Committee of the Whole, May 6, 2025

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE FY26 BUDGET City Hall, Room 400 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, May 6, 2025 10:00 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYATTA JOHNSON COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE-RICHARDSON COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILMAN CURTIS J. JONES, JR. COUNCILMAN NICOLAS O'ROURKE COUNCILMAN JEFFREY YOUNG, JR. COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS HELEN LOUGHEAD, CLERK - - -

This is the public hearing. A public meeting of the Committee of the Whole regarding Bills No. 6 250195, 250196, 250197, 250198, 250199, 250200, 250201, 250202, 250210, 250211, 250212, and Resolution No. 250214. Ms. Loughead, will you please take the roll?

Councilmember Squilla.

Present.

Councilmember Gauthier.

Present.

Councilmember Jones.

Present.

Councilmember Young.

Okay.

Present.

Councilmember Young.

Present.

Councilmember Driscoll.

Present.

Councilmember Lozada.

Present.

Councilmember Bass. Councilmember Phillips.

Present.

Councilmember O'Neill. Councilmember Gilmore- Richardson. Councilmember Thomas.

Present.

Councilmember Harrity.

Present.

Councilmember Ahmad.

Present.

Councilmember Landau.

Present.

Councilmember Brooks. Councilmember O'Rourke.

Present.

Council President Johnson.

Present. We have a quorum. And this meeting is now called to order. Ms. Loughead, will you please read the title of the resolutions?

Bill No. 5 250195, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-1500 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Wage and Net Profits Tax by revising certain tax rates, under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250196, an ordinance adopting the operating budget for fiscal year 2026. Bill No. 250197, an ordinance to adopt a fiscal 2026 capital budget. Bill No. 250198, an ordinance to adopt a capital program for the six fiscal years 2026 through 2031, inclusive. Bill No. 250199, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-2600 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Business Income and Receipts Taxes to revise certain tax rates and end certain exclusions from the tax on receipts, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250200, an ordinance amending Chapter 12-1000, the Philadelphia Code entitled Traffic Code to revise the fee for the use of parking meters all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250201, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-1800 of the Philadelphia Code entitled School Tax Authorization to provide for an increase in the tax that the Board of Education of the School District of Philadelphia is authorized to impose on real estate, and amending Chapter 19-1300 entitled Real Estate Taxes to establish an equivalent reduction in the tax rate for the City Real Estate Tax, all under certain terms and Conditions. Bill No. 250202, an ordinance amending Section 19-1806 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Authorization of Realty Use and Occupancy Tax to eliminate certain exemptions, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250210, an ordinance amending Section 10-1001 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Fees of Commissioner Records to increase the portion of fees for the recording of deeds and mortgages and related documents to be used for housing trust fund purposes, under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250211, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-1400 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Realty Transfer Tax by revising the rate of tax, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250212, an ordinance to amend Chapter 19-4400 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Development Impact Tax to end imposition of the tax, under certain terms and conditions. Resolution No. 250214, resolution providing for the approval by the Council of the City of Philadelphia of a revised five- year financial plan for the City of Philadelphia covering fiscal years 2026 through 2030, in incorporating revisions with respect to fiscal year 2025, which is to be submitted by the mayor to the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority pursuant to an intergovernmental cooperation agreement by between the city and the authority.

Today, we will continue the public hearing of the Committee of the Whole to consider the bills read by the clerk that constitute proposed operating and capital spending measures for fiscal year 2026, a capital program and forward- looking capital plan for fiscal year 2026 through fiscal year 2031. This morning we will hear testimony from the Law Department, the Office of the District Attorney, and the Defender Association of Philadelphia. This afternoon we will hear testimony from the Philadelphia's Sheriff Office. Ms. Loughead, can you please call the first panel, which consists of the District Attorney Larry Krasner, Chief Defender Keisha Hudson, and Chief City Solicitor Ms. Renee Garcia? Can you please all come to the panel? As you are surrounded by greatness, Larry, Mr. District Attorney, I'm going to ask for Ms. Keisha Hudson, Chief Defender to please begin her testimony. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: All right, Council President.

I said Ms. Keisha Hudson, Chief Defender, can you please begin your testimony? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: One Philly, a city united, I just want to clarify.

Yes, sir. One Philly, a city united. Ms. Hudson, please speak into the microphone to begin your testimony. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Good morning, City Council President, esteemed members of City Council. My name is Keisha Hudson. I am the Chief Defender at the Defender Association of Philadelphia. My -- I'm going to keep my remarks brief today because I have submitted extensive written materials to City Council. The Defender Association of Philadelphia as you know, has contracted with the city of Philadelphia since 1973 to provide indigent defense services to people who are poor in the city of Philadelphia. And last year, we represented -- we rose from 70 percent to 75 percent of the people in Philadelphia that we represent that come into the system. We represent not only youth independency, but we also represented youth in delinquency. Last year we had 29 children -- 2,900 children that we represented in dependency and delinquency. We also represent adults from preliminary arraignment all the way through to appellate proceedings and in homicide. That number last year was almost 34,000 adults that we represented. We are a large organization. We are an organization of 530 defenders, that includes only 29 social workers for that adult client population. I want to spend my time talking about where we are right now, not only in the city of Philadelphia, but statewide and nationally. I presented a budget of $15 million which to this body may seem like a large request. But our budget as it stands compared to my counterparts who are sitting with me and to the Office of Public Safety is not nearly where it needs to be. Our base budget as it stands today, is $66 million. We are a 91-year-old organization founded in 1934. The Office of Public Safety that this body created is a one-year-old organization, and its budget is million less than ours at 66 million -- 65 million. So I come to you today wanting to stress again where we are. When we look at our counterparts, when we look at the Defender Association, when we look at the resources that we have, it is not enough. We are critically underfunded. We have been critically underfunded, and thanks to the work of this esteemed body, including City Council President, we have made strides in closing that funding gap. But we need more. I want to talk just a little bit about the things that I think this body should know. Starting with our starting salaries. As of today, the starting salary for a Public Defender at the Defender Association of Philadelphia is $64,000 a year. The starting salary at the District Attorney's Office is $70,000 a year. And the starting salary at the Law Department is $79,000 a year. Compared to our collar counties where the starting salary is $72,000 a year, and New Jersey, which is at 75, Maryland, which is at 85. We cannot be a revolving door when it comes to being able to recruit and retain the attorneys -- the excellent attorneys that we have at the Defender's Association. But it is not tenable in a city where it costs $75,000 a year to rent a one-bedroom apartment for our lawyers who are the best in the city, the state, and the country to start at 64. We are losing lawyers every month because they cannot support themselves on the salaries that they earn and they deserve more. We have staffed over 200,000 hearings last year. We continue to do more without a single additional resource that involve -that includes helping the prison decarcerate because it is under contempt under the Remick litigation. We have staffed early bail hearings in partnership with the courts and the district attorney's office. We have staffed Wellness Court and without an additional sense. I stand here or sit here before you today, and I will close with this. We don't get our rent paid from the City of Philadelphia. We pay real estate taxes back to the city of Philadelphia. Last year, that was $330,000 which we cannot get waived. We do not get any healthcare benefits from the city.

We do not get a pension from the city. We get no support in infrastructure or technology. No 23 support at all. So when you look at our budget as compared to the district attorney's budget, the law department's budget and OPS's budget, we in fact, under this mayor's proposal, received a cut this year. The only allocation we got was $1 million for Wellness Court. But when you look at what we have to pay and the cost associated with what we have to pay that my counterparts here have covered by the City of Philadelphia, that $1 million is really a budget cut. It reflects a budget cut. We are at a reflective point right now in our city and our state and our country. I presented a $15 million budget that I classified as a transition budget, and I met one-on-one with many of you. And I thank you for giving me and my team the time to meet to talk about the various issues. But I presented that $15 million budget to you, and we need every penny of that $15 million. There's a lot that is coming to the city. I have 45 children that I represent independency who are at risk of deportation. We had one child deported last week without any due process. We have defunded in mental health and drug addiction services. Our client population is rising. It will continue to rise, and we need these resources in order to meet the moment and be the well-funded and well-resourced constitutionally entitled council for the city of Philadelphia. Thank you. And I will take questions.

Thank you very much. Chief Solicitor Renee Garcia. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Good morning, Council President and Council Members. I'm Renee Garcia, the city solicitor, and I'm pleased to testify this morning as to our proposed fiscal year 2026 budget. As you know, we run a full-service civil law firm that supports the entire city. We are at approximately 400 people. We handle all silver matters in the city, whether that's labor and employment, short dumping, real estate transactions for rebuild. We handle privacy issues. We handle tax collection. Our affirmative litigation brings in tens of millions of dollars every year. It is our privilege to do this work. It is a purpose-driven department that we run, and we are committed to principles of equity. We are committed to serving the people of Philadelphia. We are committed to municipal government in a hard time when the rule of law is not necessarily respected in all courts. And so today, I want to express my profound gratitude for the 400 people who come to work every day in a time when we need local government attorneys more than ever. And we're seeing more and more candidates that want to work for us because they do believe in the purpose. And so I'm pleased to present this budget. It's a strong budget for my department and it will help us to hire more people to do the work that we need to do, approximately 12 positions. And we will continue to support council. We'll continue to support the mayor in all the work that we need to do, which is more important now than ever. And I'm ready to take questions when you have them.

Thank you very much for your testimony. And, Mr. Larry Krasner, District Attorney, please just state your name, for the record, and begin your testimony, sir. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: My name is Larry Krasner. I'm the elected District Attorney for the city of Philadelphia. Council President, I have an overview and greetings that are about to minutes. And then I have the substance, which is 8 to 10. And then I also have a brief conclusion, which would be about three minutes. Were you looking for the full testimony at this time, or?

I'm sure my members did their due diligence and already read your testimony. So if you could summarize your key points and then we'll get right into the questioning. Is that okay, members? Is that okay, members? COUNCILMEMBERS: Yes.

We good. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Very well. Well, good morning, Council President Kenyatta Johnson, Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore-Richardson. For those of you here in person, greetings. For those of you here in spirit, greetings. Appropriations Chair, Councilmember Mark Squilla, and members of our esteemed Philly City Council as a whole. I run an office of more than 650 people, including sworn law enforcement, 300 plus attorneys, victim service advocates, and support staff professionals. I want to make sure, though, that we are very clear. The parade that came walking in the door, that parade involves people on our team who are not within our office. More specifically, that parade involves our contracted victim services providers in Philadelphia, which comprise nine different groups. And those groups need money. They have had no 6 increase in funding for 15 years. And as we all know, it hasn't been the cheapest 15 years. They do incredible and important work. I'm going to read their -- the names of their organizations and I will ask them to rise as I do so, so that you can associate the face and the people and the incredible work they do with the name of that organization. They include Northwest Victim Services, Anti- Violence Partnerships, Victim Witness Services of South Philadelphia, WOAR, now known as the Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Violence, Concilio, Central Division Victim Services, Women Against Abuse, Northeast Victim Services, and Support Center for Child Advocates. As I'm sure you will know, members of council, from reading the testimony that has been provided, this -- these are groups that provide absolutely essential work. That work is part of the public safety success that this city continues to enjoy. There's absolutely no 12 question that when you protect witnesses and you protect survivors and you protect victims so they feel that they can't testify, there's absolutely no question that when you address some of the trauma that is caused by some of the more violent and more disturbing crimes that occur in the city of Philadelphia, that you are doing things that will benefit us as long as we are alive. You're doing things that are incredibly important. We work with these organizations all the time, and our humble ask on their behalf, please understand this is not our money. Okay? We're not getting any of this. This is their money. But please understand that our humble request here is only $347,276 in Class 200 that flows right through us to them. It does not allow us to increase the compensation for our new attorneys, which we need to do for equity, parity, and purposes of hanging on to extremely talented people, as I think has been mentioned here by my colleagues as well. It does not address the other budgetary needs that are itemized and specified here, which come to, you know, the numbers that are indicated in Section 2 of our testimony. But they are to some extent without a voice in the budget process, and they need to have that voice because the work that they do is so essential. I realize that's not a fulsome summary of this testimony, which goes on for a number of pages, but it is a point of particular emphasis. We -- you know, I've seen on a day-to-day basis the incredibly important work that they do. And simply put, it is not right that they're expected to do that amazing work with moderate funding and then wait for a raise for years. It 15 just isn't right. Therefore, I'm happy to take the bit of time that I have right now to make sure you all understand. We view that as a tremendous priority even though none of it sticks on our fingers. All of it goes straight through. And beyond that, for the time being, I will rest on the written testimony.

