At the Nov. 20, 2025 special meeting, commissioners raised concerns about how prescriptive the Sentencing Guidelines Commission’s draft legislative language should be when it comes to recommending statutory maximums. Chair Mitchell said she was "feeling a little uncomfortable in suggesting a specific, stat max to move to" and asked whether the Commission’s role should be to notify the legislature of ranking changes rather than dictate precise statutory caps.

Several commissioners agreed. Commissioner Middlebrook said Recommendation 8 (a package of DWI‑style sentencing and release requirements proposed to apply to criminal vehicular operation and vehicular homicide) was "really too much," adding the commission had not fully discussed many interconnected pretrial and sentencing consequences and lacked the time and expertise to draft comprehensive statutory language. Commissioner Ladd and Commissioner Frase echoed this preference for signaling the legislature to review those consequences rather than providing final statutory text.

Director Reitz defended providing example language to help the legislature and said staff included suggested statutory language as one way to achieve the Commission’s objectives, but commissioners repeatedly asked staff to reframe detailed provisions as examples and to highlight specific mismatches to the grid (for instance, conditional release terms that apply to DWI but not consistently to criminal vehicular operation). Commissioners requested staff present a revised draft that uses more deferential phrasing ("respectfully request" or "consider") and that pulls out a few concrete examples for legislative consideration rather than proposing an entire statutory scheme.

The commission did not vote on the substantive recommendations; staff was directed to incorporate the committee’s feedback into the December draft and to present the revised package at the Dec. 17 meeting.