Travis County Commssioners Court
July 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.
Added Item A2
A 2. receive an update on programmatic and fiscal impact on Travis County on laws enacted by the 78th Texas legislature.
>> if you don't mind I知 going to sit in leroy's chair, it seems to be the lucky chair. [laughter]
>> lucky?
>> lucky chair.
>> I知 sorry I could not make your work session fast enough before you all lost the quorum, but I did want to talk about three different bills, I believe, I apologize we are passing out the handout now. In our saying of the third time is the charm on our third semi able request to the legislatu to obtain a new court, the legislature created the 419th district court. It is scheduled to come online September of '05. And we have included a copy of the [indiscernible] creating the court, then a budget estimate as to what fiscal impact this would have on the county within that fiscal year. Basically, you have start-up costs within the first year of approximately 273,000 and then thereafter the new court would cost you 250,000 per [indiscernible] so I imagine this will be a discussion in next year's budget process. And unless there are any questions, I知 going to move on to house bill 2402. Which was with the court's approval -- a provision that related tohe compensation of district judges in Travis County. If you remember when I was over here asking for you all's approval, to lobby for this bill, what this basically does is to give Travis County the discretion to compensate the district judges more. Now, I need to tell you that at this time we are sort of unclear as to the authority of Travis County to do this. And the source of our confusion lie goes within a -- lies within a rider to the appropriations act. And basically the rider to the appropriations act has directed the comptroller that if the counties supplement our salaries more than what's in the statute, the comptroller is to reduce our pay accordingly. I have been in conversation with some local administrative judges around the state and then also with the county attorney david escovilla, we are trying to figure out the mechanism to see whether or not the county has the authority to supplement our pay. It's going to be a couple of mont before we get increased clarity of that.
>> I知 sorry. Are you saying that they actually think that we petitioned them for the right to have the joy and honor of paying a greater percentage of your salary? And not giving you one more dime of it? Did they actually think that was the legislative intent of that language?
>> well, the -- Commissioner, the legislative intent, as someone who has to interpret legislative intent all of the time, you always wish that it were more clear. In discussions with the county attorney escoveda, certainly this bill meant something and -- but the use of the general word notwithstanding and we sort of wish the bill's authors had used stronger language, we believe that a case could be made and can be made that the legislative intent irrespective of the government code limitation, that this means something. But I think it -- it may be something that -- that the county attorney can rule on. But it may also be something that the attorney general has to rule on. And because it affects the comptroller and what the comptroller might do. And all I知 saying is that it's not exactly clear right now, as clear as we would like, that the county has got the authority to supplement our pay without the comptroller reducing our pay. Yes, ma'am?
>> one other possibility. Those folks are over there right now doing stuff and they are opening up a session, some of the stuff might get into budgetary items because of having to do some cleanup on the transportation bill and at least one other bill and possibly on education because of some funding issues. Wouldn't it just be easier to kind of work to see if that might be one of those little cleanup of an unintended consequence that would then be the attorney general says something that we are not exactly thrilled with, you don't have to wait two years to go and fix it. They are here right now and we might see about seeing -- about getting a little cleanup here right as we speak as opryland possessed to later -- as opposed to later.
>> that I ostensibly a good idea. But be careful of what you ask for because this passed on calendar in the house and senate. Only one other county, collin county jumped in on this bill. It may be something that I more people became aware of, it might create controversy. So it's the type of thing that it's going to be a judgment call, but it's a good idea, we will certainly explore it, but I知 not sure that automatically that's necessarily a good tact to take because we have the bill in hand right now and given what the legislature did throughout the state, I知 not so sure that I知 going to give them a second opportunity to write any more bad legislation. So the thrust of my remarks is that we are not sure that this gives the county the authority we are going to be working on it and hopefully we will have some clarity within the next couple of months.
>> okay. Finally, I would like to talk about the topic of --
>> the other question would be what course and -- what force and effect do riders have? I mean, that's something that we need to look at, I think.
>> sure. And I think, judge, that's a good expression it's sort -- because it's sort of an expression of legislative intent, that's something that we are going to look at, but the question of whether or not this is a county issue or a state issue is the overriding question.
>> Commissioner Sonleitner would recommend, I知 sure, that we increase your pay by a dime and see what the state's reaction is. [laughter]
>> well, I was going to do a quarter. Get a cup of coffee. Before we move on to the next one, back to the thing about the new civil district court.
>> yes, ma'am. I知 sorry.
>> there's so much more that is not on this sheet of paper, but it's not even in an unknown category. That is sheriff's department, transportation, cscd, the -- there's like a million. Because i've always looked at it in terms of it takes about a million bucks to do a new court, this is not even --
>> there's a slight difference between a criminal court and obviously with the legislature it's created two new criminal courts since they have created any civil courts. And there's no doubt that a criminal court has budgetary impacts is that are more -- that are more than just reflected on the sheet. That's not necessarily true with respect to a civil court. Plus if you create a criminal court, then the d.a. Is in asking for more prosecutors, more staff, cscd is asking for staffing and other types of things. And you don't necessarily have the same implications that you do in the creation of a criminal court.
