contact the head football coach at penn state, joe paterno which mr. mcqueary did the next morning and he went to joe paterno's house and reported to joe paterno what he had seen. coach paterno, the following day contacted the athletic director at penn state, tim curly and the vice president in charge of finance and campus affairs, gary schultz who was also head of the campus police department at that time and reported to them mcqueary's visit to his home the previous night. after that, no one else was ever notified. children and youth services were not notified, and no law enforcement agencies were notified of what had occurred at lash hall in march of 2002. gary schultz who was also the director as i said of security at penn state at that time was also aware of a 1998 incident

where a report had been made and that report of the 1998 incident again was made by the mother of a young boy who learned that her son had been showering in the lash hall facilities with jerry sandusky. .. they reported it to the administrators, and no further

report was then made to law enforcement or child and youth services. in the 1998 incident, again, a mother reported it to children and youth services and to penn state university, and as a result of that, the ag's ended up charging to administrators at penn state for failure to report an incident of child abuse that occurred on the penn state campus, and we did that as a result of the statute in effect in pennsylvania at that time. the statute at that time was not very artfully drafted. it was over broad, unspecific, and it really was only a summary that and had very little teeth as far as punishment or accountability. at the time that the penn state administrators allegedly failed to report the activity, it was a

summary. since then, it's become a misdemeanor carrying the penalty of one year. you can see that the penalties associated with these reporting statutes are really not very -- they really don't have strength in them. if you look at the statute that existed in pennsylvania at the time, it looks like it was drafted to really cover people and professionals who had contact with children as a result of the profession that they were engaminged in. nurses, school administrators, doctors, people like that whom might come in contact with kids that were bruised or had evidence of some sort of physical trauma, but it really wasn't designed to apply to a private citizen who observed either child sexual abuse or physical abuse. we know that with private citizens that there's all sorts of issues attended to them as

well. oftentimes you might run into a situation where, you know, someone might come into contact with their 7-year-old neighbor that lives across the street who may not be crash credible to them, they know has a tendency to exaggerate, and if that child says uncle john has been doing things to them, the question arises, what's the obligation of the neighbor to report, to do anything, probe further as far as the child is concerned, and so i don't want to go on and on here, but the jerry sandusky case created the need to report child sexual abuse and the consciousness of the public because when the facts came to light, it was obvious in the media and the public, oh, my goodness, you know, why weren't these things reported?

when you look why, there's various reasons, and it also raised consciousness ofous inlaw enforcement because it made us realize that we really have a need for better laws and better statutes that are, you know, well-drafted, and that are directed towards the need that our society has today to protect our kids and to cause people whether they be private citizens or people coming into contacts with kids by profession to report this, and then there's the issue whether it should be reported to a child and youth service agency or whether it should be reported to the police, and so it really is not quite as simple as it appears at first blush. there's a lot of nuances and issues that arise as far as both moral obligation to report and the legal obligation to report. >> thank you, general kelly. general biden. >> yeah, i just want to chime in

quickly, and general kelly, i commend you were all your efforts in pennsylvania on this. it's been, you've been working on, and you've -- i've been thinking of you as you do it. our state, approximately two years ago, indicted my office, indicted a pediatrician who we indicted him for raping nearly 100 patients, average age of 3 years old. a pediatrician raping his patients, average age of 3 years old. we dealt with the same issues you dealt with, and i want to leave y'all with one fact, most of you know these facts. one out of four girls are sexually assaulted before they are 18 years old. one out of six boys is sexually assaulted before they are 18 years old. only one out of the ten of the kids ever report p because nine

out of ten of the perpetrators know or say they love the children they are raping. one out of four girls, one out of six boys, one out of ten report, nine out of ten say they love the kid they're raping. that's why this issue is critical. i raise another event to spend more time on this because the report is essential and critical because the people reporting are people in our communities in positions of trust who we inherently trust our childrens to, aunts, uncles, priests, counselors, people who take our children that we don't think another thought when we hand them over to them. reality is that it focuses so much on those of our children in our states abducted and raped by strangers, but that's the minority. the majority is done at the

