THE SPECIALIST SESSION PREVIEW
Michael Pope
Welcome to Transition Virginia the podcast that examines the transition of power from Republican to Democrat. My name is Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
And I'm Thomas Bowman. Today on transition Virginia, we're joined again by Alexandria city lobbyist Sarah Taylor, Sarah, how you doing?
Sarah Graham Taylor
Hey, good, good to see y'all
Michael Pope
Great to see you. And we understand that you're going down to Richmond with a special session. We want to get a sense of what the special session is going to look like all the budget stuff. They're going to talk about all the Criminal Justice stuff we're going to talk about We want to start by getting a sense of what the heck this thing is actually going to look like. This is a special session, unlike anything that has ever happened before. The house is going to meet on like a basketball court and the Senate is going to be in a museum that used to be a train station. All of their committee meetings are going to be done virtually. The committee meetings are not going to be open press the public, obviously, like Sarah are not going to be in the room there to testify. Sarah, what the heck is this going to look like? That is
Sarah Graham Taylor
That's an excellent question, Michael Pope and we are still kind of waiting to see what it looks like and what it feels like and how it actually works. But you're right, you know, they're going to be in two very separate and distinct locations. And the committee meetings are going to be held virtually. Over the last couple of weeks, the house held some joint Judiciary Committee public safety hearings, which were sort of a test of the technology and a test of the way they could do this. In a virtual environment and they went, they went fairly well, they were able to have members participate, they were able to have members of the public call in and participate. And so just like local governments and other, you know, folks have sort of moved to a virtual environment to do their work of and with the public that was sort of the houses test of doing it. This is going to be a special special session, you know,
Michael Pope
this one is really gonna be special. That's a good point. So that the house I'm curious,
Thomas Bowman
By the way, that's our title now the specialist session.
Michael Pope
The Specialist of Special Sessions. So the house is talking about coming in on Tuesday, gaveling into session figuring out what their procedural resolution is going to be and then going home and then essentially not what I mean, what I'm hearing from the house members is they plan on being there Tuesday, they do not plan on being there Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Is that right? Sarah? Like what are you expecting this to actually look like for the first week?
Sarah Graham Taylor
The first week my expectation is that the first week is going to be obviously the first part of it will be The procedural resolution will be hammering out the rules and the procedures and the guidelines, the guardrails for the special session and that will be Tuesday after the joint money committee meetings, which will be held that morning, they'll hammer out the procedural resolution. We were joking about an over under on how long that would take and some folks have set the over under at six hours. Others had it at 10. I think. I think my price is right rules. I think this is probably closest without going over. But depending on how close they are on what the procedural resolution looks like, you know, it could take longer, partially because of them not physically being in the same building and sometimes on things like this. You know, the two parties come together physically in the middle to try and negotiate some of this stuff. And you know, if they don't already have it hammered out when they walked in on to gavel and Tuesday, that part of it is going to be more challenging. It's going to be have to be done by phone, by Skype, by text by Slack, whatever other, you know, technologies we're using to, you know, to sort of keep our lives right moving forward. At this point, but it definitely has the potential to take longer. So they'll gavel in Gatlin on Tuesday, we'll get through a procedural resolution. And yeah, I've heard the same that the house is planning on dispersing from there, and that they'll go off to hither and yon and plan to do the rest of their committee work virtually, and that they would hold meetings one at a time, none would overlap the other due to technological reasons, as well as just ensuring that everyone can participate in everything. And because obviously, you know, it's one thing to run between post room one and house room three for meetings. It's a different thing to have to toggle between virtual meetings. As far as the senate goes, we're expecting them obviously the gavel and for the procedural resolution, and then my understanding is that they're planning on doing the bulk of their work in the days immediately following the procedural resolution. And so they would do their committee meetings again, virtually, but I mean, practically speaking right now, we're still we still haven't seen words on paper about what it is that we're going to be discussing These meetings however they look whatever they entail. And so I like to tell people that I don't deal in personalities. And I don't deal in hypotheticals. I like to deal in words on paper. And in most cases, I am still waiting to see words on paper.
