Travis County Commssioners Court
April 1, 2003
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Item 34
Now let's go back and pick up the other item. 34 a-is to receive status report from court assessor collector on the court fees and fines collection program. That's pilot pravment and b is to approve the collection of a 2-dollar fee per transaction.
>> good afternoon, judge and Commissioners. I知 here to update you on the progress of the court fees and fines pilot program. With me today are rene decker, who is the revenue manager over the collections program, john serta, the collections supervisor. John will be giving you a brief presentation on the collection work flow, and rene will be giving you some collection statistics and numbers. And i'll just begin with a brief history on this project. In fy '02, this report budgeted $100,000 to the tax office for a pilot program to collect court fees and fines. We did substantial research in other counties and found that those programs were very effective. There were at that time some problems with Travis County's system, and we determined that it would not be appropriate to begin collections at that time. The tax office then -- we transferred the $100,000, judge, back to the general fund. You were asking about that money once before.
>> we are still -- [ laughter ]
>> in fy '03, you again budgeted the $100,000 to the tax office to do the pilot -- conduct the pilot program. In October we worked with hr to determine appropriate job titles and classifications for two positions for the pilot. When that was completed we placed two existing tax office employees into the slots. These folks had prior private collection experience. And we restructured our office to find adequate space and equipment for this project. Then in November and early December we worked with a software provider, Texas logic, inc., To train on their systems and make software modifications and test our soft wire. We worked with the county clerk and the auditor to learn their systems and process for disbursement of funds. In late December we were ready to state, but we were going into the peak property tax period, and that's our busiest time, so we held off with implementation until the first full week in January. On January the 6th we began with the first county court at law, judge triana's court, and two eekz after that we -- weeks after that we added judge crane's court. We finished out that month with the two courts and made changes with the software vendor to the system to aid in our productivity. We provided the auditor with the gasb 34 report on the cases that we had received, and in February we started training additional tax office staff to assist with this project. In mid February we added judge elizabeth earl's court, and ending the month of February with these three courts, we provided the auditor with a revised detailed format gasb 34 report. In March we added judge jan breland's court and misdemeanor cases in judge mike denton's court. So we're preparing at this time the gasb 34 report for the end of March. We've provided disbursement reports and we are making daily deposits to the county treasurer as is required. And at this time we're being audited by the county auditor's office and we will work through any issues they may find. We're not planning at this point to add any additional courts until the tax system is implemented in the district court area. In a nutshell, that's the background on the project. If you don't have any questions at this point, john serta will talk about the work flow of this program.
>> I have questions, but i'll hold them.
>> okay. Thank you.
>> thank you very much. Once the defendant is sentenced in court, they report down to the intake office down at the criminal justice center first floor. After receiving instructions from the intake office, they instruct them to report to the tax office so they can pay their court costs and their fines. I just want to say the intake office has done an excellent job of directing all defendants to our tax office for payments of all these court costs and fines. Once they arrive at the tax office with the judgment stating the type of probation, lengths of probation and any costs associated with it, they are assisted by an employee from the title division that we have cross-trained on the daily operation. They will in turn go ahead and make copies of all the necessary paperwork that we need, the judgments and so forth, and then we'll assist the probationer with any questions regarding their payment options. Once the probationer has completed an application for an extension of time to pay, the application is now screened by other employee in our customer service division, which was also cross-trained to help us with this program. After the screening is cleated, the -- completed, the corrections officer is now ready to arrange the case for payment. If the defendant is able to pay all the court costs and fines in full, we process those as what's we call a rush probation commitment. What we do then is we will call the county clerk's criminal division to obtain a total amount due. The clerk's office has done really a fantastic job in getting us those cost nses a timely manner. We will then review those costs of the cjs fine system and update our database so we can have our collection peace corps respond with theirs. If a defendant is unable to pay in full, of course, lie I said before, they must complete an application for an extension of time, and once it is completed we'll negotiate payment insteads based on their income and debt ratio. We do attempt to collect the court costs and fines directly on the same date that they are sentenced, although many defendants aren't able to pay, we'll work out some kind of schedule. Although many defendants do want to get the whole experience behind them and they're willing to pay those in full and we do collect plenty of those in full on the same day of sentence. At this time we -- like ms. Pierce said, we have cross-trained several employees from the tax office to assist us with our daily operations and we have also included a part time temp using a tax office fund to help us in this process. During the collection phase we still work real closely with cscd and all the probation officers. Wherever their cases are assigned to us, we make sure they're notified when they're cases are paid in full or when they're delinquent and we need to take other issues to get defendants to pay. I just want to close out with saying that cscd court services, the county clerk's criminal division, all the county court at law judges and their staff have all been very supportive of this program and we're all working together to make this a very successful program. Thank you.