Thank you very much. I just have a couple brief questions before I turn over to my colleagues. And one, I just want to welcome back the City Council board member from the Defender Association, Everett Gillson. Let's give Everett a round of applause. I see him back there and I've sat in many meetings with him regarding the public safety of the city of Philadelphia. So it's always good to see you, Everett, doing the hard work. And to Ms. Keisha Hudson, defense never rests. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Never.

I think -- think I know that more than anybody. And so I thank you for your hard work and your dedication to making sure that those who need representation receive quality representation. And most importantly, you're reshaping the identity of the Defender Association, taking a comprehensive approach. I think you-all just -- would you create the Office of Education Advocate through the Defender Association? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Yes. I'm pleased to announce that through grant funding, we will be bringing on an education advocate to work with our dependent and delinquent youth. As you know, City Council President, the School- to-Prison Pipeline is a real one. We've switched our thinking and now called it the Womb-to-Prison Pipeline. As you know, one in four children who start independency end up in our delinquency system, and one in five of our adult clients started independency. And oftentimes the thorough thread of missed opportunities for intervention starts in the education setting. Teachers see students for eight hours a day and we see with our clients missed opportunities to intervene early before they're removed from their parents and placed into the foster care or adopt -- adoption system. So this education advocate will be an incredible add to the work that we do for our clients. I also want to mention that through grant funding, we have started a reentry practice for the first time to work with our adult clients. We are currently working with 12 clients. It's one person. So 12 clients on State Road. So we are grateful that we have expanded our practice and we'll be expanding our practice this year.

Okay. And also working with social workers, with your clients as well as a way to provide wraparound services on that first intake. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: We can provide wraparound services, for -- not for adult clients. We have, as I -- as I mentioned in my testimony, we have 29 social workers that works with almost 34,000 people. We --

for 34,000? 14 CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: 29 15 for 34,000. 16

17 29 for 34-. 18

19 We refer our social workers 20 for those who are watching are just 21 amazing. They come to work for us 22 with a master's degree starting at 23 $45,000 a year. They could go 24 anywhere else in the city, in the counties, but they come to work for us because they believe in the mission. I'm grateful to them, to our entire staff, but we cannot provide wraparound services. We would like to do that, and that's why we are hoping to get additional funding to hire more social workers to be able to do that.

But you do have social workers that service the clients, correct? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Yes.

Okay. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Yes.

And District Attorney, Larry Krasner, I just always want to acknowledge your hard work in working with this body under the leadership of our Chair of Public Safety, who's going to lead this session, Councilman Curtis Jones. Rather, it was the carjacking unit responding and making sure we're addressing those who are carjacking individuals. Rather, it's an issue near and dear to me, addressing the issue of gun violence and making sure that we're very, very strategic as we work with the Gun Violence Task Force. And I also see you have a new unit that deals with guns, which I also thought was very, very interesting. It's the prolific Gun Defenders Unit, which I'll allow you to elaborate on at the appropriate time. But, you know, I would be -- would be remiss about it and say that we are at a 30-year historic low when it comes to homicides and shootings in the city of Philadelphia. And pretty much those numbers have decreased under your watch. And so I think that deserves some level of support. You know, people think, you know, are we celebrating and we are acknowledging that the work that we've done comprehensively to focus on prevention early on, focusing on boots-on-the-ground organizations so young people don't pick up guns in the first place, and specifically focusing on how to make sure we don't have -- we address recidivism but not increase mass incarceration. So I just want to acknowledge you as a part of that work that this body has been doing in partnership with our law enforcement agencies, including yourself. And also you never being shy and saying, you know, if there are issues and concerns, you invite members of council to meet with you and your team, I think it was once a month. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Yes.

We would come and sit with your team and ask questions and do a deeper dive on the work that the district attorney's office is doing. And so I just want to acknowledge you from that aspect. And, I guess, I'll do a deeper dive into the work. Give me an idea. So we know we had a historical low when it comes to gun violence and shootings. There was a trace report to talk about amongst juveniles though. You had to charge more juveniles as adults regarding gun crimes. Give us an idea of what are we doing to address that? And what do you think are some of the symptoms that our young people are continuously picking up guns? And then last, I do acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the victim advocate organizations that you do have working day in and day out to support families who have been victims or co-victims of all types of violence. And so let's talk about the juvenile issue. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Yes, Council President. Thank you for that. And -- but I do -- just before I get into the weeds with that, I do want to say, I believe it has been a partnership. And it's been a partnership that has really had some successes. If we look back, you know, and this is something I've discussed with a number of members of council. If we look back at some of the crises that we faced in the pandemic coming out of the pandemic, time and time again, when Council raised concerns, same concerns that we had, whether it was about house theft and retail theft, or it was about carjacking, or it was about particular corners in Kensington where there was, you know, uncontrolled drug activity or whether it was robbery, time and time again when we came to Council and said, we'd like to have a unit to specialize in this, we have seen council respond, we've seen council fund it, and we have seen that that specialization, that investment in specialized work in that particular area has borne fruit. We have seen crime come down in one of those areas after another, after it's funded and after we get these units up and running. Even recently when Council in conjunction with the Mayor, were agreeable to some funding so that we had more resources to prosecute short dumping, and emphasis of the Mayor's cleaner, greener initiative. Even when we came up with that money, you know, we were so appreciative that we started doing the work without the money. The money doesn't show up till July. But, you know, we did what you do with tape and paper clips. We found some people to get the work going because it does take a minute. So I do believe it's a partnership. I think time and time again when there have been real concerns about criminal activity, we have all been able, in a collaborative way, Council, the Mayor's Office, government, those working community-based organizations outside of government have been able to come together. I also bring you some good news. On my numbers, it's not the lowest homicide in 30 years. It's the lowest homicide in over 50 years. Lowest number of homicides this morning. The second closest one -- we're at 66. The second closest year was 73. So we are actually well ahead of some of those other years.

You said 73? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Yes.

1973? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: No, the number was 73.

I'm sorry. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: It was around 2014, I believe. 2014, 2015.

Around 2014. Okay. I'm sorry. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: In the last 50 years. But, you know, we also, as we look at other categories of crime, 15 out of 18 that are listed by the Philadelphia Police Department are down. And they are down after 2024, which was the year in the United States when there was the biggest improvement in public safety in U.S. history. Okay. So, you know, I got up this morning and there's something on TV about how crime is going up. Really? Really? Crime is going up? Well, that is interesting because we have facts --

Numbers don't lie. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: And then we have fear. And I appreciate that Council has always stuck with the facts and has always been able to work with us. You know, even when we didn't know the solution or we didn't see the same solution, has been able to work with us to try to get at those results. We are seeing crime come down and down and down. Shootings come down and down and down. Victims of shootings come down and down and down in category after category. And I think Council deserves a lot of that credit. When we talk about juveniles in particular, the issue that often comes up to which you have alluded, Council president, is that we're seeing more juveniles arrested for homicide, and more juveniles arrested for shooting in some instances. It's part of a -- kind of an interesting riddle because we are also seeing fewer people between the age of 22, or even between the ages of and 22, 18 or between 18 and 25. We're seeing fewer of them. Exactly why? Once again, I'll stick with the truth. I don't know. I'm not sure. And I also think we have to bear in mind that when you talk about that, we don't know the ages of the people who do not get caught. Okay. So one of the powerful techniques that has been used by the Philadelphia Police, federal partners, and our office is social media analysts. And I don't think there's any question that the shooters most active on social media are younger. That that is how they brag about what they did. That is how they manifest their arguments and beefs back and forth. That's how they challenge the other side, is become a powerful source of evidence. So it is possible that part of what's happening here is they have made themselves easier to catch. And so we are seeing more of them arrested. But if you look at the population of people who are not caught, that you would see are more adult population. That's possible. There's no way of knowing if that's what's actually going on. It is also very clear, even including from the press conference we did yesterday, which was about an arms dealer. It was about, you know, people who were engaging in straw purchasing, buying a whole bunch of handguns. They were being dismantled and they were being shipped, concealed inside of microwave ovens into New York, into New Jersey, and also to the Dominican Republic. It is also clear that our state legislature has left us a wash in guns. You know, last year in Pennsylvania, there were almost 800,000 guns purchased lawfully. And that of course doesn't even count the ghost guns that are circulating after they're built, doesn't even count the illegal trade. But it was 800,000 guns just last year in Pennsylvania. Do you want to know how many were taken off the street by law enforcement? And I don't say this to criticize law enforcement at all. You know, they work hard and this is important work, 17,000. So what is your net? Your net new number of guns purchased lawfully 783,000 more guns in Pennsylvania purchased lawfully. The fact that we are in a position with a 50 year low on the 6th of May of 2025 in homicides, while we have more guns on the street every single day over those 50 years, is something to encourage us to work harder and do better and do everything we can to try to get the guns out of the hands of those young people. You know, having said that, we have seen the complete dismantling of shooting groups that are populated by young people, many of them juveniles, not just the Young Bag Chasers.

Say their names for the record. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Sure. Well, among them are the Young Bag Chasers, 02da4, The Senders. And we have also many others, half shut down or on the radar as active -- as our investigations with our excellent partners continue.

So for the record, these are -- these are groups of gangs that are responsible for shooting and warring in neighborhoods that you have prosecuted and taken down for the record? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: That is correct, sir. There -- there's another five or six. I can dig up the names for you if that is of help, but, you know, this is real and it's something -- again -- once again, I'm not saying it's us because it has been a wonderful collaboration with the FBI, with ATF, with DEA, with the attorney general's agents, with the Philadelphia Police Department in particular. It has been a wonderful collaboration. But some of the modern enforcement techniques that we are using based upon the limited but very powerful forensics that we have, some of those techniques have really borne fruit. We do not have a record in Philadelphia of taking down shooting groups. We have a record of shooting groups' names living for decades as they are passed from one generation to another and people are shooting each other over stuff that started long ago and they don't even know why. That's the truth. But we are seeing some of them be shut down. So, you know, I think that the solutions here have to include things like this. The state shut down an awful lot of juvenile facilities because they were snake pits, and then did not replace them with ones that are effective and humane. That's a problem. If you take a 15-year-old who's been swept up into a life where people have guns and there are threats back and forth, and you simply incarcerate them with no treatment, with no 12 education, with no effort to address the underlying issues, they're going to come out educated in crime. If on the other hand, you are able to put them into humane institutions where we can deal with them in the juvenile system, you have all those years from age 15 to to try to address these issues 21 and get them back on track. And we have seen oh so many times that, not everybody, but the majority of those young people can be put back on track if we have those facilities. I know it's a problem with the state. You tear down, you don't rebuild. It's exactly what happened with mental health during the rise of mass incarceration, the dismantling of 85 percent of our mental health system, which was never replaced except by jail cells in the streets. You know, that's the truth. But the city also has a role here, and I would be delighted to work with the city because the city does have the ability -- the ability to contract with appropriate facilities. If they're not built in Pennsylvania yet, then we're going to have to find them somewhere. But the city does have the ability to contract with those facilities and to make it a priority. The more we do that, the more we will see people who have been right -- rightfully arrested and put into custody, reforming and coming out and not endangering public safety.