Thomas Bowman
So, Sarah, that brings up a good question, which is, you know, what's so important that you have to be there in person?
Sarah Graham Taylor
Honestly, I don't think there is any compelling reason to be there in person in Richmond. For the specialist event, I am of the opinion that it is my job to have relationships with members that I can leverage whether it is in person or over the phone or by text, and that I have done the bulk of my work on the front end of all of this, but I don't think there's any reason to be in Richmond on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or any day moving forward. In fact, I would expect that if you were a lobbyist who showed up lurking outside the seagull center, or the Science Center, or the Pocahontas building, or these other places, We do not have access, but you might get a little sigh. And there might be some folks who are keeping lists of people who are operating that way. And I like to think that most of my relationships in the legislature are positive, at worst, they're neutral. And the last thing I want to do is get on somebody's naughty list by lurking around trying to argue about the unintended fiscal impacts of some of these things.
Michael Pope
That's a really interesting point, because lobbyists will not be allowed in any of the committee meetings, you're going to be testifying virtually lobbyists will not be allowed in the House chamber. There's no gallery for the lobbyists to visit, lobbyists will not be available to go in the Senate chamber. There's no gallery there. So really, what kind of is the point for any lobbyists to be there? I mean, I, you said that you're going to be there. What's your plan, like are you going to, I mean, you raised a really interesting point, which is, it's probably a bad idea to just lurk around the front of these buildings. So sort of just physically speaking, other than being in front of your computer, which you could from anywhere, what is your plan,
Sarah Graham Taylor
My plan is literally to go down there locked myself in a hotel room nearby, spend 24 hours there, as the procedural resolution get settled, have clarity as to what is going to happen moving forward, and then most likely packed up and head home. Because there really isn't any, you know, any compelling reason to be down there. I don't think moving forward. But for me, I would like to have clear assurance that there is no reason to be there. And once I have that assurance, I'll pack back to Alexandria and do all of this from my office from my home office from my kitchen table from a car outside john Marshall library.
Michael Pope
So let's get into the procedural resolution. I know one of the issues that they're going to be debating is limiting the number of bills that individual lawmakers can introduce, like maybe three or four. I think that's what they've been talking about. So you were talking earlier about like The Price Is Right rules. Well, I mean, this would be like the game of Plinko. You know, like, there's the discs and how many discs? Can you throw down the board with the with the nails? So, I mean, if you limit the number of bills, you know, perhaps you might sharpen the session a little bit. I would imagine that seems pretty straightforward. You do expect any debate on limiting lawmakers to the number of bills that they can introduce.
Sarah Graham Taylor
I can't imagine that there would be significant concern about that, because I don't think anybody is interested in having this be a free for all. And, in fact, what we've heard is that we should expect to see rather than seeing lots and lots of individual bills in these areas, we are expecting to see kind of Omnibus bills.
Michael Pope
Let me push back a little bit on that because the Senate had several press conferences, where they were outlining their their agenda. And they were planning and they are planning an omnibus bill on policing reform that has a whole bunch of different things on it's about policing. And that's one bill. It's an omnibus bill, but on their criminal justice reform, Morrissey it hasn't Bill voicevault has a bill Hashmi has a bill that Bill Gates has a bill. So it's like that's not an omnibus approach there will justice into a whole bunch of bills.
Sarah Graham Taylor
I think that may be partly due to making sure that everything that is in one bill is germane to the subject matter. But it also may simply be some specific issues that are specific to individual members, and encouraging them to be very thoughtful about how many things they bring to the table, knowing that they're, you know, there is not an appetite for this being a, you know, a 60 day 60 day, special session, you know, a special session that's longer than regular session is probably not what they're going for. I think that at least on the Senate side, it feels like they have been very coordinated as to how they put their agenda together and their bill packages together. So I would expect that anything that's rolled out is fully vetted and pre baked. At least from the Senate Democratic side. That's what it feels like. Whether there's been a similar effort on the House side is still yet to be seen.
