January 07, 2020
DOJ Update:
- There was an open status conference on the DOJ Settlement Agreement which began this morning in Federal Court at 9am; within the first 20 minutes of “discussion” on the items upon which there was no agreement between the Commonwealth and the Department of Justice, with each attorney and witness being peppered with pointed questions from Judge Gibney, it was clear that the Judge was interested in getting the parties to agree. It was also clear that he he had a definite idea about what he thought the agreement should be!
- The conference adjourned to the Court’s jury room out of sight and hearing of those of us gathered to hear; we have a first hand report that at the end of the session there was agreement on all items. Each side “won some & lost some,” but in many cases the Judge informed the parties that if they could not agree on a particular item, he would decide for them.
- A final draft must be prepared by 14 January, and may be available at that point for us to review. It is clear that even with “agreement” this is not the end of this process; some of the items will be difficult for the Commonwealth to achieve. Some because the standards are very high, some because we simply don’t have the systems or tools in place to measure the activity. Time will tell!
Session 2020:
- This week is one of organization for the members, especially because virtually every committee will have new leadership.
- For your leadership, it is the time we have to ensure that all budget amendment requests have a patron and are properly filed and we are frantically reading all of the legislation being proposed so that we can assess if there could be any impact on the membership. More on both of those later.