hands of the people whom our families know, and that's why the need to report is so critical. the duty report in my state, and i'll end with this, we had to tweak our statute, but it's not an understood statute to this day, although it's better understood. in our state, unlike yours and the commonwealth, we have a mandatory duty to report for all citizens of our state. there's about 16 or 18 states that have a version of that statute. mandatory duty to report for every citizen if they reasonably believe the child is being abused or neglected. everyone has a duty to report. these children cannot report for themselves. those that don't have voices, many pedophiles prey op because they know they won't be reported, and they are children who are intimidated into not reporting, if they report their uncle or coach or someone that they care about. if -- or intimidate them at a

minimum. it's an essential critical issue, how you grapple with that. ours is not a penalty. ours was unclear before our case whether it was criminal or several. it was never really forced. we chose to make it a civil penalty because we didn't want to be in -- and you dealt with this in your own way, in a misdemeanor world. i wanted to have a way to figure out how to get people to een force this statute. there's an organization that brought this darkness to light, we partnered with them after approaching some of you throughout the way, about this great organization, and i know you've been in touch and they reached out to you, general kelly, an organization who works with states, works with entities, had to educate

children and parents and law enforcers in communities about hour to spot the signs, abuse, and neglect and do something about it. we have a moment in time because of the god-awful tragedies that the commonwealth of pennsylvania is going through, my state, and other examples all around this table. this is something i've been very focused on, and i look forward to the opportunity to being able to have an opportunity over the next year or so to make some of my perspectives and thoughts. >> thank you. just as one final note, you may want to look at the policies and procedures that your schools, your universities, and those of you with jurisdiction over the elementary schools, that they have clear policies and procedures and teach the administrators how to do this. many times they said they didn't know what to do or understand how to do it, and that's a

failing. >> if i can jump in because i think this is a very good time for those interested in having a working group to see how the procedures are enforced. our state is a little bit different. it is mandated reporters only who have to file, and i just want to put in context a little bit whether you are an initial investigator or not, in one way or another, it ends up on your desk because if someone else did not do whey that were supposed to, you may deal with the publicity and the fact finding, but just by way of context, i started prosecuting in the 1980s with the day care cases, and there was this case that everybody was abused and abusing, and then we devised ways to file report, but if you're going to file report, you

have to make sure your state that has the trained folks and personnel who can say, yes, this is abuse and it should go to the da or police or it is not or just kneeing legislate and it's a civil issue. i think what happened after the backlash on the day care cases was for a long time we looked the other way on the church abuses, on i think in 2002, it occurs to me when the first occurred, it was just the beginning of the cases starting to be reported and nobody could believe it, doesn't happen. coaches don't do this. priests don't to this, and there was this huge level of denial. one thing i think that is we look at the ways in which your states require reporting in the circumstances of which they do it. we need to take into account that over zealousness is a problem in this area, and it's one area of reporting child abuse where we don't have a big margin of error. if you over report, you undercut

activities, and if you under report, there's kids in these circumstances who no one believes. who is right? 90% or more of the cases are not amber alert cases, but cases of people that know and say they love the kids is absolutely true. huge issue for everybody in terms of child safety. it would be a great time to step back and look at what the statutes require and talking as a multidisciplining issue. how do we deal with other disciplines that have a responsibility for identifying child, sexual abuse and physical abuse, two very different cases. >> okay. any general thoughts? >> we have two major military bases, and there's abuse cases happening on base, and not really good communication with

the service providers on base. what we're doing is reaching out to them and getting them aware of obligations, and so don't forget those basis, get to the issue and because this stuff can happen and stay hidden, remain hidden so you need to do that, and that's one of the things we have been doing as far as getting in the community. we include them as far as they want to be a part of the community, but include them and get them involved. >> all right. thank you. we'll move to the next topic. general? >> changing topics a little bit. we talked about veterans and i

know you had thoughts about this also. this is an issue that seems to me as attorneys generally, you have a range of opportunities to think about how the office is involved, particularly with the federal government, and i think it's a question of figuring what are the needs? what can you do as an attorney regime's office, and how can you partner with federal and other resources in your state for the men and women when live in your state and obviously the ones most visible that we think about returning back from middle east conflicts. there's world war ii, korean war veterans, vietnam veterans, and a couple things we started in our state and hear from other states what you've been able to do or issues you had around it because i think one of the things that's happened in our office is we've drawn from different parts of the office from consumer protection,