Okay. Thank you. I also want to acknowledge the work of G. Lamar Stewart. Takes the call at any time of the hour. I think I caught him before going to church service the other day, Sunday morning. I know you was preparing your sermon, I apologize. I needed some help trying to help a constituent. And I see Fritze back there who's the head of the Gun Violence Task Force unit. Thank you also for help getting them guns off the streets. And the whole district attorney team. And Ant Brown is around here somewhere. Young man who you recruited to come and work with you. I'm going to have Quetcy Lozada talk about where we at on retail theft policy at some point in time, as well as Councilmember Jim Harrity. Because I know those are issues that they're very, very passionate about in terms of the Kensington Corridor. But I just want to -- also, Renee, thank you for your hard work as well on behalf of the administration. Sanctuary city, at some point in time, and I could hear Rue Landau on my ear now, like, what are we going to do? At some point in time, they're going to acknowledge the city of Philadelphia from D.C. What are we going to do defense wise, legal wise, to fight back, if we could talk about it? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Sure. Pursuant to the President's executive order, in probably a month's time, the Attorney General Pam Bondi will issue letters to cities, counties, states maybe, and designate them as sanctuary city. We have no 3 definition of what they think is a sanctuary city. We do not use that term sanctuary city. It is a term that is bandied about to accuse municipalities, counties, and states of illegally harboring migrants or undocumented people. That is not the case. We -- as I have been very clear, we do not honor detainers. We honor judicial warrants. We are backed up by Third Circuit case law in that respect. So we believe that we are following the law. We know that we are following the law. Nevertheless, we may get this letter designating us as a sanctuary city. Pursuant to the executive order, again, we will have time to respond, and I expect the Mayor will have many conversations and follow her diplomatic procedure as she does. And then we will see what comes next. Right?

Okay. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: We will see if they try to cut off funding, which we've already litigated this issue. We litigated this issue in 2017 and 2018. They cannot cut off funding. It is very clear. If we have to litigate, then we'll do that. But we --

That's what I wanted to hear. We prepared to fight. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: -- I expect -- I'll expect there'll be many national lawsuits between now and when these letters come out and when the letters come out and when funding is cut off. And as I've said before, it is an hour by hour, day by day. There has already been a lawsuit filed in San Francisco by a number of cities and they have succeeded on a limited injunction out there. So the legal road is long, but the courts have really been stepping up to protect the rule of law.

Okay. Just one small question. We talk about equity in contracting, minority participation. FY24, historically underrepresented groups account for 76 percent of law department contract partners. But in FY25 is 65 percent. So what's the disparity in terms of the decreasing going into the new year? Is that a change of major contracts, or? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: It ebbs and flows depending on when we're entering contracts and what contracts we need. But I want to be clear that we believe that diverse attorneys are important on our matters. It is the most important to have attorneys both internally and externally with real life experience in the city of Philadelphia from different backgrounds. And when I came to the law department, what I found was the big firms were using minority firms to make their numbers, right, to show that they had diversity. And that was not something that sat well with me. And so what I have done is entered into contracts with those smaller firms that are -- that have minority partners so that they could do the work and get the credit themselves. And that encourages our big firms to then bring up diversity within their ranks. And now diversity is a bad term that we -- that is being bandied about. But there is diversity that we can always do that is legal, right? We're not talking about quotas. We're not talking about picking people because of their race or their gender or their background. But we're talking about is broadening the pool and making sure that different firms have an opportunity to apply, to come forward, to make the pitch and to be awarded on their merit. And so that is something that I believe in. It is something that I believe in hiring both internal and external counsel. And we see the dividends of that. We see in a room when we have the thorniest legal issues, when we're dealing with the opioid crisis or we're dealing with public nuisance. We know that we need a variety of people in the room 24 because if everybody looked like me, it wouldn't be effective, right? If everybody looked like you, if any -- everybody looked like even one person in this room, it wouldn't be effective. We need everybody. And so we are constantly striving to broaden the pool and we will continue doing that.

Thank you. It's crazy. We -- they say we can't even say diversity. That's like saying you can't say black people. Totally racism in my mind, but it is what it is. We got to keep fighting. I want to let the Chairman of Public Safety lead this round. And then next, Councilmember Jim Harrity. Councilmember --

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.

-- Curtis Jones, Jr.

I want to thank the dream team up here. They look like they could defend us well at a -- as a city in whatever case in courtroom. So I want to thank you for that. There's over 3,000 parts in a jet engine. And all of them have to work together in order to create lift so that a plane or jet flies. Between you and the boots on the ground and the people that work for you, we are seeing lift in the right direction as it relates to reductions in fatalities in Part I Crimes. And I want to go through that list with you. I want to also say to Keisha Hudson, Chief Defender, thank you. You have the most comprehensive continuum of what happens when we get it right and what happens when we get it wrong with our young people. You see them as advocates that you defend in the beginning and sometimes you have to defend them as the defender when we get it wrong. So your input on how we can early or have intervention, think about and will answer. That's the question for you. For you, Madam Solicitor, thank you for representing us in some hostile courtrooms up in Harrisburg and others. So I need you to give us a quick update like you do every court or monthly with us on the crimes -- on the court cases that we -- that you are defending and where we are. DA Krasner, I need you to look at the -- you know, there's facts and fears. Where are we down at in the crimes? By category? If we gave you money a while ago to create a carjacking unit, where are we in carjackings? So take us through that. I wanted to get my questions on the books before the bell run. So I'm going to -- I -- I'd like to start with you, Madam Solicitor. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Great. Thank you, Councilmember Jones. We have a very strong mandate from the Mayor and from City Council to make this city safer. And as you know, we do that in a number of different ways. I will take you through our affirmative litigation and our legislative work. We are defending the ordinance on 3D printing. We have been successful there. That is up in the PA Supreme Court. We are briefing that now. We were successful on getting rid of a Second Amendment claim for our gun range case. We unfortunately lost on the Crawford case that was fighting preemption. But we will continue to fight preemption. We still have our lost and stolen case, which is --

Elaborate lost and stolen first. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: So lost and stolen is an ordinance that requires a gun owner -- a lawful gun owner to report when a gun is no 10 longer in their possession. So either it has been stolen or lost or what have you, right? And we strongly believe that this is not preempted. It does not infringe upon your right to own a gun, to transfer a gun, because you no longer have the gun. And so we are hoping the PA Supreme Court will take that up as well. We are defending our switch ordinance, which we have been successful so far. We have had our ghost gun litigation that we settled. Right? And actually Polymer 80 has filed for bankruptcy. That was the company selling the ghost gun kits, but no ghost guns are able to be sold in Philadelphia and the collar counties for four years. And then JSD Supply, who does the gun shows cannot sell throughout Pennsylvania for I think four years as well. Un-serialized ghost gun kits. And then we have a lawsuit pending against three gun dealers. This is a straw purchasing case. One of them has surrendered its gun license already and we're fighting with the other two. So -- and I've got some more ideas up my sleeves, so you may see more coming. That is the overview. We're also very active in our code and public nuisance space where we are working with the police on nuisance businesses, skilled game, tobacco, doors and windows, all of that. We are also working with the prisons to make the prison safer. With Commissioner Resnick, we've a lot of money, obviously coming out of the Remick litigation. We have million set aside and 7 we're doing that. 8 Our child welfare. We 9 shouldn't forget about them making 10 this city safer for the nearly 3000 11 children that are in custody right 12 now. And our people are doing that 13 work day in and out. 14 We also -- I want to shout 15 out our employment group, making it 16 safe to be at work and our data 17 privacy work as well, to keep 18 people's information safe. Right. 19 Because that is a vulnerability as 20 well. So we think about safety very 21 broadly and we are working with all 22 of our partners. 23 Council President? 24

Can I put in one point of information just real quick, Chairman Jones? So when you talk about these different partners in terms of the administration agenda to make sure the city is -- the city is safe, right, so we have a contract with the Public Defenders Association, right? And so wouldn't that be a part of the strategy to address the issue of recidivism? And so people who are involved in the system through trying to get representation, right, for something they may have done, but during their point of intervention, right, is an opportunity to kind of steer them in the right direction so they won't continue on that path of doing something bad in the city. Like is that part of you-all strategy as well? Because it's kind of like it's the Defenders Association over here, but we doing everything for the police, we doing everything for the district attorney's office. And I know it's a contract, but I think, and help me out because -- for the lawyers in the room, but there's a mandate for people to have legal representation in the city of Philadelphia, right? Part of their constitutional rights. So is that -- did that play a role in your strategy? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: For immigration? Are you saying specifically?

Yeah. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Or generally? Yeah. So that money, what do they call it? PAIFUP. P-A-I-F-U-P. The administration has been very clear that that will be allocated appropriately. They're waiting for the Office of Immigrant Affairs to hire their director, which we are in full steam ahead in hiring that person. But it's not as if that money is going away. It just has to be allocated. Quite honestly, I will defer politely to the administration. I'm not involved in paying money out, but we work very closely with the Defender's Office in all matters related to children in particular.

Yeah. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: And I think we have a very healthy relationship, and we are talking as well as we enter this new frontier where there is concern around immigrants. But on the specific funding, I will defer to the administration.

Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't really -maybe my question might have been interpreted. Talking about the immigrants, I was just saying overall strategy. So -- CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Overall strategy.

-- probably may be a better question for Adam Geer and administration, but you were just touting all the different agencies that you-all are working with -- CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Yes.

-- to make sure the city is safe. So since you were touting everybody you're working with, I'm kind of saying, okay, well, this would be a part of that conversation to address recidivism before individuals go on a life of crime and gun violence. That's all I wanted to say for the record. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Yeah, I agree.

Chairman Jones.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. So we are in key for a number of cases that deal directly with public safety. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Yes.

And you and your team have been, you know, chin to chin with some folk from other parts of the commonwealth and federal government and private sector to defend us and the bills that we pass, the bills that we've implemented. So thank you for the update on that. I'm going to go with the district attorney. I want you to go down by these part crimes. We funded a lot of stuff and we're seeing results. And, you know, if people are going around telling us that it's not working, two things can be true at the same time. We can be for criminal justice reform, but we can also be for public safety. It's not a or it is an and. And what the stats have proven is that is true. Can you give us an update on where we are on different parts of crime? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I certainly can. So I check everyday and I encourage any of you who are interested to check every day at the Philadelphia Police Department's publicly available website. Sometimes I check it a couple times today. So as of this morning, meaning through midnight last night, this year we have seen almost a percent decline in 23 homicide over last year. Rape down 24 almost nine percent over last year. Robbery with a gun, which goes to the carjacking issue, down almost 23 percent over last year. And remember, last year was not only a national record for public safety improvement, but Philadelphia led big cities in the United States. We were the locomotive on this train going in the right direction. That is robbery with a gun. If we look at robbery by other means, meaning without a gun, almost eight percent decline. We take a look at aggravated assault with a gun, that is down almost five percent over last year. As we move into the property crimes, we see residential burglary is down 11 percent. We have theft from auto, down almost 12 percent. Theft in general, down very slightly over last year. 09 percent to be precise, because I know it's a matter of concern to all of us. 29 percent. Overall violent crime down almost three percent. Overall property crime down over six percent. 44 percent. 34 percent. And this is after the year when Philly led the nation among big cities, cities of a million or more, in public safety improvement. Just to put a finer point on it so that -- so that we don't get it twisted as they say. Philadelphia has been getting safer for four consecutive years at a rate that is better and higher than the average of other big cities. So if we go back to the -- to the bad old days in the pandemic, and look at when it peaked and started to improve all over the country, all over the country in big cities, you had an eight percent decrease in homicide. Philly went down 11. The next year you had a percent 10 decrease in homicides. Philly went 11 down 20. 12 And then in 2024, you had a 13 23 percent, an amazing 23 percent national average reduction among cities of a million or more, 23 percent. Philly was 35. Okay. Year after year after year, we are leading the way despite being the brokest of those cities, despite being in a state that is, frankly, so inadequately regulated when it comes to guns, that we are the supplier for New York and New Jersey crime guns. Despite all those challenges, we are leading the way. And once again, I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back. We should probably pat these victim services providers on the back and everybody else who's in this room, I don't need a pat on the back. And we should also pat the commissioner on the back, a couple of them, and a Mayor or two. We should probably pat them on the back and everybody in Council. But these are remarkable achievements that should really encourage us to continue on this path of deep investment in prevention, deep investment in forensic science, and understanding the value of what the public defender does and what the city solicitor does, and what the DA's office does.

