June 25, 2026 Council Meeting Transcripts

Speaker 1

I can't read that, what does that say? Oh, that's Randall. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2

Randall, anything else?

Speaker 1

Oh, Stewart? Yeah.

Speaker 2

So I've got Chad, Karen, Randall, Stewart, Troy.

Speaker 1

Okay, we're recording in both places, we're good to go. Oh, wait. Make sure they can all hear. Oh, yeah, sorry, I should have been doing that. Hey, somebody online, can you hear us? Loud and clear. Yep. Great, thank you. All right, welcome everyone. We can go around and do roll call. Let's start here in the room and then Marilyn can just announce who's online. Trent, start with you. Trent Dressen, UPC. Craig Peterson, Attorney General's Office for Stu Young. Bob Church, UPC. Ed Montgomery. Ron Weight for UPC.

Speaker 2

Marilyn with UPC. Talia with UPC. Elisa with Orem City.

Speaker 1

And then you just want to say it out loud, Marilyn.

Speaker 2

And then out loud, online, saying it out loud, Chad Dotson, Karen Walker, Randall McCune, Stewart Williams, and Troy Rollins.

Speaker 1

Okay, welcome everybody. Do you want me to just run through? Yeah, please. Okay, I didn't want to tell a story. Okay, so you have to be able to review the minutes from the previous meeting. Do we have a motion to approve? Or, first of all, do we have any discussion on the minutes or make any amendments? Move to adopt. Okay, second?

Speaker 2

Second.

Speaker 1

That was Elisa. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Speaker 2

Aye.

Speaker 1

Aye. Okay, sounds like it's unanimous. All right, we want to welcome Talia. Hopefully those of you that are online will get a chance to meet Talia here in the next couple of months. Talia Spina is our new part-time secretary. She comes to us. She was the legislative intern for the last two legislative sessions, highly regarded, recommended by everybody that worked up on the Hill, so we're excited to have her join us. Sadly, we're only going to have her for a year because she has declared her intention to go to law school, but we're trying to talk her out of it. It was also her birthday yesterday. That's right. Happy birthday, Talia, yesterday. So we bid Emma farewell last week and wish her well. Okay, budget review. So I have been stressing over the budget for the last several weeks. We've talked about this kind of off and on, and you've got the information in the packet. So just the two errors, the big errors that I didn't catch were the first one was the estimated network expenses. The data that we had gotten, we thought it was only going to be, as it says there, $1,750 in network expenses. Brett Robinson has just joined us. And you can see that it was actually $23,000. We got some incorrect information, incorrect estimates, which was our fault for not following up on that. How we have counteracted that, and I'll talk about this later on, but we have been assigned in the AG's office a dedicated budget person who handles our grants and our budgets pretty handy. And she actually sent Marilyn, Ron, Talia, and I the month of May network expenses, which was a report that we've never seen before. And so that's just one effort that the office is taking to get us more information. And so we are going to be on top of that. And I'll talk about what Brittany is doing for us as well a little later on. And then last year, the Attorney General's office awarded or received funding for discretionary raises for the attorneys. And we were, the three attorneys were awarded just over $29,000 in discretionary funding that we got from the legislature. What happened, though, is there was a clerical error, and those funds were actually never transferred into our budget. So I accounted for the raises, but we just actually didn't get the money. And that is going to be corrected. Oh, so here's the next thing that I point out is with our AG finance and Brittany is we are going to be meeting with her on a monthly basis. We have a set meeting now. The way that we're going to be doing our finances moving forward is in the past, our expenses were not getting entered as we incurred them. Instead, the receipts and the expenses were being held onto until we got the finance report from the state finance. And then what was happening is then they were marrying up the receipts to the finance report, which meant that our finances into the budget numbers that I was looking at were always two to three months behind. So instead, what we are doing now is as an expense is incurred, it's being entered into our reporting system, which is QuickBooks. And it will be off from what finance is just, again, because there's that lapse with finance. But as I said, we're going to be meeting with Brittany on a monthly basis to compare what our expenses show, what state finance is showing as an effort to be better on top of what our actual income and what our expenses are. And that led to me agreeing to pay for all of Advance. We paid for the students with the rationale being that if offices have already sent a student to one of our conferences, we thought if we paid for the expenses associated with Advance, we would get more people to be able to come. But I made that decision based on erroneous, as I said, we were a couple months behind. And so that was my fault. We also went over budget on our big conferences, again, just not paying close enough attention, and that is my complete responsibility. I own that, and I apologize. The bottom line is, as Brittany says, that we're going to be just barely under budget, meaning we should still be in the positive, just not have a sizable carryover like we have had in the past. One thing that I'm looking at is Ron's grant that pays for the e-prosecutor licenses also reimburses a portion of Ron's salary. It just occurred to me, and I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but we should be able to attribute those expenses to the grant. So Ron went to a national conference on e-prosecutor in, what was it, April, Ron? Earlier this year. And then he presented at the UPAA conference, and I'm talking with my grant manager, and he thinks that those types of expenses can be reimbursed. Now, whether or not the DOJ will approve a grant adjustment for this year, but going forward, we should be able to write the grant such that those types of expenses can be reimbursed from the grant. So a thought that we had is that since Ron attends every conference except for BASIC, that if we were to have him talk about e-prosecutor, maybe show some of the new features that have come out, and be available to meet with the attorneys that are there at the UPAA conference with the paralegals and whatnot to provide assistance that we could justify than paying all of Ron's expenses for those conferences that he attends and participates. So that's something that we're looking at in terms of going forward. So that's – and because we don't have all of the expenses, I don't have a final budget, and I normally don't. That usually comes in September. But that's where we're at on the summary for this year's budget. Again, I own it. That's my fault. I just – I don't know where my head was this year, so I apologize.

Speaker 2

But we're still under budget.