criminal bureau, and people in the office with veterans in the families. it's a real issue, and working with lieutenant governor and working with other folks in the community around the issues. convening power. we called together as a type of hearing experts around the field on three topics. one was mental health and suicide prevention and heard about the issues relating to veterans in the services available. we know that one out of three veterans returning from iraq and afghanistan suffer from a form of post-traumatic stress and the level of suicides for veterans and returning servicemen and women is extremely high. this affects every one of your communities. what can you do about it? we heard also from experts from around the criminal justice

systems. what can the courts do and what should they be doing around ways to better identify victims, screen them, look for other ways than criminally charges or other dispositions if that's appropriate, and so i'm interested, and i know some of your states have done things around that area. the third, i think, is really a business issue about the skills and the re-entry to the work force. how do you pull in businesses and others in the community to hire people who are december plinked, well trained, but who may have resumés who do not understand what their skills and competence are. with that convening authority, we're preparing reports on that, and we're going to go with the governor and to the businesses around what we can do better for the men and women in our communities who have gone overseas, who have taken time, energy, and some came back,

obviously, with physical energy, mental health, and other issues that i think is our responsibility to respond to. i'd like, if others are interested, for some of the topics to continue on a working group going forward, and i think through this, we have that opportunity even if it's just a question of setting up a wiki so people know what everybody else is doing and best practices. with that, general biden, i don't know if you have observations. i know we talked about this before. >> what you're doing on this issue as other colleagues are, john comes to mind and others, who i don't see here yet, do i? >> is john here? >> no. we attacked issues with perspectives you have in the mental health side with a form of a veteran's court in the state of delaware that i can't take credit for. it's led by high trail court, one of the judges there took it upon himself to work with us, but really led the way on

creating what is a classic diversion court for veterans, and it's in its infancy like the version courts are many times. they are worthwhile, but hard work in standing up. i hope to bear fruit for both the veteran and for the system. i'm hopeful i'll report more on that at a later time, but that's what we've been focusing on. >> is that a statewide policy or just one court? >> one of our counties, and it's now expanded to the most popular county, the big state i'm from, and we're almost statewide, but that can happen quickly, but it's not yet. >> anybody else familiar with pluses and minuses? we ran into issues with the two and the devil's in the details. john? >> el paso county, home of fort carson and air force academy and

several bases as a veterans' court pilot program. the jury's out in all effectiveness, but what the folks tell me is the free benefit is it's caused all the prosecutors, all the public defenders, all the judges to become much more sophisticated about combat related stress issues and all of that sort of thing, and so that the general educational level of the bench and bar has been greatly raised and they see regardless of how the whole veterans' court experiment comes out has been a big plus. >> that's helpful on mental health issues. interestingly, we have one police department that took it on itself ten years ago in cases it's obviously substance abuse and mental illness when they are called in, they have a full time social worker and if hospitals

are needed, that helped them move into the area for veterans understanding the mental health issues and recognizing that. those are ways we can ultimately, you know, do better for people who end up in the criminal justice system, save money, and get a better result for doing it that way. anyone else familiar with these veterans' courts? you have your mic. >> we have one that worked extremely well and looking to expand the model to other parts as well, and successfully diverted veterans that got mixed in the law with mental health canaling and so forth and the judges involved with it believe it in 100%, and idaho also, i believe, has very successful veterans' court model. is that right? northern idaho does, yes.

>> [inaudible] >> right, former attorney general of idaho is on the court of appeals, a federal appellate court. >> for veterans' whose status is -- >> veterans' benefits rather. >> and the other thing that we've seen is state law requires certain state veteran service organizations, a lot of times it's just cutting back because they can't afford it. not unlike the child abuse reporting depends on what mechanism is in place to enforce it. are your officers able to identify the problems and resources, and frankly, there's federal resources out there along the lines of the topic here. ensure you work with your congress mern or senator about the resources available to states for veterans' families. there's families from world war ii and korea not aware of

resources that may be available to them, and this is something that i think with a little of resource from your office you can help to highlight and call attention to. anybody else working on this topic or who has ideas or questions that we can do at the state level. george? >> my office participating in con -- conjunction and directed at homeless veterans, but we do a one-stop shopping fair, attended by hundreds and hundreds of verett raps each year where vets are set up from a support system, brings in judges to deal with cases so that they get their records paid off, legal services, housing specialists, and it's been very helpful. >> that's with the federal government? the veteran services at the federal level?