They -- there's a lot of places that need money, but we are seeing a very significant return on investment when that investment is made in these areas.

I would like to just end with Defender Hudson, who pointed out to me at the 100 Shooter review that the young man or woman that we don't intervene with early becomes the defender client. And you keep them in your portfolio throughout. And what things can you tell us that we can do to intervene earlier so that what the -- there was a, I believe, a conviction yesterday of the individual up in, was it the shoot out, the conviction, what was his name? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Maurice Hill. The Maurice Hill case.

Yeah. They -- we just complete -- he --you negotiated him out to surrender and convicted him. But how can we find him earlier before he offends? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: I say often that when our clients come to us, however young or old they are, that is because all systems have already failed them. And I mean that intently. We -- Philadelphia leads the nation in the number of children -- black and brown children removed from their homes and placed in dependency. We are No. 1. We all know that children have a right to be with their parents, but we are removing children at a large rate. And we have made improvements in the last few years under Commissioner Ali's leadership. But we have a ways to go to change that. So whether it's in the family system or the family policing system, or whether it is in the communities that our clients are raised, we have kids who are living in traumatized areas that have been disinvested in over decades. There's no green space. There are a few outlets for them. And I just want to -- just remind all of you that we do dependency work with the Defender Association, but we don't come in until after the child is removed from the home. That is when we come in. So we don't see what is happening to that child until the removal has happened and the petition has been filed, then we get appointed. But we do strongly believe and are working hard with our -- with our partners in the law department and community legal services and others to see what can -- what can be done to keep that child in the home. When we look at the children who are coming in delinquency system, we had last year, over 1,300 kids who spent at least one night in the detention center. A third of them had a dependent history. A third of those children. We do not do any juvenile reentry from our perspective. We don't have the capacity in our office. Right now our most serious cases are handled by a phenomenal group of five attorneys. They carry over 100 cases each. So we simply need, and I keep going back to staffing, I keep going back to resources, I keep going back to needing to lower caseloads so we can focus on the children who need help early and connect them with the resources including wraparound services. With supports for juvenile reentry, right, we're talking about 400 and 55 children, right, that we cannot work with on reentry. We have a social -- we have social workers in juvenile -in our juvenile delinquency systems. But we have five of them. And as I said to you last year, we represented over 1,500 children who are in our delinquent system, five social workers. So we have no reentry supports. We need more in order to do the work we can do. We can intervene, and we have intervened. And we have many success stories of children who are accused and were found guilty or adjudicated delinquent of very, very serious offenses who are now in college and beyond. We had a former defender come and visit us who started in our dependency system, and then he was in our delinquent system. He came back, worked as a social worker, he then went to law school, and now he's an assistant federal defender. So there are success stories. Members of this body who have had family members or friends know that there are success stories, but it's with the right investment. Our clients do not get a private council. They don't get a crisis manager. They get a overworked, underfunded public defender who's doing their best to represent them. And maybe they will get social services referral if we have the staffing to do that.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jim Harrity, then Councilmember Dr. Anthony Phillips, then Councilmember Jamie Gauthier.

Thank you, Council President. Thank you all for coming today. Council President, you're -- you know, I had some questions about the AMP Court and stuff like that for them, but since you brought up with the juvenile justice, last night I spoke at a graduation at the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Center for a group of kids that were graduating the PTTI course up there. PTTI is in Councilman Young's district on Girard Avenue. Used to be the Burwin Institute. Great program. Something like something kids 11 started the program, but only 12 12 actually finished. 13 And it wasn't that the 12 14 that finished were, you know, the 15 smarter of the kids, the other kids 16 either were released and weren't 17 able to complete the program. But I 18 got to spend some time, and it was 19 kind of messed up. I -- we couldn't 20 even take pictures with the kids because we had to blot out their faces if we did, which was just a shame because they were very excited. They did it really nice for them. They had cap and gowns for them and stuff like that. And they graduated out of two programs. One was electrical and the other was cement mason. And I had a chance to talk to these kids. And while they were in the juvenile justice system, they weren't bad kids. Once you got past the neighborhood slang and the little trying, you know, trying to be a tough guy type attitude, these kids were good kids. And what I really noticed was they were scared. Scared not only because of where they were, but scared because of they were getting ready to get out. But thank God for this program, all 12 of those kids will be starting Saturday classes soon as they're released. It was great to see the families up there and the actual sense of pride that the kids felt as they were getting their certificates. And all those kids, they left with their OSHA certificate, which if you're in the construction business, you can't work on a job -- walk on a job in Philadelphia and work on a job in Philadelphia without your OSHA 9 certificate at least. And these 10 kids are leaving the detention center with that. So in my opinion, that actually gives them a leg up. It actually gives them a leg up on the kids that are graduating high school, because when they're both going to apply for that same construction job, that kid's going to get that job because he has the certificate. So, and I apologize, I'm an emotional guy. Stuff like that upsets me. So first off, the discrepancy that I see between the Defender's Office and the District Attorney's Office and funding is ludicrous. I am for right off the bat 100 percent funding our Defender's Association. It's not -- CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you, Councilmember.

It's not -- it's not a wish. This is a necessity especially when it comes to the juvenile justice system. Having an attorney that knows the law is the difference in the path. You know what I'm saying? So I'm for giving the Defender's Office, whatever we need to do to even the playing field. That being said, I'd like to just hear a little more about how do we get some more of these programs from each of you into not only the juvenile justice system, but our criminal justice system. Because the fact of the matter is that at some point, people are going to get out. And then what do they do? You know, people that have been there know, you know, when you first get out, you get home, first month, everything's peachy keen. You know, the -- your wife or your girlfriend hasn't seen you in a while and you know they're happy. So the first month is really good, but then that second month comes and she comes in from work, and you're still sitting on the couch because you can't get a job. So you end up going back to the same thing that sent you there in the first place, because that's the only thing you know. How do we get more of these programs and what -- give me some opinions from you. And I'll get to my other questions in the second round if we can. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: You know, from a historical perspective, the birth of the prison, the prison was founded by the Quakers. It was meant for a very, very short stay and focused on rehabilitation. We have moved very, very, very far away from that. You are correct, the majority of our children, right, I mentioned that statistic of at least 1,379 kids spent at least one night in detention. And a third of them had more than one admission in a calendar year, right? That -- that's the client population of youth we represented. And 455 children, right, our children, are reentry. If we had reentry, support could serve. We started a reentry practice. We did that through grant funding. We're only -- we only have one staff member that's working currently with 12 adults. We need the same for our youth. We need more social workers that stay with them. We have a model like that independency. And I really want to thank this body because I came to this body in 2022, my first budget cycle, talking about the fact that our dependent attorneys had over 100 children each. And through support with City Council, right, we are able to now lower that caseload to 55 -- to 60, which is remarkable. In my -- in my thinking, that's still too much. Because again, we have a lot of work to do with our dependent kids, and we're seeing a third of them of the current population end up in delinquency. But we have no supports. I love our children, but they -- I -- and I don't like to talk about second chances, but they didn't have a first chance to begin with. And I think we need to think through what we are funding and what sorts of interventions we need. And the fact that the best place for them is in the home, but the family needs supports, right? The entire family needs supports. If we have that child with that OSHA certificate go back into a community where they have unstable housing, or they have to find a way to support a mother and/or father and/or siblings, or they can't move away from the influences that they have in that community, without the right supports and the mentor and the job connection and real actual livable wages, right, to get themselves out of multi-generational poverty, we are just going to see that client again. We should all care about funding public defense because one in three people come into the justice system. We all know someone who has, but the majority of my clients are coming home, and it doesn't end at incarceration because you're coming back to communities that are going to remain stagnant. And they themselves are not getting served in the institutions that they're in.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

District Attorney, you have anything to add to that? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Certainly. I do want to point one thing out. As you all may know, my entire time in office, I have advocated for parity for the public Defender's Office. Parity means fair equivalent treatment. But let us not lose track of the following. My office does all the cases. We do all, the criminal cases. The public Defender's Office does a portion of the homicides. We do them all. The public Defender's Office does not resent -- represent all the people who have private counsel. We do them all. So when we talk about parity, parity does not mean equal funding. It might very well mean that the Public Defender's are starting at 79,000, like the city solicitor. That my office has lawyers starting at 79,000, like the city solicitor. We're at 70-. It might very well mean that. It should mean something like that because the work they do is incredibly important. And that's why I've supported them in that regard. But equal funding does not make sense. If you have one office --

No, that's not -- that's not -- that's not what I was suggesting at all. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Okay.

I get the parity. That's not -DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I got you.

-- where I was going at all with the numbers. The numbers are what they are. Your office exactly does all the cases. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Right.

It's a lot larger. You do go against people who are represented by private attorneys. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Exactly.

That's -- I wasn't doing that. I'm just saying they're only trying to get to 15 million, you know what I mean? District Attorneys at 58-, there's got to be some kind of percentage there for the percentage of cases like you just stated, and the funding of their attorneys versus the funding for your attorneys that would make it even not per se as 58 million, 58 million, but million to 58 5 million. You understand what I'm 6 saying there? 7 DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: 8 Of course. 9

And 10 the question was actually about how 11 do you feel and how do we get some 12 more of these actual programs into 13 the Juvenile Justice Center to get 14 these kids before they become adult 15 offenders? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Understood.

And that's -- that wasn't nothing against your office or how much your budget is. I get -

Councilman --

-there's a big difference. Sorry.

No, no, that's okay, Councilman. Can we have you go back to that on the second round?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Councilman. Chair recognizes Councilman Phillips.

Thank you so much, Chair. I just want to begin by thanking District Attorney's Office for being supportive in many endeavors that we've done in the city together, especially through G. Lamar Stewart staff, but also District Attorney. Thank you for your work that you've done. So, on that lens, I'm just going to actually just run through all of my questions. Hopefully Defenders, District Attorney, and also the Law Department can just take note of the questions. I'm going to give them all at once. First question is, District Attorney, there has been progress made in the past year or so since Mayor Cherelle Parker has come into office as well as Commissioner Bethel. What has changed? I just want to know what has changed in terms of showing that the -- and the -- and the progress has been made compared to the other administration that you had to work with and the police department as well? I just want to ask that. The second question is, you mentioned that you're concerned about the rehabilitation of young people as well as not just adult citizens alone. When you do your prosecution, you don't want to just send them to any particular prison. How do you make those decisions in terms of your prosecution? Do you prosecute at a -- at a -- at a different level when, you know they only can go to a certain, you know, detention center? Or do you -- you know, how do you make a decision on what, you know -- trying to push a certain rehabilitation center for individuals? The next question I just have for the Defenders Association, Defenders Association, can you just describe, for many people they see you defending people, young people, adult citizens alike, and they're like, oh, you're just helping to defend criminals. Right. You know, people who just can't afford things. There's a perception out there in our city from some people. How do you measure the effectiveness of your diversion programming when you're trying to, like, you know, defend these individuals? And what are you doing to show the courts that in your defense, they're going to be rehabilitated? And lastly, for the Law Department, I just want to know more broadly, how many active cases is the Law Department currently pursuing against landlords for cold violations and unsafe living conditions? And then also, can you just explain to me, is the Law Department doing proactive work with licensing and inspections around landlords, you know, and other situations like, you know, that, are going on? So basically, we want to be more -- are you having a proactive process of prosecuting landlords in the city? Thank you. I guess District Attorney could start us off, and then Defenders Association. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember Phillips, thank you for the questions. If I lose my way, because what can I say? It's been a long few weeks.