Thomas Bowman
All right, let's take a quick break because we got a lot to talk about and we got criminal justice on tap, followed by the budget we're with Sarah Graham Taylor.
Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia, we're talking about the specialist in special sessions that is going to be convened in reaction to COVID-19 and budget crisis that Virginia finds itself and the criminal justice reform efforts that Democrats wants to accomplish in the wake of George Floyd. Let's talk about the budget. Sarah, this is the first time At least a recent memory that lawmakers passed a budget and then almost immediately they have to throw it in the garbage can and start over. Right? Is there any precedent for just like completely dumping a budget and starting over again,
Sarah Graham Taylor
Not to my knowledge. I mean, this was this was an unprecedented situation. And the timing with which we were dealing with the budget and the kickoff of COVID, for lack of a better term was really incredible. I mean, I specifically remember towards that variant section. I remember sitting in one of the last budget briefings and that meeting immediately going into the first briefing on COVID, which I thought was very interesting because we were all jam packed into house room, one elbow to elbow shoulder to shoulder while they're telling us about this thing that was spreading and, you know, we might all have to be very careful while we're all you know, sitting cheek by jowl in house room three. And, you know, I think the the unaligned meant the inventing of a new budgeting term. The And a lot of all the sort of new spending and new items that were in the budget with the intent of waiting for the next series of budget re forecasts, deciding which re forecast you were going to look at, you know, the most optimistic one, the most pessimistic ones are the middle one. You know, I think that this is really a very much an unprecedented situation and a huge challenge. Because not only are we looking at the things that were taken out of the budget that was passed this past session, but we're also looking at all these new things that have been brought to the table that cost money, and whether it's the criminal justice stuff, or the police reform stuff or the COVID stuff. You know, we now have a whole series of competing priorities and an ongoing budget shortfall.
Michael Pope
I'm so glad you brought up the word on allotment because I've been putting that in my scripts, you know, for the radio and my computer keeps telling me allotment is not a word, not a word. So give us an idea of the budget situation. So the one of the first things that's going to happen on Tuesday is the revenue forecast right where you've got. So give us some top line numbers here. How about how big was the budget? And what's the range of numbers that they might end up cutting?
Sarah Graham Taylor
We've heard lots of numbers as far as what the budget shortfall is moving forward. We've heard everything from 600 million for the rest of this fiscal year to two point billion for the biennium. There are still big, big shortfalls on the table. And like I said, the challenge right now is not only deciding what was in the budget that you want to read a lot, but also what are these new things that have come to the table that cost money? And how are you going to pick and choose And in addition, when you reopen the budget, you reopen the opportunity for members to bring other things to the table. And I heard from one budget conferee that they were asked to pack clothes for two weeks to be prepared for doing A real deep diligent dive into the budget stuff. are they planning to raise new sources of revenue to cover some of these budget deficits? To my knowledge, I have not heard of new revenue sources being on the table, that it's more of looking at the revenue that we have available to us and seeing how to apply it.
Thomas Bowman
One of the biggest strains on the budget I predict will be--well, beyond the obvious--could be what the legislature has to do with health care. Is there any discussion of addressing the number of uninsured Virginians now as especially as we're still trying to get our own health care portal online?
Sarah Graham Taylor
Um, I am, I am certain that that is an issue that's going to be on the table. I mean, there's probably a number of issues like that, you know, health care and uninsured. There's the COVID impact on the elections. There's paid sick leave. I mean, there's lots of I mean, I think one of the things about COVID it's really kind of shined a light very bright light on the weakest parts of our systems. And I would expect a lot of these things would be addressed incrementally, and that we would start taking small steps towards addressing them as we get our revenue footing under us as we move forward.
