Thank you. And I think it's -- thank you so much, Member Jones.
And I just want to say it is also utterly important to you as we provide support funding to this -- to this office that you all work together in conjunction with City Council and the City of Philadelphia to prevent this from happening. So you could say you're doing your part and maybe you're counseling and coaching your judges on how to look for these particular schemes. Because it's not right, right? And I think some of them are also in cahoots in some capacity with -- that needs to be looked at seriously. So we will be in conversation. I'm not going to let this one go because it's wrong. All right? Thank you. CHAIR BASS: Councilman, thank you very much. Point of information from Councilmember Young.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to point out for my colleagues that this is state legislation that allows this. CHAIR BASS: Yes.
So we need to talk to our partners in Harrisburg that allow -- the law itself allows attorneys and the petitioners automatic payments. So the petitioner gets percent from the top and lawyers automatically get their fee because the law says they do. CHAIR BASS: Yep.
8 Right? So it's not -- the court has 9 little discretion in some of the 10 things that happen with Act 135. So 11 I think we really need to focus our 12 energy on actually changing the 13 legislation from Harrisburg. But 14 yes, the courts have discretion on 15 determining if the property is 16 considered abandoned or blighted. 17 But the legislation is so -- it is 18 -- it's so vague that, you know, you 19 can -- anyone's house can -- 20 CHAIR BASS: Sure.
-- can fit under the definition. So it's very hard to kind of control this type of behavior when the law allows those, you know, those types of predators, I'm going to call them that because that's what they are, to reap these benefits from this Act 135 law. Thank you, Madam Chair. CHAIR BASS: Thank you to Councilmember.
Thank you so much. CHAIR BASS: But -- and just going back to Councilmember Phillips's point, one of the things that I learned about Act 35 -- 135 is that when someone files against you, you are automatically the defendant in the case. So you have to go in to defend your right to keep your own real estate. And again, as we talk about real estate being generational wealth for most of us in our communities, the only generational wealth that we really have access to. It's very, very frightening that this is happening. But back to Councilmember Young's point, that's something that we really need to coalesce and work with our state partners on legislatively to get some changes there. So thank you very much. You're done? Okay. Chair recognizes Councilmember Landau.
Thank you. First, thank you all for being here. Appreciate you so much. I think I scare Councilmember Jones away every once in a while. I got you. No, I was just kidding. My first questions are for the court. So in case you don't know, I am the chair of the Tech Committee, and I always try to ask a whole bunch of tech questions. But one thing in particular is that I've heard -- I'm curious about who oversees the technology systems, the databases, and the dockets in both the Court of Common Pleas and Municipal Court. Do all the courts have the same systems? And would you detail what it would cost to improve these systems? I've heard stories as much as people saying that even switching out a PDF would cost $20,000. And I'm not sure if someone was being dissuaded from changing that PDF, but would be curious about that. And also, how do you -- do you work with the city's OIT on both hardware and software improvements for our courts?
Thank you for the question, Councilperson. The FJD has its own IT department. It's fully staffed. We look after all of our own hardware. We have created a lot of software. We do have outside software that we use. Family Court uses a basis system, for example, Court of Common Pleas, a Municipal Court and criminal uses system called CPCMS as a state-run system. But everything has to come through our FJ -- FJD IT department. We work hand in hand with the City's OIT. We have weekly, if not more, meetings with them. We can't do anything without City OIT because everything has to go through the city network and they have their firewalls. We need permission to get through our firewalls. So to answer your question, we look after our own hardware. We have a cycle to replace our PCs to upgrade to, you know, the latest programs. I think that we're up to Windows -- I'm not sure which Windows it is. What is it? Yeah, we're up to Windows 11 now.
I know. We are -- we are coming right out of the 19th century and moving straight ahead. So we do have to do all this within the confines of our budget, our class 200 and 300 monies. The FJD IT department does have its own budget and it's just to basically maintain what we can do. But everything in FJD, every program, I think you mentioned that, we all are using the same hardware or software.
Who does the maintenance if you needed to change a form, update --
-- something more having to do with filing, not the website.