>> state government is the principle driver. >> just to plant a seed, we're using $5 million of our hard dollars from the mortgage settlement to match federal funds for veterans or temporary housing for homeless veteran, and we did it through the governor's office and apparently have been able to play upon matching federal funds to effectively use $5 million of the settlement to do that. >> another one is when you learn the number of veterans who serve the country become homeless, it's sad. we could be doing more than we are. that's a good view. i know there's been a lot of work done around the idea of making sure that no one is fore closed upon. they've been doing that at the state level also. i just throw the ideas out to

you. you have folks interested in it, it's a good way, i think, to get the office front and center. anybody else? questions? comments? >> general, an important aspect to it that's cost free, great success, is veteran mentoring. you'll be surprised the number of vets out there, all who have been through it themselves, substance abuse, homelessness and have come through it and want to help their fellow veterans, and it's an important aspect to it because they have a relationship that we can't have with them. >> right. >> they've been through it together, and that leads to a lot of great success, and i know in buffalo, part of their veterans' court, that's a big issue of it. we engaged vets voluntarily and more than willing to do the veteran-to-veteran counseling

and it's a success. >> how do you get them lined up and trained to do it? your office? >> we work closely, district port, a $5 million federal grant for a pilot program, doing it in one of our counties in our large state like delaware is, feeling our way up through it. went to buffalo, visited local veteran's groups and trying to implement that model. the important aspect of the veteran-to-veteran part is leave them independent of us, talk freely amongst themselves because they help guide and support them through the substance abuse counseling or whatever is necessary to overcome the hurdle afflicting them. >> no, i agree with that. sometimes it's difficult to get that when someone's outside the court system, for instance, how do they get the services, and there's older veterans who don't want to help, and it's hard to -- >> we did it through the

agencies. >> yeah. that's a huge resource. all you have to do to s.t.a.r.t. and see what's available in the state and see what's available to connect the dots. all right. anybody else? veterans? going once -- all right. we're on to the next topic. >> okay, next topic is social media policy. many or many of you may or may not be on facebook, twitter, yahoo, yelp, a lot out there. there's a lot of bad examples of bad usage that hants people starting with anthony wiener, and moving on, there was an issue where there was a report in the paper last week where a couple were murdered because they had -- the woman had

defriended somebody on facebook, and the husband of the person who was defriended take great offense and went and killed them. there's all kind of things out there. we obviously have twitter used by flash mobs in san fransisco for protests, the occupy people have been doing it. there's been mistrails in both civil and criminal cases where people go online to find out what there is on facebook and what there is on twitter, and in kansas we know that there was an incident there where a kansas team just disparaged the governor, and there was a lot of excitement about that, and the issues may come up that many times come up are what are the potential liabilities that come with the use of social media? what is the responsible way to handle this? what are good policies and

procedures to have? what are the political implications of all of this? how do you use it bestially rather than ineptly? there are -- we e-mailed out to everyone three social media policies for your pry sal that you would have got an e-mail on, too large to hand out, prepared a draft policy for the state of hawaii that we worked with our friends, adam connor from facebook on, and we had a number of people there and included the policy from the great state of washington which has been in the fore front of this and from the great state of massachusetts which is in the fore front of this. you know, many times the issues are what are the purpose, what are you trying to do with your communications? how do you do it in an ethical manner, and one area that comes up what do you do with public comments?

