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Welcome to Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz, a transparent and engaging conversational dive into meaningful topics impacting local government and Bismarck, North Dakota Bismarck Insights is dedicated to removing barriers between the city of Bismarck and the citizens we serve every day.

00:00:32,667	S2:
Welcome to Bismarck Insights. I'm Mayor Mike Schmitz, and today I have with me to discuss our city legal department, our city attorney office, a relatively newly appointed Julie Mees. Julie, you began with the city of Bismarck in 2021. But let's explain to people a little bit about your background, how you got here, kind of where your your qualities are.

00:00:55,667	S3:
Okay. Well, I grew up in Northern Virginia. Um, my mother was from Montana. Is from Montana. And my whole family moved from Northern Virginia to Montana. So I kind of followed them and I stayed. I went to law school out there. I practiced in Billings as a prosecutor at the Yellowstone County Attorney's Office for 14 years. I met my husband there. He was a highway patrolman with the K-9. And so that's we met on the job. But he's from Bismarck, and he always wanted to come back here. And I was reluctant because I didn't want to leave my job. But then I was ready to go. And then he was ready to retire. And then a job opened up at the city attorney's office here. So kind of last minute I applied and I interviewed and surprised I got hired. So I started in late March. I lived here by myself with one of our dogs in a small apartment, while my husband and I got the house ready in Billings to sell. And then we moved out here.

00:01:57,868	S2:
And so now you're in Bismarck and Mandan or the Bismarck Mandan region. And, um, a year ago, not quite a year ago. Um, we went through the process of needing to hire a new city attorney when we had a resignation. And. And you are the successful applicant. So thank you, a for applying. Um, yeah. It's also it's always, I think, good to see our our team have growth and people who who are working that can rise to leadership as certainly as long as they meet the qualifications. And and we know you do. So it's been good to have you in the role. But maybe you want to just tell me what you know, what the experience has been transitioning from the prosecuting side to this leadership, management, and now all the other city tasks that you have to worry about from a city law governance standpoint.

00:02:45,868	S3:
You know, one of the best things about this job is I learn something new every day, and I get to do something different every day. And so I loved being a prosecutor. I thought I was going to do it for my entire career, but it's a lot of stress. It's a lot of sleepless night. It's a lot of working on the weekends. Um, so I was ready for something different. I love learning new things. So I'm happy to transition into that. And I feel like the the other city staff and the departments have been very helpful, giving me lots of grace and help and their expertise, which I really rely on. Um, so transitioning was a little bit easier than I kind of thought it would be. There was a time like right after I got appointed, I thought, oh boy, what have I done? You know, but it it's been good. I really appreciated working with everybody and admin and HR and all of the departments. Um, and then our team within the legal department has been very supportive and very helpful. And I rely on their expertise and I rely on them getting their stuff done. And, you know, I don't think we've even had major bumps. We just had a little bit of transition to kind of get used to a new style and, you know, it's a different person in that office. So. But it's been good.

00:04:03,400	S2:
Yeah. Well, at almost the same time. Well, I would say at the same time as you taking over as the city attorney, there are a few other changes within your staff. And so you had to go through the hiring process of bringing in a couple of attorneys as well.

00:04:17,667	S3:
And yes.

00:04:18,667	S2:
How's that been going?

00:04:20,200	S3:
It was a lot of work. It was. So the previous city attorney left my cohort. Deputy city attorney. She moved to Dickinson to be closer to her family, and she took a job with the stark, Stark County Attorney's office or state's attorney's office. And so we had to hire two new attorneys. And that happened relatively quickly. And I think, um, I took over back over some of the criminal side to help the attorneys out. And, um, but we've had a pretty good transition there, learning a lot. Municipal court is busy. I liken it to herding cats sometimes when we have a busy court date, but they've been able to handle it and they work well with the clerks over there, too.

00:05:03,467	S2:
Wonderful. Let's talk just a little bit about the legal department and what we have currently for staff, and I believe we've got will be hiring another another person hopefully soon, hopefully soon.