Right. Unless it's something that, I myself have could go in and change a form for something for, you know, policies for the FJD. If I have access to that, right access to that; administrative rights, then I could do it. But almost everything from things posted on our -- on our intranet to our internet to the forms that are used within the FJD, all that is -- has to be done and is approved by the FJD IT, which has a staff of, I think about or so 9 people. 10
11 Okay. I would love to follow you 12 up. I'm going to get the details of 13 this and follow up with you on this 14 particular instance. And also I 15 wanted to follow up on having to do 16 with Family Court Help Center, too. 17 So last year I was able to 18 secure money in the budget for the 19 debt court navigators. Can you give 20 an update on where we stand with the debt court navigator and anticipated outcomes? And then I'm also looking at Family Court because Philadelphia Legal Assistance and Women Against Abuse have provided two help desks for almost a decade, and they're about to lose all of their funding. So can you detail their operation and impact and what would it take to not only maintain but increase access to this critical legal assistance?
Again, I'm sure -- I have to fall back on -- I'll have to get back to you with Administrative Judge Olszewski. I don't want to speak for him, but I know that they're aware of this and they're making plans, but I want to make sure I have my details. So come -- I'll circle back with you and get that information.
Okay. Thank you for that. I have one -- a couple of questions for the Sheriff as well. I wanted to -- I'm staying on my tech theme here. Can you detail how you work -- the Sheriff's Office works with the city's department of OIT for tech support; both hardware and software. And you detail a partnership with Tyler Technologies to help improve financial transparency. What are -- what are -- I suppose, what's the Sheriff's Office paying for these services? When can we expect results and what specifically are they going to produce? That's -- I also have a LiveScan Plus question. SHERIFF BILAL: Okay. Eric Chambers. And --
Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Eric Chambers. I am the IT director for the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office. And with respect to your question Madam Councilwoman, we have a collaboration, under the Sheriff's leadership, we are rebuilding -- I should say, rebuilding a collaboration with OIT. And they do some of our services, and then we have an IT staff in-house that does the majority of the services. So with respect to just general daily computer -- just computer issues or whatever, we have an IT staff, right? But when we need to work, do anything within the network, domain or whatever, we coordinate with OIT. And we do that through their ticketing system. We are, again as I stated, rebuilding relationships so we can reach out directly to those individuals in some of the different units under OIT for help in various areas. For instance, we just got our first server environment. So that will give us the ability to bring together all the software that we have currently running under the Sheriff's Office -- in the Sheriff's Office into one location. And with that we collaborated with OIT through their Gates Process to get to a point where now we have that environment, we can house that software. In addition to that, we are working with OIT to bring in accounting software. When I came on board, we -- under the Sheriff's leadership, again, we have transitioned the Sheriff's Office from the stone age, really, in my opinion because I've been in it a long time. We've transitioned from the stone age to the 20th century, and we're in the 21st century, right? But we're getting there as our people over in FJD stated, right? We're getting there. We're Windows 11 compliant now. And we have a lot of equipment that is working within the office now to assist our users to be able to do things they need to do on a daily basis.
Thank you so much for that. When I -- oh, sorry. I just want to -- when I first started to work for the City of Philadelphia long before the Sheriff was in -- at the helm, they were still doing things by pencil and paper, so --
Yes, ma'am. SHERIFF BILAL: I think we done had too many press conferences on what it was when I walked in there, so I'm not even going to belittle that. Computer had a big old back to it when my grandbaby had a flat screen and that's 2020. Patrick?
Yes. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Patrick Lee and I'm the chief financial officer for the Sheriff's department, Office, rather. So what's interesting about what we've been able to do in conjunction with our IT team is that we tie everything to a city contract. So that is the basis of where we go. All the pricing is set by those contracts. For example, IT augmentation of staff, we get that through OIT. In addition, all of the Dell and software, unless it's other than Microsoft software, we use a city contract to purchase. And that helps us with managing the costs that go into IT, down to the hardware, software, and any other items that we need through and to augment our augmentation process that we have implemented over the last four years, going on five years since I've been there. The efficiencies have been readily apparent. So every time we add technology, we improve either process, procedure, or units to do something a little more efficient.
That's great. I was curious about the Tyler Technologies and LiveScan Plus systems too. Well, let's go to LiveScan Plus, because I think this one is particularly important. You said it's going to provide mobile biometric ID capabilities such as fingerprinting, and how do we ensure data in the system and with any LiveScan subcontractors will be secure? What's the process of federal law enforcement, such as ICE, would ask the city LiveScan or any of its data storage partners for the fingerprinting information? SHERIFF BILAL: Any one of you-all.
Well, I don't work with Live -- SHERIFF BILAL: Talk about our fingerprinting that we have outside. That's our Warrant Unit. Basically, all our data is kept with us. That data does not go in a cloud to the city. It's kept within the server that we maintain in the Sheriff's Office.
Excellent. SHERIFF BILAL: And we don't give that information out.