especially negative public comments, if they come on to your website, and if you don't have a policy and procedure already in place about taking down public comments, you could have a problem. with those, you know, there's issues as to who gets to speak on behalf of your agency, who is authorized, how are you going to do this, what about copy right protection, what about disclaimers, and things like that? let me turn to general mckenna and perhaps you can share with us the experience of washington in these areas and what are best practices you've come up with. >> well, first of all, for us, the basic -- you want to turn this on back there -- there it

is. the first thing we had to do was, you know, just come up with the usage policy, and this is not all that different in, you know, in kind from the policy that develops e-mail, and the first lieu is the same for e-mail or any public resource which is no personal use. we have a fairly short policy distributed to you, a little under two pages long, and basically it says, look, you can't use it for perm use, sign an agreement if you decide to use social media for office use, and we want you to understand that there's no expectation of privacy in your use of internet resources. if you use them, you need to remember that the owners of those sites commonly monitor user activity and we in the offices reserve the right no monitor interpret usage of the employees of the office periodically. we check how people are using

social media just as we check to see how they are accessing the interpret in general. as i said, we have a policy or an agreement that people are expected to sign if they want to use social media or networks called the office of the attorney general social networks use agreement, and it basically just says that staff may use social media as a tool for approved agency purposes only that includes professional networks which they are allowed to do, and someone in the office wants to be in lynnedin for professional purposes, we allow them to do that, and we want them otherwise to use social networks for other official, other purposes that further the mission of the attorney general's office. again, we clarify in the policy or emphasize in the policy use of social media is not permitted, and there's no

diminishment of perception. that's important i think. if i just go on facebook once a day, that's okay, suspect it? just a little bit. no use whatsoever is the rule. our state government as a whole through the governor's office has a document called best practices published by the office of the governor in coordination with a number of state agencies, and this is provided to you as well, and this is a more elaborate juxtaposition on policy media including topics how and when to use social media sites, advise the agency to create specific essential policies, create a process for handling internal requests to set up social immediate yew ewe assaulted, and we also lay out privacy yules or

limits around acceptable use. i encourage you to look at that at your leisure. the other point i'll make about social media, you may recall, we needed to work with the social media companies because if you look at their standards, it con contains provisions we did not feel comfortable with, and we negotiated on behalf of all the states special provisions in terms for the states, and, john, if you want to comment on that, you're welcome to, but we can make those available to any of you interested in seeing them, but needless to say we're difficult in government, and we didn't think one size fit all policy from the social media companies like facebook worked for us, and we basically got changes negotiated successful with the companies. they were not entirely happy to do it, but to their credit, they

did so. bottom line is beyond all of the, you know, usual legal considerations of politic conversations, social media prevents an arare of useful tools, and we make heavy use of social media, particularly in the consumer protection division center. for example, we tweet consumer alerts about new scams we're aware of, push out public press releases over twitter and through facebook. we have several thousands people who signed up to follow the attorney general's office on facebook as i'm sure most of you have done as well, and several thousand who follow us on twitter as well. we see the tools as another way to achieve our mission of educating the public and alerting them to issues with

protection and anti-trust and we think they are terrific tools, lower the cost of community cation with the public and make us access l to the public which is always the goal. we can if we're as of advice to anyone, let us know. we'd be glad to act as a resource for you. >> okay. any other comments, folks? >> thank you, general. i appreciate the opportunity to say a few things. fist of all, let me thank my colleagues. we had in issue in kentucky referring to topics. we co-authored a letter that 46 of you signed on to. there was a situation where in order to remove an objectionable post they wanted a review fee to help somebody get the good name back.

they didn't pay attention to me when i contacted them, but when 45 others did, it was removedded, and there's now new policies and procedures in place that we continue to monitor. i made the point in conjunction with my co-chair in san antonio talking about the internet safety issues that we have, a cyber crimes unit in my office, and we have taken about 300,000 child porn images off of the internet. we have consumer education and child education when it comes to the issue of facebook, but i made the point that, and i learned this in talking to the general counsel of facebook, that the ag's want information or want to work with them on something. they need a s&p, and often -- a subpoena, and oftentimes our grand jury process is difficult when they want a subpoena. we were given the ability to issue administrative subpoenas by the general assembly that