>> Commissioner, go ahead.
>> Commissioner Daugherty and then Davis and then I have a few.
>> who is responsible for the collections, the outstanding that you can't -- somebody comes and pays. Is it somebody from your office that is responsible for going and collecting that?
>> right.
>> and what -- what would you say? What is the percentage that you all do collect.
>> she has the numbers and statistics in her department.
>> thank you.
>> I have a couple of questions. So the intake office is under what department? Cscd? Texas cjc?
>> yes, sir.
>> so the 100% of the defendants you work with are on probation.
>> that's correct.
>> that's correct.
>> and so if somebody is just assessed time served, 250-dollar fine, where does that fine go?
>> is there -- incarcerated, you mean, in jail? Then the sheriff's department's collect. I知 not sure -- issues we only collect those that are put on probation, judge.
>> is that a requirement or it's just the way things have developed?
>> it's just our pilot project that we've started with.
>> so y'all collect fines, court ordered fines.
>> court costs.
>> court costs.
>> and any court appointed attorney's fees also.
>> attorney's fees.
>> yes, sir.
>> the amount that cscd gets coming in each month in victim res ta constitution they're collecting.
>> so they are delivered to you, failed maild in, both?
>> both. They can mail in their payment, they can call it in over the phone with a credit card, we'll take a credit card and pay them that way, or they can come in in person and pay them.
>> we have a western union check printer if our office so they can do it from western union from any of the grocery stores in town. Whether they would like to, we can accept it.
>> okay. Commissioner Davis?
>> number one, i'd like to thank y'all for volunteering to participate in this pilot project. It's a very monumental that we're doing this. However, I would still like to maybe isolate on a couple of instances, if I understood from your testimony this afternoon, that we have now five courts online right now that are really sending you the business that you need, which is fines, fees and all the other things that you can collect. I want to make sure that's correct. Right now if I知 understanding you, you do not have any of the district courts online that would also be a part of the court ordered fines and fees and stuff like that, is that correct?
>> correct.
>> and my concern, you said that part of the terms as far as you waiting on some things as far as tying to the facts of the petition process, as it comes online, made regularly available, my concern is these persons that are on probation, I would like to make sure, not a duplication of services, but as far as -- they pay their fines and fees. Part of the problem is that the person that was on probation, they pay the fines and fees, but the records aren't updated enough in the big picture of things to let them be reassured that those fees have been paid and at that time the reconciling indicates that as far as that type of disclosure. And I知 wondering where we are on that as far as the database relationship, whereby when those fines and fees are paid on a person that -- that was in a probationary status, do whatever we need to do with it, also comes to you and paid their fines and fees, how are we updating the database at that time where it can be shared by all of the persons involved with that type of determination, whether it's the sheriff or any other relationship.