Yeah. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: If I -- if I lose my way and I misinterpret the question, please let me know. But I think there are some spectacular things that have been going on during this administration in terms of the DA's Office's relationship with the police commissioner. And also I think that the Mayor has gone in the right direction in many ways that are very, very important. Just one example would be her commitment, unlike prior administrations, to $30 million for a state-of-the-art forensics lab, made two budget addresses ago. That can have such an important impact. These numbers are truly remarkable. But oh my goodness, what would happen if we had that state-of-the-art forensic facility operating? I mean, I can tell you right now, I spoke to a high-level person in Phillips Police Department years ago about what it would mean. And, you know, he was banding around the notion of an additional percent decrease in 9 violent crime, which would be an 10 amazing thing. I don't want to take anything away from the prior commissioners. I had a very good relationship with both of them. And I don't want to take anything away from the Mayor -- you know, the prior mayor. But I will say this, I think we all feel that the progress that was being made is moving more quickly now. I think we all see the result of being on the right track for a period of years. And the Mayor is to be commended for that, and the police commissioner is to be commended. And I would also say, let us not forget the role that having a new head of the Fraternal Order of Police has played. There was a time under the old head of Fraternal Order of Police when you had a massive portion of Philadelphia police who had been categorized as injured on duty and unable to be on the streets, unable to testify, et cetera. All those doctors were picked by that prior head. And that is not how FOP President Roosevelt Poplar plays. We are seeing the numbers of officers IOD, in other words, injured on duty and unavailable, getting back towards a normal rate of about four percent, rather than the ridiculous rate of 18 percent that we saw under John McNesby. So I think -- you know, I think that speaks to some of the excellent efforts that are being made by this administration that build on, you know, three prior -- a few prior years of progress. But they build on them. And, you know, we just keep going. We just keep getting better. Crime is cyclical. It is going to -- it is going to bottom out. It is going to go back up at some point. That's just the reality. It relates to a myriad of factors so long, it's hard to even include them. But we continue to make progress, and I have to feel it has a lot to do with the excellence of this administration, including both the police commissioner and the Mayor and obviously their executive staff in many different areas. Your second question I'm going to beg your pardon and ask you to just remind me briefly, what was the second question?

Just 10 seconds. I just want to say, basically the question was, can you explain your -- the role that your prosecutor is play -- not -- your prosecutors play in helping to request judges to put them in certain rehabilitation centers that you believe can be stronger for their -- for their growth and development? Because you say that there's some prisons that are not opted out, that are not doing as much growth and development. How does that play in your prosecution? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, Councilmember, thank you for the question. You know, one of the great things about our administration is that we have Robert Listenbee, who was Obama's Chief of Juvenile Justice in the second term as a first assistant, and who was a national authority when it comes to these issues. I would phrase this a little bit differently. We flat out don't have access to facilities that we needed -- that we need for people who have done stuff that is serious, but is still best addressed in the juvenile system. They don't exist. They were closed, and they were not replaced with other facilities. So we do what we can within that context with what is made available to us four or five years after a lot of those facilities were shut down and were not rebuilt. You know, I will be very transparent with you. There are certain people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who would like their adult prisons full. They make money off of them, up in Cole County and Elk County and other places named after minerals and deer. You know, that's what they like. And I see their hand in not providing humane facilities that will be more rehabilitative for young people as a way to pressure us into sending those young people to places where they will not get an education, and their issues will not be addressed. So the issues are tough, but I will say this, if you look at someone like Marvin Robinson, a juvenile who committed an atrocious murder, you know, the U.S. Supreme Court does not permit life sentences for someone like him, but he's on the -- in an adult prison doing 35 years. You look at Ameen Hurst, this was a juvenile who killed a number of people and also escaped. He's in an adult facility doing 50 years. Okay? These -- this is what happens with juveniles who are not appropriate for the juvenile system. And yet, on the other hand, I could -- I could point you to a girl, and I'm going to keep her name out of it for appropriate reasons. A girl who at was involved in killing a man who was using her for sexual purposes. And she's in the juvenile system, and that is where she belongs. That's where she's going to get the help, the support that she needs despite what she actually did. And then she will come out and be supervised and free in the adult system. So, you know, it's individual justice. It's about being extremely specific, extremely careful and trying as much as we can to increase public safety by that sort of individual attention and separating the wheat -- the wheat from the chaff, as they say in the good book.

Thank you. And just real quickly, from the Defenders Association and then the Law Department. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Just to give you an idea. Last year we made 740 referrals for mental health and substance abuse support. So I referenced again, the systems have failed our youth and adult clients before they get to us. We do not have nearly enough resources pursuant to a Jefferson Hospital report that said that people who are looking to get better from substance abuse really have difficulty accessing treatment, the appropriate inpatient and outpatient treatment. People commit crimes or they are brought into the system. One, we get them because they're poor. Constitutionally, you get us because you have no resources to afford a counsel. But because we have the privilege of the attorney-client relationship, we get to know that client intimately. We get to know everything about them, and we get to approach what they need holistically. But we cannot do that without resources. We can't -- it's not sustainable that after all the systems failed and they end with us, then we don't have the resources to help divert them. They are not just poor, they are laboring under substance abuse issues, severe mental health issues. The adult -- the adolescent brain is a real thing. It is decades of research that is in multiple Supreme Court opinions. Boys don't mature till they're 26. I'm sorry. You -- they don't. They are a car without brakes, as one of my favorite neurologists describe them. A children brain is like a car without brakes. They don't -- they can't foresee consequences. They don't understand consequences. They can't life plan. So we have to meet them where they are, provide the resources they need until we get them to the point and after. Girls develop a little earlier as we -- as we know, at 25, until we get them to a place where we can provide stable supports and they can get out of the system. So it -- we have to provide support for interventions, but we have to provide support for the advocate standing next to that child who was brought there by the failure of so many different systems, but are now here for us to advocate for.

I know I just had that one quick question, but I'm going to run out of time for the Law Department. Thank you. That was helpful.

Thank you, Councilman.

Thank you.

Chair recognizes Councilwoman Gauthier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning to all of you. And thank you so much for everything that you do to bring justice to our city and to protect our city. Your work is vital and critical. I wanted to address my first comments and questions to Defender Hudson. First, thank you for your stellar leadership of the Defenders. Thank you for coming here and very clearly and succinctly laying out the case for your budget request. I agree with you that there needs to be parity among these three organizations. However, we define parity because poor people in this city deserve quality, free, and fair legal defense. And our ability to do that is how we continue to root out racial injustices in the criminal legal system. I wanted to talk about PAIFUP. The issue of where PAIFUP funding will be housed has come up several times during the budget season. Immigration advocates have asked that the city raise the amount of money in this fund and move immigration defense work from MDO to the Defender's Office. And I just have to say, Solicitor Garcia, I respect you great -- greatly. I've worked with you very closely on very hard things and respect your opinion. But I do not understand the administration's position on this. I do not understand why we would need to wait to bring on a new person to decide whether to fully fund immigration legal defense and to move it to an organization that's already doing that work. And frankly, you know, if we are hiring someone that has a different opinion than that, I would question whether we should hire them. And so I wanted to ask you, Defender Hudson, can you briefly describe how moving this funding right now to the Defenders would be beneficial for this work? And also how increasing this funding would be beneficial to this work in this environment that we're in right now. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Okay. Thank you, Councilmember Gauthier, and thank you for your support of the Defender Association. We have -- we started to have conversations with the National -- Nationality Services Center three years ago about moving immigration defense to the Defender Association. We -- after the Trump got elected, we realized that we needed to move quicker. And we wanted to start working with the area immigration nonprofits, HIAS, and PICC, and NSC to move immigration defense to our organization. That's the model in public defender offices in New York and around the country that have large immigrant population. Philadelphia's immigrant population or non-documented population is around 50,000. That proposal, I asked for 1.5 million this budget cycle out of the 15, but in anticipation that we were going to get the funding that has traditionally gone to HIAS and NSC would come to us for a total of 2 million. We needed to be in the work day one. Quite frankly, I am bereft that we didn't start planning for this last year when we knew what might be coming. But our clients are under threat. We had a client that was detained by the police after his case was dismissed for lack of evidence. And he was escorted out by a police officer and handed over to ICE. No one saw warrant -- a judicially signed warrant. So the threat is real. Our clients are being impacted. As I mentioned before, we have close to 45 dependent children right now who are non-citizens. We had one deported last week without any due process. We are behind -- we are going to be remain critically behind in the number of people who are going to come into the system who need representation in immigration federal court.

Thank you. The federal government is moving fast and furiously in their targeting of welcoming cities. We need to make the decisions right now in this moment to protect our people. And that's certainly a big part of my push this budget season. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council Lady. Councilwoman Lozada, and then Councilwoman Landau.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for being with us this morning. Now, I'm going to ask all of my questions for the three of you and then come back in the second round so that I can get them all in at the same time. My first question is for the Law Department. The proposed funding request section, a section 13 of the budget outlines the explanation of the code and public nuisance litigation unit. What specific matrix will you use to measure success in reducing short dumping and nuisance properties? And how will you coordinate with L&I and other departments to ensure the effective collaborative efforts? As you know, I deal with that in the 7th Council District. It's become a very serious problem, not just in the Kensington community, but across the district and almost in every neighborhood. And so can you talk to us a little bit about what your matrix are and how you're going to measure the success as far as your -- and as well as your collaborative efforts? And then for the District Attorney's Office, according to your program description of pre-trial diversion programs, it references connecting defendants to resources as alternatives to incarceration. Could you please provide the breakdown of your specific funding allocations with your budget dedicated to the diversion programs and their expected outcomes, as well as how will the DAOs diversion programs complement or collaborate with other diversion programs in the city? And then for the Defender, when we met, you mentioned some of the images that we've seen on social media as it relates to young children representing themselves in immigration hearings. Can you talk to us about how you and your office can prevent those types of situations from happening here? And why is that so important to not just young people in our community but for their families as well? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: I am going to answer Councilmember Phillips's question the same time I answer your question because I didn't get to get that on the record. But I do -- I do want to just correct the record, something that the Defender said about the incident last week, just so it's accurate, that the person in question was not detained by the police and was walked down as he was offering translation services. So I just want to put that on the record. But as to public nuisance and short dumping, I do have some statistics. And Councilmember Phillips, I don't have statistics broken out by which cases are against landlords versus other property owners. But this year through March, our code team has handled in court 2,735 matters. And before the board of L&I review 1,559 matters. That's through March. We have -- we have filed 27 short dumping cases so far. We need to ramp up. And these positions will help us ramp up. We're getting a lot more referrals from both police and Clean and Green and L&I. And we work with them day in and day out every day on public nuisance. We know that this is part of safety, right? Safe neighborhoods, safe neighbors. That has an effect on the overall neighborhood. So we will be using these five new positions to hire attorneys to really ramp up what we are doing in the courts. What we are also doing is looking at who the perpetrator is, because sometimes there is a landlord or a property owner who maybe is, you know, a mom and pop who we just need to get into compliance and maybe there's a language access issue or lack of information and we can work them to get them in compliance. And then we have, you know, the bad guys. We have the Adam Erhlichs and the Philip Pulleys in the world who have LLC on top of LLC, and they have a -- you know, they're -- they have a bunch of properties, the guys who own Brit Shalom. And this is where we're really ramping up with data, with the help of Philly Stat to figure out where are these properties? How do we go after all these LLCs that they're hiding behind? And that's punitive, right?

That's where we're getting the big judgements and trying to collect on those judgments. So it's both, right? It's working with the community to get individuals in good faith into compliance. And then the bad landowner -- landlords who are doing this over and over and over again and creating blight upon the properties. We do have metrics that we have been working on, and we will across the board, be gathering more data on what we're doing. But overall, just ramping up our public nuisance work.

