page 51, training and. i believe that the total is $36,083 in year one. supervisor chu: for the most part, the department is in agreement on most of the items? >> we would like the opportunity to continue working with the budget analysts. supervisor chu: ok. supervisor bill supervisor avalos: i did not have a question -- supervisor? supervisor avalos: i did not have a question. supervisor chu: ok. >> madam chair, members of the committee, the recommendation is $54,009 in 2013, and 13-14, $59,628. we will work with the department. supervisor chu: thank you very

much. thank you for coming to answer these questions. we look forward to seeing the director, as well as you and your staff. let's go now to the public defender. the police department is listed next, are we waiting for -- and we are waiting for the chief to return from the event. he said he may be running a bit behind. ♪ supervisor chu: i do not think that is what we were expecting, but thank you.

♪ >> [inaudible recording] supervisor chu: i think we needed that, thank you. [laughter] supervisor chu: thank you. >> good afternoon.

supervisor chu: please begin. >> thank you. the mission of the public defender's office is to provide high-quality presentations every year. the right to counsel was guaranteed by the united states constitution. a mandated service that the city and county provides. as you might imagine, in this time, particularly given the economy, there has been a great demand for our services on every front. so, today i would like to give you an overview of our budgetary challenges and initiatives for the next two years. the second slide shows our budget over the next two years.

you can see that. 92% of our budget goes to pay salaries and benefits. 3.5% goes to non-personal services. this includes the cost of our lease, and the space at 577 street, with reproduction mail services. only 25% goes to material and supplies. in terms of the major initiatives that the department will be engaging in over the next two years, i am very happy to announce that in july of 2012, we will be implementing

the tracking and management system. the part of the system that all the criminal justice agencies have been working on. it seems like forever, but it has been the past 10 years. our system is ready to launch your -- ready to launch. we are waiting for the department to begin working with us to implement the system -- implement the system. this will have a huge impact on the functions that we now do and automate the attorneys, the investigators, and the support staff. the next step that we were not able to fund would be to digitize all of our files. this is something we would be seen in many public defenders

offices. right now, we spent something like $36,000 per year on file storage costs. by digitizing files, we would be able to eliminate them for a onetime cost of $30,000. we are pricing that out and hoping we can implement that. we have initiated a new caseload. this follows the extensive report recommendation proposed by the american bar association in january of next year. we have also designed and developed new trading programs for the attorneys and staff. we will be implementing that as well. we have also worked with the court and other agencies to identify new efficiencies. as of march 1, we have

undertaken representation at the community justice center, which will result in substantial savings to the city, although they will not likely be recognized until sometime next year. we have already taken interest. we also work with the district attorney's office and other agencies around reentry and alignment. we have received additional funding from the state this year in order to help meet those objectives. this will probably be hard to see, but i wanted to give you a snapshot of how the method works. this is based on a study from 2003. we were not able to implement it at that time.

with case counting, you simply count the number of cases with no but -- no decision between the driving influence case. what we have done it now is implemented a system where we look at the total number of hours available, given an attorney's schedule. and we are then able to look at the type of cases reported -- the type of cases on the other side. each is assigned a value based on the average work in summer -- similar cases. this system also measures this position times. you get a sense of how quickly these cases are being resolved. you are looking at a qualitative review of the caseload, as

opposed to just a quantitative one. we issued a report in march of this year, which we provided to the mayor's office. we also have copies, if you would like to see it. just to summarize, the weighting system, for each attorney in the office, you can see the distribution of case types and the number of hours projected to be worked on each type of case. you can see the overall case load and how that translates into a total number of weekly hours. these are the examples of the cases that fall within the media. they expect that they will do this case waiting each quarter.