>> yes, sir. Dusty and I with the tax office, i'll speak to that. Additionally we've taken over all the county courts that do the misdemeanors, probation wevment all five of those at this point in time. There was no system for doing what you're talking about, so we've taken the cases which we've been able to give you the numbers in just a second. We have stopped at the district courts at this point in time because it is our understanding that facts should be up on July the third for us to be able to use. What we would do at that time that we go with the facts is we will be able to do what they call remote receding into the fact system. So when we collect the money, we will be actually getting on the clerk's fact system and relieving the receivable at that point in time. And the fact system will be doing the things that we are doing today as far as the disbursements and that sort of thing. So that is the plan for the future. That's why we're -- first off, we've got more work than what we can deal with. The pilot got a certain number of people that's taking more than to do what we have. Before we go to the district courts and move further, we would need to talk to y'all again about that, but we want to use the fact system to we're not having to keep up with two systems. We're the wanting to get it on to the fact system and there's a whole another group of people. I don't know who pawkd waukd in here, but there's a whole other group of people talking about it. We're willing to work with whomever and will do whatever to do that.
>> in for the July, I know the software and the program that we've got right now is doing what you need to do; however, with the fact system and everything coming online, that will happen. I知 trying my best to make sure that everything is compatible whereby whenever this comes up, we don't have to go back and retrofit this.
>> the system --
>> I知 sorry. Go ahead.
>> the system we have will not need to be interfaced into facts. What we will be doing is if we pay 100%, our system will not -- the Texas logic system will not need to be tracking anything. We will be using the Texas logic system to -- if the person doesn't show up, we need to start doing the letter generation, the writing of letters, following up, keeping all the data that will not be in facts. So facts doesn't need that information. It will just be the things that we need to be able to find the person and try to get them to comply with the judge's orders. So it doesn't need to be interfaced back into facts.
>> last question. With the emergence of it coming online, I want to make sure that the money that we're receiving or the fines and fees and all this stuff that we're receiving is getting into the right bucket because of the relationship we have with cscd as far as intake. There may be monies that maybe need to go to cscd and some of these particular regard, especially some of these cases that are going through the court system. And if that's the case, I want to make sure that we -- Travis County are getting its share of the money that's divided and categorized on your records.
>> we have established that on Texas logic system, we establish what the county auditor told us the priorities were, the breakdowns as per the state. So we're following the county auditor's guidelines in disbursing this mup on a daily basis. The county is getting its -- the correct share on every payment that comes in. And as we said, they are there right now auditing to make sure that what we set up is being done. So they're over there today.
>> how much have we collected so far?
>> if we could finish up with rene, rene will be able to tell you all the facts and figures. And you had asked this morning, we'll put all this together in the package --
>> i'd like to see what the numbers are as far as what our efforts have been. And again, i'd like to thank y'all.
>> if we could, i'll like rene to go ahead and do we are little piece.
>> thank you.
>> thank you. The statistics I知 going to tell you is from January the 6th when we started the pilot project through March the 28th. The number of cases that we've worked are 614 cases. The amount that was assessed is 439,000, $879.01. The amount we have collected, 252,000, $880.19. That is a collection rate of 57.49 percent. The number of cases that we've had pay in full is 177. The percent of cases paid in full, that's 28 percent. The amount paid in full is $195,130.50. The remaining balance due on our books is $186,998.82. The amount that we have in delinquent right now for defendants that are not in compliance is $15,804.50. That's -- the number of delinquent defendants is 98. That gives us the collection rates for the number of current defendants of 84%. The number of credit card transactions that we've had is 164. The amount collected in credit card transactions is $65,917.53. The number of transactions that we could have collected a 2-dollar fee for, which we're fixing to talk about, would be 690 transactions.
>> 690?
>> 690 transactions. That would equif late to $1,083. And just to let you know, the number of hours that we have estimated that would be needed for us to carry out this pilot project through the remainder of the year is 180 hours per week. We've estimated this on a 12 weebz of our own -- weeks of our own statistics, plus looking back at some of the intake logs from last year and getting some statistics on cscd on what we could obtain from them for last year. The number of hours that we were budgeted for the pilot project was only 80 hours per week. And I have a copy if y'all would like a copy of that.
>> yes.