Speaker 1

They're projecting that we'll still be under budget, just not significantly like we have been in the past. Any questions, comments? It's not often I get an apology for being under budget. Well, the apology is that I thought, you know, I was thinking that we'd be under budget much more significantly like we have been in years past, so I just didn't pay as close enough attention as I should have. Okay, the 27 budget. I was hesitant to provide the budget like I normally do because there's a lot of unknowns at this point. But let me – so let me go through. I mean, I had given you the budget. You can see that right now we're projecting to be in the red by $26,000, but that's because I don't have all of the information that I need to provide to you. So let me just start at the beginning of the summary here is the legislature, again, appropriated discretionary raises to the Attorney General's office, of which the three staff attorneys we received. And then the way that they worked it out, and Craig can help me if I'm saying this incorrectly, is they – based on the number of years that the attorney has and what they tried to do is give the largest percentage to that point in an attorney's career when they can go out and make, you know, make a better wage than they could working for the Attorney General's office. And so it's Trent and Tyson that fall into that bracket, if you will. And so that's how they determined the raises. Everybody got the 2.5 percent COLA, but then Trent, Tyson, and I each received a slight adjustment. Tyson received the most because he's in the sweet spot. Trent is just underneath that amount. I think his was 6 percent. Craig Peterson came to me and reminded me that Tyson was eligible to be nominated, increased to a grade 5 attorney based on his number of years. And so that nomination was put in. I haven't heard back. Yeah. We haven't heard back yet. And so what I did is I based his salary that's in the budget as if he were to be increased to the grade 5 along with the COLA and the increase. But, again, I don't know what those numbers are going to be for sure. The discretionary funds that will be transferred to us for the raises is not accounted for on the general fund entry on our budget because, like I said, I just don't know exactly what that amount will be. Right. As well as how the roughly $29,000 from last year, if that will be transferred into our budget this year or if it will be or how that exactly is going to be handled. So those numbers are not reflected in the budget, which is leading to us being overdrawn for this year. The increased legal management bump that I had put in there, I misunderstood the email. I was thinking that I was eligible as a section director for a $10,000. It's actually a $5,000. So just make that change, and I will adjust that in the final numbers. Incentive awards is what Derek, Attorney General Brown, indicated in his email. We kind of lost sight of what incentive awards were designed for us to recognize outstanding performance. Instead, they became like just a salary, a way to increase your salary at the end of the year or at the holidays that everybody across the board was getting one, which I don't think anybody begrudged that. But that got away from the intent of the incentive award. So what General Brown has done, what the office has done, is they have just awarded everybody, everyone in the office. Sorry, Talia, not you. Every full-time employee has received a $1,000 increase in their annual salary as part of that incentive award. Whereas now, any remaining funds that were in the incentive award budget has yet to be determined, and they don't have yet guidelines on how those will be awarded. So, again, I'm waiting for that information to come out. So what that means for the council is normally we would, in the late fall, prior to the end of the year, we would hold a special council meeting and you all would determine whether or not you were going to award incentive awards to UBC employees, which you have done historically, which we appreciate. I don't think that we'll be doing that because everybody just got that $1,000 incentive award. But if there's something additional that will come out, I'll let you know, and hopefully we should know by September. The nonprofessional staff, so meaning Marilyn and Ron, the anticipation is that what they will do is they will look at and do a market comparison on their salaries compared to others to determine if their salaries need to be increased. So, again, I just don't know the answer to that yet. Let's see. In the past, the office has pooled basically all of the overhead costs and then just divided those out evenly among all the sections. And even though Marilyn and I have asked what that amount is and what it's covered in years past, we haven't always gotten a really definitive answer. But what we appreciate, under Derek's leadership in what finance is doing, is they are now going to direct bill offices, or direct bill for the exporters.

Speaker 1

Whether or not UPC has been paying for File Vine and e-file licenses, which we don't use, and some of the other resources that other attorneys in the office would use, other sections would use, that we don't. And so, again, we appreciate the finance folks for looking into that. And so they anticipate that our overhead costs will go down, which will, again, affect our bottom line, but I just don't know what those currently are. Additional measures that we are taking as a council, or as a staff, and subject to your approval, include the following. Is we were going to hold advanced every year, but we felt that, like the DUI and the DV boot camps, we're renewing those every other year. We propose that we move advanced trial skills to every other year, so that we don't incur those expenses this year, which means that the next course would be in October of 27. We won't pay for students to attend that. That will be up to the offices. UMPA, they went to a two and a half day format last year. That's one of the reasons that they, that there was over budget. We're proposing that this year they go back to a day and a half format. We're planning, we are still offering the same number of CLE credits. We're not shorting them on credits. It's just they don't get as much free time to enjoy, let's say we're going to be in Moab this year, so they won't get as much free time, but you know, that's, that's what we're going to do. We're proposing that the UPAA course conference also go to a day and a half, not reduce their CLE credits they earned, but going back to a day and a half format, at least for this year. We have, we're not going to pay for lodging for students at BASIC this year, and we have done this in the past. A couple years ago, when, when things were tight, we didn't pay for lodging. That's understandable, and so I think going forward, unless, you know, unless we, things change, we're not going to pay for students to go to BASIC. We're not going to provide any significant swag this year. Last year we, we had some extra, so you'll just get a pen and maybe a pad of paper at UPC conferences, and talk about the e-prosecutor grant, and what, what measures we'll be able to do there. With our presenters at our conferences, in the past we had generally paid for all of their expenses that they wanted to stay for the entire conference. With your approval, what we're going to do is just simply pay for one night for them, one day travel, you know, the travel to and from on that one day, one day's night at the hotel, and then if they choose to stay, then their office will need to pick up the additional expenses. And then, as I said, we're going to have the monthly meeting, budget meeting with, with our staff and with Brittany, just so that we are, are on top of everything. Do you think we need a motion to change that, or, or a vote with approval? What do you think, Ed? For just making the changes, going to the band, moving events every other year? I don't think so. Okay, okay. Let's see. Anything else, Marilyn, on the budget?