Michael Pope
On the issue of unfunded mandates. I know there has been a requiring every school building to have a nurse This is sort of COVID related. But I mean, that's an unfunded mandate, right. I think what's being discussed is there might be some sort of matching funds or like the state would pay half of it and local government would be forced to pay that you know, the other half of it, but like that would really be hitting up every locality to put a nurse in every school building. really expensive, of course. So like, as these are the mandates you guys are trying to navigate your way through.
Sarah Graham Taylor
Absolutely. I mean, nurses in school buildings is a huge one. Any mandate related to body worn camera implementation, which we haven't seen on anybody's agenda, but doesn't mean that it doesn't still come up. You're obviously mandate in that area would be significantly expensive. We expect to see the mandates with regard to training and reporting and reporting requirements and you know, some other things in the in the policing reform area. Luckily for us, a lot of the things that are likely to come up in that area and mandates are things that we are already doing. And we might have to, you know, do a little more on the reporting end, but as far as the actual, you know, what we're doing, we're, you know, we're in a fairly good position and then on some of those issues, which is good. Community police review boards, again, luckily one of those things that the city is already committed to implementing but for other localities, should there be a mandate of community police review boards that could be costly for the scope of them, this mandated scope could be costly for other places. An example of one was in there's a draft with a bill that requires mental health mobile response units to augment police responses and the draft Has it not being in this fiscal year, which is helpful, but it is something that will have a significant fiscal impact down the road and something that we will have to, you know, work to budget for. And again, not something that we are up to policy wise, certainly something that we would be supportive of, conceptually, but figuring out the budget impact is, you know, is a real thing and you know, something that we again, just like to communicate the quantitative nature of these mandates to our delegation as they're making their decisions about when some of these things might be required to be implemented.
Thomas Bowman
Well, Sarah, it's always a pleasure to speak with you, you give us so much to think about. Let's go ahead and take a break. When we come back. We're going to talk about the criminal justice reform that the legislature is pursuing in the special session.
Michael Pope
And we're back on transition Virginia where with Alexandria is lobbyists Sarah Graham Taylor. She's also my lobbyist because I live in Alexandria, and she lobbies a lot on the sewage issue. You know, this this terrible, antiquated sewer system that's in Alexandria that dumps raw sewage right into Potomac River. Full disclosure, I live in one of the outfalls along the river. So you can say Sarah is actually the lobbyist for my poop, or at least against by pool by the way. She spends a lot of time with her head in the sewer.
Transition VA
Michael was at your attempt at shit talk.
Michael Pope
Oh, really could descend into like a eighth grade bathroom humor
Transition VA
It already has.
Michael Pope
Already has. To rescue the show, let's let's bring it back on track here criminal justice reform. So one issue that has a lot of people are talking about is qualified immunity. And so this is actually an issue where there's a difference between the House and the Senate. The house wants to move forward with making some sort of criminal justice reform here that what allowed people to sue individual police officers, whereas the senate decided they don't want to move forward with qualified immunity. I'm positive. This is right at the top of Sarah's agenda here and stuff she wants to lobby against Sarah, talk about the debate on qualified immunity in terms of the position that you expect every local government to take on this.