00:05:13,267	S3:
Yeah. So we have three legal assistants. We have two who handle really the majority of the criminal caseload paperwork, administrative tasks. They keep the attorneys and me in line on the criminal side. And then we have a senior legal assistant who handles the insurance part. That's a big chunk of the city attorney's office is handling the insurance claims for the city. And we just had an RFP for our insurance provider. And we work closely with the North Dakota Insurance Reserve Fund. So we're she's constantly working on those sorts of things. Um, we will be hiring a new legal assistant shortly. I hope we have to rearrange our office because we're running out of space. And so we're going to have to, I think, reconfigure to get that person a spot, because right now I think they could just sit at a table and that would be it. Um, but yeah, everything's going well. The the staff is working hard every day. And, you know, we work with other departments on a daily basis. Citizens call. So it's it's pretty hoppin.

00:06:14,901	S2:
And one of the in as part of you mentioned briefly, you know, working with the other departments. But obviously you you kind of have to make sure from a city ordinance standpoint that if we have a new ordinance or the ordinances come through, or if they're those types of things that are not necessarily they're criminal in nature, but they're providing guidance as to how we operate, that falls to you and your department to make sure we're following century code or the United States Constitution.

00:06:39,701	S3:
Right. So every two years, the legislature comes out with new laws, and a lot of our ordinances follow those laws. And so if the state legislature changes some parts of century code, we need to determine if we're going to change our ordinance. ordnance. And so that's a big process. And that's something that we did this spring and summer as well. We get a lot of help from the League of Cities. They put out a chart of all of the the ordnance or statute changes that could affect cities. And so it's not just criminal, it's other. There were HR changes as well. Right. So we have to monitor those for the entire city and things we catch up on. We advise other departments and the courts. You know what what the changes are.

00:07:22,968	S2:
Sure. And so have you. What challenge did you feel like you encountered that you found to be? Maybe it's not. Call it a challenge. Maybe it became the opportunity to see if there was some enhancement as you transitioned. I mean, was there anything right away that you learn found out about that kind of maybe even caught you off guard.

00:07:43,367	S3:
In the first few weeks? Caught me off guard because there there is so much that the city attorney's office handles. And so for me, it was the getting the background from the different departments as to their projects that they needed help with. And so that was just that learning curve was pretty steep. And I feel like I'm still doing that because there will still be things like they'll say, Julie, you know, this project from 2015 and I'll say, no idea. You need to give me some background. Yeah, but they've been great about explaining that to me and then forging path forward. You know, how we can help the project succeed.

00:08:21,467	S2:
And certainly because we have a number of departments and we're not a small organization, there are lots of legal documents that are flowing through that need to be reviewed before they can be executed, before they even get to the city commission for approval. Right. And so that that all flows through your department.

00:08:37,501	S3:
That's correct. It's amazing the number of contracts that the city does. But if you think about the size of the city, it makes sense. So my office me primarily I review all of the contracts that come my way. I don't look at the terms, the nitty gritty details. I leave that to the experts within the departments, but I look for things like the insurance, the indemnities, legal things. North Dakota has a very robust open records law, so we have to make sure that we are complying with that law within the contract as well. So we we make sure all those things are covered. So yeah, contracts a lot. There's land transfers every year. The police department has an auction. So the legal assistants take care of all the title transfers. So I get a stack of paper that's big to sign. The transfer documents. Yeah, yeah. So just something every day for sure.

00:09:34,467	S2:
Sure. So you mentioned you hired two new. I guess we'll call prosecutors, right? Um, is that a primary role? Although I know they've been helping you out on several other items, which I appreciate, because that means that they get to grow to. Exactly. But one of their primary things is dealing with municipal court, and let's let everybody Break room. Refresh them. What municipal court is. When we talk about prosecutors, we're not prosecuting, um, uh, major, major issues like a death or something like that where there's murder involved. But we're prosecuting other types of right actions. What are those and what's that load look like, and what areas can we look to maybe create efficiency.

