This meeting is being recorded. Good morning. This is the Council's September work session. The proceeding this morning is a hybrid meeting which is being conducted in person and via WebEx teleconference. The public may view through live stream available through the county council website. At this time I'm going to do a roll call of the council members. Ms. Walsh. Here. Mr. Youngman. Here. Mr. Jones. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. And Ms. Rigby is on her way. She had a delay this morning. So we are going to proceed with our agenda. And first up on the agenda is CB 47, which is the establishment of the Inspector General. And if we could put up the, electronically put up the people who are joining us this morning. I just, yes, if we could, because we do have quite a few people, and I think it would be useful to do that, so we can introduce them as well, since they will be with us electronically. We have Isabel Cumming, who is the Inspector General. Oh, okay, well she's on the list, so I'm just introducing the people who are on the list. Okay, so she All right. Do we have anyone from Common Cause? No. Okay. Is David Plimeyer from the Anorondle County Attorney? Is he with us? He's not with us. Is David McClintock, government relations for national associations of inspector generals? He's remote. I see you. I see your name up there. Thank you very much for joining us, Mr. McClendon. I have a lot of notes that I think were that came from you initially. So I'm really glad that you're with us this morning. I'm playing. Yes. Good morning. I have Jean Schu, the who's the chair of the Howard County Ethics Commission. She's remote. Miss Jill. Oh, here. Excellent. Megan Davie Lamarzi, who's the IG in Montgomery County. Megan are you with us? Do you see Megan? I can see her in your hands. Do you see Megan? And you don't see Kelly either, okay? So the only other person I have on this list is Joanne and Twan. Is she with us? Right. No. Okay. All right. Well, we will proceed. And I am again very glad, Mr. Clinton, that you've joined us because I know that a lot of the issues that we'll be discussing today are issues that you are familiar with and that you have seen in our various our various bills and questions and conversations that we've had with you over the past few months. In fact, Mr. McClendon, could you more fully introduce yourself because I think that we will probably be spending quite a bit of time with you this morning? Sure. Yeah, Dave McClendon, I actually from Maryland originally. So I spent 20 years in law enforcement between Prince George and Montgomery County. An attorney did a lot of internal affairs work in the law enforcement space. I then went to Baltimore City as the I think third Inspector General of Baltimore City. There's one between me and Isabelle. She came obviously after me. So I spent three years in Baltimore City Inspector General's Office and then was offered a position in Louisiana starting a brand new office. So I started an office in Jefferson, Paris, Louisiana. I spent nine years to two terms in Louisiana. I've been a member of the Association Inspector General since 2014. I've Been on the board since 2016, I believe. So this is my fourth turn on the board and my second turn is chair of governmental relations. And in that role, we engage with inspectors general on operational matters and best practices and also with legislators, much like this, to help craft or refine the legislative foundations for Inspector General. Great, thank you very much. And again, I appreciate you joining us today. So in order to ensure that we are discussing the primary issues that we think we might be dealing with as we create either amendments or revised bill. We have also put together a power point so that we can ensure that the council is going through each of the issues that we have number one found our critical to moving forward on our IG bill. And number two addressing the concerns that we've seen from the public, both publicly when they have come in to testify and through emails that we have received. So if you could put the PowerPoint up on the screen, that would be helpful. We have six PowerPoint slides that will help us go through a decision tree in the course of this meeting this morning. And the first one is just an overview to give you an idea of the things that we have been talking about both publicly and in meetings amongst the council members. The structure of the office, which includes the appointment, removal qualifications, performance review, oversight, term, duties and responsibilities, staff of the inspector general, the function of the office, the duties and responsibilities, jurisdiction, authority, powers, whistleblower protections, referral matters, reports, policies and procedures. The citizen board, which includes their duties and responsibilities, qualifications, compensation, term appointment removal, selecting a chair, and rules of procedure and staffing. And then finally, a second bill that has been filed by Ms. Walsh on the IG's role on the ethics commission. Okay, yeah, you are here, right in time, Ms. Rodriguez. This is perfect timing. Okay, let's go on to the next slide because this is where we're going to begin discussing our decision points in reviewing the IG bill. And the first decision point is the appointment of the Inspector General. The second is the removal of the Inspector General. And I think that as you can see from the PowerPoint, there is under appointment candidate search, selection, and confirmation. And I do think if we don't have a, if we are in agreement on a point, we can just move on. If we want to discuss that point further, then this is our opportunity to do that and let our opinions be known. So the first point under appointment is candidate search, whether to use a standard HR process, a nominating panel, or a combination of the above. And just to get this whole thing started, I would, I think think a combination of the above is probably the best approach, get resumes through the HR process and then use the nominating panel which may also be the citizen board but we'll get to that later and use a nominating panel to make a selection and then we'll get to the selection piece next. Does anybody have any other views on that? Ms. Rikby. I agree. I like the idea of going through the standard HR process to do sort of a first sweep and then having the nominating panel regardless of the form to take to have that citizen input in the process any other Yeah, now okay good everybody's good with that and of course this that the way that the nominating panel is made up and what other functions they have that will come later in these conversations. And assuming that the charter amendment that all five of people to that nominating panel that then we might have had previously. Okay. One thing I do want to add is, and Mr. McClintock suggested this in earlier comments that when you do hire an IG that you do a national search. Did you want to make a comment on that, Mr. McClendon? Just that, that that's kind of become a standard function in recruitment. There's a few recruiters out there that know the industry very well and will usually honor a broader swath of applicants and qualified applicants. That's all. Okay, thank you, Mr. McClendon. Are you sure you don't wanna come back to Maryland? Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yes, ma'am. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I can hear just a little bit of a Southern accent. Oh, he's already got it. You've only been down there for nine years. Yeah. He hasn't said use guys once. I know. He needs no. He just wants. Yeah. I'm waiting for the you all. So, okay. Well, I can even throw some yens in from Pennsylvania, but I'll try. I'll try not. Okay. All right. It throws him in from Pennsylvania, but I'll try not to. OK. All right. So selection. Now, this is where I think we're probably having our first real point of discussion. Who selects the IG candidates? And remember, it's actually a two piece thing. The IG candidates and then ultimately, the IG. So the decision points here are citizen board, which could also be the nominating panel. County council, county executive, or a combination of the above. And just to get the conversation started, I will say that I think that I actually like Mr. McClintock's suggestion that the citizen board slash nominating panel in whatever form we decide to create that. Selects three candidates and those three candidates come to the county council for a final interview and selection. And I do think it's important that the final selection is made by elected officials because we are answerable because of our elected status to the public. And I think it's important that in selecting an inspector general that people understand that we are, if they don't, if after we make our selection and they're unhappy with the IG, then they can come back to us and tell us, but if it's just a citizen board who is only involved in this election, there's not quite as much responsibility. Public accountability, yeah. That's my opinion. Any other opinions? Gosh, we're so agreeable. Oh, okay. We are not agreeable. Okay. First, Mr. McClendon, Mr. McClendon, is that in your best other accent? Does that representation reflect your recommendation coming from the Association of EG's that it would be a citizen panel who makes a recommendation to an elected local legislative body to make the actual appointment? I think that is one of the models that you see that works out there quite well. That panel oftentimes will have hiring authority and makes the appointment themselves and they can issue extensions on the contract sometimes too. So yet we don't have a firm space. A firm one way is best. That is a very common model for the reasons that were mentioned. It incorporates the calling down of three by the citizen board and then places the decision making in the executive side. We're not quite there yet. When they are hired by the legislature or a combination of legislature and the executive and the decision making, that brings into question the removal component, but I know that's a whole another section. So, okay. Does that help her? It does, thank you. And I feel like we ran into this with Office of Law when we were drafting original versions of this bill, which is exactly what you suggested Mr. McClendon talk that we had to mirror how we appointed with how we removed. Is that, am I remembering that correctly from March? Right, so what we talked about is typically the removal authority kind of flows from the appointment authority. So you typically wouldn't have like a panel appointing somebody and then a different authority removing them. Okay, perfect. Thank you. So I leading ahead to where you know I'm going is and I think anyone who's been following along knows that I feel very strongly and this has always been been at a parts of point between my draft person and others is, I think that the very most important thing about this entity, this person that is ultimately appointed by whatever means is independent and particularly independent from the political process. And if that person thinks that they are susceptible to review and removal by politicians, then I think we are already setting that body up to fail. And so that's why I was so encouraged by a charter amendment that talks about a citizen panel. You may recall Baltimore City. Latest referendum had that kind of set up in place. In my ideal world. It would be a citizen panel divorced from political influence. That would be doing both appointment and therefore removal. Does it? Does it? Could you go on again? Well, we can, you being the chair and all. Right. Oh my god. That's glad I said you can go on again. I can't believe this. OK. Go ahead. First of all, thanks for this. This is terrific. Thank my staff, China Williams. And please thank Cristiana Rigby, who came up with the idea. I'm glad we're kind of like it makes sense, I think, on paper to kind of go in this order. But I was already getting hung up even on the appointment side with I think my answers and feelings on these things are different whether or not the county council is the oversight board for this position or whether that citizen's board is a standing citizen's board. So does it make sense to talk about that first? Because then I think that that might influence where we are on the first page. Did I explain that well enough? Yes. So the issue is let's for the moment set aside nominating panel and call it just the citizen board because I think that will make it easier for our discussion going forward. And let's assume for the purposes of this discussion that the citizen board, which I think we all agree on, at the very least gets a first cut at determining who to either hire or to push forward to the elected body to make a final determination. So then the next question, then there's three pieces here to this potential citizen board. One is the hiring, the next is oversight, and the third would be the removal. We have here on this first page the removing body as to whether or not it would be the citizen board elected officials or combination of above. But if you wanted to, since those are the potential three pieces, we could move on to, let's see, I think it's the, yeah, it's the fifth slide where it talks about duties and responsibilities, which would be performance review, et cetera, which would be kind of the middle part, or we can go straight to removal. What do you all, for? I can just look simple question, and if you don't want to answer, you have the answer. But do we have any consensus on, like if the county council is going to be sort of managing this, then you have a nominating committee, and then they disband, and they go away. If the citizens board is going to be the board that sort of manages the IG, and I'm not a proponent of them, aggressively managing them, but basically taking care of the IG and never seeing the IG, then are they the same as the nominating panel? Is it two different groups of people? And are we delegating to them the right to remove the person? It sounds like we kind of need to, if they're going to have the right to hire them. I just, where does everybody stand on the, we're going to have a standing continuing citizens board that is like the IG office advisory board or whatever you want to call it. And I'm a proponent of that. So, okay. And I, and I agree. I would also prefer that the citizens board be a standing citizen board and that to the extent that oversight and performance review is decided upon and put into legislation that it's the citizen board and not the county council that performs that duty. And I do want to if we are going to touch upon that I do want to bring up Mr. McClintox observations one that in terms of oversight and performance review of a citizen board for an IG, that the IG should not be eligible for a performance award because there's no way to provide that kind of award to somebody who's supposed to be independent, that some places review performance through comments, others just have independent boards that rate the performance and that evaluations should be based only on publicly released material that it's not appropriate for a performance review to involve OIG confidential material ongoing matters. So Mr. McClintock, did I, was is that an accurate reflection of your comments? Okay, did you wanna add anything? Yes, yes. No, I mean, this is exactly the discussion that I'm glad that you're having. I mean, there's pathways both directions. My only observation is that I hear the term managed the IG. And one of the things that anyone who's been on the calls with us in the past, well, remember, we differentiate very strongly between operational and ministerial. So of course there's whether it's going to be the legislative body or it's going to be a board of some sort of a standing board. We would work with them and report to them on budget matters, you know, leave issues, all those health, all those things that you do for normal employees. However, when you start to talk about the operational side, that is where the office should have the greatest level of independence. And there needs to be a very clear line of demarcation there, really regardless of whether you go with a legislative model or a standing committee of some type, that position needs to be able to function in an environment where there may be tensions may be high, they may be on the wrong side of a particular politician or so and they need to be able to operate operationally independent during those times. So as long as whether it's the board or the legislature that is in that role of management in the broad sense. And that line of operational independence is clear. The IG is going to be able to function and either model can be made to work. I just wanted to just kind of add that extra layer of thought in there. Okay, Mr. Youngman and then Mr. Rikby. Does the association have any position or concern with the legislative body delgating its authority accountability, whatever you wanna call it, to the citizens board to hire, fire, oversee kind of the whole gamut to keep it as independent as possible. No, and in fact, that is done in some places. We don't have a position on it because both models are used. So we've seen them both work. It's more a matter of how well the model is executed. And then what can it be a hybrid where the elected body deals with the hiring but the citizens board deals with the removal and sort of oversight, or is it what a manager just said, where at least the hiring and the removal need to be in the same body? I think that there are any. I'm sorry. Or maybe that's county specific to our code or charter. That might not have been a question for you. A very well-being. I think that both pieces can occur. So you can have a board that calls down to three and the legislative body selects who's going to be appointed. And then you can flip over to the management piece. Actually, it's three parts. And that board, and I'll give you just a couple of examples. There are boards that meet monthly with the IGD, and I'm not necessarily advocating one or the other, where the IG says, hey, we got X number of reports working. This one's going to, is moved into draft phase. And that board actually is the official recipient of a finalized report. At the same time as that report goes out and draft to everyone else, the board gets it. Other models or that board does the hiring in whatever form that it is figured out. And then they meet maybe once or twice a year for the performance review and they say, okay, let's see the body of work you've done. And that's all of the public reports and there's a good, usually a very good healthy exchange about what's been happening, directions, problems, all of that, and then they provide a performance review. And if the IG's performance review is decent, it just rolls into the next year, but they only meet for the purposes of the performance review. And then the third bucket is the removal piece, and that also you often see as a hybrid. If there is an independent board and that board moves to terminate for calls typically for calls, it usually has to go through two thirds or a super majority vote of the legislative body. When you don't have a citizen board of some type, the other very common model, which often see it at the state IG level is for an IG to be terminated. Somebody has to bring a written complaint and then that has to be voted on through both houses of the legislature and then informed by the governor. So it's really, there's some different ways of doing it, but both of them incorporate the legislature and the political component into the final determination of both hiring, not always hiring, but usually hiring, but certainly in removal. I don't know that helps or confuses things even more. It was helpful thank you. Tells us that we can do either one. And that's a decision point for us. Mr. Rikby. Thank you. So Mr. McClendon, it sounds and to guess there's two points I have. One is about the board, the selection, nomination, and removal process. So if we, I'm hearing that we all appreciate a combination of the HR process and utilizing the board. Kind of the question is which direction the final decision is and the nomination is. So in theory it could work instead of having the board nominate for council approval, council could go through the HR process and send nominations to the board. That could be a viable option. And then to reverse engineer that again then the board could write a if they are recommending the removal of the IG then the board could send a written response to council for council to consider for the termination vote and I think that that that might kind of get at at all the elements that people are looking for for that process. I can you talk about the removal process again because I think that's where you and I definitely agree that the citizen board would make the recommendation for removal and give that to the council. That's yes. And then we would follow the either resolution or the public hearing process and as Mr. McClintock said, it would have to be a super majority. Yeah, and I think we just need to check with Office of Law in terms of, you know, better than now actions and all that. But I generally agree. Okay, so I think probably where we have a point of respectful disagreement, just like our fifth graders. That I think it's better to have the citizen board send the three people to us. My reasoning behind that is, and this gets actually to the selection of the citizen board because I have to admit my ideas about who should be on that citizen board have changed over the course of the month. And I do think we should be looking for more professionals to be on that citizen board instead of just people from the five districts. And I think letting them make a first cut for someone who they would feel comfortable being our IG is better than us making that first cut simply because if we have professionals sitting on that citizen board who understand what an IG should be doing and how they operate and we look to people that board with those types of people that'll be getting three really good candidates, any of whom could fulfill the duties of the job. And I feel more comfortable, should we make the citizen board a more professional, fill it with more professional people who have backgrounds in this arena that we will that it would look at that the two processes would as Amanda has said it would mirror each other. It would start with the citizen board come down with three to the county council and then then for removal, start with the citizen board, they would make the recommendation. And again, that would be from my perspective, if we're ensuring that we have people who are professionally experienced in this arena, that it would be, I would be comfortable, whether I was on the council or not, you know, for years to come. That these were the people who understood how to make these decisions. I think I just support a blended process. I'm just trying to split the baby between the two concepts, which I recognize might not. No baby splitting today. Yeah. Or yeah, we need a nicer word for compromising splitting babies. And then on the board side, I mean to me it's really more you know that the board is a body in which the IG is publicly and professionally accountable to. If you value the work that they do then we should value that it's getting done in the way they say it's going to be done and how they say they're going to do it. So really plans and standards is a responsibility that I saw from this board and less, you know, it's more checking the work. Like, did you do what you say you're going to do and the way you said you're going to do it? That's, it's more after. It's not. I don't envision them meddlingly or like participating in a throughout an investigation or something like that. That would be totally not appropriate to me. This is much more, are they saying, are they doing what they said they're going to do in the way they said they're going to do it for the board's purposes? Right, and that gets to their function and oversight, which I think, you know, we've heard pretty clearly that we have to ensure that they don't have, that they don't engage in operational interference. Is that would be? Mr. McClendon would sort of saying these are our, these are the standards we're going to use. This is our plan of approach with this citizen board. Do you think that would get into the territory where it's in an inappropriate interference, or do you, or is that an appropriate level of cooperation and oversight and accountability? I generally think, I like what I'm hearing. I'm not so sure exactly what you mean when you say standards. If what I hear is this, and maybe I can write it down. Just green book. You just need to write it down. I'm sorry. I said more like just, and maybe I can't write. Just Green Book. Is that? Just need to write it down. I'm sorry. I said, more like just, we're using the Green Book. This is the, you know, these are the standards in which we're operating under. Yes. Yeah, I think that's right. If you incorporate the components that you want that board to apply in the legislation, I eat the Green Book, that's fine. That becomes the thing that they measure against. And I very much like just that conceptually you did what you said you're going to do, because there's a lot of different ways to get there. But ultimately, it is the body of work that the IG's office produces that should guide that evaluation kind of regardless and how you put it together. If that's your outcome, I think you're in good space. Thank you. All right. Can we before we leave this point? Yes. So I think I hear two members who are inclined to have a blended nomination by citizen board appointment by the council. Yes, I think that that's. David, I don't know where you are in that. I mean, I think I do, but I don't want to say it for you, I think. I'm indifferent. What? Yeah, no, I'm as long as it's a blended process, it doesn't matter to me whether it goes board to council or council to board. Okay, I'm not. I don't mind. I don't mind us being more involved in the hiring part because I think the hiring part is not a retribution type thing. It's like, hey, this person got let go and we need to replace the person, right? I do like if we do need to be the body that removes the person that it being a really high bar, you know, like that citizens board needs to vote in the affirmative to let the person go and we need a super majority and you could even add in that the executive branch needs to also agree. But like, it's hard to get fired from this job. Yeah. I don't care if it's a little easier to get hired for the job if that makes sense. It makes sense. So it should be. Yes. What do you think? Okay. You'd like it all in this distance board. No. It scares me when you say what you think, because I keep thinking that I've said it pretty claim. I think it should be independent of political influence. And I'll give you two more reasons why here in Howard County our charter makes a very weak county council. So we are susceptible