Sarah Graham Taylor
Um, yeah, I mean, qualified immunity is, is it's a tough one for us, you know, because on the one hand, you want to be able to say, you know, bad actors should face consequences, and you know, and should face all the consequences that any other bad actor like that would face if you were You know, an average person who did something that a police officer did in the line of duty, you would face different consequences than that police officer would. And so it's certainly a tough position to find yourself in to say that one should be protected versus another simply because they're doing their job. But for us, I believe it's more of a slippery slope issue when it comes to qualified immunity and sovereign immunity and the immunities that are that are granted to employees of governmental entities and the protections that they receive with regard to doing their job. For us. It's more of a slippery slope and opening a Pandora's box and that we believe that this is a in most cases is a reasonable protection that is granted to our employees and that taking that protection off the table is obviously not something that we would want to see wholesale and that if the system is working correctly and that you have a police officers who are trained properly and are vetted properly and are hired properly and are doing their jobs properly, that the problems of qualified immunity should not really be problems. And so should the legislature address some of these systemic problems, then the problem of qualified immunity is not really one that needs to be addressed wholesale on the front end. If we make all these changes, and it still doesn't change things, then perhaps that is something that would be the next incremental step in this but to change everything all at once, you don't really know what fixed anything. And so I feel like I'm tap dancing and I am and, again, like I said, it's a toughy because, like, you know, when it comes to when it comes to sovereign immunity, you know, there's a very big difference between a garbage truck that hits a mailbox and a human being who kills me injures another human being. And there's a difference between there's even a difference between an accident that injures kills me, someone, and a really terrible choice that you make in the course of your job that ends up with the same result. And so it's a really, really tough issue. And I get that you don't want bad actors to get away with bad actions. But if we can fix the things that create bad actors or that allow bad actors to have these be in these positions, then perhaps that's what will get us there.
Michael Pope
It is interesting to me that the Senate has decided they don't want to move forward with this. So imagine, we're going to hear a lot of talk on this. But it sounds to me like even if it passes the house, it might have a hard time in the Senate. There was another issue. Sarah, though you raised just now, which was the issue of training. One of the things that people talk about with criminal justice reform is de escalation training, implicit bias training. I heard one of the advocates on this Brad Haywood with a group called justice forward, Virginia. And he made an interesting point about training. I'm gonna play that sound right now in here, Minneapolis did all of these things,
Brad Haywood
it de escalation training, implicit bias training, their use of force standards, they actually have three civilian review boards. And we all know what happened there. Minnesota actually requires more than twice as many training hours for their police officers, as Virginia does, they almost lead the nation in number of training hours that are required for police. So to me, this isn't a training problem.
Michael Pope
So this is a really interesting point, which is I think we're probably gonna hear a lot about de escalation training at implicit bias training. And yet, I'm not really sure how much impact that's going to have. I mean, it might make the lawmakers feel good. It might make them feel like they've done something, but adding a bunch of training requirements, is it really going to change anything? I'm not really sure.
Sarah Graham Taylor
I feel like training is a single piece of it. And is it not nothing that's going to fix everything? You know, I think it's, you know, this is a really, really complicated issue. And it's a really, it's a generational issue. To go back to our sewer system, you know, our sewer system is a generational problem. And it is something that takes a long time to fix any number of steps. And I feel like that is a similar, you know, the shit that we're dealing with with our sewer system is to some degree, like what we're dealing with, with the need for systemic policing reform. And that isn't something that you fix with a training module. It's not something that you fix with three training modules. It's not something that you fix by requiring more regular training, bad actors are going to be bad actors, regardless of you telling them not to be bad actors, which is why this needs a really layered a really nuanced series of changes that need to happen. And they need to happen at the state level that you push down. Need to happen at the local level, they get pushed up, you know, even giving localities, you know, authority to have robust community police review board. So these are all intertwined and integrated in that the combination of these things, that there's data reporting that you're shining light on the dark spaces that you're able to hold people accountable, that you're able to ask hard questions, you can't ask hard questions. If you don't know what you're asking hard questions about. You can't shine light on dark spaces if you don't have a flashlight. And a lot of these things are about providing more openness and more transparency, to be able to ask hard questions. And to be able to also make some changes as far as you know decertification of officers as far as training requirements as far as data reporting as far as changes to some of the what isn't isn't an appropriate police response, like the chokehold branch, right. It's not just about training and it's not just about community, please review boards and it's not just about any one of these things. It's a nuanced combination of these things that is going to start affecting change. But I also don't think that anybody believes that anything that gets done here and gets implemented is you know, an implementation date, effective data, these things will be one January unless anything has a an emergency on it most likely. So none of this stuff is gonna magically fix anything. It might make some folks feel better, but no single one of these single things is gonna magically fix anything.
