From the Director’s Desk, August 7, 2024

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the August 7, 2024, installment of From the Director’s Desk. We’re glad you’re able join us today. All audio lines are muted, as this is a listen-only briefing. For reference, this recording will be posted tomorrow to the OVC website. At this time, it’s my pleasure to introduce Kristina Rose, OVC Director, for today’s briefing.

KRISTINA ROSE: Thanks, Daryl. It’s great to actually be here with Daryl in person today for this broadcast, because this isn’t our typical set-up. It’s because we’re both here at the 2024 National Joint Training Conference for VOCA Victim Assistance and Victim Compensation Administrators. We’re in beautiful, but very HOT, New Orleans. And, for those of you listening in today, we are in the middle of day 2 of the conference, and just before a plenary session where I’m hosting the--a panel about the 40th anniversary of VOCA. 

I’m going to be chatting with national victim advocate Anne Seymour, whom so many of you know; newly minted student fellow Krishna Lund-Brown, from NOVA’s Victim Advocacy Corps; and Abrianna Morales, the Director of the Victim Advocacy Corps. 

Just last week I had the pleasure of recognizing Krishna and 15 other student fellows at NOVA’s 50th Anniversary Training Event in Washington, DC. The purpose of this new program, which OVC funds, and NOVA and their partners administer, is to leverage the passion and the energy of students of all ages who have an interest and a desire to serve crime victims.

The student fellows kicked off their victim advocacy training with a leadership summit at the NOVA conference, and I got to spend time with many of them throughout the conference. They are thoughtful and passionate and have so many diverse interests.

In addition to the training, they’ll also receive credentialing, mentorship, and a 9-month paid placement at a local victim service agency. I’m so excited for what the future, and the victim services field, holds for them.

Since we last spoke, I also participated in the 2024 Summit on Mass Violence Victims and Survivors, the 2024 Parents of Murdered Children National Conference, the National Funeral Directors Association Leadership Conference, the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association’s Conference, and now here I am at the VOCA Conference. So, in no particular order, I just want to share a few takeaways from each one of these events. 

So the Mass Violence Summit in Pittsburgh was the first of its kind. It brought together individuals and organizations that have supported victims and families of mass violence. It was somber and exhilarating at the same time. 

One of the highlights was the fiery welcome address from the Mayor of Pittsburgh, Ed Gainey, which created an air of excitement and anticipation. Another was a panel discussion with the Pastor from Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston and the Rabbi from Tree of Life Synagogue. They discussed what it was like to guide a traumatized community through the aftermath of a mass violence incident. And I’ll tell you, we hung on every word.

Attendees learned about a new product, the new Virtual Resiliency Center created by the National Mass Violence Center. The virtual center provides resources to help individuals and communities respond to mass violence incidents. The Virtual Resiliency Center provides an outlet for sharing essential information, particularly an on-the-ground Resiliency Center can be established--excuse me, particularly until an on-the-ground Resiliency Center can be established. So visitors can immediately find information about victims’ rights, victim and survivor assistance services, coping with grief and anxiety, and social support and wellness activities. I expect it will be formally launched in the next few weeks.

At the National Funeral Directors Association Leadership Conference in Florida, I talked to these leaders about vicarious trauma and victim compensation. And at the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association Conference, we focused exclusively on crime victim compensation. 

And I have to say from both meetings, I was struck, once again, with how engaged funeral service professionals are with our work. As many of you know, I firmly believe that funeral directors are a critical connector to reaching families of victims living in underserved communities with high rates of violent crime. 

And I’m so thankful for the way the funeral service industry has embraced this partnership with OVC and has demonstrated such openness to sharing their experiences with us. This partnership will continue to grow and take shape and I know it will yield benefits for years to come.

I received another really warm welcome at the Parents of Murdered Children conference in Las Vegas. The people who attend this conference never fail to impress me with their ability to talk about the losses and the trauma in their lives, and their efforts to impact communities and policies going forward, as well as provide that essential, essential peer support within their communities.

And I was so pleased that OVC could provide scholarship funding to help bring victims’ family members to the conference. I was at this conference three years ago and that was the first time I’d ever attended. And that’s when I first began hearing first-hand stories about the issues that parents of murdered children were having with the crime victim compensation programs. Many of the changes that we are making to the compensation program through the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking are a result of the courage and the tenacity of surviving family members who made their voices heard so change could happen.

And now, here I am at the VOCA conference in New Orleans. And the last few days have been an incredible opportunity to engage with all the VOCA state administering agencies, to hear about their challenges and accomplishments, and to offer tools and resources that can help them meet the needs of the service providers and the victims of crime in their states.

And I love being here with the SAAs, because they are not shy about sharing their concerns about the Crime Victims Fund with me, and because they are also just as open about the terrific and inspiring headway that many of them are making in their states to improve access for crime victims.

So, we close out the conference at noon tomorrow, and I fully expect we will all be exhausted—but in a good way—and energized by the learning, the engagement and the peer support we have all experienced here.

And now I’ll turn to the CVF. This month, in addition to the monthly statistics, I want to tell you about two lawsuits that have been filed that could impact the CVF. In June, this past June, criminal fines totaled more than $222 million, and deferred and non-deferred collections totaled $8.2 million. That adds up to $230.6 million, bringing the Crime Victims Fund balance to $1.766 billion. From this balance, OVC still has a little over $1 billion to be obligated in FY 24.

Also included in this balance is approximately $440 million that the Department has agreed to hold, unobligated, due to the ongoing litigation, and I will get to that in just a moment. This means the actual unencumbered balance is closer to $244 million. 

So, the ongoing litigation has to do with two lawsuits. Plaintiffs in both cases, who are claimants entitled to receive payments under the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, requested that court-ordered fines and penalties resulting from two specific criminal cases—United States v. Binance, and United States v. British American Tobacco—that they be deposited into the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund as opposed to the CVF.

It was anticipated that some of those combined fines and penalties from Binance and British American Tobacco—totaling approximately $1.9 billion—those were going to be deposited in the CVF.

So to date, of that $1.9 billion, approximately $440 million has already been deposited in the CVF. However, the Department has agreed not to obligate any of the $44--440 million through November 15, 2024, because of this ongoing litigation.

The Department consented to this temporary hold agreement because the arrangement does not jeopardize 2024 funding. There is sufficient funding in the Crime Victims Fun to meet the appropriations cap, which for FY 24 is $1.353 billion. So there is enough money in there to cover that cap.

I want to be clear. None of this information is going to impact FY 24 funding. We’re talking about FY 25. Even if the full $1.9 billion was deposited into the CVF during FY 24, the Department could not obligate these funds for ‘24 expenses without Congressional authorization, because OVC already has sufficient funding to meet expenses obligated under the FY 24 appropriation cap.

However, it does not mean that this is not worrisome. Without significant deposits into the CVF between now and early FY 25, OVC’s ability to fund statutorily mandated and other critical programs in FY 25 would be severely impaired.

The Department is committed to continuing to work toward stabilizing the CVF and offering transparency to the field about the status of the CVF and future funding to help states and other programs plan accordingly.

OVC will continue to provide training and technical assistance to the state administering agencies through our OVC VOCA Center to help states and territories with managing their federal funding.

I know this is not the news that many of you wanted to hear today. Believe me, it’s not news that I am excited to deliver. But transparency is important to me, and I wanted you to know. 

So that’s all I have for today. Thank you all for everything that you do to help crime victims find their justice. Take care and we’ll see you next month.