to over-infpleance by the executive because the executive branch in this county by charter is the one that controls virtually everything. So if you think that you're independent because you have council activity in lieu of executive activity, that doesn't play out given how the executive in place chooses to exert his or her influence. The other facet is you could have a council member or council member staff misbehaving and being the subject of scrutiny. We've seen this in Baltimore County. We've seen it very recently in Baltimore County and we've seen really ugly hearings where Baltimore County council members are giving Kelly Madigan a hard time because they know that she's investigating something that they or their staff members are doing, raking her across the coals for no legitimate reason only to undermine her credibility in a community where she is investigating one of those political actors. I. So even with a super majority, you would be concerned that the county council could sort of circle the wagons for one of their colleagues and exert pressure or take that person out. I mean if you guys with a straight face can say I make decisions all the time because of what's right and wrong. I make decisions all the time because of what's right and wrong. Sure. Well you asked for it. Okay. I know what you believe and I know the truth and I know the accusations you make. And so I do laugh a little bit when you're saying things like executive interference because we do have a very independent relationship. I feel like we do have a more independent body. I don't think we could even agree enough to circle the wagons. Well, to be honest. To be real honest, and maybe this is a flaw and just by personality that I'm not as worried about executive influence as I am, we all work together and admit it or not, even though I want to bring your next sometimes. I mean, I could see me resenting and IG going after one of you or one of your staff. And wanting, you know, just like not being able to divorce myself from that and wanting to not be supportive of that. I would be my concern with the citizen board doing everything, is I see who gets appointed to these citizen boards. I would be fine delegating to this citizen board, but then we're going to have to have a long discussion of what are the qualifications for that citizen board. If it is a high quality professional citizen board, I could live with them running the whole show. But, you know, it's... Can we hear from Dr. Jones? Do you have an opinion one way or the other? Dr. Jones on... Yeah, so yeah, yeah. If I was sitting amongst you, you would see my head nodding. You would see me smiling. You would see me making the faces I usually make. Which, you know, six years in, you pretty much know where it goes on. So basically, I'm not to minimize this whole process, but I like it to like a commission where the commission gets kind of goes through the hard work and getting it down to, you know, a certain number as far as the appointing. Kind of like the Flag Commission that we have. They get it down to 10 submissions or I can't remember if it's 10 or not. And then we look at them and different bodies do stuff like this, but we were elected by the people. We were elected by a fifth of the county, collectively the entire county that voted. And I think we should be the ones making the tougher decisions on what happens with this office and with this person. And yeah, I mean, I understand exactly what you're saying this was, but I think at the end of the day, we are the ones that were elected and we should be making that tougher decision on what happens next. But I don't have any problem, as what's rigged me said. And Mr. Youngman said, for a blended process and for a commission or some board, citizens board, to bring forth names. You know, what happens, and this is nothing we haven't talked about. What happens if names come to us and we don't want to choose any of them? What happens if we can send it back? Okay. Yeah. But like, let's say, you know, I know in your case, Miss Young, you know, you have mentioned, you have brought forth several very qualified individuals that you know from your years of service and your husbands years of service to Maryland, right? So people may say, oh my goodness, Miss Young had this person she suggested, well, that person's actually pretty good. You know, they have 20, 30 years of this and 20, 30 years of that. Like, okay, cool. But someone else could say, well, you know, they're going to be biased by discount. Remember, what if they have to investigate that council member? Like, we can do these what ifs in so many different scenarios. Our hope is, I'm sure I hope, as I say, my hope, as I speak to myself. My hope is that none of us need to act or do anything in such a way that would result maybe in some of the neighboring jurisdictions that have had this problem. And an IG investigating us and therefore we need to be strategic about how we appoint this person. Let's just keep doing what we do for the people of Howard County and for the state of Maryland and go forward. So I'm cool with the blended process. I don't think it should be, you know, too far and this way, too far in that way. But at the end of the day, us as elected officials and the council members, we should be making the tougher decisions. The last couple of decisions we'll watch it at. Yeah, there's a question. Yes. So, thank you, Dr. Jens. A future council can change what we set up. They couldn't. This stuff didn't go into the charter. Right. So at the end of the day, if some council wants to act nefariously or not the best interest of the people Can't they just change the law? They would they'd have to go before that public process which I think is good like there would be public scrutiny If they wanted to change the law they'd have to go through the legislative process. They'd have to do the public hearing They'd have to publish the notices so I think you're right. It could be changed and you know our task is to do the public hearing, they'd have to publish the notices. So I think you're right, it could be changed. And our task is to do our best work to set up a strong foundation for the future. So if we're dealing with the removal, that could look, if we're directly removing the person or if we're changing the law so we can remove the person the optics of that could be similar. You mean if we decided that we would have a right to do it? We would okay then somebody. It's the right to do it. Right and then some then a future council said oh we would we just want the citizen board to do it not us Or we gave it or those guys gave it to the citizens board and we want it like right Yeah, that I mean wouldn't that look like I'm a slimy clown I don't like this person who's investigating me all I need to do is find two other council members out of five to agree to change removal process And those same three will vote to change a law. We might want to set this stuff up as some of the big structural things that there's also needing supermajorities. That's a pass, that's a good idea. That's an idea. If you expand the council, I get even harder to get to those majorities. Yeah. Putting that out there for everybody. Okay. Council, I can even harder to get to those majorities. Putting that out there for everybody. Okay, so a super majority to change the removal process. Some day some council is going to look at this and say, why? Why do they do this? And somebody on the council staff will say, well, if you go back to September 24 at 10 20 a.m., you'll see the discussion on this. Yeah. OK, I think we've got a pretty good feel now for where we stand on this. So removing, process of removing, let's go on to the next slide. And it's actually number three of two, which is good, because we only have six slides. So I just want to make sure that you all understand we're halfway through. So. Wait, Chair, can we, you said you had a lot of changed opinions about the composition of that actual board. We're going to get there. Okay. That's the next slide. The citizen board. Yes. No, no, no, stay there. Okay, don't move. All right. is in board. Yes. No, no, no, stay there. Okay, don't move. This is the Inspector General qualifications oversight of the IG, which we definitely need to talk about term duties and responsibilities deputy IG staff and budget. So here I think we're looking at the first thing is qualifications. And I think we've got a pretty good list going. I mean, if anybody wants to jump in, you know, somebody, they're obviously not going to have all of these things, but these are the things that we would be looking for auditing government operations, financial analysis, management, ethics, criminal justice law, management analysis, public administration, investigations. And I think the only thing I could think of that wasn't up there, former IG. I mean, that would be great. IG experience, yeah. And that was the only one at least looking at it that I thought, well, we don't have that up there. That's pretty relevant. Are these going to be appointments through resolution that the full council will get to vote on each one of these people that's going to be appointed to this board? We're not on the board. We're on the office now. Look to the left. Yeah, just, yeah. We're getting the board's going to be next. All right. This is still the IG office. I'm sorry. I still have a page. No, yeah. I. G. I'm sorry. I. know. Yeah. Um, so that this is just the I. G. I have one quick suggestion. Yes. I would I would encourage adding independent government oversight to that list. And it's it's similar to the the comments of, you know, experiences in IG. To me, the most significant skill set that can be brought to this is somebody who has worked in this space where they're operating independently from the main body. It's not always in IG, but something that values that experience, and I think that just including independent government oversight as another area of expertise would would encourage people with that background to apply and measure them appropriately. type of IG in Prince George's county, but they definitely don't call that person an IG, but he does have independent government oversight. So that's a good point. Well, and it doesn't this really come down to investigations, because I think we've all talked at least unofficially that the auditor's office can still support the IG if somebody needs to go do an internal audit of something and provide that background. The IG needs to really know how to investigate things. I mean, the IG in Washington, DC, I think, is a former porter. I mean, it's asking questions, taking deposition, finding the documents, yeah, all of those things. That's the real skill, I think. I mean, ethics background, well, what's an ethics background? You know, that person's financial analysis management. I can do that, but I'm not qualified to be an IG. I just think some of this stuff are not good qualifications for an IG. But you would take some of them. Well, I mean, those are just some of them, right? These are just a list, right? Mr. McClendon, did you, you said that you were an just some of, right? These are just a list, right? Mr. McClendon, did you said that you were an attorney as well, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay. I mean, it does, it just so happens and maybe not just so happens, but the three full-time IGs in the state of Maryland right now are all three attorneys. Megan, Kelly and Isabelle. Yeah. Yeah. You know, industry wide, you know, I can't say that everybody's an attorney, but I'd be willing to bet you're probably talking two thirds of attorneys, you know, exproscutor types. And the other third are people that are transitioning over from a more audit style background. But it's usually one or the other. But as we see this independent oversight model developing, you're starting to see more and more people, whether it's in the law enforcement sphere or in other spaces, you know, being put in positions where they have very strong independence from their governing body. And they are doing investigations. They may be refined to a more significant space or more a discernible space. For instance, I think the reason I was probably picked up in Baltimore City was that I spent years in internal affairs and the skills that you learn as an internal affairs investigator looking at your own department and making tough decisions and backing them up is transitional into the IG world. It's a piece. But I think that that function, that is the one piece that you want to capture. And I'll just close on this. The work that you guys are doing and putting together, I fully expect that you're going to garner a top-notch set of applicants. This is, I can already see coming together a very well plan and put together process, just the fact that you went for charter. I don't think you're going to want for exceptional candidates. I think it's really a matter of, if you have specific skill sets that you want to accentuate to make sure that it's incorporated into the legislation. That's it. Wow, that is so nice to hear from the legislative director of the Association of Inspector Generals. And again, way to go county council for forgetting that charter amendment, Don. I'm glad he said internal affairs, because I think that one of the biggest advantages of this inspector general, besides its independence, but just functionally, versus our like internal audit function that we already have, is feel like you're the follow-up policy. I mean, if there's political pressure brought on the state's attorney's office to charge or not charge someone or the police department or things like that that are way outside the realm of what a financial auditor would do. Nobody's stoning money, you know, the Debra's and Credits added up, but it might not even cost the county anything, or the taxpayers anything, but somebody didn't get due process, or somebody's just not doing their job in an important place. And that's what that internal affairs type stuff is going to come in. So I just want to make sure we're not too focused on the financial part of this and we're as focused on the behavior sort of even if there is no financial impact. Right. We don't have to do it just because nobody's watching us. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Next is oversight. We don't have to do it just because nobody's watching us. Yeah, yeah Yep Okay, next is oversight. I think we've we've talked about this you know who would do and and mr. McClendon mentioned it That some citizen boards do I think let me just make sure I get the agreement on this We want the citizen board to do whatever oversight. Okay, yeah, all right, we got that. So. Can I add one thing to that? Yes. And I heard Mr. McClendon make the distinction between ministerial and operational. And I think that's really valuable. The ministerial can happen concurrently, but the operational has to be retrospective if at all. Well, so I think we've got to, you know, what kind of, there's a couple things here. One, the performance review to operational non-interference. So I think those, and three, how to perform the review. I have to say that Mr. McClintock mentioned two different models where the citizen board meets once a month with the IG or the citizen board meets a couple times a year. I always think that you can get the best people when you ask less of them. If you say, look, you only have to meet twice a year to review the reports of the IG, then you're better able to get people that you agree. We're already on that point. If not, still spends a week or month preparing the reports and PowerPoint for the meeting. Now, if you guys were uncomfortable with twice a year, it could be once a quarter, whatever it is, but monthly just seems. That seems like, yes, I would agree. I can't even imagine any employee having to do a monthly period. I don't even need with you guys monthly. I know you don't. We're well aware of that, David. That's not true. OK. All right, so, and we all recognize that we probably should say something about operational non-interference in the bill so that people, so the citizen board will recognize that you're not allowed to walk into the IG's office and say, hey, this council member is my best friend and you better stop investigating her right now. Okay. Alright. So we're all good with that. Alright. Term. This is the term of the Inspector General. So not the citizen board. Remember one, just the Inspector General right now. I will share my idea, react to it, disagree. I think maybe the first term of NEIG, this one that we're gonna be hiring as well as any IG after that, should probably be a little shorter so that if they're not working out, we could not renew their term after that. I was just started thinking about this recently. So maybe their first term is three or four years, and then afterwards they could serve five-year terms. And I also happen to agree with Mr. McClintock who says, why would you give term limits? Because if somebody wants to come and be in IG and Howard County, but knows that, well, in eight years, I'm gonna have to look for a new job. I'm only 40 years old. I have all those great experience, but I don't wanna have to look for a job at age 48, or even worse, because believe it or not, age discrimination is the number one discrimination claim in the United States of America. I'm 50 years old. I want to take this job. I have all the experience. If I do two four year terms, I'm done. And I don't know that I want to be finished with my professional career at age 58. And it's going to be really hard for me to get a new job at that age, which is very true. So I'm kind of thinking that in order to get somebody with a lot of experience experience and who would be really good for the county that we shouldn't be limiting the number of terms. It doesn't mean that we still can't not renew their contract at the end of the term we could, but by outright limiting their terms from the very beginning, they might say, I'm not that interested. I mean, we know right now that there are three IGs whose terms actually, Isabelle doesn't have term limits. Yes, she doesn't have term limits. But Kelly and Megan have term limits. And they both have mentioned that in the course of conversations. I'm not going to guess how old they are, or the fact that Howard County's creating an IG. But I mean, it does make it difficult for people who are completely and there aren't, frankly enough, IG positions yet in the state of Maryland for IGs to just do a merry-go-round here in Maryland and go from one place to the next. So, anyway, my thought. So other people. Ideas. Oh, sorry. No, I agree with the Baltimore City Model. We have some limits. Doing a good job. Why on earth would we Remove them? Yeah. Does anyone know why the term limits Were originally introduced in any of the nearby jurisdictions? What the policy goal was it? Mr. McClendon, do you have insight into that? Not specifically to the other jurisdictions. I can say that over the years, I've heard the argument that the position has too much power. And that usually comes from people that believe that the IG is playing favorites, which to be honest with you is a very rare occurrence. But that's the argument that comes forward. There are many, many more examples of IGs that are term limited, that there's discussions about how can we reverse this because we want to keep this person. You find somebody that's good at it and you want to keep them as a much more common thing with term limits in my opinion. Thank you. I mean, I guess my concern because so much of this is hypothetical, right? We're setting up this thing that doesn't exist that needs to exist into the future. I'm fine with like a longer term or multiple terms, but and maybe this is just, you know, from where I am. But sometimes it does seem like when people are in positions for long times, they can set up almost little fiefdoms. It can lead to complacency. People get used to it. Does anyone have any kind of those concerns that 15 years in? You know, I mean, I guess that would be rectified by the citizen board. They would say like you're not, like we need you to be doing things at this level or you said you were going to do this and it wasn't done. But I mean, the only thing that gives me pause, I was surprised that there were turnoluits in general when we first started talking about it, but since there are so many around us, it does give me pause about not having a term. Very open-minded in this. You're in favor of no term limits. Yeah, right. Okay. David. I don't know Okay, I think everybody's right. I I don't want I mean the ultimate term limit We always say is the voters and in this case the ultimate term limit could end up being the county council like If we're tired of you being there you pick favorites or or this or that, then you're gonna be gone anyway, even if by law you're not gone. But, you know, we get complacent and familiar and they haven't investigated me in the last 12 years. So, I'm like, you know. Is that mean we should investigate you, David? No, I'm just saying. I'm just saying, you know. Okay, you have me there. I mean, you are. But it's like, you know, could, could the ultimate oversight body, which in this case is the county council, you know, just get comfortable with the same person being there. And you know, bringing in somebody new could provide a first perspective, could I don't know. Yeah, I just worry about like the concept of power corrupting someone in the sense of that, you know, I don't know, it is a lot of power and if it's not, if it's something that someone can hold on to forever, does that change how they operate within it? So Mr. McClendon, when you have, let's say you don't have term limits and let's say you adopt four-year terms. And at the end of the second four-year term, which obviously is eight years then. Do you, is there anything that prohibits the citizen board from saying at that point, assuming that it's the citizen board, we're not going to renew your contract. I mean, they can still say, we don't want to bring you back. They don't have to fire that person. If it's, yeah, if it's renewed by contract or by agreement, or however, if we put some sort of verbiage in the statute itself that says renewed every four years by the citizen board, then that would still give us both, that would give the council or the county the ability to get in someone new or to keep somebody who's really good? I don't disagree with that. I think that, you know, just if you were to provide the sitting board, the authority to to reappoint an inspector general, it could be on their own or it could be with the concurrence of the council. You know, other observations as I listen to you talk, and I know we spoke about this once before. I don't know what vesting is in the Howard County system for year-wise, but I can tell you that there have been positions out there that earned jurisdictions that may not best for seven or nine years and are asking somebody to pick up and move halfway across the country, sometimes with their family. For your term, that's a hard sell. So that's something to think about. You were hitting on both sides of the arrangement. You can have a bad board, a bad council who's seeking to get rid of a good eye for the wrong reasons and you can have an IG that's become complacent. I mean, look, everybody's human it can happen, right? I like your perspective or your thought on it because you're 100% right, that citizen board, if they are the entity that initiates that reappointment can simply not reappoint. And I can assure you that that happens on occasion and again it can be for right or wrong reasons but giving them the authority to do so it is sound in the way that this normally works out and once you guys get up and moving normally there will be some sort of an agreement between the board and the IG that says, hey, look, on appointment years, we're going to start talking four or five, six months out. And if there's an interest in staying and if there's an interest in us keeping you, you know, then we can talk. But if you want to leave or if we want to change, let's talk about how to develop a transition and everybody's professionals on all sides of this thing. So, you know, that will allow time to do a national search and all of those things. So, I think that it's really a matter of how our county wishes to move forward from the IG side. It is more compelling to a good candidate to have the ability to stick around if they relocate at their family and their kids are now growing up in a different city and all these things. That doesn't mean that it's right from the legislative side. That's obviously your call, but that's my take over. Yeah, and that actually your point about when do you vest? It's five years, right? Is that what I just saw? Yeah. So maybe I would change my mind about the term three years. I don't know anybody's gonna come if they can. Yeah. Yes, Ms. Riepie. Well, I was just wondering if we know the alignment of the other terms of the folks and the jurisdictions around us. Like, is there a way to align it so that those periods are similar so that there's almost like an open-eating period? It's really more of a I think a research request for the future. So Baltimore County has an initial five-year terms, four-year subsequent terms. So they have a total of nine years. I know I think Kelly's a year and a half or two years away from her second, the end of her second four-year term. Right, because it's like Montgomery County, Baltimore County, have terms, and then the use of the city does not have a term. They have a six-year term, but it doesn't, you can keep... There's no limit. Okay. There's no term limit, yeah. And there's no limit in print storages for their ethics independence office. No, but that's because it's just a hybrid of various things. Yeah. Okay, so I mean I guess in my thought it was our years falling on the same year, our open year, falling on the same year with these other jurisdictions, but I guess it's just... No, but if they really wanted to come to Howard County they could have something they could leave early and have somebody else fill the end of their term. Could not they? Yes. Are you saying this to me or? No, I'm saying this to the world out there who might be listening. Okay, did you have a comment? Again, plainly in favor of no term limits for many of the reasons that McLean talk has as identified, which is mostly just attracting and keeping top talent. Baltimore City does have a six year term of appointment, but it doesn't really speak to a difference for reasons of removal versus renewing that appointment. And I mean, we just talked about having a citizen board meet with this inspector generally, at least twice a year, going over performance reviews. In Baltimore City, the reasons for removal can be persistent failure to perform the duties of the inspector general. And so I feel like that's kind of the example that we've come up with hypothetically is this dottering person phoning it in. So I mean my argument would be that following a no term limit, Baltimore City example that there