Thomas Bowman
So I want to push back a little bit on the value of the training component. I kind of look at whether or not Minnesota requires two times or three times the training of Virginia as kind of irrelevant when the average amount of police officer training I think is like 600 hours or something like that, maybe 800 hours. When you've got lawyers going to school, law school for three years, you've got judges going to school for even longer and then networking and having experience that surpasses even that. At this point in our society, we're reaching a state where most of the population is more educated than the police officers policing the community. And that's going to have societal impacts beyond what the policy is. I don't see that there's a way. I mean, you can have qualified immunity or not. And then you don't have qualified immunity and you have all sorts of judicial proceedings against officers because that's, that'll come. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. It's just going to clog up an already clogged system. I feel like improving the qualifications of the people who can become police officers in the first place is really the best place to go.
Sarah Graham Taylor
I have a tiny bit of personal experience in this area. When my husband retired from the Air Force. He got accepted into the Oklahoma City Police Academy. And he was he was a 39 year old adult who had a college degree who had a 22 year military career and was a great grown ass man who was going to go be a police officer and wanted to continue his career of public service as a police officer. And he did a week in the police academy and said, I am not who they want, I am not going to do this, that they wanted valuable 19 year olds who they could fit into their box they didn't want the 40 something year old who had all this, you know, life experience and and own feelings, and, and thoughts about things. So I think just from our experience, our personal experience in Oklahoma City, which may be very different than here, but I do think that there is a significant front end investment that needs to be made in who we are. And not to say that your police officers in Alexandria by any stretch of the imagination are a terrible lot, who have been, you know, have been, you know, who are terrible and whatever. But that's not to say that you know, who you bring in isn't just as important as that. training you give anybody who comes into your system. And like I said, it's a combination of all of these things, and no one of them is going to fix any of it.
Michael Pope
I want to move the discussion from the police station to the courthouse. So Virginia is one of the few states where juries sentence defendants. So this is a problem because nobody in the right mind would ever want to be sentenced by a jury. juries are insane in the way they sentence people. So most states and even in the federal system, if you have a trial by jury, you can get the judge to give you a sentence. And so this is the tweak that it's a policy change that Democrats are actually united on they want to make this change, but the problem is how do you pay for it? I talked to delegate Mike Mullen who is chair of the subcommittee that will be considering this change and this is what he said
Mike Mullin
that is an excellent idea, but it will mean significantly More jury trials, which cost more money and take up more time. So we'll need more indigent defense counsel. We'll need more public defenders, we'll need more prosecutors will need more judges. And in some cases, we may need more space.
Michael Pope
And how much will that cost? They actually talked about this during the last General Assembly session. They brought in somebody from the Supreme Court, like the executive that oversees the court system. And they basically said it's impossible. We have no idea how to even calculate that. So they sent that to the Crime Commission to get a actual dollar amount. The Crime Commission right now, as of today is still studying this, they have not come up with their number. And so on the House side, you've got Mullin and all these other people who want to wait for the Crime Commission to come up with $1 amount, but on the Senate side, they're actually a little skeptical about this. I asked Senator Scott Surovell about the Crime Commission studying this and trying to come up with dollar amount and this is what he said.
Scott Surovell
Sending this bill to the Crime Commission was not our idea and the House of Delegates controls the crime crime. Right now they control the executive committee and what the current Commission does. So they've elected to do that. We don't think it needs to go the Crime Commission. We think the current Commission's resources to be better invested studying other matters. This one we think is a pretty simple matter. Just because something the Crime Commission has something doesn't mean the Crime Commission can choose to give it up and focus on other problems, like mandatory minimum sentences or, or other big priorities that we have for the 2021 session.