Speaker 2

Well, these changes just be subject to whether we have lean years, or, right, whether we're flush. Right, right. We could maybe go back. We could. By having the two and a half days, you know, just, yes, pay for students to go to basic if we're in those flush years.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Oh, one other thing is, I was asking our finance folks if I needed to go, if, when I submit my budget to the legislature, if we need to request an increase in our budget this year, and what finance is suggesting is that, let's give it one year. Let's see how the direct billing plays out. Let's see, you know, our cost saving measures, how that plays out. Let's see, you know, the discretionary raises how that plays out into our budget. They're just asking us if we can go for one year before we consider going to the legislature and asking for an increase to our general fund budget.

Speaker 2

So that, that's also, that we'll keep on the, that gives them a good baseline of how we work, and with our meetings with Brittany, because they go off a fine net, and they use a little bit of different language than we do when we're doing QuickBooks so that the council can look at it and interpret it in English rather than accounting language. So we're trying to get our language together and terms and things like that. So this gives them a year and us to really be able to collaborate through that process.

Speaker 1

Just as an example is the finance people in our meeting already emailed to me said, well, we're projecting that you're going to have $140,000 in overhead costs. And I was like, what? You know, that just doesn't sound right. And as we were talking, realized that what they consider to be overhead, we consider to be, you know, like the conference costs. And so that's why, as Marilyn was saying, is we just need to start learning to speak the same language, which in the coming months hopefully we'll get that taken care of.

Speaker 2

And they thought some of our revenue, like Ron's e-prosecutor fees and things like that, they were putting it into registration fees. So in our budget, we have it, you know, all separated. So with these meetings, we'll be able to like really see how we're doing it and how they're interpreting that.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I can't say enough, and I'm not just brown nosing because Craig's sitting here to my right, is it has been so refreshing with this new administration and then with this new folks in finance giving us a dedicated person to work with us. We're finally, you know, really getting a handle. Always before, you know, I project your confidence with our budget. We've always been positive in our budget. There's just been a lot of questions, unanswered questions that are now being answered. So we...

Speaker 2

It's a lot clearer.

Speaker 1

It is.

Speaker 2

It's a lot clearer.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

I definitely appreciate that finance is engaging in a more meaningful way. And obviously we want to be good stewards of the money of the people that give it to us. My concern is I don't want our level of service to drop. Right. I mean, I understand there's a financial reality, and I think everything will shake out in the end. But yeah, my preference would be, and I think everybody's preference is, you know, we not drop our level of service. But I agree, let's give it a see how it shakes out, see where we're at.

Speaker 1

And when we told them that, you know, we were going to be canceling advance this year, they recognized that we're doing that just as a cost-saving measures to get back. And so they recognize that. And I, when I talked about, you know, seeking an increase in our funding is because we don't want to cut the services that we're providing to our prosecutors.

Speaker 2

Well, and we also, you know, when we had that discussion in terms of the training and cutting services, it wasn't really, is there really a demand for advanced trial skills every year since we've just had one? Do we need it again this year? Would we still get the, you know, and going every other year, I think it would keep that prestige, if you will, you know, it's a special, a special type of training. So that was another consideration.

Speaker 1

And we'll, and we'll gauge that, you know, I'll ask it at our conferences, you know, we're getting into fall, but have people put on the surveys, you know, how they feel about advanced and, you know, what generates some interest. So, okay. Again, I, apologize. This has been stressing me out, but any, any questions on the budget? And I'm not asking for any vote on it because clearly this is not the final budget because there's still too many unanswered questions. Okay. Thank you all. Um, moving on late fees is in the past, the last year and a half or so, we have been telling everyone that the bar was going to charge us a hundred dollars for a late CLE report. Maryland has such a great relationship with the bar that even though we have submitted some late CLE reports, they have never charged us a hundred dollars. However, I don't know what, what it is about spring. As you can see, you know, in the comments, we've had five or six people that didn't get their spring evaluation done on time. One person wanted to watch the recordings of spring conference well after the fact, so we made him post registration and his late fee, you know, so they could watch, but we just had several people that, that were late. We had somebody from, was it Fall or Oompa?

Speaker 2

Oompa.

Speaker 1

Oompa.

Speaker 2

One person.

Speaker 1

One person from UMPA after the fact, oh, I, you know, my CLE is not showing up. So we had to do something there. So because the bar at least has not yet been charging us, I don't know that in good faith I can go forward threatening people that the bar is going to charge us a hundred and so we're charging you a hundred instead. Seeing the work that Maryland has had to do just the last two or three weeks processing all of this, I am proposing that we as a council, that you as a council adopt a policy that we charge you, UPC charges you a hundred dollar late fee if we have to submit a late CLE report. Now, if you squeak it in before Maryland submits it, then I would say we probably don't charge it, but like when we've had people two or three weeks, two or three months, several months after the fact that, that we charge them a hundred dollar late fee.

Speaker 2

And I send out emails too, emails of, okay, you've got this amount of time. Now it's the last call. And after that, the door closed.

Speaker 6

I have a question. Yes. I thought that we had already decided on doing late fees or was that like a different amount? Was that for something different?