are mechanisms already built into the citizen board and their scope of review and how often they're doing it that would allow them to identify something like persistent failure to perform duty, which would be removal for cause. Term limit or not, you know, where and the term they were. You wouldn't wait to the end of a four year term to be like, we can't help but notice that you haven't done anything for three years so we won't be renewing, right? We would want that board to step in at year one. But so I just think, I mean, if you guys want to build it, all these kind of layers, fine by me, because if that's what it takes to get, you know, the legislative body comfortable with the concept. But I do think on that one that there are already mechanisms built in to what that oversight includes and what the cause is for removal slash renewal of. I'm term would be but if we don't want to do that I think we have to be specific about whether or not we want there to be a difference between removal for cause versus declining to renew. Yeah yeah like when we talk about supermajority to remove you, do we also need that to renew your contract? Yeah. And I think we probably should be clear in the legislation that those are two separate issues. Yeah. Yeah. But you, I'm indifferent on the term limits, but if we do determine limits, I do think that it needs to be long enough for someone to vest vest. Yep. Agreed. I like the six year term, but without limiting it. So that like your initial period is that six years because that gives you sort of a, ideally those two years would happen mid-term of the elected officials. So that way you would have sort of this two, you wouldn't be getting someone totally new when all the officials are potentially new. And so we might have to structure it a little bit differently for this first one just because of that timing. But I think sort of having someone go through a full term and a half, and then a half term and then a full, I think would really support that IG in doing their work. I like that. And now that you say that, I'd like maybe that is where the Baltimore County mismatch came from. And just a note on that. I think it's common in a lot of jurisdictions to have that first year of a new office be longer because there's a substantial set up time. If that comes into play, I say that only because you don't necessarily need to bind future terms to the first term. Understanding there's going to probably be a nine month or so start up time. And the other thing I heard said that I very much like and see, we see is staggering the term so that it falls in the middle of the legislative elections for a lot of reasons. You see that more often in state governments, I think, the split gubernatorial elections. So the governor is going to have to deal with whoever the existing IG is for at least a partial term. And it keeps the IG in a good transitional space as well. So if that is something that is of interest that you want to work in, it's about consideration. Okay, good discussion. All right. Next is duties and responsibilities, the IGs, the head of the office, higher staff, establishes and administrative procedures. And this is, I don't think anybody would disagree with this, but with those three responsibilities. But I think the important thing here is, again, emphasizing the independence of the IG. The IG is the one who hires the staff, not the council or okay. And that includes the deputy IG and staff, which comes underneath that. And then the last bullet point on this is budget. And I certainly recognize that the IG has to have independence and setting their budget. They're going to know better than anybody else. How many staff members they need and the types of people that they're going to need in order to do the work that's before them. But what I have to ask you, this Mr. McClinnick, what if a IG says, I need a million dollars for my five person staff? I would love a million dollars for my five person staff. That's not going to happen. I would want to work for the IG. How do you set some parameters without taking away the independence? Yeah, that's one of the age-old fundamentals there. I think it may be too deep for today's conversation, but I think you first need to kind of refine what that budget's going to entail. I mean, number one on my list, and I've had this conversation with several people in Howard County is independently of legal counsel and we can talk about that later. Yes, we're getting to that. Yeah. But you take a concept like that. And it's like, if that is the decision that's made and they have in house counsel, like I had in Louisiana, or you have out of house counsel, like a lot of other shops do or outside counsel, you know, that that in and of itself is is a substantial cost when you're talking a small office, not that it's not a value, but but more importantly, do does Howard County want to embrace the, I think, very positive trend of housing inspectors general outside of your typical government facilities? Putting them in a rented office. It could be a rented office or, yeah, or it could be some county facility that you repurpose, but it's trust the IG. There's nobody else there. I'm with you on that. Well, I am. I don't know. I actually started thinking about that this week. But we have a department of police department because it has their own space. And the reason the space is the spot that I was in in Louisiana, that was required by law, which is fine, but it costs a substantial amount of money for us to secure a corporate space, you know, regular business space and do the minor reworking that we had to do. So you look at a shop that maybe 9, 10, 11 people big and now you also have to fund that least space. So I say those things just to kind of indicate that until you refine some of those drivers, it's hard to put a number around it. You know, moving from that space, you know, the other elements that we see used most often is some sort of a micro percentage of the county budget. I think that's the model in New Orleans. I picked that up from New Orleans. And once you determine what that refined initial space looks like, you may decide it's something equivalent to a million dollars for our own missing. Well, you figure out what that is at the county budget, and then you say their budget shall be this. And that allows the office to grow with the county as the county grows. That's the benefit of that model. I was, and I don't recommend this, I had a tax, I had a specific special tax in Louisiana that ran for 10 years, that provided the funds. Now, Louisiana does a lot of things strange, and that's one of them, but they did it because there's a lot of fraud everywhere. Louisiana is just proud of what they got. And they recognize that they recognize that an IG in Louisiana needs to have an extraordinary and extraordinary amount of independence. And I thought it was inventive of them to do that, to pass a millage. And that was great because that money came directly to us. And it couldn't be touched as a matter of fact, while it was there, they did pull money from it. And we figured it out. And I think it was an oversight, but either which way, the county did not have the authority to expend that millage money only the inspector general did. Now we had to count for everything obviously, but that just shows you how meaningful the budgetary independence can be depending on your circumstances. So to find a space that is the easiest to refine something along a fixed or a budget that is going to occur without intervention, it would be that micro percentage piece. Now, the ordinance could list the percentage and you can move that ordinance. But again, it's great space for everybody because it's going to require hearing. There's going to be a public discussion. Why do you want to lower it? So there's protections for the independence side there because the council would have to articulate why they want to lower the budget. On the other hand, if they want to raise it, why do you want to raise it? Same thing. So I think that if there is an inclination to establish a fixed number that provides heightened independence because it's not an annual budget presentation where the council can move and change it as they see fit, but it also provides them the ability to do so if there's a cause. And I've seen situations where they've come to the table and said, we want you to stand up a new function, an inspection function, an evaluations function, or we want you to hire two people to put over in the permits office because the investigation you did revealed it's a long-term fix and we want you all over there. Well, okay, adjust the budget by that micro percentage increase and we're off to the races. So I think you have some choices there. And to be fair, there are places that don't have any of that, and you do annual budget presentations. But if that is an inclination, I would suggest to consider that component of the county budget. David, you look like you're ready to. You know, you hate to spend so much money on this office that all the potential waste they identify is offset. But I like the thought of them being off site. Oh, I do too. I, yes. And I know it's an increased cost. But I don't think it's. Yeah. It doesn't need to be like some of the office space that we've approved in the past. Yeah, it could be Yeah, there and you know now is not bad time to be getting office space Sure, that's true too, but it can be comparable to what we have in government not Not feel safe. Yeah, Christian I have more of a legal question if we have the authority to set a microprison to if the council has the authority to set a percentage in an ordinance for regarding the budget. And that would be in light of getting the charter amendment passed which does say that there is budget independence for the IG? I'll answer generally without seeing anything specifically. But so the charter amendment proposes that whatever the IG comes up with as a budget for the year has to be included in the executive's budget submission to the council. It can't be reduced by the executive before submission of the budget submission to the council. Can't be reduced by the executive before submission of the budget. The council's power to reduce any budget submission still remains. And what I thought I heard Mr. McClendon talking about was the idea of setting parameters to guide the judgment of the IG in developing his or her budget submission that would go to the executive. Ms. Wash. Did that answer the question note, which is, does the council have the legislative or whatever? Does the council have the authority to set, as the example Mr. McClintock said, a requirement that the IG receive at least 0.01% of the county's annual rent. The micro percentage. Yeah, we'll take a look at that. Okay. It's interesting. And I think we need to consider the question and light of the fact of what the amendment is doing to the budget process in terms of whatever the IG requests is essentially what has to come down here from the executives. Okay. Budget office. Yeah. A middle ground that's in place in Bonn-Rostit is that this is one of the functions that that citizen board provides is that an interim position between the IG gets whatever it wants or we set some micro percentage or everybody gets in a fight about it in May is that the IG citizen board reviews and approves the IG submitted budget and they have some authority to OK it or revise it or send it back so that it comes to the executive who by charter amendment is basically required to fund it. It has some validity by the people who we trust the most to exercise that oversight and judgment. OK. Oh, I like it. that oversight and judgment. Okay. Oh, I like that. And while you got, while you, you're talking about that, just keep keeping it back your mind. It, um, you know, the inspector general is, is highly incentivized to, to be incredibly transparent with their, with their expenditures. And so, so that, so it is not, you know not into a black hole, essentially, that standing committee would have the ability, as mine, did for many years, literally go line item by line item. What did you use this for? Could you do it differently? So, and in that model, now in the millage model I had, which was wonky to begin with, they ended up having to allow me to roll the funds over because I didn't spend it all every year. I capped myself by charter change that I could only accumulate maximum of one year's annual budget before I rolled back over to county government. But in this model, if they don't spend it all, it can roll back at the end of the year. So think about what you would do with overages, whether they will be allowed, if you choose to go that way, whether they will be allowed to carry a reserve. And one of the arguments for reserve is that periodically we would get a case that required us to get temporary outside support. You know, somebody with a high degree of expertise in government bond issuance or something. And we would need the funds to do that. So when that happens, and it's okay, now we've got to go find $75,000 to get this expert in here to analyze this data for us, figure out whether we've got a problem or we don't, we either have a reserve that allows us to do that independently, just go do it, or we're going to have to go back and ask for money. And then the question is going to be, what are you asking for money for? And then the IG is going to be in the spot, just a little, you know, inside baseball, then the IG is in the spot where it's like, wow, got this confidential information on how do I handle the justification component. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but I think it's an argument for some sort of a floating, a floating fund that would of course have to be justified upon expenditure and in the annual report, but it would allow them to function a little bit more, a little bit more, a debtor during a matter that requires some outside support. That's it. Well, we actually have experience with this. Our state's attorney came to us on almost the exact same issue. He was putting money in a place that we were never quite sure what it was for and we finally drilled down that it was for, in the place that we were never quite sure what it was for. And we finally drilled down that it was for in the event that he needed expertise in a particular type of witness. And I think he was fearful that we wouldn't just put the money in that piece of the budget. So there was some other nomenclature that he was using and we said no, just put the money in for the potential expertise witnesses that you might need for the future and if it doesn't use it it goes away, but he's now I think more comfortable knowing that that money is in there and when he has to use it he he can use it. So we do have experience with that. On that, really, almost exact same issue. Ms. Wash. No good. Office of law, we can't do though what Mr. McClendon was suggesting which is role over savings in one year to the same office and the following. Is that right? You are wording something or a mouthing, and I couldn't. What? Currently, if an appropriation isn't expended or encumbered before the fiscal year or by the time the fiscal year ends, it lapses unless it falls into one of three buckets. It's either a capital project appropriation, grant funding, or the risk management fund. Otherwise, it lapses. So there, the other way to say there isn't a way to maintain a reserve fund. There's that. Well, there's CEF also in housing commission. That is allowed to use the world over funds. So what happens is it lapses and budget proposes that it be reappropriated. They keep track of what it sort of ends up at the end of the fiscal year and then that is part of they estimate what the surplus will be at the end. And that's always in those fund pages that you appropriate every year. So you're actually reappropriating the money. So we could still do it. It would just be in a reappropriation of the monies that they didn't spend on top of whatever else they were asking for. It'd be the same function. Okay. All right. We're going to move on so that we can get through this in an attempt to get to our other people. Okay. Next is we are now we are actually on the citizen board and there are two things that we that are discussion points. The qualifications of members on the citizen board and the disqualification of members on the citizen board. And I don't know how much we need to really talk about this other than for me to just say, you guys, all of us need to think about these categories to make sure that we've got everybody on this board that we think we need to have and that people are disqualified for felony conviction, elected officer or candidate, lobbyist, immediate family member of an elected officer candidate, county employees. If there are other people who you think we should disqualify, I think we just need to get when we get together after this meeting. We can talk about that. Mr. Yemen. How are we going to define lobbyists? Because there are some folks out there that are very involved in suggesting things to us that might not take the time to register as lobbyists. Are we gonna use the list, or are we gonna use our best judgment? Did you mean like resident activists? Resident activists, attorneys, accountants, just people. Some of the attorneys that consider resident activists. Yeah, you know, I mean. People of attorneys, I'd consider resident activists. Yeah, you know, I mean people. Who are paid by their clients? Oh yeah, but I just mean like, right, yeah. Yes, but I'm saying that there are people who are residents who are activists who may not be advocating on behalf of a client, they may be just advocating generally about something in the same way that any other resident would be. I don't think that's what Sharon and I was talking about. Okay. That's more a frequent flyer activist with their cause that I hope that we as a board or as a county council say, hey, look, you know, that's, this isn't the place for that. This is the place for these other things. But I don't think you can start eliminating citizens that care too much about the community from being on this board. That's all. I just wanted, is the lobbyist going to be registered lobbyist or it's going to be people who are generally engaged in the practice of contacting us on behalf of their clients throughout the years? Because that list changes every year, too. I mean, that's a question for Office of Law. Isn't it why aren't those people registering as lobbyists? If they're being paid by a client to influence politics and the decision in that. I mean, yeah, if the person's activity meets the definition of a lobbyist and the ethics code, they should be registering. Whether it's at the beginning of the year, three months into the year, you know, July, it's an ongoing thing if they haven't registered previously for that particular client. Well, I'm just recognizing that it might not be a perfectly, a perfect process. And maybe it's just something that we all agree together that like if they're not currently working with a client, so they're not on this year's list, but they've worked with, they've been paid to lobbying behalf of clients for the last five years. There's still a lobbyist. That's their profession. That's what they do. They may have let it lapse because that case is over and everyone hasn't come up yet, but they're generally in the practice of... Yes, influencing political decisions for money. Yeah, I just think that we shouldn't just simply stick to the list that we should agree that a lobbyist is somebody that is on the list from time to time. Well, we will be the body that appoints the first citizen board. Yeah. And if that term ends up being five years, let's just hope that we can find however many number of people which is on the next person probably wouldn't want to serve because then if they do get a client and they do need to register then they're going to kicked off the board anyway so it's the point so I think we all agree. Okay what I thought David you were going to say though was these repeat players that literally migrate from one board to the other. And so I thought we heard in public hearing, or maybe we got it in written testimony, there was a recommendation that at least my office heard that you couldn't be on another commission. You couldn't be appointed on another higher-category commission. Oh, I agree. Theoretically, those people could also be okay. Because it's sort of like ethics commission. You be- Now there's someone on ethics who's also service on the board of appeals though. And she's on this call right now. Yes, but I just mean that like we have this conflict, it's an existing conflict, is my- Yeah, and that's a conflict. If this board or this position could potentially be investigating you and your board over there, you can't be on both. Right. You can't be both. Right. That's all. And we wanted to be explicit that elected official included also the central committees. Yes. Okay. Yes. I don't know if that was legal or someone else, but I thought we heard. Like the party central committees? Yeah. But you shouldn't serve on a party central committee and also serve on this board. I think, yeah, any elected officer, which would include state's attorney, sheriff, members of the central committee, to me, yeah. The central committee may technically, yeah. Yeah, elected party officers. Yeah. Judges, some judges. Well, judges. Yeah, OK. Anyway, qualifications of members, I think this is where I said, my thought process has changed a lot about who should be on the citizen board. Initially, I was thinking, well, of course, it should be one person from each councilmanic district, maybe one by the county executive, and then a couple of people who are professionals. My thought process has really changed on this, and I think it should probably be five professionals. Just, you know, a former IG, which I know there are former IGs and or somebody formerly from an IG office. I know there are people in this county as well as others. A prosecutor, preferably not from Howard County actually, because I think it would be better to have somebody outside of Howard County. We talked about retired judges again. I think somebody from outside of Howard County, and initially I was thinking, it has to be people from Howard County. But the more I've thought about this, the more I've thought it should not be from people from inside Harry County. Well, it should be people who don't have a dog in the fight, who don't know the actors and actresses who are involved in these processes, who can make decisions solely on the basis of, this is the best candidate, now we've got the best candidate. This is what their performance is supposed to be. We think that they're doing a good job or not recommending removal, giving advice to the IG because of their professionals in these arenas, they would also be able to say, this is how, this might be a way to help you conduct these types of investigations. You might be more successful if you actually did X as opposed to Y. So those are just my thoughts. And I'm sure you all have thoughts you agree with that Liz okay Liz agrees with those thoughts. Well I agree with everything you said but I'm glad you brought up County versus Non-County because I mean I don't want somebody from Kansas on this thing. I think kids. I mean, I want them to have some kind of courage. David McCleodont, luckily you've done to yourself. But actually now, I think about it, that I just limited, like, if David retires from this job and is no longer in this association and wants to serve on our, like, we would be stupid not to be like thank you. Yes. So, yeah, okay. Yeah, so I'm, you know, I think. I think it's between DC. I know DC Montgomery County and Arondo County. We have so many people who work in IG offices, who've been investigators, who can really come onto this citizen board without, you know, okay, I'm just saying that, I think this is a good way to go forward. Cristiana. Hi, I'm in agreement. Oh great, okay, we're moving on to slide. OK, wait. But who points the other friend? Well, we would have to appoint them. And we haven't figured out how to appoint them yet, right? So we would appoint them. I think maybe we'd sort of do the usual. We could try this. And I don't know how we would legislate it. We could try like here, we each, well, first of all, I think we would need to advertise, okay, because that's how we're going to get the largest reach of people, that it won't just be us who we know, right? Because you and I as attorneys, we might know more attorneys. So, you know, I don't want to stack the board with attorneys. But it may end up being stacked by attorneys, but it shouldn't be just stacked by attorneys that I know or that might know. So I think the first thing we should do is advertise. And I don't know if we're going to build this into the legislation. And then I think we could also do outreach. We could come up with a list of maybe 15 and who they are. And then we could get together, talk about those names, and make a determination. We could vote the way Michelle like, Okay, vote for your top seven. I mean, this is, we're sort of delegating our authority in a way to this board. So why wouldn't we do it like we normally do? We're each of us and whoever else we include in this appointment thing. Say, here's my person. And then the body votes on that. You know, they still have to be approved. But I definitely think we should be able to make recommendations. Yes. That we all should come into that process and make recommendations. But I don't know why we go through this like the way we're hiring the auditor. OK. But I do think that we should advertise. Don't you think that we should advertise from people just not really for a job. They're not getting paid. It's just they advertise for commission people. Well, and they do advertise actually. That's a board compensates. That's a good be part of the discussion because we were getting there not involved in this whole section of the charter, so they could be. That's on the next page. Yeah. Wanted to put that out there that that could be an element. It could be an element. And that's a good point because if you want to bring in somebody that's got some talent from another place, they're not really vested. Like why would a wide white woman be there? They also think three times a year and read their reports. We can put it on the county's website. You know, they advertise for commissions and board members. And when you said they could be, that means that people will see also that we're forming a citizen board for hiring of an IG in Howard County. And then they might say, hey, what's going on here? I might want to be the IG for Howard County. I wonder how this is gonna get set up. You know, this is, and then you have obviously, Michelle, can take those calls. It's gonna be a while, but we're gonna get it, yeah. And then they could even be on a list of people who get the job announcement when it comes out. I think pushing out the citizen board would be good for us in a lot of ways. So, and I think in the space for the space of time I think we need to maybe go offline in terms of thinking about the mechanics of how to get these names in. Is that okay with everybody? Okay. So you'll take the like the process of like how we would submit, that's just a, it's a future discussion point that we have to make. The mechanics, yes. Okay. And I did have a question that was back on slide four. Oh no. You're going back. Okay. So first going back. Okay. So first going back. It's going to be too fast. Okay. So on the under disqualification, I, I'm only bringing this up because this has occurred in the past. So we have had residents that have been blocked from serving on boards because of disagreements with council members. And we've had people who have significant disagreements and publicly bashed council members who have been appointed. So I guess I just think it's important that we kind of figure that out and how we want to approach that. You mean like a member is already on the board or they're being submitted? They're being nominated like someone who has for the citizen board. they have been nominated. No, like it being submitted, they're being nominated, like someone who has... For the citizen board. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, hopefully to be honest, I'm hoping that there'll be professional people like... That would be my hope, but sometimes I mean, we have all sorts of people in our community. You're trying to stay off the board list. Who have all sorts of professions, who make all sorts of posts online, that you know, you would not suspect would come from that profession, or make accusations or theories, or you know, whatever it is. But you know, they are certainly part of our ecosystem in our community. And I think that because we've had situations where folks like that have been appointed and served, and we've had situations where folks have been submitted for appointment and prohibited blocked with drawn. I think we're looking for people that aren't currently engaged in anything else we do. Well that would be the ideal and- And I don't know how you write that- Again, it's a lot of fun to do. You can really let yourself- It's a lot of people real- Anybody that gets sort of suggested to be on this board, you know, that has consistently been engaged in county business, is like we don't, this isn't for them. There's a lot of opportunities for them to serve other places. Well, I don't know how you read. Do we have a mechanism that would allow us to have that discussion? Because I think most, yeah. And no, we don't have it for any of the other countries. No, I agree. I don't think we can legislate that anymore than we can legislate lobbyists who don't register as lobbyists. Like, people have to act like grownups if they want to be considered for commission appointments. And we have to expect that the council members will be respectful enough of each other to not appoint. That must be expected. Yes. Okay, so we're all committing to not doing that against us. Not appointing people to commissions that have made personal attacks, I guess, or spread conspiracy. I thought we're from a member of the conspiracy. Yeah, that's a choice. No, that's a choice. But I just, I think you don't want someone on here that has a personal animus for any of us or the county executive that would use their position on this to influence an IG to potentially target someone. And we're just going to have to have our, we're just going to have to promise to not do that. I mean people will have an opportunity to make their case to the IG that if somebody is upset about something that's going on in the county government, they'll have their opportunity to make their case to the IG after the IG gets appointed. They don't need to be on the citizen board. I mean, that's that, yeah. Okay, I thought what we were going to talk about was political party affiliation because I'm very proud of you. That's what I thought. I thought Mr. Youngman was going back to that I thought. I thought for sure, young men. I thought that was one of your major points. And so I want to make sure that we address that. And I thought another thing that isn't, I don't know where it is on your slides. But someone mentioned it today. I don't see it here is what role the executive plays in employment to this citizen board. is it purely a legislative body created entity or are there ex officio members? I mean that seems like a big issue that we're not addressing. We are addressing it if we could get to the next slide. Yeah I didn't think so. I thought that was the next slide. But we haven't got the air yet so yeah. I feel pretty strongly there need to be a minimum of two people from each of the two major parties and two unaffiliated registered voters on the hard You know, I initially I totally agreed with you David, but now that I've changed my thinking about not trying to get citizens from different councilmanic districts and two people from the county executive, I really think it should be a professional board. And regardless of political affiliation, I don't care what their political affiliation is. You know, people who, if we can get a prosecutor to serve on our board, I don't wanna know if they're a Democrat or Republican. Well, most of them are. But I don't want to know that. I don't want to know that. Did you see all the signs of every 70? Welcome to Maryland, they're blue. I'm just saying. I don't want to know that. I don't want to know their political leanings. I want to know that they have a job, that they do at present, that qualifies them to help us select the best person to be our inspector general. But we're not going to investigate all of these people as we should not. And the machine has lots of tentacles and lots of people that are, you know, attorneys or prosecutors or accounts or just in their professional roles might be kind of tied in politically somewhere else. And because it's not like you leave Howard County, and all of a sudden you don't know anybody in Howard County. You know, like, you'd be surprised. I've met so many people on this journey outside of Howard County, and I'll say, oh yeah, we're doing that. Oh, who's the county executive in Howard County? Who's this? Who's that? I mean, you have to people don't know who we are. But they can't get in. They can be influenced by a state central committee, a state party. I mean, if this IG is going after a high respected elected official, either executive branch or a toss or whatever, this person could be from Prince George's County, and they're still going to get a call. Maybe from somebody that used to actually. Look, certainly if we're going to have one Republican, we should have one Democrat. But I just hate the idea of putting a political partying this citizen board by saying this. I agree with you that it would be better to don't ask, don't tell, don't know. Yeah. But I think that could also be naive in that you end up with a player from Montgomery County who's really kind of a player in a NAPA list, which means that they have some allegiance. It's here, I'm just trying to find ways to continue to make it more and more independent. Mr. McClintock, have you dealt with this issue before? Do you have any observations on this to help us in this room? Been incredibly interesting to listen to. I'm going to back to this room. As he placed on the tarot and he'll have to. Yeah. One thing that I, I didn't want to interrupt the flow earlier that I would consider adding to your disqualification would be political donations. I don't know how you feel about that, but I've seen that. And I've actually seen board members really like that. The one that comes to mind disqualified anybody who had made political donations in the last two years to any of the local candidates. Yeah, good catch. And then once they're on board, they are prohibited from giving political donations. So, one second, David, before you move, is that going to knock out some of, I know attorneys get hit up a lot for 50 bucks to go to a reception for somebody that's running for judge or I would hate for somebody really good that went to a happy hour like getting knocked out of consideration. You know what I mean? I'm not concerned. So they're seven people. We can find people who haven't given political donations. I'm sorry we haven't gotten to the next page. The point is there's enough good people around. If somebody gets knocked out, they're mind. I'm sorry, we haven't gotten to the next page. The point is there's enough good people around. Yeah. If somebody gets knocked out, they're not. I'm sorry, Dave. Go ahead. That's OK. Now I think it helps drive your candidate pull more towards the type individuals that I hear. People, you know, desirous of attaining folks that are, you know, disconnected from the political apparatus are not likely going to have been contributors in any meaningful sense. So that's something I would consider adding. As far as mandating a deer and a r and don't forget the eyes out there as well, I have not seen that. And that is something I don't have an opinion on on but I can tell you I've looked at an awful lot of boards. I've not seen an effort to mix the board based on that. I think it's almost a little counterintuitive to the seeking an apolitical board. I very much like the professional vent. I think that whether they're in the county or out of the county, if you put a board together, that much like I suggest the IG is going to be viewed based on the body of their work. If you put a board together professionals, their applications or their submissions for consideration are going to include a professional body of work that I think is going to, I'm hopeful, would demonstrate those individuals that are going to act in a certain fashion regardless of all these ancillary issues. So, it's a monolic comment. Okay, Kristian. My view on the party affiliation is less from the decision-making side. I think we should, in the way that I'm looking at this in my mind, we have these professionals, and that's the first qualification. Of those professionals, do we have a spectrum represented across political party? And it's not for the decision-making process that I'm asking about it. It's really for the legitimacy of how the public receives that decision making process. So, you know, there's oftentimes there are people here at decision and they don't agree with that because of their political experience or their political, the view, the lens that they're bringing because all politics is, is how we make decisions in our community at the end of the day. And so that's the view they're looking at it with. And so does having this representation across the political spectrum as part of the professionals, not their first qualifications, but as a secondary or goal or a soft qualification to add to their legitimacy of the decision making. Because I think with the partisan nature of, and I really blame 24 hour news for a lot of this, but you know, like some people are just really, like they are really in this. And so are they hearing these decisions out in the community and they're filtering it through this lens and does having that spectrum of political representations say, look, everybody was at this table and this decision was made. Now that D might not be this D and that R might not be that R, but parties are generally broader. It gives us some optical cover. OK. But this is- I can't take the legitimacy of it. I do want to bring, I mean, it's an individual example, but I have a friend who was an investigator for an IG's office. She was a Republican, and in order to vote for for me changed her party affiliation to Democrat. A Liker signed a rob. She takes one of your D spots. So what do you do with that? She'd already be excluded just a piece of paper. You know, right. That's true. That is true. But and I wouldn't for that reason probably have yeah actually nominated her. So this I just think anyway we can talk more about this offline. Okay, but in order to finish getting through these PowerPoints, I think we should move ahead, but yeah. All right, so next is, this is where we were looking at the citizen board, duties and responsibilities, number of members, term, removal, compensation, chair selection, support staff, rules of procedure, and prohibition of meetings on certain days. I think we've gone, for duties and responsibilities, I think we have pretty well discussed the appointing and removing of the IG and come to a lot of, I think agreement, and we can pull something out of that discussion. We've discussed the budget review and approval process, and I think we have a couple different ways that we can proceed. But I think ultimately we can also probably reach consensus on that. We've talked about performance review, operational non-interference. Number of members. Yes. Oh, this is non-interference of the government. This is citizen board, citizen board non-interfering with IG. Which we talked about. Which we are going to have to also address our non-inter interference with the citizens board and the IG as a separate topic. That's interesting. Okay. All right. Next is the number of members on the citizen board. Obviously I played that card already because in my head, I'm thinking seven and I'll just say why I think that this is the primary thing that this board is going to be doing is reviewing and individuals hiring an individual reviewing their job performance and then potentially terminating them or not renewing their contract. As somebody who has worked in the HR arena for 30 years, I can tell you the more people you get on a board like this who are primarily invested in an HR function, and I think we should probably understand that or ourselves because the five of us have had difficulty making HR decisions that it makes it almost impossible the more people you add. I think seven is a max. I would actually prefer five but that's my view and those are my reasons why. I landed on seven. You did too. But just each of the five of us got a nomination. I think it's important the executive branch get a nomination that put me at six and I was stuck with six and I needed the seventh. And I said heck, maybe you'll let the judiciary branch have an appointment too. That's how I got to seven. Okay. Kristiana. But I do think that I do think all the branches of government that could potentially be investigated by the IG should at least have the chance to nominate a person to be on this citizens board. You, you, you, that would be, that would be then judicial counsel, but then we could get away. Well, I guess then they would have to nominate the same kind of people if we decide they have to be professionals, but, but I mean criteria. They, yeah, but still going to get to vote on them. But I don't know. Anyway, we could invite the school system to sign up for you and engage and they could nominate one. And that would be a process in which everyone participated in the understanding and creation of the oversight. But I agree with that. Unwielding. That's OK. That's my view. It's too unwieldy. I agree with that. I agree with that. Unwielding. That's my view. It's too unwieldy to do something like that. Go ahead, Christina. So I think 5 is too tight. I think that 7 would be better than 5. I don't know that 9 is better than 7. I agree primarily on the professional view. I would prefer that over the council manic appointments. I'm open to the idea of branch appointments that does mean that we would have to agree. So there is that. And if you did nine, then you could divide by three evenly. Oh my god. Well, that's okay. No. Well, whereas if you only have seven, that's going to make, if you do it by branches and you have seven, that will be more challenging. If you do it by branches and you have nine, that would be easier in many ways. So anyway, my point is that my preference is seven. My preference is professionalism over councilmanic district, though, and I do feel bad for Mr. McClendon, because this is a very in the weeds conversation. But if it's possible to sort of make county quadrants and say, you know, no more than three quarters from the quadrants, or that's even a suit, assuming they come from the county. Right. Well, that's true. And the only reason I bring that up is because until very recently, until very recent history, we had seven board of education numbers that all lived west of 29. And that was really not. Though, I mean, maybe those considerations are much more, like those proclure considerations are much more impactful for school board than they are for IG. But just knowing that that has been the balance of a board and that, you know, I don't know. That's the only thing that's giving me that sort of geographical pause. Okay. Liz. Generally said. Well, I am a bar registered attorney. I think if I pay my dues on time, no, I do not see the jade. I mean, I mean, maybe I asked Mr. McClendon, but I can't imagine the jade judiciary getting an appointment here. I see the benefit of having an executive appointment. I just don't know how you get that seventh person. I don't do you have the word itself nominate the seventh? I mean, I personally think that, if we wanna include the County Executive's office in sending in names or however, we decide to gather those names that we could take those names for the County Executive's office, just like we're going to be submitting our names, but I don't know that the County Executive the county council should get any specialized treatment. What if that's my view? What if that the county that that I don't know that it should be five from you know the council that county council because there are five of us. See that's the county council that's the county council that's the county council that's the county council that's the county council I don't know that it should be five from the council, the county council, because there are five of us. See, one from the county executive, because there's one of him. You know, I think... When I view five as the county council, I get my person, you get your person, you get your person. Exactly, that's why I think we have to get out of that. The county executive gets his person. I know.'s why I think we have to get out of that. Exactly. His person, so it's not really five from our body. It's one from each of the sort of six high ranking of officials in the county. And then maybe they appoint their seventh and that person ends up being their chair. But I think, well, I don't know that they could do that. Or we all vote on that seventh person. That seventh person. That's a possibility too. But I feel like here's, I guess this is what I'm fearful about is we could end up, David, you could have like four fabulous names. And maybe I have two kind of good ones. And maybe Christina have two kind of good ones. And maybe Christina, Christina has none. But we're sure you're delegating our authority. But then we look at this and we say, okay, well, wow, these are four really good people. And I don't care that David, who represents District 5, gave us four good people and I don't care that they that David from who represents district five gave us four good people I care that we now have four good professionals who can sit on this citizen board that's what's important to me I agree and I think we should all stay focused on that but at the same time like in lieu of the council serving as this board of which each of us will have of those, does it make sense that we are sort of, you know, I know Joe Smith from down, I don't know, wherever, and he's the one I put on that board. I trust him to have the same terrific thoughts and judgment that I would have. I don't know. That's what we're trying to avoid. I know. Yeah, that is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. I don't want to smith. Respectfully. We want to. We want the former IG of the Baltimore City Office who now lives in Louisiana to be on this nominating committee. We don't want Joe Smith, you know, that's, yeah. So then it really is, we're back to, we invite the county executive to send us also names and to suggest good people, but it's not like... He gets a, he or she in the future gets a specific appointment. So we all have, so sorry, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding this. We as a body have to make this decision together on who we're appointing. It's not 1111. And then ultimately, yes, we would make, do we all vote? Yes, then we would. And ultimately, we're all the, we're working as a body to determine the makeup of this board. Yes, I like that. Beautiful. Well, we're supposed to work as a body. So I like it. I know. I know you like that. I know, I know you like that. I know. Okay. All right. Okay, we're back. So go ahead. So does this include the judiciary component? Still I'm trying to make sure I'm following it. No, we got great of that. Thank you. If they know somebody really good, they can have them apply for the job. Right. But like, all the job. Right. But like all the, my only thought was if you wanted to go that way, you could always just ask them, or you could bake in there that they may submit three names for consideration by the council, but that's not necessary. It's just what I was thinking. So you're looking at seven at this point. Yes. Do you think that's too many? No, I mean, five and seven is what we usually see. Okay. You know, they're only going to come together theoretically a couple of times a year, you know. So, yeah, I don't think that's too much. The problem, it's not really a problem, but one of the things that I can see, I can say, I see from the other side is once the office gets up and running, it is, it might personal experiences. It was very common to have the board members not be spun up on our reports until it was way late in the game. You know, after you get a couple of years behind your bell and your issue in 3035 page reports, it's a lot to ask these people to hurry up and read those before your June meeting and your December meeting. And that's just a little bit, you know, of inside baseball, so a much more concern, or interested rather in the types of people and the understanding of the role that I am the numbers. That's it. Okay, well, actually, there is on this page to compensating these people. What do you think of that? I have not seen it, so I don't really have an opinion on it. And that shouldn't be taken as a negative necessarily. If I had to be critical of the few boards that I've seen that have had problems, it has been your more citizen-based boards that are more where you live versus what you know. I've seen Fortune 500 CEOs on these boards and I've seen them run incredibly well. And I've also seen bad appointments made and a board, you know, become a little unwieldy as well. So it really doesn't matter to me. The compensation piece is as long as it's kept reasonable and most of the folks that want to be on a board for something like OIG oversight are penny pinchers anyway for the most part. But if it helps facilitate people who understand and embrace their role and take it seriously, and it's something that you're comfortable putting forth to your constituents. I don't think we have any position on it at all. I don't think it bothers me. I don't know that, okay, no compensation. No, okay, I'm looking at my colleagues and I think it consensus is no compensation. Well, did you go ahead? I mean, I think we are, it's less onerous than the board of appeals. So I think that's, and that's $200 per meeting and I'm thinking they're going to, if they have one meeting to go over these 35 reports, they're going to say really $200. Right. That's, yeah. No, the money we're offering is not a fair compensation for the time in the calendar of people that we just want serving on the sport. So they're not going to take this position or not because of a tiny stipend. Yes, too small. And I think part of what we should be doing is looking at how we're packaging their responsibilities for them to review. Yeah. That can be an element. But, you know, I think, I just generally think that compensation for some of our advisory boards is a worthwhile discussion to have because we miss out on having a well-rounded board in the absence of it. Well, that, we could look at the Board of Ed too, man. Those poor people, yeah, they really need to talk about it under. The difference between this and all the, and the Board of Appeals and Board of Ed is, again, these people don't really have a stake. Like they're not looking for a way to serve their community. They're just being kind of asked to do this. They might live somewhere else. Whereas Board of Appeals, Board of Ed and all those other folks are looking for ways to serve the community. Sure. They do it, you know, in addition to their job. So. Okay, what if we have to remove? Okay, I'm gonna go right to you, Mr. McClendon, on this one. What if we have to remove a member of the citizen board? What if they go rogue? What if they start posting conspiracy theories and saying nasty things about a council member that can't be executive? Or they don't come to the meeting. Or they don't come to the meeting. We just gotta blow it up. Yeah, yeah, then what that's a great That's a great question and I think I've I've shared this with a couple of folks there in other meetings, but That that is a problem For sure and I think that not coming to a meetings. I've literally seen boards not be able to make Quorum to make their their quorum You know for four or five months at a time or four or five months at a time, or four or five meetings at a time, because people just check out and the legislative body they created and never thought to ask the question that you're asking now. So once you turn to that, I think it becomes a simple matter of allowing the council to replace a member on the not showing up if they fail to miss. And you know, you pick the number you're comfortable with two, three meetings, so many meetings in a certain period of time. Whatever the model is that Howard County is comfortable with, I think the more difficult question becomes, you know, what to do if you have a board member. Let's just, you know, let's just say picking, using the opportunity to use their board influence to go down the agenda line. I think that's very rare. And I'm not so sure, you know, how you can legislate it. It's one of those things that you know it when you see it. And I will also say that I have seen situations where board members pick up a cause, but usually it's one board member and they're mitigated by the others as well. So I would suggest if you're going to have a removal clause to include language that is very high, a very high bar. Other situations that I've seen come up is political people putting pressure on board members to go a certain direction. You should question the IG over this. I don't like the way that came out. Don't you disagree with this? And those types of things, and I heard somebody mentioned earlier, you know, you're going to bake in language to keep them ice, you know, to give them the power to push back when that happens. That's fine. But when and if it doesn't happen and the board member does go down that road, maybe a solution to think about will be allowing