we will issue four reports each quarter, allowing us to better manage cases amongst star attorneys, able to more efficiently assign serious cases. particularly those that are more time intensive. it gives you, policymakers, a much better sense of what they're doing, relative to the types, as opposed to a flat number, which is essentially an artificial average of cases that the internally is handling at any given time. all the information used to plug in the case loads come from the management system. the difference is, for the past nine years we have had to go through a laborious process to

get those numbers. often a few months have gone by then. starting in july, even now we have access to the case load data in the system. it will markedly improve our ability. you last for a report on the new full-time employee positions. we have a position for a grant writer. there is a focus group in washington, d.c., and it was held this year in january. the attorney general indicated that for the first time, he would make a number of grants available. most of the grants are only available to law enforcement, police, the district attorney,

and probation. these are designed for defense programs. this grant writer will allow us to apply for these, bringing in additional moneys. we have already seen the success of grant writing and grant programs. this year, i think we will get something close to half of a million dollars in grants. so, this grant writer will allow us to repetitively apply and obtain grant funding is from the federal government, state government, and private foundations. there is also a juvenile social worker position that is currently grant funded, a federally funded position. this person's job bois to manage a caseload for juvenile.

these are young people who are released from long-term out of home placements or, in some cases, the department of juvenile justice or a youth guidance center. these are young people who would otherwise be in the system. currently, the cost in order to incarcerate a young person, young counties are on the hook for half of that amount. in view it -- if you assume what each of these young people may have done, you have almost $4 million in savings. these can be continued. we are hoping that they can bring grant funding. as you see here in this slide, it says that the budget position

will allow the current social worker to continue working in using salary savings. if we did go to the slide, for a moment? we also pointed out that the current position is subject to a grand refunding in september. there is a little rose there. mr. rose it changes policy recommendations to indicate that it is a policy decision. so, we are hoping that you will agree. we are not asking for any funding. if by some chance we do not get the grant funding in october or september, then we will find funding within our own department salary savings in order to fund this position. supervisor kim: i have a small

clarification question. i am glad the went in to finish the detail. that position is funded through september. >> that is right. supervisor kim: if you do not get funded from september through next june, there is opposition to the 30th? >> we would find the savings in our own budget. to cover the cost. supervisor chu: thank supervisor kim: you kim -- supervisor kim: thank you. >> the next area that you asked for a briefing on is job creation and opportunity employment. we had attorneys who worked every year, for free, and for the experience of working in the public defender's office. we have employed nearly 200.

these are high school and turns, over the past 10 years. this year we will provide 18 slots. we have seven this summer. we were able to work throughout the year. we had two from the enterprise program and school district. the total budget in this regard, it was 41,000, which had been allocated for this purpose. finally, around language access, more than one-third of the employees in the public defender's office are bilingual. i do not speak japanese, unfortunately.

korean, samoan, vietnamese. we also use the language services, where you can call and we will put you in contact with someone who can translate simultaneously, if there is no staff person fluent. all of the attorneys are required to use these for any. the have a small budget for that purpose. it will remain stable over the next two years. we thank them for working with us. it does not require additional funding to approve this. i think that that is it, unless

you have any questions. supervisor chu: i was just wondering, in terms of the trajectory and friends, where are you seeing the numbers of caseload for your department? >> we have seen a reduction in the overall number of cases. it is a direct result of smarter charging policies, as well as charging policies from the police department. a report pulls down about seven years ago where our court system was criticized for not spending enough resources on the serious crimes. i have discussed in this with the district attorney and the chief. their focus is on violent crime

in serious crime. that is where we shift our focus, from defending serious crime, felony crimes, three strikes -- the trend we have seen, and it is certainly clear this year, the we have seen an increase in serious crime, for example, six or seven years ago the department was only solving homicides. we are seeing many more homicide cases than we have in the past. we are seeing more dna cases being brought than ever before. we are seeing sex cases, are some cases, more serious cases being charged in court. at the same time, we have seen reductions in misdemeanor cases. for example, the community

justice center hit a total of 1000. for those cases, they have been diverted and from the hall of justice to the community justice center. that certainly will be included going forward. we expect that there will be more cases as a result of that. on the other hand, it is important that i point out that we have had a number of scandals in the last year and a half. we had a recent scandal involving the alcohol breath testing devices and the hotel scandal. when these kinds of things happen, the public read the headlines. we have to contact every person and litigate those cases. it is extremely time intensive. we had over 1000 cases brought