Speaker 1

Well, it was, it was, we were going to tell people we were going to charge them a hundred dollars because that's what the bar was telling us they were going to charge us. And so it was basically going to be a pass through. Whereas what I'm suggesting is that we rename it and say that it's not a bar fee, but it's a UPC late fee. And then if the bar does in fact charge us, well, then we've got the money, um, you know, that they've already paid us that there would be a pass through. But I'm hoping, and I'm not looking to make money here. What I'm hoping is that, you know, people understand that this is a hard and fast thing is you're going to have almost a hundred bucks if we'll just get their evaluation done on time. Gotcha. I certainly support that. Okay. There's no reason. Okay. So Jeff and Ed, would you take that as a motion? Yeah, I move that we adopt that. Okay. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Thanks. Um, and so I'll, uh, those, those that with the legislature to look at the fee schedule, you'll see this show up on the fee schedule, uh, just so the legislature approves that for us. Okay. Uh, training committee, uh, you can see what our upcoming, uh, events are. We've got, oh, I did not give you the, uh, agendas. I apologize. We can get those out if you're interested. So let me just do a recap, um, of spring conference. It went well. We had some really good evaluations. Um, we did the, if y'all remember, we did the inaugural student networking event. Craig joined us. Um, what we didn't realize at the time when we scheduled it is that it was falling on reading days and during finals. And so I remember, oh, and Elisa was there. Yeah. I'm trying to think if anybody, you know, um, any other council members, I don't think so. Uh, anyway, um, the food was amazing. I, the food was the best I've ever had.

Speaker 2

Oh, Craig was there.

Speaker 1

Yeah. No, that's what I said, Craig. We were trying some of the food, Craig. You don't serve that kind of food all the time. I just want you to know. And it was, it was within state budget. I just want you to know that. I just wanted to know how to get on that invite list for her. Yeah. No, you're permanently on it. White shanks with mint jelly. Oh, they were amazing. Yeah. And the skewers.

Speaker 6

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1

Peanut sauce. I still have dreams.

Speaker 6

I heard a lot about the food. I heard it was amazing.

Speaker 1

Yeah, the food was amazing. And we had a handful of students come and those that came, I think were really engaged. I mean, uh, Craig and Elisa, I mean, what were your feelings or thoughts on that?

Speaker 4

Oh, they were terrific. And most of the ones that were there that at least that I talked to were all on the cusp of graduating and they were seriously looking like, I want to be a prosecutor. I want to get into prosecution. What is it about? What am I looking at? How best do I approach it? You know? And, uh, so they, they had real questions to which they were hoping to get real answers. It wasn't just fluff. And so it was really engaging. I enjoyed the time.

Speaker 7

Yeah.

Speaker 5

I was saying, yeah, although I think I had a 1L and a 2L that I talked to, but, um, yeah, they, they were motivated enough to come down. I think most of ours were.

Speaker 1

Come to you.

Speaker 5

Come down and talk.

Speaker 1

Yeah. And so what I try not to look at how much we paid for it compared to how many people attended, but instead look at the contacts that we made. And so we're proposing that we do it again next year. Spring conference is going to be a week earlier than it was this last year. And so, uh, that should not conflict with reading days or finals for either school. And so we're hoping to see, um, more students that, uh, that come, you know, we thought about not only limiting it to 2Ls and 3Ls for that reason is, you know, looking for jobs. We thought we might as well open up to the 1Ls as well that are starting, you know, want to look for summer clerkship jobs. And so we had just a very good plan on doing something. So I don't know that we'll get as much food, uh, but, uh, we'll, we'll make it worth everybody's while. And the fact that we held it just right, right as we ended the day, hopefully that will encourage more of our prosecutors to attend, especially as, you know, you all say what a good experience it was. And, um, so that's that. Uh, regional legislative updates.

Speaker 4

Attendance was roughly the same as I had them. One thing we did different is we did the Wasatch Front locations together, Tyson and myself, and then we split up to try and get across the state prior to the new laws going into effect, which I think was beneficial to the agencies and to us. So it was significantly less time away for us, but also they all got word before the deadline date. So I think we'll response from the officers was I'll get this, we're probably gonna ride this walk-up song thing for a while. I know some people are getting tired, but it keeps things interesting at the very least.

Speaker 2

And that was, I mean, that's, that was one thing that I told these guys is you need to limit the number of days, number of nights you're away from home, and there's benefit having Trent and Tyson together, but do you think you lost anything by not both being together off the Wasatch?

Speaker 4

I don't think so, no. Yeah. There was probably less traffic offenses talked about in my sessions other than that. I do not spend 30 minutes talking about hit-and-runs.

Speaker 2

Okay. All right, UPAA. Karen, do you want to tell us about your conference?

Speaker 3

The conference was so good. June 10th to the 12th, Cedar City. Trent, I think you can keep doing your walk-out song for us. Everybody enjoyed it. Four positions, we have three open positions, a couple retirements. So if you have anybody in your office that might be interested, encourage them to apply. We would really appreciate that.

Speaker 2

Karen, let me, are you looking for city or county representatives, AG representative, or?

Speaker 3

Anybody.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Like, I think we're just taking a pool, and because I feel like we had a couple county people that are gone now, maybe three. I think it's two county, one city, so. But just, yeah, anybody. We'll look them over. Doesn't matter what agency you're with.

Speaker 2

What is the current composition of your board? Or, I mean, in terms of who and where they're from?

Speaker 3

I think we have, like, three cities and currently maybe, like, three counties.

Speaker 2

Okay, so an even split? Yeah. Anybody from the AG? I don't think you guys replaced the one you had a year ago.

Speaker 5

We haven't had someone on the board from the AG's office for quite a while, but Janelle was at the conference and, I'm sorry, I forgot her name, who went with her. Sarah Boyce, you said that was the other one. Sarah, no, it wasn't Sarah, it was, but she expressed an interest in being on the board. Okay. So, we would love to have someone from the AG.

Speaker 4

I forget her name, I think she does ICAC.

Speaker 5

No, no, it wasn't ICAC.

Speaker 4

Cecilia Rivas.

Speaker 5

Possibly, yeah. I'm terrible at names.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I was just curious, so, you know, the council members knew, but, yeah, if we could get someone from the AG's office.

Speaker 3

I think, like, right now, we have Box Elder County, Wasatch County, Washington County, and then, like, Provo, Lehigh, and Saratoga, I think is where we're at right now. Okay. And you're Provo?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah, Provo. And it sounds like you've represented at least across the state. It's not like you're missing a region, per se. You've got North and South.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. So, we lost Davis. Yeah, we got North and South.