Thank you so much. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Councilmember, our client who was -- had his case dismissed for lack of evidence. We all know that when you're in the courtroom and your case is done, that you are free to leave. And our public defender told him that he could leave. Court staff then told the sheriff, who then told the client that ICE was waiting for him and he could not leave. A police officer then walked into the courtroom and escorted him while the officer speaks Spanish. And the client may have needed translation services. I can tell you, we are all lawyers up here. That was a detention. He was not free to leave. He was escorted downstairs, our attorney, because she had other matters before the court did not go with him. And so no one saw a warrant. Regarding representation for children, yes, children are representing themselves without counsel in immigration court. We had a couple recent examples in New York in the last month. You're not entitled to counsel unless your family can afford you immigration counsel. Our proposal would have a staff of lawyers. Each lawyer 4 could represent 25 to 30 detained 5 clients plus another 20 or 20 to 30 6 non-detained clients. It will not 7 be enough at the pace at which we're 8 seeing detention and removal. 9 People are being removed without 10 even appearing in court for any sort of process or due process. So the best we can do right now is just tell our clients to be prepared at any time because they can be detained in a courtroom, outside the courthouse, on their way to court, at work. We're seeing this happen in places that were previously deemed safe and welcoming spaces. But the moment is here. And I just wanted to again, you know, ask the Council to approve this funding, but also implore the administration to release the funding to us so we can start this work immediately.

Thank you. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember, thank you. Oh, sabotaged again. Here we go. Councilmember, thank you. I do want to just briefly comment on immigration, then I'll go right to your questions about diversion and diversionary programs. You know, I think it's very important for all of you to know that when we were doing a press conference yesterday about people who are international armed smugglers, who are sending weapons to, not only to other states, but sending them to the Dominican Republic, various different ways, I found this out. There's a co-defendant, a co-conspirator, I should say, very actively involved in that plot to do these things. ICE grabbed him, ICE took him away. Why is that a bad thing? Because we had not finished prosecuting him. We had not gotten him to a courtroom. We had not gotten him to a conviction. We had not gotten him to a sentence. This is exactly the kind of undocumented person who is a danger in the United States. And Donald Trump kissed him. That's what he did. They are terrorizing victims of crime who are undocumented. They're terrorizing witnesses to crimes who are undocumented, who we need to prove cases. And they are kissing that very small segment of an undocumented population who do terrible crimes by deporting them before they even have their day in court. It is the most upside down anti-public safety nonsense that I've ever seen. And this is not the first time we have seen it. They're out to crush, hardworking, fundamentally law-abiding undocumented people who are just trying to make a living and raise their kids on simple stuff like a first DUI, something like that. They're out to crush them, or women who are complaining about being in a domestically abusive environment and they're trying to vindicate their own rights. They're crushing them. But they're kissing that small segment of an undocumented population that is less likely to commit crimes as a total population, nonetheless, includes a few real bad actors. They're kissing them. S. Constitution, what is known as the Commandeering doctrine. That doctrine says, President cannot tell the police commissioner what to do. The president cannot tell the district attorney what to do. The president cannot tell the Mayor what to do. There is a separation of powers that is enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution. And as Solicitor Garcia indicated previously, this city has fought against these efforts to punish cities that are diverse. In a way, this president doesn't like. Punish cities that are democratic in a way this president doesn't like. And the city fought successfully in the courts. So I understand it may feel overwhelming to be in a position where you have a want to be dictator, that's exactly what he is, who is threatening left and right and writing crazy on pieces of paper. But we need to stand on those rights, and we need to stand together and defending this city from these selective, vindictive assaults that are going to make us less safe. And frankly, I suspect he wants to make us less safe. There's a -- there's a longer play here. I could get into it, but I think you all know what it is. If the cities that are doing well with lowering crime go in the other direction, then what does that justify? And what is his long-term goal? Having said that, I know that your question was a little off on a different topic. And that question was, what's going on with funding in terms of diversion? So we do not have a specific ask in our budget for a change of funding that is used for diversion. And there is a reason why it's a little hard to answer your question. Not that I don't want to answer it, but it's a little hard. So, for example, AMP, the numbers of people in the accelerated misdemeanor program, diversionary program, a program I support very much. Those numbers shrunk a lot in the last few years because of the rise of police diversion through the PAD program, Police Assisted Diversion.

Simply put, they didn't come into the system in the first place. And honestly, the notion is a good one. It's one that's worked in other places. I'm not saying it's working perfectly or well, or whatever here, but the notion is not a bad one. So how do we compare that? It's -- we don't have lawyers whose only job is to do diversion with few exceptions. We have lawyers who go into courtrooms and they got 10 cases on the list that are not diversion and they got two cases on the list that are diversion in juvenile court among young adults in other spaces. A lot of the diversionary programs that exist out there, we do not fund. Or if they are funded, they're funded from the outside through grants and things of that sort. So it becomes a little difficult. And once again, perhaps we could sit down with your staff and try to go over in more detail some of these specifics. It becomes a little difficult to say what portion of a particular attorney's time was dedicated to diversion? What portion was dedicated to going for a first-degree verdict in a homicide case? In that kind of a way. But this is certainly true, and I think this is a fair observation. We have very substantially increased diversion opportunities, especially in juvenile court, especially among young adults. We initiated a program that never exist -- existed, which was known as the Emerging Adult Unit. It specifically goes after people between ages and with special 6 programming. Some of those people 7 plead guilty. Same thing with our 8 mental health court. Some of those 9 people plead guilty, and then they 10 receive special programming to 11 address their needs. Some of those 12 people are diverted. It all depends 13 on the specifics of the case. But 14 it's -- what I'm saying is diversion 15 is happening in a variety of 16 different ways. A lot of it grant 17 funded, but most of the money that 18 is in our budget is simply 19 compensation for the attorneys, and 20 in some cases social workers who are 21 doing work that connects to this. 22

23 Thank you for that. I 24 think that, you know, as it relates to diversion programs, I'm all about giving people opportunities, right? The right opportunities to be able to get them on the right path. And you and I have had this conversation about sitting down and looking at the diversion programs that run out of your office and other diversion programs throughout the city to figure out which ones of them actually are working and which are not. And how do we redirect the dollars from those diversion programs that are not working into better use. And so we haven't had the opportunity to sit down and have that or to further that conversation. But I want to get it on the record to make sure that we look at all of these diversion programs. Some of them overlap, some of them are serving the same people. And so what is the real impact that we're having in the community? And how are these individuals who are being referred into diversion, how are they taking advantage or not of these programs? And do we need to look at something different? So thank you for that. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I hear that. And I just want you to know, Councilmember, I salute the idea of mapping it all out and seeing what is duplicative and comparing these diversion programs. But I think it's also very important we look at the outcomes with diversion and compare them to what used to happen, which is most of those cases were not diverted. We have, for example, done that with a diversion program that might seem controversial to some, for people who are not criminals but are illegally in possession of guns. And what we saw when we looked at what happens when they're convicted as compared to when they're diverted, is that we reduce recidivism by three out of four. In other words, we cut recidivism by 75 percent. That is a tribute to carefully selecting who's in the program to the fact that there are wraparound services and caseworkers working with small cohorts of people over a long period of time with judicial supervision, right? That has also been basically grant funded as well. So I totally agree with you that it's good for us to map it out, look for efficiencies, look for ways we can consolidate. But we -- but we should always be comparing diversion, not just to other diversion, but also to what would happen if we went ahead and got convictions in those cases. Does it make us safer? Ultimately, it's not about do we feel kindhearted, it's about are we safer? And if the diversion is making us safer, and I do believe that our expansive view of diversion in Philadelphia is part of this much larger picture of improvements, then that's what we should do for the public.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Lady. Council Lady Landau, and then Councilman O'Rourke, and then Councilman Thomas.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you to all three of you being here. I -- you are the highest law enforcement officials on every level that we have in the city of Philadelphia. And it's essential not only that you work together, but that you work with all of us and that you work with community. And I appreciate so much your ability to do all three of those. So thank you. I want to start by underscoring some of the things I've already heard today. First of all, you are the three-legged stool that must have all three legs strong. And if we don't have all three legs strong, the stool will topple over. And I believe, because of that, it is essential that we fund the Defender's Association to a higher capacity so that it can be as strong as the other legs. As somebody who's been a legal aid lawyer, I know what it's like to be in the batting cage, to be there with overwhelming number of cases and the weight of the world on you as all of your attorneys and all of your units feel. It is -- it's very burdensome and it's wonderful. And it is the moment, you know, we know that everybody who works for all three of your units are doing it for service, for community and to make a better Philadelphia in all the ways that we've heard today. But considering that the Defender Association does not -- has to pay for its rent, its healthcare, its SEPTA, and if you could be offered a pension, it would be nice. It makes it so inequitable that it's unfair. I had -- I must admit, I did not know until taking this role that you had to pay for your rent and your utilities, right, rent, utilities, and healthcare while the other entities do not. And that, to me, is such an inequity. We should actually just start there. If we could alleviate that burden from you, then you'd be freed up to spend some of that money in other areas where you know, as the expert in the Defender Association where you had to pay it. So I -- even if we just start with rent, utilitiesband healthcare, I am all in on making sure that we -- that we make this equitable.

Point of information, Councilwoman Landau Madam. Defender, what's the -- what's the price tag on that roughly? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: So our operating costs are 2.5 million for this budget year for -- out of the 5, million. 14

For 15 what Councilwoman Landau was speaking on regarding -- CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: So our annual --

It was rent, healthcare, and what else was it?

The 2.5 is the ask for the increase.

You have to come to the microphone. Please state your name for the record and proceed.

Yes. Hi, everyone. Thank you, City Council. I'm Carolyn Jester. I'm the chief Financial Officer of Defender Association. So, our budget for the year for those types of expenses, our operating expenses, is about $9 million, not counting benefits. Our benefits are another $15 million. Oh, my God. And our ask this year is $2.5 million. It's just for the increase that we're expecting and the increase that we had last year that we were not funded for. So, we have normally these kinds of increases are addressed at mid-year transfer ordinance.

So these increases, are they, like, salary increases or cost of living?

No.

No? 2

This is benefits and --

Oh, 5 benefit increases. 6

-- operating 7 expenses. 8

Okay. 9

We have our 10 rent increases every year. We have 11 common area maintenance charges that 12 are imposed on us by our landlord. 13 We pay -- we pay the city of 14 Philadelphia property taxes. So, 15 you give us money that we give back 16 to you. We pay our electric bill. 17 We pay all our telecommunications. 18 We fund all of our IT, backup 19 systems, network switches, 20 everyone's laptops, everyone's 21 computers, all the phones, internet, 22 so forth. 23

Got 24 it. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. And you do all of that when it's a constitutional mandate that -- and thankfully, you do it so well, of defending and representing those who have been charged with crimes and make sure that you do so in a way that is socially and equitably just and in collaboration with the other legs on the stool. I also want to just take this first round to weigh in on PAIFUP as well. I, too, do not have any idea why we are talking about having to hire somebody who might be new to the city of Philadelphia or new to a role, even working for government, to decide where we should put the money for PAIFUP, for immigration defense, when all of the immigration organizations have come together and said, please put this with the Defender Association. We are asking you to put it with the Defender Association. We need a headquarters that is strong and fully equipped to handle this. So my question for you is, if we can give you the extra $1.5 million for PAIFUP, which I am strongly in favor of as well, along with the money that had previously been put to HIAS and NSC, how many attorneys would that hire, how many support staff, and are these new roles that you would hire for, and if not, when can you get started? And if we -- if we could tell you today that you are going to be the recipient of these funds, when could you get started and what would you need to make this happen? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: The proposal, if we only got the $1.5 million, we would be able to have a staff of 13, 10 would be attorneys. We would also want to hire someone in an administrative capacity. We would also want to hire a mitigation specialist because, of course, we want to be able to do a lot of work to humanize our clients before the court. A lot of our clients are here because of fear. They left their country because they did not feel safe, and they cannot -- and do not want to return. Many of them have no family ties in their home country. So our mitigation specialist would do a lot of that work. I would have to post and hire, but I could be up and running in a month.