to court and this mess as a result of that scandal. we had over 100 cases brought back to court in dismissed as a result of the police department not providing it arrest and conviction information concerning police officers. at the hotel scandal, we had 100 cases that came back to court and dismissed as a result of that. we work collaborative with the other agencies in order to achieve the proper route, in these cases. those cases are not included in our case load, but nonetheless represent hours and hours of work. but one thing that i would point out is that because we are able to focus on the more serious cases, one result has been that the number of people in custody has been, frankly, substantially

reduced. i do not know if you have done the sheriff's budget yet, but you will see that in the numbers, in part because we are able to bring these to trial and investigate these cases sooner. because we are able to put the attention where it belongs, on the more serious cases. this is a positive outcome. something that i see should represent the future of criminal in juvenile justice. because we are all dealing with limited resources, we have to be more efficient and effective in how we allocate those dollars. supervisor chu: thank you. let's go to the budget analyst report. >> the public defender concurs with our recommendations in 12-

13, and 13-14. regarding the policy recommendation, it is just that, a policy recommendation on page 68, which the public defender is asking you to approve. we would be happy to respond to any questions. supervisor chu: my understanding is that the public defender is not involved in the cuts at the moment? >> we do like the social work position. supervisor chu: with regards to the recommended cuts, looks like there is a desire to take that. do we have to take the recommendations aside from the social worker positions at this moment? we will do that without objection. supervisor? sueprvisor wiener: i wanted to speak in support of the authority for the social worker position.

it seems like it is a real benefit for the department. if it does not come through for the remainder of the fiscal year, we will find funding within his own department. it makes sense to me. supervisor chu: are you making a motion to not accept or supervisor wiener: correct. supervisor chu: a gig, any other comments from colleagues? given that, we hope you will not come back with anymore. >> thank you very much. supervisor chu: so we will take that motion without any objection, and we will not be requiring you to come back. >> thank you. supervisor chu: ok, i know that they achieve department -- the

chief of the department is back. but we will do this before we go back to the police department. >> first of all, good afternoon, madam chair, members of the board. i want to thank you for the opportunity. i also want to extend appreciation for the mayor's office, the budget analysts, particularly antonio as well as another office and in particular k'd -- for all of your support. i want to go through where we are at the office.

beginning with the first slide, you are looking at our budget. we are doing a comparison between the general fund and our non general fund support. as you can see, the blue represents the general fund, and the white part represents the non general fund. roughly, what we're looking at is 2014 very similar to that. and when we look at that, it represents about 86% of the department budget. next, i would like to discuss very briefly where we are with the budgeting, because this has been an area where we have seen a shift in the national and local economy, and at the state

level, there is a decrease in resources. we can see that just in the recent past, we have gone from approximately 15% of our budget to where we are now, which is roughly around 10%. nevertheless, i would like to point out that we'd like to seek grants aggressively where we can. as a matter of fact, just recently, we have received two grants, one from the attorney general's office for mortgage fraud, and there was another with the intellectual property grants. both of those totals approximately $600,000. the next area that i want to talk about are these proposed fte's, and i thought it would

begin to look and see where we are today. if you look at the fiscal year where we are today, you can see it is down from around 269 employees to what we're projecting at this point, which will be 204 before this year and then 204, rounding the numbers off, for next year. what you're seeing in this budget is that we're not asking for any new positions. the next area that i want to discuss is information technology. this is an area that is really important with what we're trying to achieve in moving forward and modernizing the office and trying to become more efficient. there are basically three functional sears, and one has to do that case management and information sharing. the other has to do with litigation support, and finally,

the end user support. my goal is to bring the office to the 21st century within the next few years. i think most of you are aware that the technology in our office has been woefully deficient in our offices for a variety of reasons, and that has a direct impact, not only with our ability to be able to provide a higher quality of services but also in our ability to be much more efficient in a way we deliver those services. one of the things that you see here is that we have a couple of items. the first item is the request for the chief information officer. given the high technological needs that we have, we really need to hire a professional that will be able to lead us into the will be able to lead us into the 21st century.