allowed us to really streamline the ability to investigate with ip address or internet service provider or the social media sites. what we can ask for, it's normally name, location, basic information, it's very limited. it's not snooping. we did a survey of what the states have, and only 17 of the states right now have administrative s&p authority. we're happy to share the statute with anyone interested, and to that end, we've been in the process of putting together, and i believe you have a draft directory of the various interpret investigators, internet prosecutors and protection interpret folks to share information with one another. we have six major states not yet given us contact information, and this goes final on march 30th. some states not yet provided information, i know you have an internet program so please get

that to emily or to hetta here because the first directly will be april 1 #. >> thank you, jack. any other comments, experiences to share? >> jack just reminded me, if you recall, i don't know how long ago after craig's list jointly and made fairly significant progress, and many of you are similar problems with factpage.com. we busted a sex trafficking ring in colorado. i mean very, very serious statewide 14 defendants and they were operating through backpage.com, which some of the alternative newspapers and communities owned by the same company that owns packpage, and thus far, very uncooperative

with us, and so i may be asking for same sort of approach we used in the craig's list. >> because we sent a letter demanding they take down the sex pages, i recommend none of us enter into agreements with back page and put our state agencies up there. martha, do you have any comments? >> that reminds me, john -- [inaudible] >> it's not working, just come on up here. >> it ties into the trafficking work, obviously, because we have been involved in the craig's list murder, a young woman who put an ad in craig's list and a young medical student went to her apartment offensively to rob her, but then killed her because she fought, and he was caught, and ended up commits suicide in prison.

we'll never know the full story on it, but through that hearing, we'll have to know what's the marketing tools for human trafficking sex trade through craig's list and other sites. there's 1st amendment issues and they are thorny, and we have to look at those, but public safety can be balanced going forward. what i want to say about the social media sites and i say this as someone kicking and screaming in the digital age and i look around the table and not a lot of media natives although some are savvy, and i still have a pager on my desk. i don't use it, but it was not that long ago that we were in a cyber crime division training, and my lawyer said to the police, how many of you still have these? i was the only one who raised my hand, and i was still using it at the time. having said that, i also recognize not only do you need

the policies of what you don't want your snap to be doing, and for your office, you should do that. and it's easier to hire people under 30 to figure out. weird talking about the issue of drugs. this is an audience that gets information on our about through the social media. if you address these issues around consumer protection and public safety, you have to go where that audience is, and if we are not technically savvy enough to do it, we're not going to be effective. we're not going to make the message. >> i hope that, and i'll be the first to admit i relied on other people to do it. if you don't want to, get somebody else to do it. it's important. nang itself, and if we use it more, we can do better with each other in keeping ourselves informed on best practices of

where to go, and also as a resource, we're resources for each other. hey, i have a problem and who else is doing that? we should do more of that. >> thank you, john, i'd like to were with you on the back page issue. we had murders in detroit where back page was used as a vehicle for someone to stock predators, young girls, and we have to approach this not on the law review, but by restraint and censorship and approach as your niece or neighbor victimized by these back page and other people like that. they have been uncooperative with me in mashes, and i'd love to work with you. we have to be aggressive. they use prior restraints, and

they have protections that they provide a space for people to prey on young girl, and that's just wrong. >> thank you, general. >> i have a question for rob. on your social media, the people signing up relative to say folks on the press list, do you have a sense of who is paying attention to what you put out publicly? >> it's a real mix, general. we have the media who follows all consumer reporters, follow our facebook, follow us on twitter, and we also use fees, and we have a number of ways to push information out to the media. we have a lot of folks who are sort of just generally interested. it's really kind of hard to tell why, but they seem to be interested in the issues. we're happy about it in any event, and then with twitter, you're inevitably getting people

following you, the commercial side, that, you know, they just want you to follow them as well, which is okay. i mean, it's, you know, we have a policy, actually, for people who want to post comments that they have to follow the comment posting rules provided to you in writing. it's a mix of people, but one of the most important groups that following us are other consumer advocacy groups, really useful, following them and vice vice versa because they are useful to us and whether it's a program at aarp or the better business bureau or a number of other business groups, we like the way we can intertie with them because it helps us get more information to the public on consumer issues. i tweeted a photograph, leading discussion on social media, right up to date.