Speaker 5

We lost Davis, Morgan, and Salt Lake, and Kathy. Salt Lake. And Kathy, yeah, because Kathy's in the category. Okay. So, they were lost in the Morgan.

Speaker 4

Yeah, Heather was the one that was there. Heather McKinney. Heather McKinney.

Speaker 5

Okay, Heather.

Speaker 4

Okay.

Speaker 3

So, the posting closes July 31st, so, if you encourage people, just keep that date in mind.

Speaker 2

So, what we can do, Marilyn, is let's send out another email.

Speaker 5

Another announcement?

Speaker 2

Yeah, just letting people know to encourage your staff. Sorry, go ahead, Karen. I apologize.

Speaker 3

No, you're good. No, you're fine. There is one other thing. I talked to a couple people about, you know, UPA is supposed to be a resource to legal assistance. Some feelings, I mean, I guess it was like a couple people, but just like a little bit better communication of things that are happening, upcoming. Like, we get our legislative update, Trent, shout out to you, but it's after all the changes go into effect, so, if there's a way that we can, as a council, kind of come up with an idea to get information sent out to legal assistance before these changes go into effect. Another example is like the DV changes that went into effect last year about, it would include race when we file for victims and defendants and just having those heads up and having information out to legal assistance before they actually go into effect. So, I don't know if that's something we can discuss or, I mean, I don't know what some options are.

Speaker 2

Any suggestions on how to improve that? I mean, from your folks, what's on their wish list or what they would like?

Speaker 3

I guess, I wasn't really sure what options there might be. I mean, I know from my point of view with the DV stuff that went into effect last fall, like, I know the information got sent out to the prosecutors and my boss forwarded me that information, but I had a couple agencies calling me asking me if I was having issues with the same thing and they didn't know about it. But I just happened to get that email passed on along to me and I know that doesn't happen in every office. So, I don't know if there's like an email thread or something that we can create for legal assistance.

Speaker 2

I was just thinking that, Marilyn, do you have an email thread for your UPA folks? Yeah. So, I probably need to get access to that or forward you that so that you can forward it out. Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll work on that, Karen.

Speaker 3

Awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Uh-huh.

Speaker 3

I mean, that's all I have. Okay.

Speaker 2

Okay. Ron, I was thinking that Ron would be gone this week, but he's here. So, Ron, do you want to talk about e-prosecutor or e-filing? Yeah.

Speaker 1

We're moving forward with e-filing. I'm going to work with, I think, five new offices here in the next few weeks to get them trained and working on it. After that, I'm just going to move down the list. I'm kind of going in order of when they first got e-prosecutor. Then I'm just, they're the first ones. In other words, the order they came online to be e-prosecutors is kind of the order I'm going in unless they aren't ready or whatever. So, we're going to just move quickly as we can. AOC sometimes takes a little while. They have to turn on every court to allow us to e-file to that court. And I don't know why they can't just turn them all on because our e-filing system is a little bit, they have to know it's coming from us and they have to be able to accept that. I don't know what it is. It takes them a while after we request it before they turn it on. It can take anywhere from a week to three weeks. It's been the longest time after I asked them. So, as soon as they turn it on, then I schedule training. And then I train two or three offices. Then as soon as they're ready to go and we've got things cleared up and it's working, I go to the next two or three. And that's kind of how we've been doing it. So, it should be, I'm going to try to accelerate it and get as many as possible going here. Get it so everybody's e-filing. It's pretty handy for the most part. It works mostly. It works pretty smoothly. There are some little issues. Justice courts were doing some weird things, some of them. They were deleting data on their end when we submitted a case to them. When we didn't submit anything to them, we don't know why they were doing that. It's on their end, the process itself. We just told them what we're doing and what they're doing. We found some workarounds that doesn't cause that problem. So, it's moving forward, looking good. I think we'll be able to get everybody going by the end of the year. The other thing that's coming up, though, that I didn't mention in the report here, I forgot, is that we're going to be doing an upgrade of e-prosecutor pretty soon. It's a major upgrade. It goes from the 2023 version to the latest version in 2025. Didn't want to go to the 2026 version because it's brand new. We're not sure yet if they've worked out all the bugs in that. The 2025 version has a few extra nice things in it and a couple of things that aren't quite... They had to make it more compliant for ADA, just like we're doing with our website. Some of the tabby will be a little different than this. There are some minor things that aren't good. There are a lot of things that aren't good about the upgrade. The biggest thing is they don't keep us in the support loop so that we don't run out, so that we don't get old, too old for them to support us. Some of the bugs they can't fix anymore in older versions because they've moved past that. We got behind a while ago, and we're just trying to catch up now. But the new upgrade's about ready to go, and thanks to everybody who helped me test the new system, the new version. Got a lot of good response in that, so that was very helpful, I think. I'll send out a notice the weekend we're going to do the upgrade. It will be on a Friday afternoon, evening. Then I'll work with General Technologies through the weekend if necessary to get things cleaned up, if there needs to be anything, so that by Monday morning it should be ready to go. But it will be different, so I'll try to send out a couple of screenshots that show some of the differences so everybody knows it. That's coming up pretty soon. Is this going to be Monday morning, I can sit down, it's going to be new, I'm going to be able to navigate it? Yeah, the navigation stuff won't change, but the login screen looks different. I might send out a screenshot of that so you don't be surprised. Oh, wait, what is this? The login screen looks different. Most of the screens will look the same. There's some small visual differences that you'll see. I'll try to catch those and then make a note of them so people aren't surprised. But yeah, Monday morning you just log in like usual. Other than the screen looking different, it shouldn't be a problem. It won't be in the next week or two, but probably by the end, before the end of July. It gives us some capabilities that will be interesting if we can leverage them.

Speaker 2

Can I talk about your ADA?