Excellent. Thank you so much. Wait, that's it for now. Thank you. CHAIR BASS: Thank you, Councilmember. Chair recognizes, Councilmember Ahmad.
Thank you, Chair -- CHAIR BASS: And before I do that, I want to recognize Councilmember Mark Squilla is present. Member Ahmad.
Good to see you all. I first have a quick question for the First Judicial District. Good afternoon, Madam Judge. I wanted to know what training do judges get around human trafficking and child welfare issues? Is there a specific training module as new judges come on around these issues? And then I have a second part question.
Yes, there is training. Thank you for that question. The AOPC, Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts runs -- we call it affectionately Baby Judge School. Every time we get a lot of new -- any new judges that come in, and they cover a lot of that substantive information.
And the follow up is, do you have -- give us an overview of how the branches within First Judicial work with DHS, with Department of Human Services, with respect to trial, welfare, Family Court cases? And where do you see gaps either in communication or cooperation? And particularly do you have any interaction with the CUAs -- CUA case managers, and the DHS case managers? We -- the feedback we get, particularly from constituents, is that there seems to be a disconnect. And a lot of times the information doesn't seem to reach the judge sitting in on, you know, reviewing these cases and they feel a lot gets lost. So this is from the outside looking in, and of course not everybody is allowed in the court. So this is also some hearsay involved. So I just wanted to clarify what exactly -- what engagement is there to have a really nuanced, solid, you know, sort of, briefing that the judges get in order to pass judgment?
Well, the judges have all of those workers right there in the courtroom, and they can testify. The workers can testify. The judges can follow up; they can ask for additional resources to be ordered for them, and they periodically reschedule those matters, especially in Dependency Court. So if there's a change of circumstances that can be made known. A lot of times, because those cases are so intimate and emotional --
-- you may have people who are displeased with the result, and that can end up in a -- in a complaint. But the judges work really hard to try to get it right. Our Family Court judges are hardworking, and they really do want to make the right decision, I mean, who doesn't want to make the right decision? Of course they do.
Well, thank you. Because this is traumatizing for them as well, but it is many more times traumatizing for those who have gone through the system to stand in front of them.
So I just want to make sure I can tell our constituents that there is a grounding in understanding all of this. So thank you. I know I have very little time. I want to pivot to our Sheriff. Thank you. My question is you talk about including workplace stabilization and wellness as a FY27 priority. Can you give us a quick example of what this initiative could look like? And I will tell you why I am asking. I just passed a bill on workplace accommodation, and I wanted to see how those trickle down to you. Meaning how do you see those in your work and how does that come into the wellness conversation, including those who come to court and are traumatized by whatever decision is made. And I have seen this happen in Family Court where one side will not, you know, maybe have their child removed, and they have a meltdown, and then it becomes -- there's violence and all of that. So I was looking to see how wellness is integrated in those spaces as well. SHERIFF BILAL: Thank you. When we say in our accent, workplace stabilization and wellness, it's dealing with the amount of time that our deputies are working overtime.
I see. SHERIFF BILAL: And because of the amount of hours that they're working overtime to make sure everything that we have to do gets done, that right there becomes an issue. Because now you're looking at burnout, looking at those that are getting stressed because of the amount of hours that they're doing right now. And so when we put that in there, hiring more people reduces the amount of overtime, stops the burnout, and therefore deals with their mental health and their wellness. That's when we talked about stabilization of the office.
And so are you also looking at stabilization of wellness in the spaces that you work? I know you're talking about your workers, that's clarified. That because you're the frontline sort of workers in some of these traumatic spaces, I just wondered, what do you need either from your office or the judicial system to really stabilize those spaces as well for so the clients and the constituents, so it doesn't escalate into problems? SHERIFF BILAL: That sound like the chief question. What are you doing over there? SHERIFF THORNTON: Listening to that question. Good afternoon again. Chief Deputy Sean Thornton, chief of our Court Operations. Basically, what we do is we maintain professionalism throughout the day. If we see something happen, we're more proactive with it. If there's some issues with families, again, you're coming into the courthouse, right?
Yeah. SHERIFF THORNTON: There may be some issues with trials. You have opposing families and things of that nature. So things are in place where we try to keep the peace. No, we do keep the peace and if necessary, we separate families and things of that nature. But again, it all goes into professionalism; being there, being aware, being alert. And that's what we preach to our staff.
Thank you. I just had a brief question first. Good afternoon. MS BILAL: Good afternoon.
