MICHAEL O. FREEMAN
HENNEPIN COUNTY ATTORNEY
2010 Budget Presentation
Presented to the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners
November 19, 2009
Good afternoon Mr. Chair and Commissioners.
Thank you for this opportunity to present the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office budget proposal for 2010. For all of us in the CountyAttorney’s Office, it is our privilege to represent Hennepin County. We are granted a unique opportunity to serve and we are grateful for that chance.
Part of what makes our jobs’ meaningful is the strong relationships we enjoy with county administration, department directors, and you, the county board. We are committed to strengthening these important relationships through the tough financial times we are all experiencing. Thank you for helping build a positive work place where we can meet these challenges together.
Our mission is to “serve justice and public safety through a commitment to ethical prosecution, crime prevention and innovative and reasoned client representation”.
We take that mission very seriously and we seek to meet it everyday notwithstanding tough budget times. But even without the added pressure of a down economy, community needs are rapidly changing.
We have new arrivals, we have an aging population, and we have citizens who are increasingly willing to participate in the criminal justice system in order to improve their neighborhoods. We need to fully engage these community partners and we are doing so. Tight budgets make working with communities even more imperative.
In addition, technology is changing everything we do. It is changing the way law enforcement investigates and it is changing the way we present cases. Even without a tight budget, we would need to respond to technological changes. Limited resources mean we must harness new technologies to help us do justice in everything we do at the lowest possible cost.
Through all of this, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office is working to remain focused, not on what we cannot do, but on what we can do. We are working to be more focused and efficient. We are working to leverage our resources through community partnerships. We are working to adopt technologies that result in stronger prosecutions and criminal justice system efficiencies. In short, we are working for the highest quality justice with the resources you make available.
2009 has been a difficult year financially for the County and we know 2010 will be even more challenging. The CAO is committed to doing its part to meet the financial dilemmas of the County without sacrificing ethical prosecution, crime prevention and the highest quality client representation.
To set the stage, in 2008 our budget was reduced by $470,000 to absorb the county’s negotiated salary increases. In 2009, this $470,000 was removed from our budget base and we faced an additional $850,000 cut.
Throughout 2009, we worked hard to reduce expenditures to make budget. The CAO is proud that we contributed over $250,000 to address the county’s financial gap through our staff members taking voluntary leaves without pay. The CAO was one of the largest contributors to this deficit reduction program.
For 2010, we worked with county administration and reduced our property tax funding by an additional $750,000 from our original request. We accept these reductions - painful as they are - because we believe they are necessary given the fiscal challenges the county faces today and in the near future.
Putting the actual dollars aside for a moment, I want to highlight some of the ways our office is working to meet the challenges of these extraordinary times, and remain true to our mission.
Child Support Modifications
Nationally, the reported unemployment rate has topped ten percent – and if you include people who are forced to work part-time it is closer to 17%. Child support payments are profoundly impacted by the huge loss of jobs. We simply cannot let job losses lead to complete failure to pay child support. That is why our office is working with our support and collections department and the court’s self help center to assist the newly unemployed in obtaining support modifications. We need those non-custodial parents to remain invested in their children both financially and emotionally. Appropriately modified payments help do that.
Property Tax Petitions
In these times, it is also important to fairly assess the county’s property tax base and to provide a timely and efficient process for those who wish to challenge their property valuations. An average county resident may not stop to think how much a shopping mall is worth. But, these businesses make up a substantial part of the county’s tax base and failure to properly assess commercial and industrial property can mean residential property owners - you and me – may pay too much property tax.
Lawyers in our civil division, working with the Eden Prairie assessor in a recently completed tax appeal, were successful in convincing the tax court to adopt a valuation for the Eden Prairie Mall that was 36 percent over the mall’s assessed value in 2005 and 20 percent over assessed value in 2006. The bottom line is more property tax revenue fairly raised.
For the last several years, and we believe on into the future, tax appeals will continue to grow exponentially. Petitions challenging property tax assessments have doubled in just two years - from nearly 1,000 in 2007 to almost 2,000 in 2009. Our workload to meet this challenge has increased substantially, but we are meeting this challenge with reprioritized resources.
Orders for Protection
It saddens me to report that domestic violence has increased - perhaps as a tragic consequence of the bad economy. This fact is reflected by the increase of nearly 30 percent for orders for protection obtained through the domestic abuse service center.
We have responded by sharpening our focus on what Domestic Abuse Service Center does. We have moved harassment orders, which typically do not involve family or domestic violence, to the district court’s self-help center. This allows Domestic Abuse Service Center to focus on getting victims of domestic and family violence the orders for protection and help they critically need.
Mortgage Fraud
Mortgage fraud is both a cause and a consequence of economic troubles. With the support of this board, the county attorney’s office has aggressively targeted those who prey upon our neighborhoods leaving empty houses and plummeting property values in their wake.
In just 26 months, we have charged 38 mortgage fraud cases involving 210 properties – and obtained 25 convictions. Defendants include brokers, agents, developers, builders, closers, loan officers, and foreclosure companies. Although there is a concentration of cases on Minneapolis’ North Side, cases have touched all areas of Hennepin County.
The National Investment Group case, -- involving a Minnetonka based real estate company -- is pending and it’s the largest so far -- with nearly six million dollars in kickbacks and over 70 loan transactions. Sentences have ranged from 20 to 30 months for low level players to 198 months (16.5 years) in the Maxwell case – the longest Minnesota sentence ever for mortgage fraud.
With funding for prosecutions set to be reduced in 2010, we partnered with the Housing Preservation Project to obtain federal Byrne grant funds. This additional revenue will provide more thorough investigations and prosecutions and will allow us to improve technology and data sharing to better identify mortgage fraud, vacancy, and foreclosure patterns. That information is critical to holding wrongdoers accountable and in helping to stabilize hard hit neighborhoods.