>> so the tax -- you're getting your bang for your buck on the 100,000 you spent because the tax office, we're -- the problem with this is knowing who do the work flow. People don't come in from 8:00 to 5:00. They're all coming in between 10 and two. So you have to have a bumplg people in there from 10 to two or these individuals have to sit around. So we have cross-trained individuals in the tax office. As john said, people in the title section are the ones that are going through, making sure they fill in the application. The people in the customer service are making phone calls to employers to be able to help out, john. And then we've got some temporary monies that we have each year, we've brought individuals in that are helping during this 10 to two crunch when we have all the individuals there, plus other individuals that are compliance officers come up to help us out. So these are hours we thought y'all would want to know what is it costing to do? This is what it looks like if we maintain at the level we had last week was about 115 cases all week long. If we maintain that throughout the year, it will take about 180 hours probably per week, and we were budgeted for --
>> did you take into consideration the implementation of fax in itself, and especially if the district courts start allowing their caseload -- a case road load with their cases to be off the record.
>> right, this number is just continuing with the county clerk's. It's not -- we have predicted we're going to get about -- is it 40%? Work load?
>> it's -- it's about 40%.
>> that's what the county courts have. It will be about 40% of the work load. But still that's -- once again, we'll have to have some staff to work on that.
>> but if we look at it in another way, 100,000 is what we budgeted for y'all. That was a full fiscal year, correct?
>> right.
>> let's just do you believe that if terms if it's 80 80 hours a week, etcetera double it to 160 hours a week. Which would theoretically cost $160,000. Y'all have already collected in three months covering our administrative costs if it were double the number of people that were there. So, I mean, it's one of those things, were we concerned that we were having a lot of people do it and is it a break even? Not by any stretch of the imagination is it a break even? Probably the most important piece of it is it's that accountability that up until now nobody can saying hello, where is that lovely fine and court costs that you all needed to be paying? And as we've seen, if we simply asked a good number of them had it and paid us. And I知 amazed that of the number of them that used their credit cards, so apparently they still have good standing credit with at least visa or mastercard related to their ability to pay.
>> or it could be a relative.
>> but if they don't pay, visa and mastercard can go after them if they're behind on their bill rather than us.
>> and along with that, the first case was January the 6th. We haven't made the full three months. And most of these people we're trying to get them to pay within three months. So the first week's guys are just gnaw nou hitting where they should have made their third payment. So we're not there yet. We have committed to coming in on April the 1st. We have sh sm that haven't shown up again and they they haven't shown 'you on probation, so those will have to be dealt with through the at administration active process, but we're seeing good -- I think good results.
>> in looking at the statistics, one other thing that you might be interested in is I looked at john and beverly were setting up the partial pay agreement, and it looks like they're averaging -- defendants average about 4.68 payments to get it paid in full. Some longer than that, some of course pay in full immediately.
>> so between October 1 and January did we have the team in place or in place was the official starting date January?
>> the official starting date was January the 6th. As far as working with the courts, we had to work with human resources and get our computer system working and everything. So we actually started working on it in October, but we didn't start working with the courts until in January. No, I shouldn't say that. We're working with the courts previous to that, but it's actually collecting from the defendant starting January the sixth.
>> Texas lodgics is the software vendor. Texas logics is also easy access, which is our -- both our tax and our veeting soft owe voter software vendor. In most cases that we saw, they're dealing with dallas county, tarrant county, collin county, some other counties. They don't do things up there quite the way that Travis County does. They hold the money all month long and make one report for all these counties. We were requested to deposit daily and make reports daily. So this was a total change in the way that they had to do their software. They have spent hundreds of hours getting the software to where we can collect this, knowing that we could eventually going to facts where they wouldn't need to be doing this, but doing this. In our gasb 34, the first month we reported this is how many that's for court costs, this is how many's for fines. Well, they wanted it broke down to every court -- owe the fees are broken up into 20 different places. So now for gasb, they don't want to just say these are fees. They wanted it broke down into the 20 different things. How much do you have that's 30 days old for the county clerk? How much do you want for crimestoppers? So we had to go back and the vendor wrote the programs to break all this stuff up. We didn't have it -- January we had it for February. So now we can tell you by 30, 60, we're just now getting out to 90 days what we have for all those little parts or how aged it is and haven't been collected. So these are the things that the software vendor did. We dealt with most of that through the November, December time frame to get it the wayverybody in Travis County wanted us to do business. So that was part of why we didn't get started any quicker. We had to make sure the software worked to everybody's satisfaction. And y'all have all seen the office over here during christmas time, so we didn't start right then. We waited.