Speaker 1

The website, we've had to make an ADA compliant, or WCAG 2.2, I think we're on. The government has mandated that if you don't do that, you could get sued. If somebody goes on the website and can't access it like they should from a certain disability, they can actually sue. There's been an increase of lawsuits lately. Thousands of them have been filed in the courts because I can't do everything I'm supposed to do. We're just trying to make ours more compliant. I've made a lot of progress. It's probably 20, 30 times better than it was when I started because it was not ADA compliant, and it should have been. I'm learning, and we're getting there. Some things may look a little different, but for the most part, it will be the same. One of the big things is the audio for all these meetings has to be transcribed and available in text form for those who can't hear, I guess, or for those who want their screens to read to them. That's been an interesting process. I've found a way to get that done without too much time, but it does take some time. I've probably spent two or three weeks total time working on some of the changes. If you see some minor changes, don't worry about it. I'm just working through getting it so it's ADA compliant.

Speaker 2

In terms of our webpage, we've had some people say that you need to come into the current year. I don't want to say century because we're not quite that old. But if there's things with our webpage that you think that we could improve, that we should be doing better, please let us know. Ron is doing a great job, but we've kind of given him all of our ideas. So if you've got any suggestions or additional services or things that we should be putting on our webpage, please let us know. Okay, then going back to the prosecutor and the grant funding. So you can see in the notes there is we're going to be flush in e-prosecutor funding. So just to kind of rehash, review what's in here is at the beginning of the year, we thought we would have no money for e-prosecutor licenses, meaning that the jurisdictions were going to have to cover the cost of the lease. CCJJ stepped up and found funding through the JAG grant, which was awarded. The federal government, albeit months late now, has awarded the 2025 merit grant. That's the one that funds e-prosecutor. And so we were awarded $620,000. But because we've already spent half of the JAG grant, and then we're only going to spend half of this grant on licenses, that means we're going to be flush. CCJJ wants us to apply for the 26th grant, which the application is due by the end of the summer.

Speaker 1

It'd be nice if we could spend this money willy-nilly, but it's just to be used for e-prosecutor licenses. So if there are any jurisdictions out there that would like to get onto our version of e-prosecutor, I think we're gonna have the money to pay for licenses, and CCJJ has encouraged us. And I thought about whether we wanted to have a conversation here. You know, I know Utah County AG's office, others are on different case management systems, and I don't know if that's an appropriate discussion for us here, and maybe we could do that offline, but CCJJ is, would love it if everybody were on the same version of e-prosecutor, so that all the reports are coming in the same, but that's not my thing. Just realize that we will have money, because I know Oren wasn't looking yet. Are you guys still interested?

Speaker 5

Yeah, I think that our intention is to get e-prosecutor.

Speaker 2

Okay, then we're gonna have plenty of money. Just a note, Bob, is that right now we have, we're paying for 300 licenses? We're using 287 of them.

Speaker 1

Right, and with the additional, I mean, with, I don't want to say additional. With the money we're getting. We're gonna do more licenses. Right, we'll be able to up the number of licenses if we need to, because you're not gonna, you would only have, what, how many? Six or seven, maybe?

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's probably. So we currently have enough to do that, so that's not a problem.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and even if some of the other offices wanted to come in, we could apply for more grant funding, and CCJJ seems to think that there would be money to fund additional agencies that wanted to come on, so I'm just throwing that out in the world. I'm not advocating for or against. Frankly, I would love it if UPC could get out of the case management system. Okay. I said that, okay.

Speaker 2

Just one note that I just thought of, as far as that goes. Some offices have had interns that come in for just two or three months or something, and have asked for licenses for them, and wondering if we could just not charge the admin fee for those interns. I felt that that was fair, but I wanted to bring, I just remembered I wanted to bring that up here, that I thought, just if they're on for two or three months, if we have the licenses already paid for and we're not using them, I felt like, my feeling is that we should offer them, just put them on and let them work for two or three months as an intern, because that's very valuable to the office to have somebody else help them with those cases, and not worry about charging them an extra fee for that.

Speaker 1

How do you all feel, council? Very good. Okay. Any opposition online? Okay. No. Okay, okay, great. Perfect, thanks guys. Okay, Ron, so can you, oh, John.

Speaker 3

I'm just gonna throw something out about Utah County and you, e-Prosecutor, I mean, we reached out, who's the company that?

Speaker 1

Journal Technologies, I know you guys had a.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean, we wanted them to sell us, and unless we were sure that we were gonna go there, they didn't want to come out and sell us. Yeah. And so, it's like, okay, I guess you don't want to. Because I think the basic, what you're providing is not enough for our needs.

Speaker 1

See, and that's the concern that I've expressed to CCJJ, where they keep telling me, we'd love it if everybody got on your system, and I just said, ours is just kind of basic. Is some of the larger offices need something a little more robust, or they've tailored it that we just can't do, so I get that. And let me just state publicly, Ron and I met with the sales rep from General Technologies earlier this year, and informed him of your negative experience, and he had no clue that that happened, and is embarrassed and apologetic, so pass it on. What do you guys need that we don't offer?

Speaker 3

Well, because maybe, I'm probably not the right guy to address that. My legal systems administrator, she can do that.

Speaker 2

I think it's like selling county, got their own version of it, because we've customized it a whole lot more than we can, because so many jurisdictions are using it, and it wouldn't work. The problem is, if you automate stuff in our system, it automates it the same for everybody, and we couldn't get everybody to agree to do the same things. So within, I've tried to make it so that we can do some of the stuff individually as best as we can, but there's not as much flexibility in our system as some need, and I think Utah County is, that's where your people have that issue, is that they've got to have more flexibility to make it so it's more efficient. Yeah, and the other thing is...

Speaker 5

One of the big ones for people I've talked to that have been interested is just, there's no Spillman interface. That's a huge thing.

Speaker 2

That's true too. They could put a Spillman interface in it, but it would be very costly for us to get that.