Michael Pope
So I think we're actually going to see a big fight on this issue, and probably others where the Senate has taken this approach. Let's change the policy now and figure out how to pay for it later, versus the house that wants to pay for every nickel and dime of every change that they're going to make Sara do we expect to see significant differences between the senate approach and the houses approach during the special session?
Sarah Graham Taylor
That's what it feels like. It feels like the house when it comes to the budget items are being much more pay is much more of a pay as you go approach as opposed to a we are focused on the policy and we will figure out the math later. That specific issue is one that the jury trial issue is one that we are very conscious of and that we are very aware of, you know, you talk to our Commonwealth's attorney. And he'll tell you, you know, this is not something I oppose conceptually, but it will have a fiscal impact. We know what Mike Mullen said is with delicate Mullen said is correct, you know, that it will take more, you know, in defense console to take more complex attorneys that will take more and more jury trials, it means you have to have more juries, which you have to not only find people to serve, but then have to pay them.
Michael Pope
Sarah, let me push back on that because I asked this group of senators about this on their press conference center. Morrissey disputes the idea that it would cost more money. He said, if you look at the experience of other states, when they have made this change, it has not cost significantly more money. So there's, there's that argument that they're not really sure it's going to cost more money. And then there's a separate argument, which is okay, even if it's true that it costs more money. In the long run, you save money because fewer people will be in jails and presence and you might actually be gaining money in the process. So it's possible it might not cost anything or might actually end up saving money, too. Right.
Sarah Graham Taylor
Right. And that is one of those things where it would be sort of nice to know that before we put pen to paper and go Sharpie on these things, but no, I think you're right. Going back to sort of the, you know, the big picture here is that, you know, I it does seem like the house is being more more pay as you go, trying to balance the checkbook on these issues versus some of these issues that the Senate is sort of willing to say, well, we'll see how it goes. And we'll figure out how to pay for it later. Or will you all, you know, can figure out how to pay for at later.
Thomas Bowman
If I can go out on a limb. I kind of look at the whole like, Oh, do we have the money or not debate as pretty disingenuous when the reality is, this is just the battle royale between defense attorney and prosecutor. You've got Mike Mullen, a prosecutor in the House. You've got Scott Surovell, a defense attorney in the Senate, and this is just the extension of courtroom politics entering into the General Assembly Building. And I mean, look, I really like and respect Mike Mullen. He is a brilliant guy. I have objections to putting a prosecutor in charge of a Democratic committee. You know, like you don't do that in my opinion. So this is what you're seeing is the result is a prosecutor wants to slow walk the reform that would hurt prosecutors and increase their workload and you've got defense attorneys who want to go all systems go because they're gonna get better outcomes for their clients. Mike drop.
Michael Pope
Sarah smartly knows what I think this is a lesson from Hamilton smile more talk less
Sarah Graham Taylor
I'm having my Aaron Burr moment since we don't have any more rooms where it happens, other than their virtual but I mean, this is yes, this is a challenging This is a challenge. You know, from our perspective, we like to know what things are going to cost us so that we can do as a local government. We like to know what things are going to cost us, and especially when it comes to our Commonwealth's attorney's office and our public defenders and things like that, where it actually costs us more. Because the calculus when it comes to how much the state invests in our Commonwealth's attorney's office, we have to make up a much more significant amount in order to attract and pay attorneys to work in Alexandria, Northern Virginia, the math is really tough for us. And so we sort of have an extra interest in making sure that anything that causes growth in our Commonwealth's attorney's office or our public defender's office or places where we make up the difference that we have sort of like some sort of predictability about it, because especially in budget environments that we're looking at right now and for the you know, for the foreseeable future until this U or V or whatever this revenue curve looks like, starts to go back up again. We would at least like to have some predictability when it comes to how much some of this stuff is going to cost us and again, you know not that we're necessarily against it I joke I've never been called to be on a jury. I am 40 years old I've never been called me. I feel like the criminal justice system doesn't want to sit with me at lunch until like I'm all for more jury trials because I want to be on a jury but uh, but for a month from a my job perspective, it's, you know, there we would like to see some estimates of you know, reality about what this cost and even if you know, even if Joe Morrissey is right, and you know, we can look at other states and see that, while there might be some front end costs, the back end savings will sort of balance out the universe, or even maybe there's not front end costs, but we would like to know that versus the speculation of you're going to be more calm, Attorney dreamy. More prosecutors are going to be more indigent defense, you're going to need more pretrial services, you're gonna need all these other things to support these changes.