[laughter] >> some other -- >> that app was ready for prime time. >> that's right. check it out. you're up to speed with this. >> [inaudible] >> okay. [laughter] i was going to suggest another thing we use, and i don't know if you know state side associatings, but they started this trend of doing quitter interviews, and if understand hash tags and twitter, drive -- dave, we were on twitter, and asked questions and i would answer, and anyone in the world could join, go to point state side chat, and they could throw in questions, no filter, no media getting in the way and decided what's reported. it's just another way to connect directly to the constituents and people without going through a media filter or somebody else deciding who is important.

we encourage people to get involved and use it. >> great idea. segueing into the last quick topic. >> we actually, i thought we would not have time for all six, which is true because as usual, we have a lot of interest in this. we have about five minutes left. okay. we'll see how much interest is in this. who wants more than five minutes on procurement fraud? [laughter] this is an old-fashioned topic, from twitter to procurement fraud. i thought what we'd do with this time is outline issues as i see them, but see if you have questions or comments. i approach this topic with the idea part of the job is to protect consumers and taxpayers to ensure the money that are used, spent in our commonwealth and states are used

appropriately, and in order to do that, you have to have the right tools to do it. i use the big dig when i first came into office and had a huge number of civil, criminal, waste, fraud and abuse allegations going on for 15 years, ect., ect.. you all have in your varying responsibility for this, and it may be a topic that you think is a couple of steps removed from what your responsibility is, and i just want to raise it as a potential opportunity for you outside of the medicaid-fraud area which i know we all do very well, to think about if there are ways in which you can either use your current, may have procurement fraud statute with similar or criminal penalties, false claim statutes. how many of you have false claim statutes? so a lot do, but not everybody does. one of the things when i first

came in 2007, one of my chief deputies say we have a false claim message, and we don't use it much. how do we change that? we looked at ways to focus on bringing small claims in the financial fraud area, and it's been effective, i think. we thought in many instances potential trouble damages and attorneys fees. you may want one. if you don't have a procurement statute, you may want one. think about what are some of the remedies that are available to you, and is it worth it to you for your resources to put it there. we have done a couple things, not only in enforcement of both procurement, but we also used this idea as a way in the convening authority for instance before our money was coming into the states, just coming off the big break, and all concerned we'd get stimulus money we didn't know who was getting it

and where it was going, and ten years later, you, as attorney general, or me would be asked what happened to this money? one of the things that was effective was the convening authority to say we want to meet with secretary general at the federal level, at our state level to ensure we identify how much comes into the state, who oversees it, and as you all know, the money went to different places. some went through state agencies, other through contractors on different projects, and some went to cities and towns. i think that we were able to, with the federal inspector general, also a resource for you if you are interested in the area, he talked about coming out to tell you what we does, presents the federal resources of the inspector general level, and it's just, if you have not thought about it in terms of what resources are available to you as an auditor in your state, what is your ability to provide additional eyes, ears, and

enforcement ability as a physical watchdog. it's worthying about at a time when every penny counts. i talked to you about what happens in your state. i talked with greg about the ideas of inspectors general. how many states have inspectors general? some, but not all. how many would like them? greg, turning it over to you because you all have auditors, probably. some appointed or elected, and inspectors general came up recently as someone who is supposed to be independent but also can be so independent they are not accountable to anybody, and so, greg, what's been your experience around this issue? >> well, we have a recent inspector general that's only four years old. there was a lot of argument within the legislature about where to put this, and i thought inside the office of the attorney's general there was the resources. the problem is that they didn't want to have the attorney general give more authority relating to inside state

government. we work with the state board of accounts outside of state government and all of the localities and municipalityies to do it inside of state government they created an office of inspector general to issue really who would appoint the governor in indiana appoint, and there's this question now, there's some inspector general activity centered on things close to the goff -- governor's office, and it's particularly some of the problems that people identified earlier about having the governor appoint somebody who then has to do investigation over the governor's office raise questions of partiality. that's a real issue. when you talk about -- we have a fairly complex nature between the inspector general, state board of accounts, and when you talk about false claims, i was