a majority of the board to request the removal of a board member and allowing that to be the floor. Yes. That's what Baltimore City has. Okay. A majority of the board can remove a member for cost. Yeah, there you go. So if that pops off and give them enough space, you know, they'll know it when they see it. And then I do think it is a very positive thing to have the fair to appear component just happen. You miss so many beings. You're out. And then the question is going to come. Well, who's next and you may choose to incorporate a couple of candidates that didn't get selected in the first round as your next go to's and that way you can save yourself the time of going back through the whole process, again, to select an individual if you have somebody who's willing to serve in that standby capacity. Just thought. I'm just thinking the same thing. Hopefully we wouldn't have to do a full search again. And we could go back to those candidates. Okay. Chair selection. I don't know. I think the citizen board, yeah, I agree. Okay. Citizen board should select support staff. I think it, you know, it shouldn't be a lot of support staff. This is for the citizen board remember. Okay. We have to I have to bring that back. So one meeting you know I think the since this is primarily you know where the council is involved in this a lot. I think maybe we could the council could support this. I love your shaking of the head, yes, Isaiah. Look at him, he's so positive, yes, we can do this. I mean, it makes sense to me that the council does that. Rules of procedures, so the citizen board will have to adopt their own rules of procedure, but I think we have a number of examples. Mr. McClinnick, you have examples of that, don't you? First citizen board for rules of procedure. Uh-oh. Give me a little bit more on the procedure. I mean, other than that. So like how often they meet what they- You know, the the reason Roberts rules. Yeah. Well, what they do, I'm thinking more like there rules of procedure for, I guess what they do. I don't know, actually. Yes. I guess they could just say they adopt Roberts rules of order. And when they hold their meeting, I'm not quite sure what that means. So my experience from this is that the boards and one of the questions that I'm gonna have, I would have a view if it's not on your list already, is who is gonna serve as their legal counsel. I have seen them get their own legal counsel too. And they usually, because they're meeting on a very small space once or twice a year, I think the last one that I recall, they had somebody for, I don't know, $10 or $15,000 a year, very nice local attorney who was just interested in the space and gave them advice on those couple of meetings. So it wasn't overly expensive. But I guess in other words, I've seen them actually get independent counsel too. But assuming that it's a county attorney, So I guess in other words, I've seen them actually get independent council too, but assuming it is a county attorney, whomever, they need somebody to be able to balance procedural issues off that are legislative issues such as, you know, open meetings, notice things like that. Outside of that, what I have seen them do is the chair, oftentimes with that council, but the chair will initiate the development of an SOP, if you will, and that'll talk about, how they're gonna receive copies of reports, what their duties are with the reports, acknowledging that they receive the reports, making sure that all the documents are read by a certain amount of time, the manner in which they'll host, you know, the meeting, the agenda, things along those lines, but that I think it's a very free-flowing thing based upon what their duties are, but it really should be perhaps legislated one of the tasks of the chair, you know, the chair shall develop a protocol to effectively accomplish the requirements of set fourth below and and publish that protocol. You know, there's no reason that the council should not get a copy of that within a pick at 90 120 days after appointment. And yeah, that way it's some incentive to think about what they need to do and how to get it done. And that will be very helpful to the Office of Inspector General as well, because they'll know what the board's expectations are. And it's probably something quite frankly that will be put together in consultation between the two. And they may even have some sort of an IgA-ish type thing between the two saying that, we'll get these things from you in a timely fashion. So, and also considerations that are gonna be rare. What's the protocol for special meeting? Something comes up, the Ig leaves, or there's a problem. Somebody presents a complaint that seems to be found and that indicates that the IG violated ordinance, and they got to figure out what to do with it. They need to have a protocol for that, where they start, where they stop, and all of those things. So yeah, there's work for them to do. I don't think it's overly daunting, especially if they have some professional support in that space. All right, great. Okay, we're on our last slide, which is the function of the IG office now. So we're away from the citizens board. That doesn't mean that our conversation is done forever. It just means that we've had a chance to discuss many of these issues in a public setting so that anybody who is watching and wants to get a feel flavor for what the council members are thinking and going through this process that you will have that opportunity to take a look at us or to hear us. And that doesn't mean, like I said, that this conversation ends today. So the last slide is general discussion points on the function of the office. Duty's in responsibilities. That's their first duty in responsibility is to investigate fraud, waste and abuse, which includes activities, functions, records, process, operation, contracts procurement, programs, grants, agreements, compliance with internal controls, policies, and procedures. And that seems like a pretty inclusive list, but I think if anybody wants to add anything or discuss whether or not something should a lot of the time. I think that's a lot of the things that I think is a lot of the time that I think is a lot of the time that I think is a lot of the time that I think is a lot of the time that I think is a lot of the time that I think is a lot of the time that I think is a lot of the time that I think is a lot of the time that I think is a lot of the time that I think So it's nobody used that. Brought. That there's a. The loss of. And yeah. Oh, well, what they're doing isn't technically one of these bullets. OK. All right. And they will. Yeah. I think time is demonstrated that they will. So a couple of different approaches, you could say to include versus shall. Okay. And more limiting. You know, and I've made the suggestion a couple of times, I think, and there's different ways of doing this. And I hear the very strong emphasis on investigations, which I agree with, and if I understand, if I recall correctly, the OIG is not going to supplant and take over the internal audit function. So that's going to stay by itself. That being said, sometimes IG shops, and that probably won't be the case here, but just by way of possibility, sometimes IG shops will also probably won't be the case here, but just by way of possibility. Sometimes IG shops will also stand up an audit unit that does not do audits that look like you would see out of a traditional internal audit function. They're more forensic digs and they don't follow all the red book components of giving notice and all that, but they're basically using audit tools and audit processes. So you may want to include that, but that may be a little bit of a bomb there for the auditor because it isn't really a threat, but it could be perceived as one. But outside of that, things that should not be a threat that I would consider including as they may perform these functions because I think as the office develops, it gives them space to grow, evaluations, inspections, monitoring, all of that stuff has its own distinctive element to it, and all of which can be incredibly effective at addressing certain issues when they come up. So I would just encourage crafting crafting their duties is broadly as possible and that doesn't mean that they have to stand them all up It just means that they can use them and it may just be a matter of we have an issue where we want to engage in a monitoring Effort and I'm not so sure we can because it's not fraud waste abuse. I would add mismanagement to that, by the way. But just a very quick, by the way, when I started in Louisiana, they were in the middle of the merger and acquisition of two public hospitals, biggest deal that ever occurred in parish government. And there was money going in six ways from Sunday, consultants, and all kinds of stuff happening. We chose, because we had the space to do it, to engage in a monitoring effort, which allowed us to be in the periphery or on the periphery of that deal as it came together over I think it was nearly three years. Lots of state regulation components, there was federal approvals mixed in there. It was a very, very complicated thing and we needed to be around it for a long time. But it wasn't a singular thing and it wasn't always an investigation baked into it. We did issue some investigative work on contract components and some of the consultants, buildings and invoicing and all that, but it gave us the space to write about how well was it noticed or we found our procurement? What about this contractor here? What about these invoices there? So just think broadly in how you approach what they do to allow them to address what the county needs. Do you have this already written? That was an interesting example. But does the association have a model or template that we can... You mean of the things that IG's do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We actually don't because they vary so much. You don't have a list. Well, I guess I could put one together, but now that really. Now, the list that we have is the list of things that we offer professional certifications in. We list inspector general certifications and audit investigations, evaluations, and we're getting ready to issue one in a legal council representing IGs. So those are the areas that we professionally certify people in, but that doesn't mean that those are all of the areas that are being performed. So the military side, and we have a lot of military people in the organizations as well, they're very heavy on inspections, but the military has that all built out, so we leave them to do their piece over there. But when you look at inspectors general across the country and even internationally, they vary widely. See, some of the biggest offices in existence in the US, human services. You look at Texas HHS. I think they got like 400 people. It's ridiculous. And they could probably use more. But all they do is Medicaid, Medicare, you know, HHS style fraud. So they're not building out these other components and you have some shops that do almost all, all it work. You have some shops that do all investigative work. Everything in between. So it really is, and I think we started talking about this way back when it really is exactly what you all are doing, figuring out what your organization needs, giving a professional inspector general the space to build it and then letting that person build it using the tools that are out there. But as far as a list of possibilities, I don't think we've ever been asked for that and we don't have that. It doesn't mean we shouldn't have that. It's actually a pretty good idea. But we don't. Okay. I will read the rest of this list. There's identified ways to promote efficiency, accountability, compliance, and integrity. That's actually in our charter amendment and it's really broad. So I think it can include lots of things. Conduct investigations, provide information to appropriate authorities, review county government operations, conduct joint investigations with the auditor, which I think is important that gets to your point about, you know, if you're working with the auditor and whether or not a forensic audit is called for and establish written policies and procedures. So... Well, one quick comment that I think you should give some good consideration to is that conduct, join investigations with the auditor. I don't know your auditor, but I can tell you that it is very rare, as a matter of fact, I can't even think of an example where we can work jointly with the auditor because they are working under one set of standards. We're working under another. Both those standards require us to operate independently. So while I could support an audit function, and Baltimore I supported a few that the controller was doing because we had information we had developed in one of our issues that was relevant to an audit they were doing. I can support them by providing them that, and they can support me in an investigation with some of the audits expertise and data that they may have. But functionally, it's difficult for us to work jointly. So maybe, and look, I don't think that we're joint bothers me necessarily. It's just I don't think it's going to come into play. But you may want to consider conduct joint investigations and or support the auditor. And I think the auditor will probably be fine with that. Okay. Okay, last thing. Okay, last thing, last things on the list here on our last page, under functions of the Office of the IG jurisdiction authority, powers, whistleblower protections, referral of matters, reports, policies and procedures and professional standards. I think we know the professional standards piece, it's a green book, and requiring certification as an inspector general I think is already in a couple of places that we've, on a couple of these different bills. Policies and procedures for the office, I know we've heard from Kelly don't reinvent the wheel. That there are IG policies and procedures out there for an office already. And Megan has said the same thing. That they are both willing to share their policies and procedures for the IG office. Reports, I think are important and we'll get back to that. whistleblower protections. I think we probably need to have that. Even though we have a whistleblower statute, I think it's important to put that in this piece of legislation too, so that if people are looking to make a complaint to the IG, they see it right there. No right-of-way that this is a place where you can be protected. I think, I mean, stop me if I'm wrong, but I think probably the two biggest things are jurisdiction authority and reports. Oh, and three, referral of matters. Today, I'm going to go back to you on referral of matters because I know that you had to you on referral of matters because I know that you had some views on referral of matters. Yeah, I think real quickly, referral comes in a couple of different buckets for an IG's office, one of which is going to be referral of a closed matter. So they do an investigation, they complete it. They issue the report or it's in process and final form. But a small piece of it may have a theft component is the most common. You do a payroll for all investigation. And the big picture for the IG is how did this happen, how can we prevent it in the future for the county. The small picture often times is this person received compensation and not eligible for and maybe it deserves to be vetted by the state attorney's office. So you would send your completed report over to them and they'll either pick it up or they'll do a little more work if they feel like they have to and they may or may not prosecute it. Great luck with that. In Baltimore, it was built doing the same. The other bucket of it is an open investigation. So we're working something that has a much larger piece of criminal component involved in it. They need to be able to make that referral to whomever may be FBI, Howard County PD, State Police, whoever it may be, and work alongside that entity to the extent that they can. And sometimes that means we stand our administrative investigation down, let them do their own, and then we pick up when they're done. Sometimes we work jointly, sometimes use us a lot, depends on what the data is. So just make sure that that referral language, keep it simple and just permit the inspector general to provide referrals as deemed appropriate. It's something simple is best, but sometimes people try to focus in on certain protocols for how to do that or prohibit certain things and it really needs to be broad. So that's my take on referrals. Okay, any questions on that? No. All right. whistleblower reports. So I have down here that the OIG should could issue advisory or public letters. These do not require notices. They do not involve finding recommendations. So there's two types of reports. There's the official report after an investigation is completed and you publish that. And then there's this potential for advisory or public letters. I think that's true. So just take for instance, one of the common things that we do, or is often done, we'll see a procurement underway. And we think that it's not written correctly, or it could be made better with some changes. And we may issue an advisory letter that, hey, procurement action, ABC is not in compliance with the code. And we suggest that that be amended before the procurement is complete. And a lot of times that works. But there isn't a finding. There's just a, hey, it's an observation. We think X. When we go through the best. So when you do that, do you publish that or you just send that to the department? It can go either way. It depends from the IG's perspective quite frankly. It depends on how well your organization is working with you. If you issue an advisory like that and they typically pick up and run with them, then it's all fixed because nothing ever happens. It's just an FYI. If the organization doesn't do anything with it, then you're in a spot where your choice is, you either sit and watch the procurement occur in a way that you think is in violation of the other ordinances or you do something about it. And the only way that you're going to do anything about it at that point is to open an investigation or to make that letter public or perhaps address the council in public session. So it really depends on what the circumstances are. I've had situations where we have brought issues to the county and the county said, we just don't agree with you. And we're like, well, okay, but we're gonna send you the letter and you can do as you want with it and we're gonna publish it. And sometimes they're fine with that and sometimes that changes their mind. So there's proper uses of both if that helps and it probably doesn't. The other stuff is on the investigative reports. Though those need to be issued in a much more formal process, even if you didn't legislate it, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't, if any IG's gonna come in like Kelly and Megan have said, there's lots of rules for this. There's lots of policy out there, but they need to implement some sort of a draft and review process, draft and comment. The legislative piece that is important is to establish the timelines on what the county has or the vendor if you choose to do the vendor side. What the county's obligation is upon receipt of a draft report. Because if you leave it open ended, they'll sit out there for months. I would suggest 10 days, 10 business days, to respond. They may request an extension in the IGMA grant the extension, which I've done many, many times. But any report that makes an official finding or recommendation should go through that draft and comment period, and that that is what assures the county that they will never open the front page of the paper and see something that they've never heard of before. It takes usually about a month at a bare minimum to navigate the drafting format. So I issue a draft, they get 10 days to respond, they respond. If if there are responses that I missed something I may reopen and revisit that issue. If if it's just we disagree or response is that I missed something I may reopen and and revisit that issue. If if it's just we disagree or we agree that I'm going to wrap their entire response into my report as an attachment and I'm going to publish it. It's going to first go to the county and my personal rules in that I like that I've used is it five days after finalization in the county The county gets a final report five days after that report being delivered which includes their response It's published publicly. You know out there on the website media whatever the case may be that component Should be mentioned in the legislation either in more or less detail. I would say less, but what's simply stating that there shall be a draft and comment period that responses shall be completed within 10 days. The inspector general may issue an extension if requested, which we almost always do. That will ensure that it can't get bound up and held in the background, which is unfortunately a problem in systems that aren't as well thought out. But as far as the advisory pieces, just giving them the space to issue advisory opinions and actually like the way that you mentioned it, that maybe issue publicly or not allows them to do it in the way that best here is jurisdiction and authority. And for this one, I'm looking to you, Gary, to help us with what's the universe here. I know we've talked about school district, library, Howard County Community College. Is it anybody who the county funds that, you know, provides most of their funding for, which would actually include the state judiciary? And the things that are called state, that all the county funds, okay, that would be the state prosecutor's office, the state judiciary, which the county provides all the funding for. So, where is the jurisdiction authority. How far are field can the IG go? And I know that the biggest sort of piece of this would be the school district. And I do feel probably more comfortable that we do have a, somebody, we have a separate IG at the State Department of Education, who is situated quite well to investigate the school district and in fact, I Know that Kelly Madigan has entered into an MOU with that IG so that if Issues in the school district the Baltimore County School District come up, he's already been located and hired to do that type of work. I was just looking for the resolution. I would say that the council's intent in the charter amendment expresses the scope of what the body had in mind when it was brought. Yeah, yeah, very bright. So then it would just be a matter of what we can't do by law. Well, from a policy perspective, I would think you'd want to at least be co-extensive of what the charter amendment says. Right. be co-extensive of what the charter amendment says. Can we include the school district? I guess that I don't necessarily want to. I like the fact that there's a separate IG out there who has expertise in doing any of those kinds of investigations. And that could end up taking our IG office over to the school district for, you know, to look at 15 million. I'd like us to have the option though. I don't want us to be precluded from having our person looking to, that's why I want to legally, can't wait. I think the wise approach would be for us to get you something in writing so you have it. Instead of doing this on the fly. Okay. I think there's another little subset of folks and it's people that we don't fund or organizations we don't fund, but they get something from the county in kind. Like they're occupying county property for free or like a sports league that is at Rockburn Park for a dollar or an organization that's in one of our buildings or office space for, you know, not market rent, but like they're getting some in-kind benefit of county dollars. Do you know what I'm talking about? Does this make sense? I think that's C6. C6? Yeah. External recipient of county funds benefits or county services. Benefits. on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on General on the very bottom, I think of her actual landing page. It says very explicitly that she does have authority over the Montgomery County Public School system. They actually, there's legislation, you know, Montgomery County. You know how it is in Montgomery County. They love to go get more power than what is granted through the regular state system, legislature. Montgomery County went and got specific legislative authority to do that. Okay, that's what I'm asking about is can you please tell us if we don't have it or whatever that what what the next steps would be as evidenced by Montgomery County apparently. Yeah, we will definitely get you something in writing. Yeah. Okay. Anything else in them? We're going to take a break and we have these other two groups here that unfortunately have been here forever. But we do need to take a break because we've been at this for almost three hours. Any issues that I mean I know we didn't come to a complete agreement on everything, but I do think we understand where we all were headed. And if are there any issues that anybody thinks that we absolutely should have discussed or touched upon that we didn't touch upon or discuss at all I mean I was timing. I don't know if that's a substantive issue Oh the administrative aspect of timing. Yeah as as you mean when this would go in how it will happen Yeah, um, I don't does anybody have any thoughts about that I mean I Yeah, I do. Okay, well then tell us what your thoughts are. Do you want to file in, I don't even know, March, April, May. The bills that are before and still pending before this council now is 47 and 48. I think it was June, but yeah. Okay. And we have prefiled and posted publicly the amendment one to both of those two bills which uses a device that's used at the state level which is make a conditional amendment which is that is we can simultaneously with the constituents of this county voting on a referendum work out the specifics of the ordinance that's referenced in that referendum. So that the timing works out actually where we could vote on this bill either one of our next two legislative sessions either the first Monday and October or November and because these are bills not resolutions they take effect within 60 days and the amendments that we've put in already say so long as that referendum passes. So it would be my strong preference that we continue to work in the near term and getting this stuff on paper and reaching agreement on whatever those last details are. I've certainly made it a point to know where I think we have even unanimous agreement because I think that did occur to a certain extent and then happy to circle back with everyone. But I do, I think, you know, loud and clear and I think we all heard it and I think that's why the charter amendment got through this office so quickly is I think there's a desire to get this office in place or at least get the steps in place to get the office in place and it's not quick, you know, for the seven people or whoever many to get appointed to a citizen board. And then themselves