Michael Pope
Well, we want to sit with you at lunch, Sarah so you can sit at the Transition Virginia lunch table in the cupboard Come
Thomas Bowman
Come sit at the cool kids table, Sarah.
Sarah Graham Taylor
The cool kids table...
Michael Pope
You know, I want to ask about one more issue, we should probably wrap this up. But I want to ask you about one more issue which is demilitarization. So right now there's all this military grade equipment that is available to police agencies across the country. But we're at the point in Virginia is called the 1033. program. It's very controversial because you get your the argument against it is you're essentially militarizing your local police departments. And so there's a difference here once again, and how the house wants to approach things versus how the senate wants to approach things. The Senate version is to just get rid of the program and say, no more military equipment just make it end. The House says well hold on a second. That's actually a problem. Because the program isn't just about military vests for police officers and in ramps that they can drive around in your local community. It's also laptop computers and radios and engineering supplies and Office cabinets. I would imagine the city probably has a perspective on whether or not some of this 1033 stuff should be available to the city. Right?
Sarah Graham Taylor
Yeah, I mean, I think I don't think we have ever availed ourselves of the, I don't think we have an MRAP in Alexandria.
Michael Pope
There are several MRAPs in Virginia right now, not not in Alexandria, but other jurisdictions that were actually acquired through this program. So I mean, this is a legitimate complaint for the people who are against this sort of thing. What use is an MRAP for a local police department? So this is the conversation that they're having. But but the Senate's approach from the perspective of some House members I talked to, they felt like the Senate was approaching this in a very ham-handed way that might hamstring Alexandria from getting radios and laptop computers and filing cabinets from the federal government.
Sarah Graham Taylor
And I have a feeling that it probably even more significantly impact smaller police departments who use this opportunity to get necessary things like you said radios and laptops and filing cabinets and desks and emergency command centers and things like that. That piece of it, you know, could very well hamstring, especially smaller police departments.
Thomas Bowman
Well, that's, you know, we could keep going on for hours or so much to talk about. We'll be doing more of this as a podcast. I've got a couple quick announcements before we wrap up this episode. Michael, did you know that we are now on Stitcher?
Michael Pope
Stitcher? We are, really? Excellent. Yes, we were not on there previously. It was an oversight.
Thomas Bowman
We apologize. But now you can find us on Apple podcasts on Stitcher on Spotify. On Google podcasts anywhere you get podcasts for real this time, you can find Transition Virginia.
Michael Pope
What about a My Space account Thomas
Thomas Bowman
No, but we do technically have a SoundCloud. We also debuted the transition Virginia blog which will host the training scripts of our episodes and audio file of the episodes, look for those as they appear and that'll be a fun way for you to interact and share what we're talking about here on Transition Virginia.
Sarah Graham Taylor
When COVID is over, or when Coronavirus is over like my daughter couches everything right now. I expect the Transition Virginia lunch table with all the kids who don't want your cool podcast. All have cool kid lunch together. I'm so down for that.
Thomas Bowman
We're looking forward to it. All right. Well, thank you for your time today. Sarah Taylor. Thank you so much for listening to Transition Virginia. As I said, find us on Apple podcasts on Stitcher on Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasts, you can email the transition team at TransitionVApodcast@gmail.com. You can find us on the web at transitionvirginia.com. Please listen and subscribe.