going to suggest if you have a false claims, have a key element because as much as we like to think the investigations lead to this, nine times out of ten it's somebody inside coming to you explaning how, and so i think the fact of the inspector general doesn't have the resources, and in my office, they don't account for everybody else. there's some opportunity for people to come forward, and i think in the statute, and i think it's critical for all of the areas. >> and that's right, and then if you have a source of these cases, and you are prepared to do them, you can make an impact not on every case, but you send the message you're going to look at the cases. it's obviously an issue in corruption cases, how independent you are or can be in doing the investigation, but having some agency that can do that work or clean things in for you that's important, and,

again, as in a scoot scaling date obligations social media sites outs xz trsology your applaud, all -- and people want to know why you didn't do thinking about it now, and think about ways on how to enhance other agencies or other refeferls to come to you to then handle help on this idea of we stand up for consumers, stand up for taxpayers, and we want to ensure the bisque of our communities is handled fairly in the public and can have confidence in that. any questions or comments on that? yes? >> we have a number of procurement officers, and their competence seems to border on inexe tepees, and it's real -- incompetence, and it's real close to fraud. what we have done in the office is start a series of training and procurement loss for the different agencies and procurement officers and directors under the laws,

directers are the chief officers, and it's been working out well. i just reviewed the evaluation sheet for our first series, and there's well taken, and so we're going to be doing series with those, and i suggest that for those who have a number of the agencies that seem to be muddling through this -- and it is -- it is something that we could end, be sufficient on, something as mundane as procurement fraud, but it happens every single day. we have to deal with it. >> you're right. i think there are ways you can, for instance, with we pulled together groups around the stimulus, it was called stopwatch stimulus oversight and fraud commission and put together really a hand book of red flags for auditors, investigators, inspectors who wanted to do is good job, trained to look at the ways in which the books indicate to them

something's wrong. how do you do that sampling. and that's something an attorney's general office undertakes to makes sure the training is done. >> right, we have a checklist of everything that needs to be covered, and we have the checklist before we do anything. >> it can be a deterrent in itself, the people you're watching. >> right. >> great. >> on the things to do list, you know, talking about the convening power, and 23 -- if you go back to ask the state to send something out about state government asking how many agencies and offices have investigators, i mean, that's the title, "investigators," you'll find they are all over government and coordination and communication, let's say, is really lacking, and so i think if you do well just to ask to convene, have all the numbers of investigators throughout the state government, and half the time they don't know what one

another's do or share information. >> my experience is when you do that, they are eager to be trained, do good work, and agencies get big and people lose track and don't have that, and as attorney general, you can do that. thank you. anybody else? >> yes, in new york, i recommend this to everyone. three years ago, we surveyed all false claims act in the country and took what we thought were the strongest approaches, cleaned up burden of proof problems, enacted it into law to ensure it was user friendly and we have a terrific statute which obviously happy to share. the second thing we did was when we came in, we realized in new york, we have tens of millions a dollars a year pouring out in state and local contracts every year. unlike medicaid fraud, there was never a dedicated group of lawyers who felt there was a job

to look after it, and we set up a taxpayer protection unit with a small number of attorneys doing outreach and meeting with our colleagues and local government because state government has a hard time with contract, and local government is there, and waste, falling contracts, supplies to schools, road construction, and we've been able to get significant recoveries for them. the third thing we did, and this is now and we'll see how it goes, looking promising, had a joint executive order in the controller, and every state is different, but the controller's the one who audits the state funds, and we now have a situation due under this order, the controller's office designated people to work with our staff, see something funny in the audit, combine with our up vest gaitive abilities with their auditing powers, and there's several local governors

who have active investigations underway. there's been good progress in the last few years, and anyone interested in talking about it, we're happy to talk further. >> yes, you know, off of what you said, there's a lot of resources in your states. if you bring them together, you don't need a budget increase to do that. just marshall the resources, and you can be out there. on top of that, we go to the legislature and say if you give me a revenue of a certain amount, i'll put it through false claims, get this back and more. >> you got 1991 >> we. >> wow. >> they give it to us and bring back 10 to 15 times what they give us. it's hard to argue with that. you have seen the success we had in the area where we done that dedicated work. you can in your state around procurement fraud and other th