find it IG and then have that person actually set up an office. My preference would be to keep moving on this as good and reasonably short time as we can. Totally agree that we need to, without a doubt, get this bill done at the very latest before we go on December break at the very latest. So yeah, absolutely agree that we need to move forward and have a bill that we can vote on before us by that time at the latest. David. Would it be helpful? And this outline is fantastic. But to take our notes and get it into almost a spreadsheet form. And I'm not sure if we're even allowed to do this. Like, straw poll, some of this stuff, so that we can have a little bit more organized and productive, either drafting of an amendment or drafting a new bill or whatever it is. So we're not then taking a text and like, yes. So what do you think? Kind of the beginning. And a amendment, after amendment. Yeah. I mean, I think that a singular council member would have to pursue that and then obviously meet with singular council members in order because we can't meet three at a time because that's a quorum. So at least to get our preferences on the spreadsheet also be considered. If there's the same spreadsheet that we're using, I mean, I use the same spreadsheet. I'm using a thing in public. Well, I use the same spreadsheet for my general plan of amendments to see where you guys landed. And if you agreed with something, if you agreed with that, I gave you a copy and said here's what I'm thinking. Put it up on the. We can all provide our own. And then someone could compile it, and then we could review it, you know. But it would have to be a singular council member who reviews it with a singular council member to get that feedback. Correct? I think David was saying we could each send our spreadsheets. council member to get that feedback. Correct? I think David was saying we could each send spreadsheets. This is what Liz wants. This is what Deb wants. This is what Opal wants. This is what David wants. Send those to be compiled all into one giant spreadsheet that then we would discuss. It would still have to be a singular or we would have to have it in the body. Yeah, but if we want to move it along then we're going to need to we would either need to set up a special meeting where we would all have that chart in open meeting where we would all have that chart and we could vote literally we could do like a pre-vote and say you know there's three of us who agree to seven all right there's three of us who agree to seven. All right? There's three of us who agree to those. All right? I like that process better as a way of ensuring that sort of we're moving together and drafting this bill as a body. The only sort of follow-up question I had to some of the timelines were regarding the charter amendment and what that process is for certifying and implementing the charter amendment and what that process is for certifying and implementing the charter amendment after it's passed. So like what those general timelines are? We'll get you those. Okay. But it's relatively, it would be before the end of this calendar year. Okay, that's helpful because I would rather match those deadlines than try to get the charter amendment passage to match our internal deadlines. I'd rather sort of build it up around the charter amendment passage. Don't hold me to this, but my off the hip estimate is probably the amendment would become effective sometime in early to mid-December. Oh good. Well early to mid-December. Oh good. Well early to mid-December it gives us. We wouldn't be able to introduce legislation in December, but we could. It would be official in December, and then we could introduce legislation in January. I hope that we're done before that. But yeah, really. Really. We're worried about it. We would be really pushing it down. It could be the it could be 2020 the end of 2025. I think we should Before we vote before an IG office is that up. Yeah. Yeah. I why? I mean, I proved this. Let's say we improve. We didn't introduce this until first first of all, we can't introduce and we can introduce in December, but we can't even, we can't introduce in December, all right? I remember this from the CEF, which means we can introduce until January, which means it wouldn't get, it wouldn't get decided until the end of February, because we would introduce at the end of January. Why are you? We got a wait till it's drafted. No, that's what the amendment one has already got legal sufficiency and prefiled. We can do this concurrently. The state legislation does this all the time. Yeah, we don't have to. I'm not worried about waiting for the charter amendment. This is like a normal thing that happens with the state all the time. It's not. But I think the hold up is us getting together on where we stand on everything, getting it drafted and getting it pretty fine. And I think pushing that along is the primary thing. And for me, it's like that we're moving together. So for pushing it along, we're going together. And we have these meetings set to have these. I feel like we should be dance partners with the way you're yes okay. But no, this is an issue that we all feel strongly about, that we've all, we have agreement on some of these major tenants and that it's something created by this body and we should be moving as a body. And then secondly, I don't want speediness to be the priority over thoughtfulness and sort of solid legislation. I wanted this bill to be well thought out where all five of us have really worked to make it what it is. That's where's right. Whether it is ending before December or you know that's fine if this is concurrent in a normal process. I just don't want to rush and lose quality in expediency. I think that we so far we've done a pretty good job of looking at this, thinking about it. It's been kicking around now since March when I started kicking it around with individual council members and we've read the Blue Ribbon Commission. We've all talked to the various IGs who are existing here in Maryland. We've had the incredible help today. Thank you so much, Dave McClendon, for giving us so much of your time and sharing your knowledge and your thoughtfulness and answering all of our many good and sometimes weird questions, but you really have, I think, helped us tremendously, think through these issues. And your experience is critical to our understanding of these issues. So yeah. You're quite welcome and thank you for putting up with my Southern draw. We enjoyed it. You know you're going to be welcome to come back to Maryland anytime. Especially after we get this bill through. Anyway, I do feel like that we've had a lot of opportunities now to read and discuss with each other. I like the idea of doing a chart saying, okay, three people here, three people on this, three people on this, five on this, four on this, whatever it takes to say, okay, this is where we're going to head. Instead of somebody, one party or another, putting in an amendment that nobody else, right now would not get three votes. So I think pushing ahead on a bill that we all would agree on, at least three of us is a good way to go. All right, so I think that ends this part of our session. We clearly need to take a break. And what are we going to do? I feel so badly because the next two... They're all still here. I know. They're all still here. But I don't think we can get lunch in 15 minutes. Now we have it ordered because of how late this is going, but it's gonna take another half hour of a wish to get there. Oh, it's gonna take another half an hour. Well, the very least we need to get up and walk around. We've been sitting here, let's say, since we know lunch is coming, let's just say, let's take a 10 minute break, at least get up and walk around. We've been sitting here. Let's say since we know lunch is coming, let's just say, let's take a 10 minute break, at least get up and walk around, get something to eat or drink. We have wonderful candy machines. Okay, so 20 of. Okay. What time are we ending? I think. Okay. Okay. We are in a marathon legislative session today. Well, we're going to have a discussion. Okay. We're going to have a discussion. Okay. Okay, we are in a marathon legislative session today. Welcome back everyone. Hopefully, if you're watching us, you too got a chance to get up and stretch or maybe you were stretching the whole time. Who knows? But I do think our department, our office of agriculture, and our economic development authority for patiently waiting for hours while we worked on the very critical inspector general bill, not that your bills aren't critical to, every bill is critical. But this is obviously one that we are still spending a lot of time working through. So appreciate your patience and waiting for us. So the next bill up is going to be CB 49. CB 49 was introduced by the chairperson at the request of the county executive. The short title is Emergency Appropriations, Economic Development Authority, Farmer Grants, and it is an act making emergency appropriations pursuant to Section 610B of the Howard County Charter and amending the annual budget and appropriation for fiscal year 2025 to provide additional spending authority in the economic development authority for farmer grants and declaring that this act is an emergency bill necessary to meet a public emergency affecting life, health, or property. And with us today to discuss this bill is Jennifer Jones, the head of the Economic Development Authority, James Zoller. Are you like the head of the Agricultural Bureau, the Administrator? OK, I wasn't exactly sure. The Administrator of the Agricultural Bureau. And Kathy Johnson, who administrator of the agricultural bureau and Kathy Johnson who is, who wears all the hats, both at EDA and at the agricultural bureau, but is a huge assistance with one-on-one with our farmers in Howard County for which we are very grateful. So I'm going to ask you all, so Mr. Zoller, I sent you a number of questions yesterday, some of which were from our work session that I wanted to make sure that we're addressed today and in this, some of which were from our legislative session, that I wanted to make sure that we're addressed in this work session publicly. And this, is this what you handed out? So that's not yet. Please. No, it's not. So there were no. Please move. Yes. I did add that that's addressing one of your questions which you asked about the ag fund and the off the bag budget. So that's why that's what that piece of information is. Okay. I have to admit what I was really hoping that I would see today was an application or the grant, you know, the affidavit, or something that indicates to me that we are not just going to give people $5,000 because they said that they lost $5,000 in crops. But rather that there is going to be something more to that affidavit than that. What do you make sense if I start kind of like explaining? I think it's a good idea. You can start at the beginning. I'm hoping this will address some of your concerns. One of the things that the grant is broken into two pieces. The idea behind the two pieces is we have, it's up to $5,000 that a farm could receive. And when we say a simple affidavit, really what we're saying is it will be a form that they will have to have, it's up to $5,000 that a farm could receive. And when we say a simple affidavit, really what we're saying is it will be a form that they will have to fill out and give some information. The information included would be the farm operation name, the tax ID, the address, contact, email, phone number. We also want to know what agricultural segment they're in. And then the amount of the loss as well, a breakdown of what those losses are. This is for the primary grant. Do you have- The $5,000. For the $5,000. I would like to know, I think, and I asked the farmers at our legislative session, do you have receipts? Do you have records of what you grew last year? Do you have evidence of your crop loss for this year? Yes. I don't think anybody in Howard County should get $5,000 by just signing an affidavit. So it doesn't have anything to do with farmers, but nobody. I think we can also, Jennifer can address this isn't a precedent that we're Saturday we've done this before so. I think that during COVID we know there was an emergency for everybody but there were some industries that were harder hit than others right so although some farms did get COVID grants most of them went to restaurants, hotel, retail, establishments, childcare and so so I know that you are saying that you would like some kind of proof, but from a macroeconomic level, we know that there are certain industries that are hit at certain times. And so I think hearing from the farmers, doing our own research, doing our Kathy going out and James going out, getting feedback from the farmers, we know this industry is suffering, right, in Howard County. And our ability to be nimble and to respond to challenges of certain sectors is really important at EDA. So during COVID, I mean, the childcare people, the hotels, restaurants, they filled out one page, Affidavit, with information similar to what James just said. And we knew that they were being truthful because we know we do our research. And we know that some of these industries were hard hit. So I guess what I'm saying is there is evidence and feedback that this industry is suffering right now. And so I think that understanding that and then making the receipt of money as easy as possible while still giving information is really important for us. So my first thought about that is things are very different now than they were during COVID. In COVID, during COVID, we had money flowing from the federal government to aid every industry. Farmers, hotels, restaurants, every kind of retail establishment that had to close their doors. But not every industry got the same emphasis in the same amount of grants. But that doesn't mean, I'm just saying there was different money available that was set forth by the federal government. This is a county program, which actually was the very first question that I asked. Both at the legislative session and in the written questions that I sent to you, Mr. Zoller, is any other local jurisdiction giving $5,000 to their farmers because of crop loss. So, and I'll let Kathy address this too. We reached out to MDA, Maryland Farm Bureau, and the agricultural marketing professionals. And we did ask that question. We didn't ask you to find out what other jurisdictions we're doing for the sake of saying, is this the right thing to do? Because we're fortunate. I'm on an active farm here in Howard County. Kathy grew up on a dairy farm there. The act of stews. So we have those relationships and know the need that's out there and know what really would best help our farms. So we did that really for the reason of seeing how, if other jurisdictions were doing it, how are they implementing it and how we could successfully. So there aren't any right now and I'll pass it off to Kathy's now. So the answer is no. Right. Okay. We're the only ones. They're not but we were the first ones to start agriculture grants as well and now there are many counties giving those agriculture grant programs based on the program that we started here in Howard County. So we have set, you know, started new things that have been followed by other counties. Actually, probably over half the counties now are giving agriculture grants that had never done it before. So there are grants being given. The grants are not for the drought. Not for the drought. That's what I wanted to know for the drought. But for my grant program, but again, like I said, we started the grant program that we have in Howard County first, and now other counties have followed suit with that. So there's a potential that that could happen. We don't know. It's a potential. But right now the answer's no. Right, all right. All right. Miss Grant. So do you have data about the economic losses by agricultural sector. And I don't mean just like the whole sector, but like we have people mostly who are coming in and complaining about pumpkin loss and who are complaining about vegetable loss. Do you have that kind of data to support that there is a reason to give this money out? Sure, so the data, and we actually did, you heard from a lot of those farmers from the different segments. We heard from the produce, the pick your own. We heard from horse farms, from hay, livestock, as well as the commodity crops. We're all there represented in those testimonies. I do have statements before when we were looking to this problem, we went and talked to a lot of farmers and got some statements to kind of gauge the different losses that were there. And I have a copy of some statements. Largerlaine gives a good example, but all these farms give some financial example of what losses they have. On a segment from each ag segment, we don't have right now all that data because they're still in the process of doing these harvests. There's still data they're collecting, so we don't have that form. So we didn't even know if like some of these farmers might be more successful than we think if they're in the process of harvesting. That's the whole idea between the two grant programs. So you have to state in the first one that you've had a loss from the drought. It's not just giving it out. You have to also state in that grant what reasons. Like you have to state, well, this is why I have these reasons and put a dollar amount to them. Well, I would like to see the economic evidence behind that. That's what I'm focused on. I guess I guess. Where is the economic evidence behind saying I had a drought loss? You could have a drought loss of $3,000. You could have a drought loss of a few hundred dollars. And here's your $5,000 check. Sure. I'll let them. I want to know. On the 5,000, they're going to have to spell out what their loss was. If it's above the 5,000. But there's no evidence that you're crying. For the 5,000. It's really down here, James. I got it. Is there evidence that you are requiring? the only evidence would be what they're stating and they're signing affidavit that that isn't that. Okay, that's what I don't support. That's the number one thing I don't support. I got it, okay. Number one, right? And the reason we want to do that that way is so that we don't, we want to get this money to the farmers as quick as we can. I'm all forgiving money to the farmers. Sure. But I am not forgiving them money without any evidence. I am not forgiving out of $5,000 taxpayer funded check without any evidence that there is something that they have actually experienced a loss. The farmers would want that. The farmers wouldn't want us to be giving out $5,000 to anybody who says I've got this loss or that loss without some evidence of the loss. Well I think we'll go ahead go out the chair has to I'm sorry. Yeah yeah thank you mr. Zola. Yes yes yeah go ahead Christian. Well that's sort of what I was wondering so say someone on my street in Newtown zoning applies and says I I suffered crop losses and my address is lovely blah blah blah and it's a quarter acre. Then you would say we don't think you're eligible for this. Correct. Could you talk about what would happen in that instance? Well we would just we would just basically email back to them that you don't qualify for the grant. Where is the eligibility criteria? The eligibility is, so the farm operation must be located in Howard County. That's good. There we go. Hey, well, you got to hold a baseline. There we go. That's a baseline. Under the farm operation must be a Howard County resident. The farm operation was actively farming in the summer of 2024 and the farm operation was negatively impacted by the excessive heat and drought this summer. So far that person is eligible. The person you just described. They would have to be a far more. Howard County resident. They would be eligible to in the sense that they live in Howard County, but they would be unallegable in the sense that they don't have a farm operation. How do you define farm operation? Unless you know how you define farm operation, your person's eligible. So, well, I guess I'm asking from a department or a office perspective, how would you handle and manage this affidavit that comes in that you, you know, you're doing your due diligence, you're looking up their address and you're like, this doesn't, this doesn't smell right. Then what would you do? Farm visits is what I would do and I've been out to a lot of these farms. I've seen the damage. Many of our farms that have, especially in the horse industry, pasture loss has been huge this year, so they don't have the pasture for their horses or cattle to go out on. They're gonna have hay loss. I'll even use my dad's farm as an example in Montgomery County, I was out there last week, and they don't have this opportunity. The corn fields, there is no corn. What little there was is on the ground right now where the deer took it and what little was left. So, you know, the damage is there. It's, and, you know, they will have losses. What it's going to end up, how much of a loss it will end up being, how bad, maybe different on different farms in different areas, because some areas did get a little rain. But most of our areas, when we need it rain, when things were pollinating, it did not come. It came after. I understand the circumstances. You were very clear about that at the legislative session. But I do still have this primary question and concern that I don't think that for giving out $5,000 in taxpayer money, we are asking for enough information to justify that and to ensure that the people who are getting these $5,000 checks are actually... I can't... I mean, if somebody, this person, Cristiana's neighbor or my neighbor said, Hey, these people are getting $5,000 checks and they don't even have to turn in a receipt. I can't... It's hard for me to say, Oh, it's okay because Kathy's gone out to their farms. She knows that they have lost. That's one issue. My other issue is this. This is what is, and let me see, I let me find this. The recital. The recital of this bill. The county would like to provide grand assistance to farmers, impacted by summers, drought-like conditions, and to farmers impacted by climate change. Can you explain how this grant program addresses drought-like conditions? I'm not talking about it, we're just giving them money because they had a crop loss, but the conditions themselves of this past summer and climate change. And I'll tell you why I'm asking this question. We're going to have drought-like conditions and climate change for the rest of our lives and most unfortunately probably for the rest of our children's lives as as well. So what, how, this is a one-time grant program. How are we addressing climate change through a one-time grant program? Why wouldn't we take this money and use it in a way that would really help our farmers address climate change because that's not going away. Droughts are not going away because of climate change or excessive rain, one or the other. We know that we're gonna be having both of those things on a much more common basis in the future. We need to actually, this actually I like, this I thought was a really good way. This is the right approach for our farmers. We need to help them build resilience for the future. Handing them $5,000 doesn't do that, but spending that one point, spending $1,743,000 towards which is the amount that's in this fund, which may end up all getting spent in $25,000 increments. Another way to spend that fund and future funds like this would be to help farmers build resilience, whether it's through irrigation or I don't really know, frankly, I don't really know. Frankly, I don't know what it's going to be like to be a farmer 10 or 15 years from now. I can't even imagine. But what we can do to help them now, there were a bunch of the farmers who said $5,000 is nothing. And I understand that. I'm not saying, well, then don't take it. But what they're saying is an operation of this size, $5,000 doesn't go that far. And I agree with them about that. It doesn't go that far. They need more than this. They need ways to actually combat climate change and create more resiliency. So and that's great point. So we do have grant programs that can address those needs for the farmers. We have a soil conservation district has a best management practice grant that they give out to farmers to help with the cost, the rising cost of these best management practice grants. The idea of it is a lot of farms want to do these things are good for the environment, good for their farm, but it's very costly. So the soil conservation district does a great job of getting grants to cover those costs. Unfortunately, because of where we are and the cost to do these practices, it's usually really doesn't cover what it is intended to cover. So this grant has been helping with that. We also have the economic development has two grant programs, the innovation grant, that's $100,000. And then also the enhanced agricultural grant, which is $500,000 this year that we're giving. So those are sizable grant programs. This million dollar grant is really just to help the farmers recoup some of the losses that they've had because of this drought and then allow them to continue to survive for the next year. What are they gonna do the year after? And the year after? And the year after? I mean, that's another one of my concerns. This is not climate change and drought-like conditions and excessive rain, that's not gonna change. So are we now going to make, okay, if your business is not doing well for the next 10 years, we're gonna give you money. Is that gonna be our promise now? I mean, where do we, this is a big precedent that we're setting here. So we routinely administer grants. And they're not on a regular basis when we have extra funds and we have a program, we administer the grant. When we don't have funds, we don't administer grants. I mean, to the extent that we can help an industry and help businesses with grants money. We do, but they know that it's not. It may not be every year. And I think that's expected from the business community. We don't always do the same thing every year where we can meet a need we do. And I think that's helpful. And also with this band-aid, as you call it, it could give them the opportunity to utilize some of that money to put in retention ponds by matching it with some of our grant money or things like that that will give them some water when they need it to help put on their crops. There are opportunities there that they haven't looked at and education is part of that and will continue to do that education to bring that about. So it's just helping them see that there are opportunities there and that they can't give up yet. And that's the one thing we don't want to do. We don't want to lose our farms. We don't want to lose our local food products that we have today. We're blessed, but we have in my lifetime of working this job in 17 years, we have lost a lot of farms and we finally got into a point where it's stable and farms are staying. They're trying to hold on, but they may not