That's great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilman O'Rourke.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to all of you, the three- legged stool, as my colleague called you, for the defense and the legal expertise that you provide, our little domicile. Good morning, Madam Solicitor. Good to see you again. I was going to ask a few questions around what the council president already kicked off, considering we are under new management and a new mayor, how we were going to grapple with Trump 2.0 compared to 1.0, but I think it's kind of been covered a bit. So I'll jump to something else. Neighborhood Wellness Court raised some serious constitutional as well as operational concerns, including from the judiciary itself at this point. The program has been paused, postponed, and publicly criticized by the very judges that are meant to actually oversee it. From my understanding, the program is currently paused based on those concerns. Here are a few questions that I want to get on the record. Has the city, at this point, prepared the manual that Judge Simmons requested in order to resume the court operations this week? And if so, will you submit it to the chair for our review? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: I understand that the document has been submitted and reviewed by the courts and that they -- but we can share that with Council.

Okay. This is actually for the solicitor. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Oh.

Yes, no problem. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: That would be a question for Director Geer as to the manual that's -- but the Defender said it's been submitted, so there you go.

Okay. The administration has claimed that the program meets constitutional standards. Can you speak to what specific legal thresholds that you're relying on to make that particular claim? What legal analysis gives you confidence that this model is constitutionally sound? And I'm thinking in this point right now because we heard reports that residents were nodding off, otherwise not coherent, drifting in certain spaces, which I understand to be the constitutional basis for competency. So can you speak to that? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: It is true that my office has consulted with the public safety office all along the way on all manner of legal issues, including constitutional issues. I will not waive that privilege here, but I can follow up with your office in written or spoken format. But that analysis is not appropriate for the public since it was given in confidence to a client.

Duly noted. I actually would be interested in having that conversation if we have to have it off the record. So let's do that. Lastly, how have law and -- excuse me, how have law and OPS worked to help train police officers that are actually undertaking the very delicate work of bringing those folks in, since those officers are the actors with the ultimate choice to bring somebody to the Wellness Court in the first place? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: The officers that are presenting in court?

Yes, for those who are actually do -- CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: The specific court or the -- well, we've trained all officers from those who are working with Deputy Commissioner Rosario in the field in Kensington, those are the officers who would be bringing people into Wellness Court along with the medical providers, the police officers. We have been involved along the way in every single aspect. And a lot of that is explaining constitutional rights to the officers and those in court.

Okay. I heard the bell, but I want to ask really quickly to Defender Hudson. The administration has told us that we need to wait six months for enough data to evaluate Wellness Court. Your office has already gathered meaningful data, and more importantly, you've been on the ground representing many of your clients who are pulled into this pilot. So we'd like to better understand what you're seeing now. And here's my three, and then I'll get off. First, as of today, how many people have been brought through Wellness Court? How many people have accepted diversion? And how many people have decided to have a same-day trial? And of those who have actually accepted diversion, how many of them successfully completed the treatment and are at the wellness village? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: I'm going to call up Andrew Pappas, who's our managing director of pretrial and has been the one staffing Wellness Court on the Wednesdays.

Thank you.

And good morning, Council. Andrew Pappas from the Defender Association, and thank you for your question, Councilmember O'Rourke.

Good morning, Mr. Pappas.

To date, there have been 72 unique arrests made for neighborhood Wellness Court. Not all of those cases resulted in -- not all of those arrests resulted in a case being brought in Wellness Court. There have been 67 unique individuals who were arrested. Some were arrested multiple times, which is how you have 72 arrests but 67 different individuals. As to the number of trials, there have been eight individuals who rejected Wellness Court. Two of them entered guilty pleas. Six of them went to trial. Of the ones that went to trial, four were found guilty. Two were found not guilty. There have been four cases to date that were marked as successful completions of Wellness Court. One was for a housing referral. Three were for treatment. Of the three that were successful completions for treatment, two of those individuals made it to Riverview Wellness Village.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilman. Councilmember Thomas. Chair recognizes Councilmember Thomas.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Thank you. I want to jump right in because we don't have much time. I want to start with our city solicitor. Good afternoon. First question, why did you recommend to the Mayor that we get rid of the $100,000 exemption for BIRT, as well as the $2,000 exemption on use and occupancy? What made you say that this is something that we should get rid of as far as the exemption? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: I have -- I have been public about this as recently as last week in a press conference. The law has changed on uniformity and is getting more and more strict.

The law where? The state law? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: The state law on uniformity. Correct. And there were a number of cases in the PA Supreme Court, so the highest court since the law was passed in 2011, 2012. And it is very clear now that this program is very risky. And I'm talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in risk. And we are put on notice by the Zoll case. And if we continue this lawsuit and we lose, it could be hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments against the city.

So because this is a City Council project and a City Council-based initiative as far as the creation of the legislation, did you or anybody on your team think to come to Council and offer some type of legal representation for us? I'm thinking about when I went through drive inequality and being sued there and there was a lot of reluctance and we worked with the public defender's office on that specific initiative, but one of the things that happened was City Council had the option to be able to retain outside council. So based on my knowledge of both the exemption around BIRT and use and occupancy, it's a City Council-based initiative. So did that conversation happen? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: I cannot disclose to you in this open forum what conversations happened with Council, but there's no legal conflict here. That's between the Mayor and Council. The law is clear.

Do you think we should have our own council for this particular issue? Do you think we should have our own representation that gives us our interpretation on what direction we should go in, around BIRT and use and occupancy exemption? So if you represent us, you represent everybody. You are saying as our lawyers, that we do not need our own separate council for this specific City Council-based initiative. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: I do not believe there is a legal conflict. I do not believe there --

No, I'm not asking you is there a legal -- CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: I do not believe --

I want to be clear. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: -- there is not clarity in the law.

So -- CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: I believe that this is a risk --

So as our lawyer, you recommend that we do not need to retain our own counsel for this particular issue to advise us on what direction we should go in? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Correct.

Why would we not have our own council for this when we have been given that option when other City Council- based initiatives have come under threat in the past? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: The last time I remember having that was in self-injection sites. And then probably before that was the Nutter administration regarding the library.

We had outside legal counsel when we were sued around driving equality. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: We were working together with that counsel.

We did. We worked in collaboration, but we still -- CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Right.

You guys still came to me and offered me the option to retain counsel. I think this is my concern. This decision was made without dialogue with City Council. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: That is not the case.

It's a City Council project -- CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: It's not the case. It's not the case. And we can talk offline or the administration can talk offline.

I don't think that's best for the public to have a conversation offline. I think, again, I don't know. So let me just be clear. Over the last three years, I've been a person that have led the way around any legislation around the BIRT tax. So basically if you're saying that a conversation took place, you're saying that I just wasn't preview to that conversation. So you had the conversation without me. I'm not allowed to be a part of the dialogue. Is that what we're insinuating? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: I know that there were conversations.

I'm going to move on to the public defender's office. I'm going to cue myself in the tee for the second line of questioning because I'm going to go and talk to a couple other people and get clarity because this is not the way I thought this line of questioning was going to go. And it's unfortunate that you're taking a position that's, like, clearly very adversarial when I'm just trying to get questions answered on something that's going to impact thousands of businesses across the city of Philadelphia, right? Like, we're not just talking about the BIRT exemption. Have we done a calculation to recognize how use and occupancy is going to really hurt businesses? We talk about corridors and corridor development and developing businesses in neighborhoods across the city of Philadelphia. Is there a fiscal analysis that says what the $2,000, you said, occupancy exemption being dissolved is going to do? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Yes. The revenue commissioner has all those numbers. And I'm truly not being adversarial. If we lose --

I'm just saying, we're the ones who got to go back to these businesses. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: I completely agree with you.

Right? Like, no one's going to vote for the city's -- you don't have a position that's voted on, right? And at the end of the day, we're the ones who are going to have to take the hit. And I'm at large. So I'm really thinking about the district council members. I'm going to move on to the public defender's office. I'm going to come back with a different type of line of questioning. And DA Krasner, I want to say thank you to you, G. Lamar, your entire team, Chief Public Defender Hudson, Kate, the entire team, everybody who we work with, I want to say thank you very much. Just a quick question, and then I'm going to tee up for the second round of questioning, specifically, around rent, and this is just like a curious thing. Why don't you just use a city building? Why are you renting a building that's not owned by the city of Philadelphia? Why can't we put ourselves in a position to be able to absorb your office in one of these city buildings? I think about Councilmember Young and some of the work that he's trying to do around center city buildings and center city spaces. And all we're hearing is office spaces are empty and no 8 one's taking new leases. How come we haven't been able to rectify that issue? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: We have been asking budget cycle after budget cycle about what supports we can get around rent. And we have tried to, at the minimum, get our real estate taxes waived. We explored that with Director Dubow, and he told us that he is not in a position, and the city is not in a position to waive those property taxes, which last year was 330,000.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to definitely queue up for a second line of questioning because I'm very curious to know how dialogue happened with City Council, but I was excluded from the conversation, so thank you.

All right. So we'll look to hear from you in the second round. Councilwoman Ahmad.

Thank you, Council Lady, Council Chair. I have a bunch of questions for all of you, so I guess I'll tee them up. First, for the public defender. Thank you so much for what you do. And I just want to underscore that public defenders are essential in ensuring the constitutional right to counsel for those who cannot afford it. The 6th Amendment. And in that light, I was just curious why you have a 501c3 that has a relationship with the city that allows them to disregard your needs. Is there a different structure that would obviate all of these, you know, budgetary constraints you have? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you, Councilmember. We are an independent or what we call quasi- city agency. The first rule, the APA has principles for effective 9 public defense systems. That first 10 rule is independence. But we don't want to be a part of the city government because then we are advocating, right? We're advocating for our clients and our first and only duty is to our clients. And there are times when that is going to be in conflict with what the city interests or city priorities may be. So we have a board of directors, but 99 percent of our funding comes from the city of Philadelphia.

How are your -- is your structure different from the DA's office in terms of the relationship with the city? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: The District attorney's office, the law department, office of Public Safety are city agencies.

City agencies. So in order for you to be able to, you know, honor the 6th Amendment, have we put in that frame that the work you do actually in the long run saves us money and follows the constitution? And what has the response been when this is mandated in our constitution, we have this, and yet we are not able to fund it so that we are -- people are getting appropriate representation. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: This isn't just a Philadelphia issue. The state ranks 45th in the country in supporting public defense around the Commonwealth. I think when we look at supports of public defense, our clients are not popular. And what we see on the news and the narratives about them, right, and how they're portrayed. And so, you know, for example, I will say that for my colleagues, right, the ability to get grants and grant funding, things like the opioid settlement funding, again, funding that we do not get, right, because of who we represent. So that's why I come every budget cycle with high asks, because we have high needs. You just heard from the CFO, we have a $66 million budget. 9 million of it goes to operating costs and another 15 to benefits. And I have 530 people. So you can imagine how much we spend on salary, which is upwards of $40 million.

You had mentioned something when we met, which really struck me, that the way you work with your clients, so that they plead appropriately, has much less appeals and costs us less. Could you elaborate on that, please? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Part of the million ask was to 6 expand homicide representation. We 7 currently represent 20 percent of 8 the people in Philadelphia charged 9 with homicides. We would like to 10 represent 40 percent and expand to 11 40 percent over two years, and 12 that's a 3 million over two-year 13 ask. The Defender Association of 14 Philadelphia, with the incredible 15 work that District Attorney Krasner has done in his Conviction Integrity Unit, I believe we're up to 50 people?

45. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: 45 people that have been released through the Conviction Integrity Unit. Not a single one of those people were represented by a public defender. I did death penalty representation for years. There's not a single person on death row that was represented by a Philly defender. We are the best, and we should be doing more work. But because we spend time building relationships with our clients, should they decide to plead guilty, we have that relationship. We do effective representation. Our cases rarely come back for ineffective assistance accounts, or prosecutorial misconduct, or judicial misconduct, police misconduct. They don't come back. So, it's for three million over two-year ask to increase the representation, would down the long road save the city tens of millions of dollars from wrongful conviction litigation.