00:10:15,367	S3:
So Municipal Court is a very busy court. Um, so municipal court, the jurisdiction is up to class B misdemeanors. So we have infractions. We have traffic offenses. We have class B misdemeanors, a municipal court, any higher level misdemeanors like class A or felonies, those all go through district court and are prosecuted by the state's Attorney's office. And so we prosecute the city ordinance violations. And like I said, they do mirror a lot the state's entry code. So we'll do so for traffic offenses like we have stop sign violations, red light violations and then infractions are things that no jail time are involved. It's just a fine up to $1,000. It's things like minor and possession. Those are infractions. And then class B misdemeanors are crimes that could be punished by up to $1,500 in fine and maybe up to 30 days in jail. And so those things are like simple assaults, DUIs. We see a lot. We see a lot of driving under suspension tickets. And those are all Class-B misdemeanors. So we have to maneuver those around.

00:11:23,167	S2:
Sure. And what's your sense what's our level of activity compared to the other cities in the state of North Dakota, population wise, are we we have greater numbers. And if there's anything we can determine what we're driving that or lesser numbers as well too.

00:11:38,968	S3:
So I don't have the exact numbers, but we've been looking at that recently. And for some reason, Bismarck is, I think, busier than even Fargo, which is a larger population. I don't know if it's more robust policing. I you know, there's not really an explanation that I have offhand, but we do keep up with all of the charges. I know courts very busy. We've been looking at ways to make prosecution more efficient. We work really closely with the court and the clerks. We have an electronic case management system. We've had it for a couple of years now. It's called prosecution by carpel or prosecutor by carpel. We'll call it PBC. And that all is digitized. So we've gone as paper free as possible. So and we're we get our documents in from the police department. We're working on a new module that allows them to hit a button. And the paper, the paper digital paper flows right into our computer system. And so we're still working on that. That's a long you know, there's I think 3 or 4 systems that we have to coordinate to get that done. So um, and then also when we hand out what's called discovery, all the police reports, videos to defense attorneys or pro se defendants, people who represent themselves. All that's done with the computer link. So we're not handing out paper anymore. Which is I think that's a huge efficiency. And we're trying to do that as much as possible and work with court to get that done as well.

00:13:06,267	S2:
So how do we handle those defendants who are not so technically technologically savvy or the ability to handle paperless, I guess, is the best term. It's really it's still the documents, but it's paperless. How do we help those people? Because not everybody can do that or have access.

00:13:22,868	S3:
You know, surprisingly, people are figuring it out. But if they need to, we can print out the report for them. They can certainly come to our office and watch any video if they are not able to look at it on a friend's computer or at the library or at home. Sure. So we have an open file policy, like most prosecutors do, and people are certainly welcome to look at any of the evidence that we have. They're entitled to.

00:13:47,067	S2:
It. And that's probably most my point is we will find a way to accommodate for sure because A we need to. We're required.

00:13:53,567	S3:
To. We're required to. And it's only fair they need to be able to see what the video might show, for example.

00:13:58,767	S2:
Yeah, sure. So what's your what's the city attorney's offices relationship? Let's start with PD first. Um, how do you feel that relationship is?

00:14:09,000	S3:
It's good. So when I was prosecuting felonies, I was dealing with, you know, mostly detectives who had multiple years. Municipal court has a lot of the younger officers, which only makes sense. So I also feel like we're helping educate as well. And some of the officers have never testified before. So we're also giving help with them testifying accurately and and coherently. And so we have D.O.T. hearings. So when people get a DUI, potentially they could get their license suspended, but they can challenge that at the Department of Transportation. And so the officers come testify at those hearings, and our prosecutors attend those hearings as well. so we're helping with that. The officers are really good about working with us to get updates and follow up reports. We also work with them with their records division. Really well. Like I said, we're getting those reports flowing into our new system. And then the PD also has a computerized discovery or evidence system called axon. And so we're getting body cam videos, patrol car videos, shoplifting videos, videos from convenience stores. Those also come into our system as well. So we work with them to get the evidence collected as well.