Speaker 1

Okay, somehow I've missed that. So, Spillman interface. Let me talk to CCJJ, because I know that they have contracted directly with JTI about getting reports sent to them directly, and so maybe they can look at the Spillman interface as well.

Speaker 3

The other concern that we had was, I mean, it sounds like you're still working on e-filing. Well, it's working. I just have to get people up to speed. I mean, we rely on e-filing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it'd be nice. I mean, I'd love to tap into the funds to reduce mine. Right. It'd be nice if they had a basic, and then we could tap into that, but get a higher version, and we'd pay for the difference type thing.

Speaker 5

Level versus the basic one.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. Basic one. This is what you get for basic. This is what you get if you pay for the free version. Right, and it's like, okay, let's start with the basic, and then we need this, and we'll pay for that, and tap into those funds that the legislature is providing right now, and JTI's just paying for the whole thing. I know it's just a big burden. Yeah. What were you gonna say?

Speaker 4

I believe Sandy built an interface for Spillman and the prosecutor, I believe, because that was a big deal for them.

Speaker 2

It can be done for sure. Actually, Sandy did pay Journal Tech to get a special interface inside of our version that works for them, and I don't know exactly what it does, because I wasn't involved in that, but it does, they did get some kind of interface where they get some data from the case somehow, and I don't know.

Speaker 3

I mean, I'll guarantee the file buying isn't, we've certainly been battling with them, too, to get us what we need, but I mean, my legal systems administrator has basically become a computer guru, and she's creating all this stuff herself at this point, so yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 1

That's good feedback. Okay, moving on. Our DV Resource Prosecutor. I've been talking about this for years. I just have not made the right connections, and so we have Marlesse Jones to thank for this, as she was talking with Representative Angela Romero's policy analyst, Abby Adams, about the need for increased domestic violence training. Abby said that Representative Romero might be interested in doing some legislation like we did back in 2017, HB 200, that did the trauma training that funds transposition, and so Trent, Marlise, and I met with Abby last week, and Representative Romero was on the phone, and talked to her about what this would look like. I've included the talking points that I sent to Representative Romero in your packet. You can look at all of that. I'm not gonna go through every one of them, but Representative Romero seemed to be really interested in that, seemed to be very supportive. One thing, and she asked a lot of really great questions, anticipating what her colleagues were going to ask her. One of them is, do we have any hard data, even anecdotal data on prosecutor offices that are either prosecuting without the victim, participation of the victim, what are the impediments? Similar to Dr. Valentine, for those of you that have been around a long time, you'll remember that Dr. Julie Valentine worked with West Valley City for a year, and they did the trauma training, and they tracked whether or not the trauma training resulted in an increased number of filings of sexual assault cases in West Valley City, and the numbers were pretty dramatic. It would be nice if we had something similar to that, which we don't, and so Trent and I have been talking about how we can maybe get some of that data from all your offices. Several of you responded to an email that I sent out, whether it was earlier this year, but not anything that gives us hard numbers, and so Trent and I are talking that maybe what we do is we create an anonymous survey that we can send out so that no offices have to admit, hey, we're not doing a good job in prosecuting cases, regardless of victim participation, but we haven't quite worked that out yet, but with all of that said, Representative Romero is supportive. She's making this a priority bill. I gave her some information on what the fiscal note would be, and she didn't, I guess I was gonna say she didn't blink, but she was online, but I didn't sense a lot of pushback. Did you, Trent? No. Yeah, so we're hopeful on that. Whether or not it gets passed this year, that's something that she wants to work on, but if it does get passed this year, then a year from now, we might be looking at having a separate domestic violence resource prosecutor that can do, that we're hoping can just do great things that Trent's not able to do. Anything else I'm missing? To be clear, doesn't have time to do, not necessarily unable. Well, that's what I meant. Yeah, that Trent doesn't have the time to do. I mean, just frankly, this doesn't have the time.

Speaker 4

I think ideally, from a prosecutor perspective, it would be on both ends, so there would be significant law enforcement training, because it would be legally required to help law enforcement officers see additional evidence they can gather to help prosecutors prosecute cases with or without victim participation. Then on the prosecutor end, we realize there's probably a lot of newer prosecutors getting DV cases that are probably afraid to proceed without a victim, and or could use an expert, but have never done that before. And if I had more time, I would love, I do consult on those cases, we talk about them a lot over the phone or via email, but typically, I cannot go and spend two or three days in a trial. If we have this position, I'd be able to do that. Sit down, here's how you do, I'll do the expert direct for you, so you can see it, I'll walk you through it, which we hope would result in prosecutors feeling more comfortable doing it, and an increase in prosecution of DV generally, but also DVs where we don't have the participation of a victim.

Speaker 1

Because, thank you for bringing that up, as we talked about, some of the bigger offices that are gonna have more experienced prosecutors, they've got a resource there, but small offices, Orem, your office, I mean, when I started Orem, I was only prosecutor, and we've got a lot of offices that are similarly situated, where they just don't have a ton of experience, or people they can go to, and so that's the void that we're hoping to fill with this position. So, obviously, we're just in the really beginning stages. Trent and I have taken the HB 200 statute, and are massaging it for language on the required training, trying not to reinvent the wheel, but we're hopeful. Of course, we'll see as it proceeds, and we'll keep the council apprised of what happens as we move forward, but I'm feeling hopeful that we will get another full-time resource prosecutor on our staff. Okay, let's see. Then, UPC sunset provision. This was a surprise to me. I didn't realize that we were a commission or a committee, similar to others, subject to a sunset provision. So, about four or six weeks ago, I got an email from Dan Burton and Eric Lynn, who is the legislative guru in the office, let me know that UPC was looking at being sun-setted, and I needed to appear for a hearing. And I didn't really freak out, because we do great things, and so they talked me off the edge of the cliff, and I was able to tailor the presentation that I give every year about our budget and what we do. I tailored that, but added more detail. I gave them specific numbers about the number of people that we have trained, the number of law enforcement officers that we have trained, the number of conferences that we do. I talked about the John R. Justice grant, and then since 2009, that we have been managing this on behalf of the state, like nobody, no other entity does that. We've awarded over $800,000 in grant funding through John R. Justice, talked about sexual assault, the trauma training that we're doing. I mean, it basically laid out, here's everything that UPC does, and if we go away, there's gonna be nobody that is willing to do this. And so Dan and Aaron, as Stu was in the room, I tried to get them to see if they could move this, but I was in St. George, they let me appear remotely. Stu was in the room representing us physically, but I had a couple of questions that were really innocuous, just a clarification on some of the numbers. I was talking too fast, and I think I skipped over the explanation, but I talked with Aaron and Dan yesterday at our Attorney General annual picnic, and they said they thought it went well, and they're not concerned. They'll keep track of it, and there should be an announcement made later this summer. So that's that. I would love it if they take us off the sunset provision, but I don't know if that would happen, but I'm not concerned that we're gonna go away.