I want to thank Member Cindy Bass, who is part of my leadership team for holding me down. I know as we wrap up, I just had a -- just some brief few questions and also comments. Always good to see you, Sheriff Rochelle Bilal. SHERIFF BILAL: You, too.
Thank you for your hard work and your dedication and things that you're doing to move the City of Philadelphia Forward. And Nina Wright Padilla, we thank you, and the work that you're doing with the First Judicial District. On the First Judicial District, we have a follow-up conversation as well. I just want to know the progress we have made regarding the CURE Report. The CURE Report was a report that focused on racial equity, nepotism at the First Judicial District. And it was a report that I worked on as a Councilmember and just wanted to get an idea of where we're at in terms of how we are addressing the --
-- racial climate, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and all of those things to make sure that it's a healthy environment for individuals to thrive. Just want to get to know if any progress has been made since then.
I'm so glad you brought that up. Thank you for that question. I have been concerned about that CURE Report from the time you brought it to my attention some time ago, thank you for that. So what I've done during my time as President Judge is I've convened a committee for the board of -- Board of Judges Committee for the CURE Report. And the purpose of the committee is to go through all the recommendations on that report and try to see how we can effectuate it, to effectuate change. I think it's really important to be aware of that CURE Report and all those recommendations and protocols that were mentioned. And I plan to continue that work to change -- to make a change while I have this time. So thank you. I appreciate it. And we will do that. We will follow up too if you're interested.
Yeah. Well thank you. And yeah, we can just do a follow up and just say, here's a recommendation that were proposed. Here's the progress we have in making as relates to the recommendations. Just a status update. And always good to see Richard McSorley as well, thank you for your hard work, your dedication. Always been on the case because you were around at that time when we were working on this particular issue.
I was, Council President. And we have made significant changes. Our population has changed. Our numbers are changing. The upper-level management, old people like me don't get out as much, but our demographics are changing. They've changed since the last time we spoke. We've instituted new hiring policies; we have hiring panels; we have promotional exams that have been changed. We've gotten rid of a lot of testing; we don't do that anymore. We have changed a lot of our policies, our personal appearance policies, to make them more neutral. And in fact, myself, my DEI Chair is back there, Cordell --
Say that again one more time. I like how you said that. Say it again.
He's back there. He has been working with a lot of training in the FJD, doing a lot of brown bag lunching, doing a lot of different training, and making the staff aware of different cultural differences. And we've undertook -- it was -- it took us about two years. We went through every personnel policy in the FJD with that eye, with that different lens and updated everything to try to make it more inclusive, try to make it more gender neutral. Try to make sure that it was up-to-date from the 1980-something that it was originally written. So we have been making progress ever since then, and my staff and I and along with the judge, we're going to continue to do so.
Good. I see Gary, but Mr. Jones, stand up, sir. And he's part of your team over there doing some good work. And so I want to continue to encourage the young man to keep up the good work while you over there in the First Judicial District. That's all I have. Chair recognizes Councilman Nicholas O'Rourke.
For the good of the order, I'll pass all my questions, Mr. Chairman -Mr. President. Thank you very kindly.
That's it? Okay. Thank you very -- listen, we want to thank the two of you for being here. Thank you for your hard work and your dedication to our Sheriff's Office, and the people that work for the Sheriff's Office and particularly those who put those uniforms on. It is not guaranteed that you will come home, especially in this climate in America on any given day. So just thank you for -- on the work that you are doing from a law enforcement perspective and just protecting those who need protection. So with that being said thank you very much for your testimony.
With that being said, is there any other questions for members of this Committee as we wrap up for today? Hearing none, the Chair calls on Councilwoman Cindy Bass for a motion to adjourn.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman -- thank you, Mr. President. So moved. Councilmember: Second.
Okay. It has been moved and properly seconded that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolutions before the Committee today stand in recess until -- MALE VOICE 2: Supposed recess until tomorrow.
Yes. MALE VOICE 2: Say that. Just say in recess until tomorrow at 10:00.
I'm reading it now. It has been moved and properly seconded that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolution before the Committee today stand in recess until Wednesday April the 29th at 10:00 a.m. All those in favor of signify by saying aye. COUNCILMEMBERS: Aye.
Anyone opposed? The ayes have it, and the motion carries. This committee will stand in recess until Wednesday, April 29th at 10:00 a.m., at which time we will reconvene at Room 400. Thank you very much. (Committee of the Whole public hearing concluded at 4:10 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully and accurately in the notes taken by me of the above case, and this copy is a correct transcript of the same. ______________________ Samanda J. Rios