00:15:28,000	S2:
Good. And and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I mean, you're the prosecuting attorney. And so we have a middle person municipal court in this case. Yep. Houser. You know, and they're also part of the city, an elected position. That is the judge. But, you know, are we making some progress to finding some efficiencies with how Municipal Court can operate with our city attorney's office and vice versa.

00:15:49,767	S3:
You know, recently we've been having meetings with the chief clerk and the judge to come up with efficiencies. I have ideas, they have ideas. It is working hard to help them become more efficient as well with their computer systems and the statewide computer system to help, that helps track charges across the state. It's called Odyssey. So we are working very closely with court, and we don't talk about the specifics of any case. It's more procedures.

00:16:18,300	S2:
No, that's what it processes.

00:16:19,767	S3:
Yeah. Because I mean we all are working together. We want to make it as efficient as quickly for people going through court as possible and as fair. So we're trying to make it.

00:16:30,100	S2:
Yeah. And we know there had been some there were some changes in this last legislative session that put some made some changes to how things are done, maybe even change requirements. And I know that's that's really why I'm asking, because we've heard from the municipal court judge that there's some they were having some struggles. So how they could implement some of that?

00:16:50,100	S3:
Yeah it is. So next July, I believe all municipal courts will become courts of record. And so that's also a struggle to figure out, because now the Supreme Court Committee is working on ways to help the municipal courts with recording and what the rules will be. And so that's something that will be a big switch as well.

00:17:11,801	S2:
Sure. And we also obviously another part of the job. And you know we we deal with the municipal court. But I'm going to switch a little bit. Risk management. Part of your job is you're the you're the risk manager for the city right. So let's talk about that a little bit. What what areas do you have to be focused on and what are our risks?

00:17:33,167	S3:
The first question I always ask is what could go wrong and how. And so our goal is to protect residents, to protect employees, to protect city property, to ensure that we have essential services going forward and to reduce our liability. So we just try to make sure that we're following policies and procedures. We update those as necessary. We work with all the departments to make sure everybody's getting the training that they need. HR is really good at that. And we those trainings are mostly online now so everyone can have an opportunity, you know, even if they don't have access to a computer because of their job, they can sit in a group and watch the trainings. So we try to work with that. We make sure that we're doing as much safety for the employees as possible. You know, you can't make it 100% safe. You can't wrap everybody in bubble wrap and send them off. But we do try to reduce our liabilities to make everything safe and running effectively as possible.

00:18:36,200	S2:
So as part of that, you mentioned it earlier. We just went through an RFP for insurance. That's part of how we create risk management protection I guess, or mitigation is better word. Um, where what areas do we or do? Is your office really focus on from that risk risk management standpoint with insurance especially.

00:19:00,400	S3:
So like I said earlier, we're part of the pool for the North Dakota Insurance Reserve Fund. So we work really closely with them. Um, so winter is coming. So we're going to see a lot more people crashing into snowplows, for example. So we we work with that to try to mitigate those issues as well. Um, but you know, there's only so much you can do when the roads are slick. Yeah. Um, people crash into light poles a lot for some reason. So we try to work with engineering to get those put back in place real quickly and replace and work with an insurance reserve fund. And, you know, if that was a driver who had a snowplow work with their insurance to make sure everybody's safe and put back as whole as possible. But to get the snowplow, for example, back on the road.

00:19:47,000	S2:
Sure. So that's physical damage type of risk obviously. Hopefully it's never a fatality. But those are those are the things we have to be worried about, including our own team members.

00:19:58,300	S3:
Exactly.

00:19:59,467	S2:
But we also have, you know, what's the what's the operational risk that that you get involved with, whether it's, I don't know, delivery of service infrastructure related items that aren't necessarily physical property that we think of like it, cybersecurity, all those things.