>> any quick questions? How much are the 439,000 -- of the 439,000 is county money?
>> I didn't bring my piece of paper. Probably -- the fines? Of the fines, I guess you get it all.
>> 100%.
>> 100% of the fines. Did we bring that little sheet of paper I had that broke it down? I知 going to say 100,000, 200,000 in fines. Probably when you break it into those 20 parts it's like 20 to 40% of the fees goes to the county and the other part goes to the state.
>> we get 100%? , I didn't bring my piece of paper with me to get it for you. If you want it by the time we get back --
>> court appointed lawyer fees, we get all that, though.
>> yes, sir.
>> at some point we have to see what comes to the county and what goes to the state. My next is, and it's a legal question as much as anything else, is are we keeping all we're entitled to? Some of those laws are kind of funny, if we do certain things we get to keep a little bit more. If we do this, we get that much more.
>> we're depositing daily to the treasurer. And if you do it in x period of time, the treasurer will hold whatever on monthly reports. I知 assume that they're doing that. I do not know. We collect it and we deposit it and from there it's the treasurer's deal.
>> we need to check on that. Are you the lawyer working on this?
>> I have been.
>> what kind of schedule do we think we are on to start seriously thinking about district court cases.
>> when the facts system comes up, we're told that will be July.
>> because that's complicated beyond belief. And I do think we need to put our heads together long in advance of July then. There are four or five major issues that would impact the district court cases.
>> joe and others have talked to us about this and that's why we got the county courts misdemeanors and then stopped, and it's like let's wait to see what falls out. Then we need to be able to take care of what we got.
>> joe may not know about half of these. But all I知 saying is we need to -- at some point we need to sit down and try to figure out what to do, when to do it. A lot of it turns on things that are at work now in cscd, they all come into play when we consider -- but it is remarkable progress. And the guy that coim down from -- came down from the state, I forget his name.
>> jim layman?
>> thank you, mr. Layman, wherever you are. But he did say that in other counties this they had all been remarkably successful, right?
>> yes.
>> so our cases are the same.
>> we will provide you after this session, we'll give you all the written -- everything we've told you today. We'll put it in writing. We'll give it to you as a packet to include the questions that you asked that we weren't exact on the answers.
>> okay. Commissioner Daugherty?
>> so I get told to come to your window and give you $200 because that is my fine. And I can only give you $50. What do you tell me about my 150 that I owe you?
>> well, again, we're going to first have you fill out listen ann application for an extension of time to pay. We will do an analysis of income and debt, and then make a determination of -- and after talking to the defendant of what is a reasonable payment to get in a reasonable amount of time.
>> so what's the longest that you would allow somebody to pay.
>> 90 days is probably about the longest we're trying to work on. I know we have some contracts that go -- some payment agreements that go maybe six months, but we first shoot for nothing more than 90 days. And that seems to be working really well.
>> I would love, rene, for you to come by my office and set up a time to go over -- you or whoever to go over this sheet because this is real interesting stuff, especially since I just came back from precinct 3 jp's office and there were 35,000 claims that had not been -- that go all the way back to 1995, and over 6 million dollars' worth of monies owed to the county. And that's just precinct 3. Now, if you all are good enough to get 84% of -- something -- this is amazing. But not to go through that right now, but I would love to be able to ask some of those questions.
