriation staff recommendation, IEC.

That takes us to the Office of Public Guardianship on page 83. The Office of Public Guardianship currently neither contracts with a lobbyist nor maintains one on staff, but like the other agencies, we'll use existing staff to testify on bills. OPG's R1 is on page 84. It's a request for two guardians to allow OPG to continue its expansion into new judicial districts. OPG is prioritizing the districts that have the most unmet need. and this will allow OPG to go from serving three to five districts It general fund in the first year and in out years Assuming the committee does not want to pause program expansion, I'm recommending the committee approve the request. I think this is a reasonable approach to expansion. On page 85, I've provided a summary of what that expansion plan most updated is to meet the mandate to reach all statewide districts by fiscal year 30. And so they'd be adding two this year, nine next year, and 12 the following year. And so I think what's really important for the committee's decision here is you all, General Assembly needs to be prepared to grant that extra $9 million over the next three fiscal years on addition to what is being appropriated and asked for now, because otherwise it should cause expansion and do that through legislation. NEW SPEAKERS OF THE COST ASSESSMENT. IT'S BECAUSE OF THEIR OFFICE OF PUBLIC GUARDIANSHIP CASH FUNDS. SO THEY CHARGE SOME TO THAT TO PAY FOR ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS. AND SO THERE'S DISCUSSION LATER ABOUT THE INDIRECT COST ASSESSMENT. THIS IS REALLY THE ONLY PLACE IT SHOWS UP. AND SO I JUST FIGURED IT WAS EASIER TO FLAGATE HERE THAN LATER.

ARE THERE ANY OBJECTIONS? THAT PASSES ON VOTER 6-0.

Okay. Vice Chair Bridges.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of six to zero.

Vice Chair Bridges.

Are there any objections? That passes on to vote 6-0.

The other bridges. Of Colorado, not four. Very different.

17-6. They're continuing to work with all of their districts. Everything in here is annualizations of prior legislation, and they do not have a lobbyist, but again, their staff comes and testifies when needed.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move staff rec line in detail base appropriation, Bridges of Colorado.

The one other thing, I will flag it here before moving on, but it can take is actually, no, that's in Asia. My bad. We'll move on to the Office of Administrative Services for State Agencies on page 101. OASIA doesn't currently contract with a lobbyist or maintain one on staff. They did not submit any decision items this year, but the one thing I did want to flag... Oh, I do have the staff initiated. So there's the staff initiated for on page 102. This actually kind of came through as an unofficial request from the agency, but this is for a footnote providing roll forward authority of a 25, 20 of two 25, 26 appropriations that total $50,000. This is for the comprehensive study of OASIA that's required by statute that's going to help support continued operation of Asia and prove that it is driving efficiencies, hopefully. And then $30,000 is for, sorry, $30,000 is for that and then the other is for cybersecurity insurance. So I'm recommending that we include this footnote and provide that authority.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move Staff Initiated 4.

Yeah, there is. On page 110, I wanted to just stop real quick. This is where the appropriation for the competency and behavioral health hub is. I'm recommending that it maintain that consistent $100,000 appropriation It's really going to be a couple years until the data starts being able to be used in a meaningful way But since it came up during Ms. Pickle's presentation I wanted everybody to know where that appropriation exists And so we'll move on to page 112

CHAIR BRIDGESS MR THANK YOU MADAM CHAIR I MOVE LINE OF DETAIL AND BASE APPROPRIATION FOR OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES FOR STATE AGENCIES CHAIR BRIDGESS CHAIR BRIDGESS Thank you Madam Chair I move line of detail and base appropriation for Office of Administrative Services for State agencies Are there any objections That passes on a vote of 6 to 0

WELL, THAT'S FINE. WE CAN STILL REDUCE THE FUNDING. WE CAN, WE COULD RUN THE LEGISLATION IF IT DIES, WE'VE STILL REDUCED THE FUNDING, YES?

VICE CHAIR BRIDGES.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0.

And then whatever happens with the legislation happens with the legislation? Yep. Yes.

Vice Chair Bridges.

I mean, we're. I think that will confirm what I just asked.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of six to zero.

VICE CHAIR BRIDGESS.

AND THEN ON PAGE 119, THE ONLY ITEM I REALLY HAD EXTRA TIME TO PUT IN HERE WAS TO DELAY THE OPG EXPANSION. BASED ON YOUR VOTE, I DON'T THINK YOU WANT TO TAKE THAT. I WILL BE TRYING TO COME UP WITH SOME OTHER OPTIONS BEFORE WE GET TO REAL BALANCING NEXT WEEK. AND OTHER THAN THAT, THAT'S ALL I HAVE PREPARED FOR YOU, COMMITTEE, AND I'M HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY OTHER QUESTIONS.

Thank you.

Rep Taggart?

Mr. Thompson.

Scott. I just wonder, given the fact that Mr. Thompson brought us to our attention that we're going to take four counties and go to six counties, it's a pilot program. And whether we ought to have an RFI that just kind of summarizes that pilot program to date of how effective has it been?

OKAY. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. MS. KANAGARAJA, WHENEVER YOU'RE READY, TAKE YOUR TIME. Do we have a thing?

Okay, I don't have it.

Oh, I mean, you have it.

Thank you. Ms. Kanagaraja.

Anybody have a preference? I don't want to run the legislation. No, it would be two or three. It would be two or three. I just think if they're able to get the grant funding, I would rather leave it there in statute. You think they don't need statute for the grant funding?

VICE CHAIR BRIDGES. DON'T MAKE ME CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO AND THREE. ARE WE ON TWO? I MOVE STATEWIDE R6 STAFF REC NUMBER TWO.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Tom Dermody, Joint Budget Committee staff. The second comeback for you, this was an item that was omitted, intentionally omitted from the Operating Common Policies figure setting that was presented to you on February 5th. Prior to the development of that document, I was informed by the Department of Personnel and the Office of State Planning and Budgeting that there was some confusion and communication difficulties with their federal partners regarding the statewide indirect cost plan. And as such, I didn't have any numbers to present at that point, so I knew I was going to be doing a comeback. Subsequent communications with the department and OSPB has indicated that while they continue to hash out those confusions and communication difficulties with the federal government, we should continue to use last year's statewide indirect cost assessment numbers So this is staff's recommendation to do that. There is no change from the prior year. We'll just use these numbers again.

Curious. Madam Chair, my understanding is that there was some personnel turnover at the federal level that caused the inability for our state staff to have open communication with their federal partners on this.

Ambassador Dermody. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move the Ambassador's staff recommendation.

Thank you, committee.

Madam Chair, I think you've done plenty this week. I'd like to thank our staff for what they've put you through over the last several weeks. You have one more day of staff figure-setting presentations. That's Monday. But you are through all of your departmental figure-setting discussions at this point. Monday is Common Policies, and then we will go into comebacks and balancing.