All right. We're advocating for this. A quick question for the DA. Thank you, Public Defender. The question for the DA is the resources you allocate to organizations doing gun violence prevention work. Is there any requirement, or at least are they using cognitive behavioral therapy in any of these programming? And obviously, there's been evidence across in Chicago and Maryland, and our own Philadelphia Osteopathic College just got awarded $750,000 to do CBT work. I just wondered how intentional we are about using CBT in our programming. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Thank you, Councilmember. The good news is, yes, we're very intentional. We've been doing it now for years. More specifically, just to give you, I think, the leading example, in our diversionary program intended for people who are illegally possessing guns but are not criminals or not gang- affiliated, are operating more simply without having gotten the right paperwork or out of fear. In that, the way that works is intensively based upon cognitive behavioral therapy. We work with the Center for Carceral Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and it is done under the guidance and supervision of University of Pennsylvania professor, Dr. Toorjo Ghose. The work that they do involves cohorts of about people. 15 It involves caseworkers who very 16 actively are trying to assist them 17 with everything that's not correct 18 in their lives at that point, and 19 cognitive behavioral therapy often 20 done in a group session with mentoring among the people is essential to it. We have found it to be extremely successful. As I mentioned earlier, if you look at a cohort of people who used to get convicted, and compare them to the ones who are in this diversionary program now, the convicted crew will give you a rate of four arrests. The CBT, Intensive Social Work Crew, will give you a rate of one re-arrest, okay? Any time we can reduce re-arrest by 75 percent. That is absolutely in the interest of public safety, and I think that is just one example of how cognitive behavioral therapy has shown its power to deal with some of these issues.

So, yes, that's great to know. So all the organizations that you grant funds to, are they privy to this CBT training, or is that part of their programming since clearly it would behoove us to make sure everybody has access to that? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember, I agree that more widespread access is a fabulous idea. We -- you know, we give micro-grants to community-based organizations that do many, many different things. They're all carefully vetted by the Philadelphia Foundation. They get relatively small amounts of money, by which I mean amounts usually between $5,000 and $50,000. We view it as seed money for, you know, innovative mom-and-pop, smaller community-based organizations. And, you know, recently we gave, I think, $1.2 million. Please remember we're not allowed to use any of this for our salaries, okay? Which is basically the vast majority of our budget. And we're also not allowed to use it for a lot of fixed costs. It's money that by law must go back into the communities it came from in order to rebuild the harm that was done by criminal activity. So I don't want anybody to think we're depriving the taxpayer. Not only are we increasing public safety with this work, but in my opinion we're aiding the taxpayer in myriad ways. But there are some of those organizations that use cognitive behavioral therapy. There are some of those organizations that use other tactics. You know, I'll just lift one up at random. If you look at Eyekonz, E-Y-E-K-O-N-Z, which is a sports organization that teaches inner-city kids, especially started out with girls but is now also boys, lacrosse skills. This is a group that has not only succeeded in increasing capacity there, but they've put 80, 80 of their kids through college on scholarships as a consequence of what they've done, which is just amazing. You know, there are these heroes and sheroes all over the city doing incredible stuff, and they're doing it different ways. But I am with you in saying that all the research and all the science supports the intentional use of cognitive behavioral therapy to address many of the criminal justice issues we face.

We should think of a fund of some sort that others can use. But I'll go to the second round, but just a question for our city solicitor. You know, these bonds we're looking to float for our HOME Initiative that the Mayor is, you know, proposing. Who are getting awarded these bonds? Are you involved in that process? Or who exactly is overseeing the awarding of these massive floating of bonds? And which law firms are getting those? And how does that work? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: The law department is involved. I will have to get you right up on that. I've been involved at a very high level with the solicitor's opinions and the legislation, but we can get you in more detail, I wouldn't want to mutilate the response to that. But obviously the law department is involved. There's law firms involved. And obviously city planning and the mayor's office of housing.

Yeah. So if you could give that to the council president, appreciate that. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Absolutely.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will reserve the rest of the comments for the second round.

Thank you, Council Lady. Next is Councilman Young and following Councilman Young -- Councilman Harrity, would you be willing to yield your time for Councilwoman, Majority Leader Gilmore-Richardson, who hasn't had a chance yet?

(Indiscernible).

Okay. Thank you. Okay. So young, and then Gilmore-Richardson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This has been a very interesting conversation. I'm learning a lot. But I would want to put on a record, you know, that, you know, definitely supportive of the Public Defender's Office and what they do to our city, what they mean to our city. But we have to realize that they are a vendor, essentially, of the city. So those workers are not entitled to, you know, a city pension. And I'm sure all the other vendors that the city has would like us to pay their rent and things like that as well. But we have to keep those things in consideration as we're going through the budget process for our city. And one question I do have for the Defender, and we were talking about parity. Are your attorneys allowed to live outside the city? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: They are allowed to live outside the city, and many do. Getting the SEPTA benefit would help remarkably considering that that comes out of their already incredibly low paychecks. But they do live out the city. It's more affordable.

Thank you. And this question is for -- oh, and so you are -- for the defenders as well, and the city or the state is constitutionally mandated to provide the service. But your Defender Association of Philadelphia technically does not -- technically is not itself constitutionally obligated to provide indigent defense in our city. Because our city technically could contract that service out to Ballard Spahr if we so decided to. And so in having -- in being a vendor of the city, how can we -- as a city, how can we help you improve some of the services that you're providing to us as a city? What are some of the things that we need to do in order to help you uplift your services that you provide to us? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: It is correct that the city could contract with any entity at any price to fund a constitutionally required representation. We go through an RFP process every five years. We just went through our RFP this year. We were, since our founding in 1934, once again granted the opportunity to represent people in indigent defense in the city of Philadelphia. How we can improve our representation. I referenced earlier the importance of recruiting and retaining excellent lawyers who are going to carry this organization forward. Every one of my clients is a human being. Every one of my clients deserves representation no 13 matter of what they're accused of doing. And any one of us in this body, should one of our family members come into the system, are going to want the best representation and the best advocate next to them. And the only difference between us and the clients who represent are the fact that they're poor and they can't afford one. But they're entitled to excellent, zealous representation.

Thank you. And one more question. Could you provide us with the demographics of the attorneys that are representing the clients here in Philadelphia? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: I absolutely will. I will say on recruiting, as a generation, we are not so far removed from the current state of law graduates who are the first in their families to go to college and the first in their families to go to law school. It is really hard and has always been hard to recruit diverse, particularly Black attorneys, because they are not coming here for $64,000 a year. And when they do come here, it's very hard to stay here when their salaries do not move. But I will absolutely get you those numbers.

I mean, I ask that because me being an attorney, have friends, I've heard a different perspective than that answer that you provided to us. And so if you could get us those demographics, I would appreciate that. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Will do.

Thank you.

Thank you. Majority Leader Gilmore- Richardson. And then Councilmember Bass.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Council President. And I also wanted to thank all of you for your work and for being here. And also thank Councilmember Harrity for this time. I wanted to quickly start off with some thank yous for law, Solicitor Garcia. For Sam, your Chief of staff, who has been stellar. Lewis Rosman, our longtime friend in the Leg Unit. Reynelle Staley, who was excellent and came over with us in our last law and government hearings so we could get through those amendments after three hours of negotiations. Zoe in the Leg Unit, Joanna Klein, Marta Sanchez, thank you for all your assistance with scheduling. And Amanda Stewart- House, who was at all of our nonprofit provider meetings. So I wanted to thank all of you. And then for our district attorney's office, obviously DA Krasner, we thank you for your work. And, you know, I say this every single year, so you already know it's coming. G. Lamar Stewart, who we rely on to be a liaison between Council and the DA's office.

Put that raise in the budget request, sir.

Right. So, you know, we are here for G. Lamar Stewart because he makes it happen.

From Northwest. Rather wilder than them --

And also for the Defenders Association, Chief Defender Hudson, I think you are doing a stellar job. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you.

I really do. And you are really representing our most vulnerable residents and especially our youth, and to Kate Parker for all of her help and her work. So I wanted to get the thank yous on the record. For the law department in particular, I wanted to ask a question relative to nuisance businesses. And also some of the code enforcement cases that we have for properties, like actual residential properties. Recently, we've been talking a lot, as we always have, about these nuisance businesses. We know that Councilmember Bass and Councilmember Phillips and I have all done legislation on this matter. We're working together with Councilmember Bass's office on this issue now. And I wanted to, you know, for the record, if you all could just explain why you can't confiscate the drug paraphernalia when the CVNs are issued, you know, for violations. And in addition to that, when we had one of our hearings a few weeks ago, and I thank all of my colleagues for being there, it was brought up several times that the IRS will move penalties from one LLC to another LLC so that these businesses don't skirt their responsibility. Are you familiar with this process, and is it something that we could use here in Philadelphia to stop the nuisance businesses that we're dealing with from avoiding justice around the illegal sale of drug paraphernalia? I'll start there, and I'll just have a couple more. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Thank you, Majority Leader, and thank you for your gratitude for all of the members of the law department working hard over the last year. I'll start with the second question first on nuisance businesses. I'm not sure if you were in the room 21 when I was responding to Councilmember Lozada, but there are ways to sort of pierce the veil, right, is what we call it. And, yes, we are doing that. And what we are doing is very rigorously tracking these LLCs from person to person to person to person to person because they set up all this. It's a shell game with them, right? This is a shell game. And so we are doing that, including with information that Philly Stat is getting.

Okay. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: So we're aggregating all this data that LNI has, that the revenue department has, that -- anyway, different -- the commerce department, right? Everybody has little pieces of these LLCs, and we are putting it together, and we are piercing the veil to go back to that sort of core owner or owner. So we are actively doing that.

Okay. I hear the bell. I want to honor the clock. But as a secondary question, as an example, I know when we did one drug paraphernalia tour, there was one owner with a number of businesses, but it was only one business that was shut down. In that instance, what do you do? CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Yeah. So, yes, it is. And they do have due process, right? And so we do have to make sure that we can stand up those cases and educate the court as to why we are tracing back the trail of ownership. But that is a high priority for us, and the money that we are getting for the code team will help us. We are hoping to get an investigator to help do that, too, and do that tracing back.

Okay. And then I also -- I had a question regarding the BIRT tax exemption that I will hold and I will save. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Okay.

But I wanted to also ask a question relative to -- and I know this question has come up for a million years. I remember being a legislative aide here, and I remember former Councilwoman Blackwell used to even ask this question all the time. Relative to legal representation for counsel and also for the administration, seeking to -- and you know we always do get outside counsel. And we can get outside counsel if we need to. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Sure.

But there are some instances where there are matters where we know that one party may feel strongly about the matter and there may be some disagreement, right? And so in those instances, how do we -- I don't even know what way we make that process fair for everyone, not just for counsel, but also for the administration. Because I think it does become a conflict wherein we know as an example if there's something the administration wants to do or strongly believes in, and even if, you know, I'm just going to give the example. The charter change passed regarding workforce development, we received the opinion from your office. It basically stated that even though the charter change passed, you all don't have to follow it. And so my concern is not around that specific issue because -- any longer because we have -- I've spoken with the administration. We've met, we have agreement around that part of the workforce development situation with Commerce. And so -- and I'm continuing to meet with them. So it's not specifically about that particular issue anymore. My concern is as the chair of the Law and Government committee where all of our charter changes must be approved before they go on the ballot. My concern is that at what point do voters believe that their votes didn't matter? Because even though it was a charter change and it was approved by the voters, now the administration has stated they are not following that. And your office, which represents both of us, is saying that they are correct and we have no sort of like due process in that. And there's no knock at all. This is really a procedural question. This is not an issue question because we've worked out the issue and I'm very appreciative of what the administration has done in this process. They've been working with us in good faith. So this is not a knock to the issue. It's a procedural question. CITY SOLICITOR GARCIA: Right. You're right. This is a question that goes back ages.