>> in most counties that have the centralized collections, jp courts are where the money is, and it's a simple matter of doing skip tracing, which what we have to do, and telling a person, you owe the money, please pay. And that collects us in most other centralized collections. We just don't have the staff yet. We've already been approached bhi some of the jp courts. They've asked when can you help us out. We're using other tax office staff to get this pilot going. We know it's going to work, we hope you will fund it. We need to deal with auditors to get the refuse news there, see the need. And we hope to help the jp's because in other counties there's that's where really lots and lots of money is is in the jp courts.
>> that's where this is headed. We need to see -- we're starting from scratch and I think --
>> and they do it.
>> I guess it just surprises me that seemingly out of the benevolence of people -- you don't run into that group very often, but the 84% of these are collected is really outstanding. I mean, so I知 going to be all ears if you'll come by and show me how to do this so we can start precinct 3 next Monday. [ laughter ]
>> do you think you have sufficient space to add one or two f.t.e.'s?
>> you know we're moving.
>> there's a whole bunch --
>> so part of this whole thing is if you continue pilot, we've got to deal with roger. Roger has got some space for us if we move. There's a whole lot of issues, as you said, we need to discuss here shortly because we're looking to be moved by September time frame, and this group -- we do not want -- we'd love to have the group with us, but they're better off down here where the people are. Because if we have to go across town, we're liable to lose some of these individuals.
>> September?
>> that's what we've been told.
>> I thought it was this is March.
>> he's moving fast.
>> [everyone talking at once].
>> if you don't mind fe jumping in again, once again, 32 a two-dollar fee that's allowed -- I think I made the reference -- it's hard for me to stop. [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> whenever you want to start.
>> move approval.
>> okay. I have already seconded it. I just said first just like I said. He was asking.
>> again, I would like to thank you guys, this did come up, of course, your numbers weren't there. Then there are additional numbers will be coming that you gave us today. And I think that that -- that's real good selling points as far as -- as far as we really are trying to do, as far as collecting finders fee, have a more efficient system and -- in Travis County, we have a ways to go, but I feel very comfortable with these numbers there, but I think a further break down of what Travis County actually has in its hands as far as money is concerned would help us a lot. With the fax system coming on board later, this court and the other courts can get involved in -- and we get -- I think we have begun this process. I would like to thank you all.
>> thank you.
>> what county attorney did you all work with on the fee?
>> I知 sorry, I didn't hear you.
>> which county attorney? We worked with our attorney elliott beck, he had some attorneys --
>> one of his foirns did the research -- one of his attorneys did the research for it.
>> I think they passed it by david, I知 not sure.
>> so gentleman were you able to adopt a fee like this.
>> this -- this looks straightforward. That was the only question that I had was how were they going to do it. Deputizing -- [multiple voices] it's actually in the code of criminal procedures. Actually set there.
>> on 90% of the fees that we have authorized the charge, -- I don't see that here, I知 not sure they had to come to you. We just did.
>> deputize them, she could tell them to go do it.
>> I know an -- another example of teamwork [laughter] well, motion to approve. Let's go heapd approve it, but -- if you would -- go ahead and approve it.
>>
>> the thing to do is expend it.
>> we are good at that.
>> we worked with the chairman to get a line item to ship the money to, that's not a problem. If you wish to hold off us just flipping a switch, we can hold off if you wish.
>> we can go ahead and prove it. If things are -- if there's a condition -- we will just do it.
>> you have time before 5:00 to [inaudible]
>> we still have a bunch of people over there, we're ready.
>> well -- the other thing is -- any kind of notice requirement we had better just look at that, too. Any more discussion of the motion to approve the collection of a $2 transaction fee pursuant to the statutory provisions that we have been provided, all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thanks, y'all.
>> thank you,.
>> thank y'all very much. Appreciate it your dedication, hard worn, et cetera.
Last Modified: Tuesday, April 8, 2003 1:25 PM