00:20:17,501	S3:
Right. So I it has a very strong cybersecurity program in place. They are constantly updating those things. So now we have filters. And make sure that we're not getting hit by a cyber attack. That's what we're trying to avoid. We do have a writer for cybersecurity. But you can never be 100% safe. But we're doing the best that we can to make sure all the information contained within the city programs are protected.

00:20:46,367	S2:
And so what's your involvement with the IT department and that because, I mean, I think of that a lot of times that's their job. But you've got the risk management component of that, which means then how do we protect the catastrophe. And so what's your role with it and making sure we have the right coverage, doing as much as possible. Make sure we have the right systems implemented on the IT infrastructure.

00:21:09,100	S3:
Right. So I am nowhere near a security cybersecurity expert, so I rely on their expertise. And if they find a program that they need, I will review the contract to make sure it's legally required for North Dakota and for the city. Um, we work closely for policies and trainings. Everybody has to do online trainings again for not just HR issues, but IT issues, and that helps with our insurance as well. Um, we get tested, it sends out little fish tests. And so that's something that we work with to keep the city's systems secure.

00:21:48,367	S2:
Sure. Is there any other? Well, reputation. Reputation for the city. Reputation for team members? Technically. What? What's your involvement there? What do we do for that?

00:22:00,567	S3:
So we work with HR for ethics training. So people, you know, we represent the city. We have to be good stewards of taxpayer money. We want to represent the city well. We want to always be as ethical as possible. I have a law license that I need to protect. Yeah. And I never want to do anything that's going to impact either my law license or the reputation of the city. So we always have to act professionally, even when we're getting screamed at on the phone or at the window. We always have to be cool and calm, and we work with HR for those, you know, if those issues pop up, we talk to them, I'll talk to residents if there's an issue and we talk to employees as well too.

00:22:42,467	S2:
Yeah. And you brought up the one thing that's really important from a reputation standpoint is to maintain good reputation as being ethical across all levels of our organization, right from commission down to the janitor or the. That's a bad term because they might be the most valuable people, but whatever the position is, you know, and so I'm glad to hear we go through ethics training for people, and hopefully we're doing a good job of that. And I know we have policies in place now that maybe we didn't have, even for appointed and elected positions.

00:23:13,567	S3:
Right. A lot of what happened decades ago was sort of a handshake, and now we're getting things more solidly written down. And so everyone knows what we're working with, what our requirements are.

00:23:26,567	S2:
Sure. So as we look forward moving into the next, I don't know, year and then maybe beyond what kind of services? Um, I know you deliver a lot right now, but what things do you think we might have to be worried about? How we can deliver from the city attorney's office to our constituents or for our constituents.

00:23:47,100	S3:
So I think I'd like to, you know, we're efficient. Now, I think I'd like to become more efficient and more open. I mean, we help, you know, people can do open records requests and we we help with those. There's just always you never know what's going to come across your desk in any given day. But we are looking forward. I at some point I'd like to go through the ordinances because there's some ordinances that need to be repealed because they were repealed at the state level. We still have them on the books. Some terms may not be as accurate as possible. So I'd like to go through those whenever we have time. And I don't know if that's going to happen in the near future, but that's something I'm looking at. Um, I think once the prosecutors get a little bit more used, I mean, they've been there less than a year.

00:24:36,000	S2:
Right.

00:24:36,868	S3:
Um, I know that they both have other interests outside, just prosecution. And I like, like you said, to help them develop professionally. They've also started those projects. So if there's like a bad debt, for example, somebody doesn't pay their water bill. One of the attorneys is working on a project to see if we can collect that, or somebody files for bankruptcy, but they owe a water bill. We got to work with the bankruptcy court to see if we can get the city water paid. Um, there's always something coming up for the commission. We have research projects, and sometimes they need to be done last minute. And so the prosecutors will also help me with the research to answer the commissioners questions.

00:25:18,901	S2:
That's very good. So I think one thing we need to make sure people understand is you're the city attorney. So you represent the city, right? You don't give legal advice for citizen disputes with another citizen, for example. Correct.