be able to hold on much longer if we don't continue to help them. Some of these farms have been in families for generations. But don't know what to say. I don't know. We're dealing with this existential threat of climate change and I just don't know what it's going to be like. As I said to farm 10, 20 years from now, I you, yes, it would be, I would love to see every single farmer who's here now still be able to farm in 10 or 20 years, but anyway, did you, did you wanted to say something I could tell? Is the concern that this, that we're going to invest in these farms through this one time grant and in 10 years they're going to fail anyway because there's just not really a practical or affordable way to get them through climate change. I mean, is could say that. Climate, I mean, it seems to, I'm just saying that's what the, that is what was in the legislation that, that climate change, so clearly there was a belief that climate change is having an impact on farming here in Howard County. So, or that they thought it would make the bill sound more trendy. Okay. I thought maybe that was... Because part of climate change, I thought was that it rained a whole lot more. It could be climate change. Climate science is specific to regions. It has general patterns. And it's well documented over multiple decades, speaking as a person here, who studies environmental science. The point is we've been having droughts for a long time. I don't think this drought is necessarily because of climate change. I don't know why it's in the bill. You've read grapes of wrath. We had a pretty big one 120 years ago, whenever that was. This is, yeah, this is a drought. It's an industry that had a really hard year. We have an ag preservation fund that is there not just to buy easements, but to support the resiliency of the business and the operators. You can't take money out of the ag fund and use it for anything else. It's a one time thing. Nobody's talked about it being next year, the year after, the year after. If we want to amend the word climate change out of the bill, let's do it. I think those were my thoughts while I was listening. Okay. Ms. Welsh, did you have any thoughts? I paused as I'm late to this, so I don't know if you already addressed it, but my concern was more rather the legal authority we have to use this for something other than the easement. And easement specifically outside of the public service area. I mean, this came up during the comprehensive plan draft, but I just wanted some from ground from legal that this is okay because here is the provisions of the code or state law that says we can do x-lianc and that's why we can do this. But if we can do this it seems like we can do a lot of other things too actually. So I'm going the other way then Mr. Yaman. Lots of other things but we've already learned that from DPC with allocations and secure and moving or storage units. Yeah, so we can do lots of things. Did you get that? Gary? Gary's looking at it Liz. You can't see him but he is. We will get to the council on the emergency budget ordinance. Okay. The authority. Did you hear that Liz? Thank you. Okay. All right. I was just going to say, I believe we've already received opinion on that the AG Fund is absolutely eligible for things not just parcel accumulation. So we should already have that and this is really for the public to know that that is the way it is in Howard County that we have the authority and ability to spend those funds on not exclusively AG Eastman's. Howard County that we have the authority and ability to spend those funds on not exclusively ag easements. Yeah, we've tested the language repeatedly over the last six years as we've used it for soil conservation grants, the funding of the office of the soil conservation, the funding of the Office of Ag, and some of you guys working for the county, Cathies, the old grants, the new grants. It's, but the limitation exists that it does need to be spent on agriculture. That you couldn't take agriculture fund and spend it on fire. Or, no. Any random business that was have industry, that was having an issue, that this does have to have a tie in. And, you know, I appreciate that we have the Office of Agriculture now to really help prioritize those needs so that there is an entity that is focused on our farms to prioritize those needs. So the question I had is kind of going to this, and I think it's interesting because it's this legislation, but it raises larger questions. So the question asked by Mr. Youngman was, do we do these efforts now and we lose the farms anyway? But what happens if a farm closes? What happens to the land? What happens to the community and the food supply? So and I guess that is kind of a farm that has these mints and a farm that doesn't, but I'm certainly curious about those outcomes either way. Or because he, Kathy, wants to come too. That was good with this. So, you know, when farms close here in Howard County, I mean, there's two things that happen. The ground sits vacant, you know, and nothing's done with it. Right. Or, and the second outcome is what we hope is that we have another farmer come in that's going to farm it. The real challenge we have here in Howard County is with the cost of land and the value of land and the agricultural value of land and what you can make on farm land. It's hard for a new and beginning farmer to come in here. So unless you're in a family and say to your whomever, or stop farming that you're a family member, I want to farm it a lot of times, it just doesn't get bought for agriculture. And I'm gonna let Kathy Chiamin, because I know she's ready to. And if that farm is not in preservation, more than likely it will be sold and developed and we lost the land permanently. So and that's an issue that we're facing. We're losing more and more land every day. So where is your food going to come from? How are you going to be able to go to farmers markets and get local food or go to the farm and enjoy a day of pumpkin picking or apple picking if we don't have them. And those are opportunities that we can't continue to take that. We've lost a lot of land in Howard County over the years and that's why the AgPres fund was started to preserve those farms to keep them in farming and hopefully help the next generation continue. And we do have multiple generations keep them in farming and hopefully help the next generation continue. And we do have multiple generations farming some of our farms today, but we don't know, protecting them is important. And I agree with, we're not trying to do this every year, but this year is a year where everything kind of maxed out. So no rain when we needed it, all of the, what they needed to put on their crops, those prices tripled to what they have been in last year, just because of the economics right now. So their costs have gone way up, they got no rain, their crops are very limited. It's kind of been that, yeah, that perfect storm that we weren't expecting. And their commodity prices have completely bottomed out. So we're looking at $4 or less corn and soybeans, which we haven't seen in years. So actually I think the last it was when I did my research was it's been 10 years since we've seen prices this low on our commodity crops. So it is that perfect storm of everything coming together. So how do we help them through this year and then give them that start so that they can buy what they need for next year. So they continue that farming. I just had sort of one solution and one question or follow up. As the arid line that sort of demarcates the Midwest and the east, it's been shifting Eastward. So we've been losing this farmable land as this line moves closer and closer to us. I mean when I take a really long-range view it seems like that could end up with additional farmers also shifting Eastward. If they're losing the land and the ability to farm these lands then there's going to be more focused eastward. So I do think it's wise to try and preserve farms now because we need to have that capacity when we're looking at a 30, 50 year sort of timeline, which is what I'm trying to, you know, always trying to keep that in mind. And then secondly, one solution that could speak to some of the concerns we've heard is to add the criteria of the agricultural tax status onto the parcels because that stat is coming out and ensuring that these are actual farming operations that they are not committing tax fraud and saying, you know, so I think if you add that criteria in that could Speak to really that it this is absolutely an agricultural parcel that is That is applying for this it helps with that definition of ag operation Well, I already told you I don't feel comfortable with an application that you just sign and say I had Crop Loss. If you have anything that says this is what, this is, this is how much I made last year and here's a piece of paper that shows that. This is how much my crops are going to be worth this year. Here's a piece of paper that shows that. Then I'm much more comfortable with this plan than just somebody signing an affidavit. And it doesn't have anything to do with whether they're a farmer or whether they are a restaurant owner or with whether they are a child care provider. I don't care what business somebody is in. If you are Howard County taxpayer and you are wondering, how does somebody get $5,000 without having to give any evidence of a loss? Then I don't want to have to answer that. I want to be able to say, oh, they did have to give evidence of a loss. I don't think that's too much to ask. I really don't. I mean, the farmers themselves said, we have receipts. We know how much we've lost. So to ask them for that information, I don't think is too much. I really don't. So just to just address that real quick, the some of the farms absolutely have those receipts. Some of the smaller and some of the farms absolutely have those receipts. Some of the smaller and some of the farms that haven't, you know, some of the losses they have are harder to substantiate to and take more time. Then this is going to be, didn't you say this is, this is going to be for months? You're going to have months to- The $5,000, the reason we were doing the smaller grant, the quicker grant, was to get the money to all the farms as quick as we can that have had this loss. And they would have to state their loss and put a dollar amount to it. So it wouldn't be like they're just making, they could make it up, but they also, when they do their bigger grant application for the $25,000, I mean, that's the stage they're signing affidavit, too. Yes. for the $25,000. I mean, that's the age you're signing affidavit, too. Yes, are they providing us with more data and information? Yes, but they could essentially make that up, too. It comes down to EDDA and myself to try to look at those things to see if there's any irregularities in it, if we know the farms. What are you asking for at the $25,000 level? It'll be done similarly how we do Kathy's grant, there'll be a description of the loss which will be spelled out and then they're going to have to show financial proof of the loss. So just what you just talked about. Okay, that doesn't seem like it would be. And it sounds like from what you just said that the same people might be getting the $5,000 grant who are then gonna turn around and apply for the $25,000 grant. That's correct. So they have to have the information together anyway. There's gonna be a higher portion of forms that have a loss less than $5,000. We're assuming there'll be probably about a hundred of those forms is what we're guessing. You have less than a $5,000 loss. And then they didn't, they get a $5,000 check if we were... So they wouldn't get a $5,000. Okay. They would write down what their loss was. So if it was $2,000, they're going to say it's $2,000, they're going to list what those reasons were for that loss and then sign that affidavit. And they would just get $2,000. Not going to just arbitrarily get $5,000. And then go ahead. If it's a small farm and they have a $2,000 loss, it should be even easier actually to justify that. I mean, because there's going to be fewer purchases, there's going to be, I just, the crop yield will be easier to calculate. Well, for crop yield, for a smaller farm isn't going to really, that necessarily isn't easy to do. It really, it depends a lot on the different operations on how they do that. Some are easier to do and some are harder to do. But the goal of the reason we have this smaller one is so that we don't create a...we're trying to help the farmers and all the farmers and the small farmers in the mid-size. The ones that have greater loss, they'll be able to take that time to get that information. Yes. The smaller farms, the mid-size farms that had a smaller loss and even the big farms that need this money right now, that's the reason for this 5,000 is so that we can get that money to them. It's quick as we can so that we can make a positive impact on it. Okay, well I've made my point. I'm not going to keep arguing with you about this. I don't think it's appropriate to be giving people money from Howard County taxpayers without requiring something in writing that indicates the actual loss. That's my view. I'm not gonna keep, also, in concern that this is, we've got climate change, regardless of what Mr. Youngman thinks, but we do. I didn't say we didn't know that the change was like I just said that. We heard that. I didn't say that, you're not going to work on that. We heard that. That's not for working on that. Yes. And I do think that it's shortsighted to be giving out these small grants when we should really be looking at, really, truly trying to harden ourselves against the future here climate wise, and looking at much bigger ways to help our farmers keep their land. Because I don't think $5,000 is going to help them keep their land. It's going to take irrigation. It's going to take all the other things that we've talked about over the years when we're out doing these farm visits. And that's what we're going to need a lot more. It will help especially in the industry of the horse where they're not going to be able to afford the hay cost this year. So believe it or not, you know, that will make a small difference to them to be able to continue to feed their horses to have up to $5,000 that they can spend that they weren't planning on because, hey, cost are going to be much higher because of the shortage. So I know it's hard to see that, but there are. And the same for those feeding cattle or livestock, any kind of livestock, it will make some kind of... But those are the people who are probably going to apply for the $25,000 grants. I would imagine. I mean, if you've got a big hay loss and a lot of horses that you're feeding, then anyway. I mean, I would assume that they would be spending a lot more money than $5,000. Depends on the number of horses and things. Yes. Yes. It's very variable. It's really different. There's so many different types of farms. But it is hard to say which a farm's going to do. Because I think every segment is going to have people in both columns. And so my last question is, there is, with the transfer of million dollars, there's 1.74, 3 million dollars, I think, in the fund. Are you planning to spend all of that in giving out grants? So this is the 1 million dollars is what is- 1,734, yeah. The 1,7, that includes the already appropriated money I believe to EDA for their grant programs. Is that correct? Yeah. We're just looking at $1 million. It's just a million dollar total for this grant. So you're not going to put the, also the $734,000. I believe that is referring to the existing amount that's already going there. Right. It's already being changed. So that will. It would be a total. We would be adding a million dollars to the 734. So you would be looking at giving out 1,734. Ultimately. So it's broken. That's the ADA. So there's several, let me get my little, but those ADA grants of 700 and something are already in the budget. Correct. So this is the incremental budget, Joe. Correct. So and it's not just, so that also includes, if for the economic development, the ag marketing grant, which actually is covers Kathy here, and some of her smaller programs. The enhanced agricultural grants, which is $500,000. The agonization and expansion grants, which is $100,000. The special ag events, it's $10,000 in ag books for the school system and libraries 2000. So that's the seven months. Okay, so is those bigger grants that really are needed? Yeah. Yes, so it's, yeah. OK. All right. Great. Thank you, guys. You're welcome. You can't leave. Oh, yeah. Jennifer Jones, you were staying right here. You're never leave right here. You thought you left the George Harrod building. But you didn't. Is Mr. Janati going to join you? Is anybody else going to join you? I'll join you. Okay. Thank you for your work to classify agricultural parts. That was a good idea. I'll wait a minute. That's what I started doing this work. I'm going to start with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with the gentleman with price zones, which we also have a bill here to establish those through Council Resolution 134. And that was at least for me the big surprise of the session since nobody had brought it up until after it was actually filed. And so there are lots of questions and I didn't want to spend all of Monday night forcing everybody to have to listen to all the questions, but I am... That is the primary reason I think why we ask you all to be here today. So if you could introduce yourselves so that everybody knows who's on the panel here right now. My name is Brian Smith-Micknell. I'm a civil servant. You have to get that really close to you. My name is... See how close this is. Listen to this voice. My name is Brian Smith the McNeill. I'm the supervisor of assessments for Harbour County. Jason Janati, Harbour County D.A. Mary Kendall, Deputy Director with the Department of Planning and Zoning, sitting in for Linda Eisenberg. And Jennifer Jones, CEO of Harbour County Economic Development. Excellent. Thank you all for coming down. And again, I apologize for your lengthy wait. I do have a number of questions here which I guess I'll get started on and so I'm going to jump right to it. First I want to understand enterprise zones and that is my understanding is that in order to be a part of an enterprise zone, you have to have a commercial, not a residential building. I think is that correct? Commercial or industrial? Commercial or industrial? So no residential buildings are able to apply for an enterprise zone tax credit of 80%. For the first year, yeah, that's correct. My understanding is that if you do get an enterprise zone credit of 80%, which I understand it starts at 80% that goes for real property for five years and after that the 80% goes for five years and after that it descends 10% each year. Is that correct? Is that so it is 80% for the first five years. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 80% and for the first five years and then it descends by 10% each year after that. Okay, so it's my understanding that the county that the state pays the 80% tax credit, but the county has to pay the 40% has to pay half of that. So if it's the first year, at the first five years, at 80%, then the county would pay 50% of that 80% or would lose 50% of that 80% of the taxes, and the state loses 50% of that 80% of the taxes and the state loses 50% of that 80% of taxes. We'll just take a simple example because I think otherwise it's hard to really understand. You have $10 million, you have a $10 million property tax bill. Let's hope nobody ever has that, but let's pretend. You have a $10 million property tax bill. You are an enterprise-owned commercial building so your property tax is only $8 million because I'm sorry it's only $2 million because you have an $8 million tax credit. The county foregoes $4 million of that revenue and the state foregoes $4 million of that revenue. So that's why the state pays back the county $4 million. I guess is. So I mean jump in, but I think, I mean, so if you have a 10, if you have a building or a property and it's assessed at $10 million and then you make capital improvements. No, no, no, we're just pretending. I mean, I guess I want that to go. We're not even talking about capital. Here's the thing that. So they push. They don't get credits unless you do capital improvements. Right, I understand. So it kind of pretends for a moment that this, that I'm just, I'm not saying, let's pretend for a moment Brand new locates in gateway, brand new. And they have a $10 million property. I'm just using this as a way to understand the numbers. Okay. Okay, I'm not even talking about whether or not it's an expansion or anything else. Just brand new, $10 million property tax bill. And with the 80% credit, they would only have to pay 20% is that right Braxton? That's right. Okay. Then of the next 8 million dollars that they don't have to pay half of that well the whole thing is taken on as by the state of Maryland as their, what they're giving in terms of the tax credit, but they pay the county back half of that. So the county would get $4 million from the state because it's an enterprise, that enterprise zone is something that's created by the state of Maryland. Is that correct? Yes ma'am, the county and the state shares 50%. Okay, all right. So that was what I wanted to understand. Okay. So it's also my understanding that these same businesses, this brand new big business that has a $10 million tax bill, that they are that under an enterprise zone, they get an 80% tax break on personal property. I should go to you, Brackson. You're the, you're the, it seems like you're the expert here. They get an 80% personal property tax break. That 80% goes for the whole 10 years. There's nothing descending in that 80%. I'm not familiar at all with the personal property aspect of it. Nowhere in our procedures that I brought today is personal property addressed at all. Okay, that's on the Maryland State website on enterprise zones. And there's a personal property tax of 80 percent, which is huge because if you're obviously any kind of Medi-Spaw or you have a lot of computers or you're, you know, bringing in lasers or who knows what else, that would be an 80% tax break on personal property. Right, again, my example is the new thing, all right? That's the new thing that comes in. The new building comes in, they get the 80% tax credit on their real property for five years than descending 10% each year and an 80% tax credit for all 10 years on their personal property. So. So. That's for a focus area. That's for a focus area. So you have the enterprise area designation and then you have to apply for additional enhancements and then that's when you would get if you were awarded that you would get a Folk but that's that's not just by being designated for enterprise zone. No, you don't get the personal proper. Are you planning on applying for focus area? Is that part of it? Not to my knowledge currently, but you don't know. Yeah, I don't know currently. Yeah. But I'm saying that doesn't automatically come with the enterprise zone designation. OK. My next question is, Howard County having trouble leasing buildings. And are we having trouble? Are people who are in these two designated areas for enterprise zones in Gateway and Route 1. Are they having trouble leasing up their buildings? Well, I mean Gateway, I mean we have so an EDA we've seen a lot of great expansions and redevelopments across the county. We have had a couple of new businesses in Gateway but definitely there has been not the same expansion and revitalization in Gateway as other parts of the county. I mean, we have wins all over the county about, you know, when businesses are expanding, businesses are redeveloping. A lot of those are not in Gateway. And I think I've presented to the council before about things like other activity that we've had throughout the county, and most of it is not in gateway. Do you have a question? Yes. When we have with our questions, do you want to go more by category sort of there ones that would be sort of a follow up to the one that you just asked? Should we seek to share those now or should we try to compartmentalize? So it's like you to go ahead and see to show those now or should we try to compartmentalize so it's like you could go ahead. I just sort of in my research and looking at these, you know, there's no county in which they're applying them to the whole county. So I wondered if you might be able to, and this is really for the purposes of the public, because we've gotten some questions in, you know, could you explain why we would select a certain zone, what those benefits would be, to getting to encouraging investment in a specific place versus sort of having the whole playing field be the same for all, if you're a property owner and you're looking out where to make this investment and where to make this decision, how would this tax credit help you make that decision and what is the county's benefit in encouraging you to go to one area versus, again, having sort of same standard for the whole county? Shroud, I'll take the first crack at that. So the Enterprise Zone designation, it is an economic development tool. So it's just one tool in the toolbacks where we decide we want to try to encourage, attract additional private investment in a specific place. That's right. And a targeted specific place. And that those census tracks have to meet certain criteria. Exactly. In order to be designated. So there's that. So obviously you know every track. I mean other census tracks in Howard County wouldn't even be eligible for this. Yes, I mean, other since the tracks in Howard County wouldn't even be eligible for this. Yes, I have a copy of the census tracks here. OK. Yeah. So local governments get to decide, you know, what we decide as we submit this application and develop it, we determine what the economic needs are and what the economic development strategy needs to be for these targeted qualifying areas. So they could be for to support redevelopments and developments of downtowns. They could be to support development of industrial parks. They could be support to support development of commercial centers. But the point is the local locally we decide what that redevelopment development strategy is. So I don't know if I so there was absolutely yes there there so where we want to try to focus and encourage commercial development, and we want to grow jobs, it's really about targeting the places where we're trying to have some significant job growth. I mean, there is an advantage to that. Is there an advantage to the gateway area if we're getting sort of this parcel gets investment? And then that attracts more investment to this other parcel. And then you have more people investing within the gateway area versus, oh, I'll select this warehouse up Route 1 instead. Or I guess we're not doing warehouse in gateway, that was a bad example. But like, maybe there's three parcels that meet this business's criteria. But one of the things it seems like we're trying to do is encourage more redevelopment within Gateway, so that way because investment gets investment, that when people see you're getting, that people are investing in this space, other people want to join them in that investment. So that seems to be one of the benefits to creating this zone versus the opposite of not having the zone and having the whole county be the same. Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. I mean enterprise zones and similar incentive strategies are used throughout Maryland. It's used in 20 counties I think we're one of the only four that don't use them at all. Do you have to go around. Yeah, it's just the out the nation to kind of spur and catalyze, you know, maybe a catalyst for development, right? So there are times where there are some areas that need that extra boost. You create new jobs. And in terms of, and the reason why I was talking to you about the example that you had is because a lot of times, but for some of these incentives and designations, you wouldn't have the businesses. And there's examples of that. So it's not really accurate to say that we're losing out on revenue. We don't have it yet, right? And we know that development, revitalization, redevelopment costs are going up. And anything that we can do to make our return for redevelopment helpful and to spur development is our job. I mean, I have a whole business unit called Business Finance that focuses on incentives, like loans, grants, and other programs like that to help businesses make their financials work, so that they stay in Howard County and we retain them and we maintain our commercial base. So these are all tools that are routinely used, they're commonly used, and they work. And so, I want to make sure that Gateway has proper redevelopment and reinvestment. Like I said, people don't in that area aren't already trying to do this. They're not, it's been kind of frozen in time. Gateway's been frozen in time. It was great in the 70s. I don't know if you're going to get a chance to do this. I don't know if you're going to get a chance to do this. I don't know if you're going to get a chance to do this. I don't know if you're going to get a chance to do this. I don't know if you're going to get a chance to do this. I don't know if you're going to get a chance to do this. developed is Gateway right now. Did I hear that it was like 88% developed with the Madeline that's left? Sure, I'd have to go back and see what it was that we recently presented, but it's, yes, the good, it's covered in a good bit of impervious surface, but it's a lot of single use buildings, office buildings surrounded in parking lots. And there's two major developers over there, right? Two major, I guess I should say. And Howard Hughes. Oh, and Howard Hughes, okay, right? They own all the undeveloped land, but they were. They only undeveloped land. But they don't have a lot of, they haven't developed a lot over there. Have they Howard Hughes? They have. No, they have not. They have not. That's what I thought. That's why the two major developers over there are Abrams and cop. They 70% right? Isn't that my end? That's what was said at the Gateway Master Plan? I think it's not. No, it's actually between five property owners that own about 70% of the land. It's copped Abrams Howard Hughes, Columbia Association and DWS. The land, I'm asking the buildings. That's a lot of things. So I'm sorry. Maybe I need to be more clear. I mean, they own a lot of the buildings. They're most of the buildings. Yes, I don't know what they're doing. Yes, they own 70% of the buildings over there. Right. on this is if they own 70% of the buildings and 88 to 95% of the land is already developed, then basically what would happen in order for anybody to get a tax credit would be somebody would have to either knock down or expand a building. And it would be one of the two, most likely would be one of the two primary developers who already have 70% of the development there. Is that correct? I mean, it's good to be. Well, other than our use coming over and rebuilding on their land. It'll either be through redevelopment and full development under the development of the vacant land. That's exactly. Thank you. That's what. Thank you. That's what I just asked. It would have to be them redeveloping one or their buildings or Howard Hughes developing on their vacant land. And the vacant land, the little bit of vacant land that's left is just Howard Hughes, correct? Not CA. Take CA out of it. OK. I'm talking about developer Boolean. I'm talking about land that is lane follow. I think power use does have on development. It might be another owner too. I'm going to say Kaiser owns a big parcel over there too. I want to check. Yeah. OK. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but the evaluation of the Enterprise Zone credit was done by the Department of Legislative Services in 2022. And here are some excerpts from this report. The first is, and this is a quote, the purpose of the enterprise zone. It was established in 1982 and designed to encourage economic growth within economically distressed areas, economically distressed, you may call gateway economically distressed, I wouldn't, and to improve employment of the chronically unemployed. While enterprise zone credits is a quote on page two, if you want to go look at it. While enterprise zone credits may incentivize some businesses to create jobs within enterprise zones, the tax credit is not effective in providing employment to zone residents who are chronically unemployed and or in poverty. A number of factors contributed to this problem, including skills mismatches for new jobs created, lower than average educational attainment levels of the zone residents and labor mobility. In fiscal 2021 the program is expected to reduce state and local government finances by an estimated $55.1 million of which $28.9 million is a reduction in state finances. As of December 2020, a total of 36 enterprise zones are located in 17 counties and Baltimore City. There are currently 15 zones on the eastern shore. So clearly this is not a big Howard County thing. That's most of these things, 10 in Western Maryland. So far that's 27 out of the 36. Seven in Central Maryland and four in the capital region. I mean, it's not like people have enterprise zones all over this state who are competing against Howard County. The vast majority of these enterprise zones are located on the eastern shore in western Maryland and economically, what do they call it, economically deprived areas and they're not even doing what they were supposed to be doing, which was getting people into the labor market because they were near a census tract that had a lot of unemployment and people who were low income. So we did my office, and I would have loved to have seen you all do this. My office did a deep dive into the census tract that's around gateway to see what they actually look like and whether or not they fit into what is supposed to be going on when you're creating enterprise zones. So we looked at Census Track 601203 on Route 1,1914 families, the median family income. And this is different. It's not median income because enterprise zones look at family income and this is different, it's not income, median income. Because enterprise zones look at family income as opposed to individual income. The median family income for that particular census track was $140,244. That means that 52.8% of the families were below 80% of the county wide median family income. Doesn't qualify. Doesn't qualify as for what it is that you would have to qualify for in order to become an enterprise zone. 60, 67.06, which is in Columbia, Lark Brown, similar. In fact, the percent is even lower. That's not in the zone they're looking at. So it's adjacent. It's a personal, we're looking at the adjacent. So the parcels that are included have already been vetted. That's one of the programs. There was one adjacent. And already been communicated to us that they meet the criteria. There was one that we found and that was which may feel and which report are you reading from what it was the census track the US Census Bureau. I mean what year was that this year we're looking at this year. No, I don't know. It might have been 22. Okay. Might have been last. Oh, I'm sorry. Might have been 23. Yeah. Go ahead. So I believe what a part of what DPC'd, what did, was they helped try to identify which census tracks might qualify for this particular designation. And it's spelled out really clearly what the methodology is that you have to follow to determine if a census track does or doesn't qualify. And there's four different criteria that a census track could meet in order to qualify for the designation, which could be either average rate of employment related to low income poverty area, meeting family income requirement, and then whether population has decreased in a particular area. So I know that we did, I don't have to do that in front. And we didn't fit me. I have that too. Yeah, but I know that. The standards in the criteria, I know that we did, I don't have data in front. And we didn't fit me. I have that too. Yeah, but I know that. It's standards in the criteria. And I didn't see that we fit any of the other criteria except maybe the Census Track criteria and then found only one Census Track that was adjacent to any of these that fit the criteria. Yeah, so we did look at that. And that's what we used to inform the map. I don't have specifically that data in front of me, but that's something that I know that we did look at to determine which census tracts and therefore the parcels within would qualify for the designation. And like I said, the state does spell that out in their application. What the process is that you have to follow and how you use the ACS American Community Survey data to make those determinations. That's what we do. Yeah, we did. But it's part of their process, they vet that. So we did too, because we never saw anything from DPC or EDA about anything that I've just talked about. I asked for that information, we got none, zero. And I am not about to vote yes on an 80% tax credit without knowing more information. It just doesn't make sense to me. I don't know that businesses are asking for that. Oh, hey, I want to redevelop my commercial office building and make a bigger add on to it. And I need that 80% tax credit. I'm only going to do it but for but for that 80% tax credit I'm not going to add on to that building. I have no evidence whatsoever that that would help. And the other thing that I don't have which I find truly amazing given what I read to you about how many millions of dollars the state and the local jurisdictions are losing on enterprise credits. We have nothing about how much money we could stand to lose here in Howard County if we say, okay, enterprise credits, you go. We have nothing. No data, no data about what any projections. I know you can't say there's six buildings or six developers who are looking to redevelop and they're going to add 100,000 square feet. But that's where you have to project for us. What if there were six developers who were looking to add 100,000 square feet? What would that mean to the county? What would our loss be? What do you think you can do to get those six developers to redevelop if they had that enterprise credit? Do you think they would be more likely to do so? If they were, is it worth it in the long run knowing that they would get that 80% tax credit for five years and then descending down. What I need data to make a decision like this and I don't feel like I have any. So what I will say at this point is that you know an FY 24, 4.4 billion was brought in by enterprise zones so a new capital investment. And we, this is- In Maryland on the Eastern Shore and in Western Maryland? Yeah, this for Department of Commerce has this on there. So this is a lot of money. And also, like I said before, I mean, we enterprise zones, we don't have any in Howard County, we regularly use incentives for businesses and redevelopment. And that means tax credits, that means a lot of, that means, you know, a lot of programs that EDA routinely use, use us to make sure businesses, can redevelop the way they want and they can make the money, the financing work, and it's worked. So it's not these credits, I mean, it's not anything new, it's always, economic developments across the state and the nation, use these to credit out allies gross and we've done this in our accounting. Okay and it's worked so I'm just telling you it's not this isn't a really a new a new I know it's not new in 1980 and it works according to the state legislative source who said it doesn't work but but that's okay. I think Liz Walsh has a question or a comment she'd like to make. Thank you, Chair. Mike, I don't know. I wish I noted when we started the conversation, Route 1 only just came up now. And I can see why a program like this makes every sense on Route 1, and especially in those tracks that you've identified, but in lots of other tracks as well But I think you actually make the case against gateway by including a route one in the same application. I Really That's where the disconnect is for me. I wish your predecessor and Jones had done this 15 years ago for route one for all a little miles of root one. Agreed. But place where I had to spend 10 months out of last year hearing about mixed use and this and that and woolen offs and whatever else we have planned there. Never ever was there mention this kind of incentive in a place where the county already is investing in planning efforts, you know, all kinds of other infrastructure. It again almost seems like a disconnect. If we want multi-use, then why are we incentivizing industrial? You do that on Route 1. It's a failure. Don't do it again, it didn't get me. But I'm with Cherry on this. Give us some data. Don't file a bill the week before you need an approval for this on a state deadline. I thought in our conversations with you, and we did get a preview before the bill was filed, I believe, and we very much appreciate that, but our questions were the same. I think as others, which was what is the timing here, and once the next round, and we heard April, and my preference would be that we get some of these answers, we get some better clarity about why these tracks are not others. For me, again, the disconnect is always going to be, how on earth can you pretend like a vast sprawling office complex is the same as the wasteland that is ruined, particularly in those areas you identify in this bill? There are some logical flaws in this application, unfortunately. I would agree. I was also quite surprised to see Gateway and Route 1 together as an enterprise zone. I like Ms. Walsh would totally support an enterprise zone application for Route 1. I don't feel the same way about Gateway, and I don't feel like the data is is clear about Gateway. We don't know the effect of the tax breaks. We don't have a foregone revenue model. I don't know that the biggest thing that might not help over in Gateway is attracting more commercial if we change zoning rights for density and maybe setbacks or something else that would give more incentives to the people who are already there to build higher bigger. I also really don't understand how we can attract sixth to 10th and we can hope to have 6 to 10,000 new residential units in Gateway. And at the same time, be expanding all these commercial buildings or bringing new ones in. This is, I guess you have better vision of all this than I do, but at the Gateway Master Plan meeting, I'm seeing nice open space, I'm seeing a wide boulevard that ends in a town center area, I'm seeing parks, and I'm thinking I don't know how all that comports with having 6 to 10,000 residential plus the commercial that's already there plus expanded commercial. That is not computing to me. So maybe I'm just not don't have the vision that you all have, but I don't see it. Madam Chair, in my apologies for my tardiness, I did get pulled into another meeting at one o'clock. So I'm just coming into this. So Brian Chepter for the record. On the data point as to eligibility, the Department of Commerce has verified eligibility of two tracks in this area that you reference. One is 6011.07, the other is 6012.03. In both exceed the 125% poverty rate, according to the data that the Department of Commerce itself is going to review. So those are two eligible census tracks in this immediate area. As it relates to why we should put these together, why not? They are both areas that we are in our general plan that this Council adopted a year ago, areas that we want to encourage redevelopment. These are areas that are prime for redevelopment. We may be in a gateway master planning process, but to designate an enterprise zone takes nothing away from the opportunities. It will encourage employment opportunities to be further developed through capital investment. There will be no net loss. If we look at the baseline of today's assessed values, the incremental benefit to the employer or business owner is, there is no loss there to the county. It is only an incremental benefit to the employer to make the capital investment. So. I don't know how you can say there's no loss. We've just talked about an 80% tax credit and we just talked about the loss. We talked about the loss on the state level and on the local level. There's a loss. There is a loss. There is a loss. It's a loss of incremental. It's incremental. We don't have that. Yeah, we don't even have the only laws that allow us to. Yes, but if we bring it in, then we lose it for for 10 years. That's the butt for. This is right. Yeah. I'm sorry, but I'm not finding up if it was such a terrible place than why would it be 98 or 85 or however many percentage it is already built out So wait, I'm looking for an idea. So is your point that who might build a new building or renovate a building there without the enterprise zone Generating incremental increase assessment increase taxes that we don't have to share. I mean that would be the law. My point is, you know, potential loss, but there's no way to plan. My point is one loss revenue, two, we're supposedly going to have all this residential, which I think will attract new businesses and expansion anyway. I don't think we need to give people 80% tax credits in order to do that. But can I ask questions after we do a lot of it? Go ahead. Because I'm done. Yeah, I'm done. Okay. So you have dominated this section quite fulsomely. To go back to these zones Actually, Braxton would you be able to assist a little bit does does Baltimore County have zones? Sorry my first time here Yes, ma'am Rice just down road Parts of a job a road Also where Bethlehem Steel was relocated. Sparrows Point. Sparrows Point, yes. And then it looked like they had one that goes down in the Holland's Ferry Road to almost the Elk Ridge Howard County border. Yes, man, that's correct. And then it looked also like Anorundal has one? So I'm not familiar right off with an arundal. Okay. And it also looked like Montgomery County had two. Yes ma'am. And Prince George's is the whole county? No, no, it's not the whole county. It's listed strangely. But no, I'm positive it's not the whole county. And then Carol, looks like Carol does not have one. Carol County? You know, I don't have a map with me. I can't say 100%. But it does look like many of our surrounding jurisdictions have them. Thank you. I appreciate that because it, when I looked at the map, it did not appear to me that it was just sort of the ice cream sandwich comportions of Maryland, but it also included the Center of Maryland ice cream that have enterprise zones. And to clarify, we have people investing in gateway, but it's not really meeting the county's needs, either for our residents or for our revenues. That's correct. So, when it comes, and then when we, and we also know that in redeveloping areas that takes a lot more effort, time and money. Is that correct? That's correct. So redevelopment is much harder to accomplish than greenfield development. Yes, oftentimes. And at the moment, we're in a different financing reality for most of the people who have the capital to invest in these areas. Absolutely. I mean, like I said, we've worked with business developers, businesses that are taking on redevelopment projects and our incentives help them make the numbers work. And so as an example of this when I'm glad someone mentioned the Kaiser Parcel because they currently rent within a building but then they have a large silver spring office and then they also have a large South Baltimore office. But these kinds of incentives, incentives that we talked about, ensuring we're part of our general plan because we recognize the need to draw these businesses in. That that would be part of their decision. If they know that there's a growing need, that that would be part of their decision if they want if they they know that there's a growing need if if our county were growing at the pace that it was or if it were growing at a faster pace they may say hey we actually have higher need here we're out growing our existing lease space and they this could be the kind of thing that would push them into making that capital investment. If they own the land and they could do those capital investments and draw those healthcare jobs here. Now, I agree with Ms. Young, I don't think that that is necessarily going to employ every resident in the adjacent census code. I think whoever set up opportunity, employment, empowerment, whatever verb zones in the 80s, I think if their plan was to end poverty, I don't think that they should have structured it the way they did. But this is just to allow the state to designate it. This is just saying yes, we would like to be considered as an enterprise zone. That's what this action is before us today, not today, but this month. That's correct. It's not saying everybody has, you know, it's not saying free money for everybody. It's just going to the state and saying this is a designation we're seeking that would allow for this process to be administered by Estad. So yes, the process would be administered in cooperation between the county and Estet and Estet. I guess you maybe you could talk a little bit about how that is triggered at the building for review, etc. That would be very helpful to hear. Sure. Just like you were talking about the Kaiser lot. So say they built a new building and you had allowed the inner-prosome to move forward. So say they built a new building and you had allowed the Enterprise Zone to move forward. So say right now, so the lot is valued at $10 million. A new office building of good size would be probably about $20 million. So you know say you approve the enterprise zone, we go out next May, we put this building on for $20 million. So instead of being $10 million for just the land, now it's $30 million. So, you know, we would take that $20 million, and then times about 0.8 for, you know, the first first to five years and then we'd be going down and then we would multiply times a tax rate and then we would be splitting the state and the that we track all the accounts. You know, we do yearly reports and we track when they should, they should come off. We also apply the credit and then we work with the county to actually administer. What the values should be. So when I have calculated these before in Baltimore County, where I was a commercial manager, you know, I was in charge of, you know, cooperating with the finance office, putting flags on the accounts, you know, I would run the reports for the Department of Justice because we track them all so that we know when to take them off. From your perspective in Estat, you are taxing their land, the sort of vacant land at 10 million, just rounding numbers from. But then when they go to do, when they add this investment, so that the money becomes real, it's not a longer potential, a potential improvement, it's an actual improvement on their land. That portion is what would be, what would accrue the tax credit, not the 30 collectively. Or would it be the 30 because now it's been activated? Well, it's the value of the new construction. So the 10 is just the land that's going to be part of, the 10 that's the land before the new construction is what we call the base. So the tax credit is going to be on whatever is the difference between the new value with the new improvements and then the old value which was the base. So it's got it got it you know an older building plus land or if it's just land that would be the base where if we're starting from. And so on that older building piece say you have office building that is not great. It's not a crew as a property owner. It's not accruing the revenues as a county most office buildings are not accruing occurring the revenues we would want to see just if you care about giving money to schools then you should know that we do not make a lot of money for our general fund on commercial buildings. So this could really allow that commercial redevelopment to take place. But then from the sort of county DPC side we would be gaining an additionally crumman if it's a mixed use building because of the residential taxes. For it, we'd be retaining their income taxes and that larger buildings property taxes. Right, so the residential piece would not be eligible for any tax credit? No, it wouldn't be eligible for any tax credit, but their revenues would be coming in. If you can take down a single use office building that is not well least, that is not bringing in sort of the revenues that US property owner were hoping it would or you know, also on the county side, then the credit would apply for you to redevelop the commercial lower portion of the building and then also create the opportunity for the residential come in because that residential isn't coming in now. It's not getting built on top of an existing office building, but if you had to redevelop it, this credit would help you redevelop it. And we would take it. And then that would be, the tax rate would be applied to commercial, but not the residential. And so we would still receive residential income taxes, residential for the property taxes for the building and then just the diminimus, just that portion of the commercial would be what would be eligible for this tax credit. Okay and that's how it functions in the other mixed use communities that you've administered this process with. Yes ma'am, that's correct. Okay well I think that's the biggest question use communities that you've administered this process with. Yes, ma'am, that's correct. Okay. Well, I think that's the biggest question. So thank you very much. Any other comments or questions, Ms. Walsh? Could we please just get clarity on when the submission deadlines are for a locality to make this application to the state. The submission deadlines October 15th and again in April April 15th. Anything else? Wait after that October date was there responses to when the next round is? Yes, Mr. Shepter said April 15th. Correct. Okay, that's what I thought. No, that's all I have. All right, anything else? All right, nothing else. Thank you all. Thank you. And we are adjourned.