The mortgage fraud area is an example of the way we must respond - by focusing on our goals, partnering with others, and adopting technology to our use - to leverage our resources to meet the challenge.
As I said earlier, the consequences of the economic downturn are not the only challenges we face. In many ways, it is important to not let the poor economy distract us from responding to the changes in our communities.
Gangs
Notwithstanding the fact that the crime rate in almost every category have declined in 2009, there remain small groups dedicated to violence and intimidation. If we are going to succeed as a diverse community, we must be committed to going after gang violence and intimidation. We have done just that. Our 87% conviction rate for gang trials is - an incredible rate in these most difficult cases.
These results do not just happen. They require close cooperation with law enforcement, strong efforts by those who work with victims and witnesses, excellent legal work and quality relationships with the communities affected by gang violence. Whether the community in which a gang operates is white, latino, asian, black, or somali, we need to do all we can to support victims and witnesses, to gain their cooperation, and to let the gang members know that justice will be meted out in our courts and not on our streets.
Truancy
As this Board has recognized through its endorsement of AGRAD, progress in school is essential for success. In 2006, this Board noted that high school graduates on average earn $260,000 more than dropouts. Researchers have found that 23 percent of the black-white gap in male incarceration rates can be explained by differences in school success.
Not surprisingly, educational success requires kids to be present in school. One recent study showed that high school dropouts were absent twice as often as high school graduates in first grade and three times as often in fifth.
School attendance is important and we need to be smart and focused as to how we go about improving it. As this Board knows, the CountyAttorney’s Office’s Education for Success Program, focusing on early intervention for our younger kids has helped reduce truancy. Building on this experience and incorporating ideas from others, the County Attorney’s Office is taking the lead in implementing a consistent countywide truancy prevention program. It will involve parents and schools at an early stage; it will be flexible and tailor responses to each family’s circumstances, and it will be community focused, using cost effective neighborhood based interventions.
As part of our focus on attendance, we will demand accountability from parents, school officials, the community and - - the student.
Vulnerable Adults
Hennepin County’s 65-and-older population has increased by more than 10 percent in the last decade. Moreover, elderly who are living alone – and that is the most vulnerable group – makes up nearly a third of those over 65. Tragically, two-thirds of those who abuse elders are family members. A 2006 study reported that 33 percent of perpetrators were adult children, 22 percent were other family members, and 11 percent were spouses. This interfamily dynamic makes for heartbreaking cases, which are also much more difficult to investigate and prosecute.
Hennepin County Adult Protection Services has a well functioning system for reporting of financial and physical abuse or neglect of elders. The problem is that not enough of these calls get investigated by law enforcement and referred to the county attorney’s office. We aim to change that. We are meeting regularly with our adult protection and law enforcement partners and reviewing cases for investigation. We are also reaching out to other social service and advocacy organizations seeking investigation referrals. Together we have applied for federal stimulus to help fund a data-driven strategy that would make cases much easier to prosecute.
Community Prosecution/Diversity
Hennepin County’s population is also increasingly diverse, which brings both challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, it’s imperative that our staff be bilingual and multicultural. This year we will meet 90 percent of our interpreter needs in-house. Conservatively speaking, this represents savings of more than $70,000 per year. More importantly, it creates tremendous good will when a victim or witness under great stress can converse with government staff in their native language.
We also know that to serve the community we must be out in it. We need to leave the government center silo and get out into the neighborhoods. Our attorneys are increasingly there, providing information and working with court watches to help prevent crime. This year we took on the challenge of doing this same work for juveniles. This is particularly challenging because most delinquency hearings are closed to the public. Nonetheless, we are working with neighborhoods and law enforcement to bring more community impact statements into juvenile court. That is good for all concerned.
Technology
A final challenge is the use of technology. As anyone who watches CSI believes – and the jurors we see increasingly believe that CSI is reality – justice cannot be served without fingerprints, videos, cell phone records, and DNA. Juror expectations aside, technology is dramatically changing the way law enforcement investigates and the way prosecutors present cases. Better technology also fosters better justice.
Today, law enforcement typically records nearly all interviews. 911 calls, squad videos, crime scene photos, surveillance videos, cell phone records, medical records, ballistics, DNA and private surveillance videos are all part of a case file. All of this evidence helps us get to the truth. It can also be extremely powerful if it is correctly presented to a jury.
The problem is this all takes time and money. Money for reviewing and, at times, transcribing audio and video tapes. Of course, most of this information must be duplicated and provided to the defense.
It also takes time and money to properly present it in court. In the last several years, we have been able only to make a minimal investment to help us handle this evidence. But even these investments have paid off.
I want to show you part of the closing argument made by Liz Cutter of our office in a recent murder trial. State v. McCord involved a drive-by murder on Royalston and 7th Street in Minneapolis. The 911 call came in at 11:37. Through some excellent investigation, police determined that Starsha Wyatt witnessed the shooting. Ms. Wyatt initially stated she was nowhere near downtown Minneapolis at the time of the shooting. Police obtained and analyzed Wyatt’s cell phone records. The records showed a call from Wyatt’s phone hitting a cell tower right by the murder scene at 11:41. The records also showed other cell phone calls made by her nearby both before and after the murder. Confronted with the cell phone evidence Wyatt admitted to what actually happened.
Presenting the case to the jury, we used video, maps and surveillance camera to tell what actually happened that day. A jury convicted McCord and he is now serving 406 months in prison.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we will do more with less; we do recognize the profound financial challenges facing the county; we will live with the reduced budget we negotiated with the county administrator.
But we will not back down from meeting the challenges before us and acting consistent with our mission statement. Thanks for letting us serve justice each and every day in Hennepin County.