00:25:34,567	S3:
Exactly. So I don't represent the city. I mean, I represent the city as an entity, but not an individual citizen. Right. And so if somebody has a dispute with their neighbor and we get this a lot about trees or snow or grass clippings, we can't step into that dispute. That's a dispute that's in civil in nature. That's between number one and number two. We can tell them where they can look an ordinance if there's something that we could look at potentially, but we can't make the neighbor clean the snow off or not throw snow in the neighbor's yard or something like that.

00:26:13,367	S2:
Right. And I think it's important that people understand that as much as we would love to say we can help or we can. Um, there are these things. We can't do that.

00:26:21,467	S3:
Right? We get a lot of criminal defendants who represent themselves, and they just they'll ask me all the time, what's my best plan? What's my best choice? And I see, I can't I can't make that choice for you. I can't tell you what's best for you. Here are your options. Feel free. Please talk to a defense attorney for that. Um, but I can't tell. I couldn't tell them. That's. It's not my job. And also, it's. I'm not allowed to do that for my law license as well.

00:26:49,367	S2:
So let's move a little bit towards the future now. Technology.

00:26:53,100	S3:
Oh, boy.

00:26:53,567	S2:
What? What are the things that we need to be looking at from the city's perspective to provide the resources necessary for your your office moving forward?

00:27:02,167	S3:
I would still like to do as paper free as possible, have everything accessible on the cloud and where it is working towards that. So our contract system, we use the online signing system so we can track when they were signed and by whom and what the the contract was for. I would like to have that even more searchable, because sometimes we need to access a contract from a few years ago, and it can be sometimes problematic to find. Um, we do have a new procurement officer working really hard, doing a great job coming up with policies and manuals, and that will also be forms on our SharePoint or on word that we can do for a request for proposals. So we're going in that direction. I'd like to figure out how we could do that for the police auction because like I said, we get a stack of titles. I don't know how much we have control over that, because that's really a state Department of Transportation issue. But I think that's something that we could look at as well, if we if that's possible, but something that's more digitized. So we're not shuffling paper around and, and getting things caught in paperclips.

00:28:20,200	S2:
And I and I live at my regular job to paper is sometimes I need it because I just can't look at everything on the screen. But. Right. But yeah.

00:28:28,067	S3:
I print things out.

00:28:29,300	S2:
Yeah. Prefer to not have it left after I'm done and just move it on. But I mean, I someday I do think we'll get to a point of where we're signing Planning documents that, in theory, require notarization. Electronically? Yes. I just had to help someone out on that this week for a document we'd already signed, and went through the city through document sign, and I had to go and get ink on it.

00:28:51,400	S3:
You know, I tell the document, the DocuSign part of it, I cannot get a document loaded in. I have to rely on my legal assistance because that's complicated to make sure all the fields are filled in. I can't do it. But I will say the state court system has e signing, and they do a lot of online judgments. Even so, I think that's something that we could work towards for municipal courts. So there's just a form that the judge could check out on the bench, e sign it and then have it ready for the defendant at the window when the court's done.

00:29:22,000	S2:
Yeah. Well I think we're going to get there. Julie, thank you for taking time with me today. It's been a pleasure. And hopefully we provide some information to our citizens.

00:29:30,367	S3:
Thank you so much.

00:29:43,467	S1:
Thank you for watching Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz. If you have specific topics or questions you'd like addressed in future episodes. Email em Schmitz at Bismarck gov.

00:29:57,100	S1:
Or call the City of Bismarck at (701) 355-1300.

00:30:01,467	S1:
To learn more about the City of Bismarck, visit Bismarck, ND gov. Or follow us on a variety of social media channels by searching Bismarck, N.D. gov. Bismarck Insights is a collaboration between Dakota media access and the City of Bismarck. You may find Bismarck Insights episodes on government access channels two and 602, as well as on Roku, Apple TV, and fire TV devices. On radio access 102.5 FM and on demand at fretboard.