Speaker 1

Ask, it's not really necessarily on the agenda per se, is we've always scheduled these meetings for 90 minutes, but we're able to get a lot of this done in, you know, an hour, a little over an hour. Do you want me to continue to schedule these for 90 minute blocks, or schedule it, or maybe bump it back to 75 minutes, or just leave it as is so that we've got a margin in case we have things that we need to discuss?

Speaker 3

It seems to me that if there isn't anything particularly controversial, or worthy of a lot of discussion, we can get it done in an hour. But when those things come up, we need a little more time. And I don't know if we can anticipate in advance when those issues are gonna come up or not.

Speaker 1

So just leave it at 90 minutes? Try 75 minutes for a while? I just, the thing is, is I'm trying to be mindful of your all time. Those of you that, you know, come here, because SWAP always follows us, and I hate it when we've got a big long gap, because I just don't want to waste your time. So that's the only, I'm just wanting to be mindful of that.

Speaker 4

And scheduling the launch. And scheduling the launch, yeah. Big gap.

Speaker 3

I don't do both, so I don't care.

Speaker 1

What's your recommendation? Well, I was gonna say, let's try an hour, unless I, you know, like Ed was saying, is if there's gonna be something controversial, that I can kind of, I can gauge that ahead of time. So maybe what we do is we leave it at a 90 minute block, and if we have to pivot, like, right at the last minute, say, I don't think it's gonna take a full hour, let's delay starting for 30 minutes. Yeah, that's good. Do that? Okay. Okay, then that's what I will do moving forward. So speaking then of our next meeting is, we've got some options here. Traditionally, we have paid for you all to come to the location where we're holding Fall Conference, because we've always done the meeting right before Fall Conference. Fall Conference will start at 12, 31 o'clock, and we've always done our meeting that morning, and we have paid for you all to come down. Just because of budget issues, I don't know that we wanna do that. I mean, we can. That's why I've given several options. So we've got Monday, September 21st, which would be the week of Fall Conference, but it would be that Monday before. Or we could do it Wednesday, September 29th at Bryce. And so we would pay for you all to come down the night before, pay your travel expenses, which we have historically done. And then if you chose to stay for Fall Conference, then your office would have to absorb the remainder of costs for staying at Fall Conference. For those of you not able to attend, of course, you would have a remote option, just like we're doing now. Or the other option would be to go the week after Fall Conference, either Monday or Tuesday here at College Drive. So what do you all prefer? I mean, we like doing it in conjunction with Fall Conference and just get it all done, but leave it up to the council. Okay, Monday's your court date. And I really, that is for a lot of people.

Speaker 4

Well, we do like to encourage you to come to Fall Conference.

Speaker 1

We do.

Speaker 4

So while you're there, you just may as well get the meeting.

Speaker 2

Bryce is a short drive from Cedar, so I'm really good with any of them, but that is probably the easiest. Okay.

Speaker 1

That sounds like the only motion to have it on Wednesday, right before Fall Conference. Do you want to choose that, Brock? Randall. Randall, do you want to make that as a motion?

Speaker 2

Sure, I'll make a motion that we do the next meeting on September 23rd at Bryce.

Speaker 1

And a second? Second. Jeff, Gray? Second. Okay, that was Chad. Chad's also close. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay. Okay. All right, then that's when we'll schedule it, and we'll work with SWAP, which means that SWAP will just have to schedule their meeting another time, which that happens on occasion. Anything else, Marilyn? Oh, I completely skipped over resource prosecutors. Yeah, so okay. So I'm defeating my own 60-minute motion to make our meeting 60 minutes. Trent. I'll be very quick. Reports in there.

Speaker 2

Quarter was very, very busy, as is typically the case with the second quarter. Upcoming ODARA. I'm gonna start doing ODARA training. First one's gonna be in August. That one's gonna be down in Grand in San Juan. That's gonna be kind of my trial run. From there, I'm gonna try and do two or three across the Wasatch Front before the end of the year to try and get whoever wants to, including paralegals, Karen, certified in ODARA.

Speaker 1

And Tyson is at girls camp, for those of you that know what that means. So we extend him our condolences. Okay, so come back to Marilyn. Anything from you?

Speaker 4

Oh, on UPAA, I'll just add, to help with the cost, we're looking at bringing UPAA to Provo, to the central location. And lunch is on its way. So.

Speaker 1

Okay. Ron, anything else? Nope. You just had before, anything that you forgot in your? No, sir. Okay. All right, I think that's all we've got. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Craig moved. All in favor, second. Elisa, all in favor?

Speaker 2

Any opposed?

Speaker 1

All right. Thanks, y'all. We'll see you in September. Okay, so I'm just gonna leave the recording. No, actually, I'm gonna pause. I'm gonna stop the recording. So for those of you that are staying with SWAP, I'm not gonna shut the meeting down, but I will turn off the recording because SWAP does not mean to record their meeting. So I need to stop it. I need to stop the recording. I'll stop this recording.