Council 6-23-2026 [94:30-99:30]

Yeah. We don't know what's left. Now we do. I mean, those days are passed. We know what our costs are and what our fixed expenses are. We continue to seek reimbursements and increase the reimbursements. Those, that reimbursement number will be higher next year despite costs being roughly the same, because that misdemeanor project that we got into will receive one quarter last year. We're tracking for $100,000 in 2026 reimburse to the county general fund for misdemeanor. So that number will go up, which will actually decrease. It'll then decrease the cost to the county. It'll increase those numbers. While they will never emerge, we want them to get as close as possible. My goal is to always keep my orange line under my blue line. And it caused that blue line to come down as much as possible. But there is a breakeven point. When I was doing this assessment, this analysis, the system that I was using to read the data threw up a lot of caution flags and says, this isn't sustainable because your training fund is too low. You've got to keep your training but line higher. For right now, we're operating. But I'm proud of what the agency has done in four years with handling cases without having to farm many cases out. For the longest time, I didn't have any contract services I love to come in and show a big goose egg or maybe a one. You know, those numbers have gone up, but we never have had more than five or six contract services out of the time. When I came, I forget how many were out there, but it was a lot. And we had to whittle those down because they were just a variable cost that you didn't know. And it was a higher per unit price effective hourly rate for those than it is for having them in house in the agency. I have to echo some of the things that Sam says as reality. I'm looking at what it costs to replace people. I don't want any of my people to go. I mean, I do everything I can to keep them happy to check in on them to monitor their workload, case load, job satisfaction. Sam's right. Most of my people can go make triple in private practice what they make inside the office. Now, they can make a little more at almost every public defender agency around. That wasn't always the case. Lawrence County was very competitive in 2022 and I came. Now Monroe County beats us, Green County beats us, Jackson County beats us. I'm fortunate. My people are geographically located where they want to be. They're working on a team that they're happy with. But when Sam says we are coming in under my experiences that that's true. The 100 to 100, 5010 range is very normal for a deputy public defender these days, just as it is for the deputy prosecutors. Just something to have your finger on the pulse that that's accurate. That's my experience too. But there's something to be said about the environment that my folks are working in and the team that we have and how we support each other and I'm really proud of them. I mean, we have a hard job. Like Sam says, his office doesn't try every case. Thank God. That would be a waste of county resources and waste of time. There's a reason. He gave a data statistic. He said somewhere around 98% of cases don't go to trial. He actually writes two to 10% do go to trial. The rest either resolved by way of plea agreement or dismissal or an informal adjustment such as a pre-trial diversion. So it's very wise to have that sort of system and the public doesn't always understand it. But if every case went to trial, you wouldn't have a system. You would have a jail that was backlogged under federal mandate or you'd have courts that just weren't processing through victims would go without any justice for the longest period of time. You can look at places that have that problem. Lawrence County doesn't. Sam and his deputies do a... We're adversarial. I'll call it a fair job of offering negotiated settlements. But there is an attempt to try to get cases resolved. Some cases have to go to trial. And they just have to. And we try to do a good job in my office of working with our clients to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their case. Whether trial is advantageous to them or not. But that's one of the decisions they get to make is whether they plea or go to trial. And I'm just proud of my team. We work hard together to try to field those. We team up so that nobody's alone on trials. That's just for confidence building. And when I came on competency professionalism and efficiency were my three point mantra. I said that in 2022. It's what I still say in all of my office meetings that we're looking for. I got everybody up to competency within a year.