>> but sometimes these involve folks that have other entanglements related to child support, some of the things that go on in civil court are just as i'll call it messy as some of the things that happen in our criminal courts because of somebody's circumstances. And it involves a prisoner or it involves somebody with child support issues or it involves domestic violence things that wind up being a civil action. It's not all about lawsuits. There's other things that kind of blend over. I知 saying let's just make sure that we have a full landry list here so we can get everybody included and not low ball it because unfortunately these things cost money.
>> there's one thing that I neglected to mention in discussing that topic, in that it involves the space issue. If you all will recall earlier this year, I asked that you all give consideration for giving us approximately 12,000 additional square feet of space in the historic courthouse. Really, that was because we had absolutely no room and are overcrowded in our present circumstances. One of the things that is troubling us is that right now we have no space to put a district court. And if we -- if in y'all's benevolence we received the additional 12,000 square feet, if I then have to squeeze another district court in there, then essentially we have gained nothing. And we are considering, though have not reached a final decision, as to whether or not we might move a district court out to gardner-betts. And it has osensible some advantage if that we might be able to handle some of our constitutional dockets at gardner-betts because there are more favorable parking situation and other types of things than here at the historical courthouse. But we are going to over the next 18 months or actually a year, we are going to have to develop a plan as to how we use space and what space that will actually have to work with. So I -- I anticipate more conversations with the court with respect to a plan for the utilization of the space presently within the historical courthouse and whether or not we teed to place a -- we need to place a district court out at gardner-betts. Those are issues that I think will be decided jointly with the court because we are not going to do anything that you all don't believe is wise and ought to be done to service the people. Finally, I would like to talk a little bit about visiting judges. The cuts by the legislature were catastrophic is the best word that I can put to this. Presently in this biennium that we are in on August the 31st, the legislature had given $8 million per annum and it's now been reduced down to -- in the biennium that will start, 3.8 million, I believe, per annum. And so in essence we have suffered a 40% cost. How this translates into real numbers here in Travis County, we have looked about -- the number of visiting judges over the last two years, last year we had, I believe, 35 visiting judge days per judge. And when we were having to submit our proposed budget back in may, we included a figure of approximately 161,000 to make up for what they were talking about in terms of the cuts. And I知 not sure that that's necessarily the figure that we are going to wind up now. I believe the -- peg that told me that p.b.o. Is supporting this $161,000 increase. I知 not sure that that increase will be able to using it -- to use it. The reason is is that within the statute concerning the appointment of judges, for district benches, you have to go through the third, your ad straight active district, in our case the third administrative district, judge schraub in seguin who actually appoints the judge. Then the statute says that the payment for that judge shall be out of the general fund of the state. Now, in discussions with judge schraub we have raised the possibility of the county's ability to do that, he said that certainly is a novel approach but again this is one of those legal questions that's going to require more research by the county attorney's office. I know they are aware of this problem, have been working on it, but in order to get the point of clarity it going to take a -- it's going to take a little bit of time as to whether or not we will be able to use that 161,000. So I知 just trying to alert you that as we get into this budget process, that number may change. The district judges are trying to anticipate the consequences of the legislature's catastrophic cuts. We believe that first it's necessary to try to preserve what we call the mass dockets, which include child protective services, child support, and our family law cases. Those are the ones that have the most number of active users there at the courthouse. But I believe that we are not going to be able to escape the consequence of this in that one of the results is that there are going to be, the phrase that we are using, dark courtrooms from time to time because judges were required to get the cle, we are encouraged to attend the two-week judicial conferences during the year, we believe that we should receive vacation and from time to time we become sick and the 35 days, the explanation how come there were 35 days is if you add up two weeks of cle, vacation and I believe that comes out to something that's pretty close to -- (emergency broadcast testing, video interrupted).
>> associates are in the general civil courts and they hear what are styled family law and tax cases. Part of -- part of judge shepperd's mandate is to hear tax cases, but they hear the temporary orders cases. They also assist in serving child protective services because judge muir requires a to hear those then they hear some of the custody cases, child support cases, a lot of the -- some of the effective order cases, some the bulk dockets. With respect to who has the authority to hire them, I believe the county attorney will tell you that the district judges have that authority. With respect to the appointment, for instance on today's consent calendar, the statute says that an appointment of an associate judge to visit, because we are trying to make up for the gap indicationed by judge richardson's retirement, is that it's the district judges in connection and cooperation with the county court which is while we felt it necessary to come and get your approval for visiting associate judges. So any time that we have a visiting judge or an associate judge, who will be seeking you all's consent to have that visiting judge and try to do it far enough in advance, unless we have some type of an emergency.
>> I guess where I headed with this is this: if you -- if you need the permission of the state and the hours are substantially cut down related to visiting judges. Is another potential strategy the hiring of more permanent associate judges that are strictly a local decision and a local funding decision and you can kind of get to the same place. If the county were saying, hey, we are willing to pay to get more hours on the bench, then is that a potential way of kind of getting around, fe, if the state is saying no, it all has to go through them we don't have any money, tough luck, darken your courtrooms, do we have the ability to go fine, we can get to the same place by rather than hiring a visiting judge that you have more of a -- a permanent visiting judge who would be called an associate judge because they would be more on retainer on a permanent basis as opposed to coming in here and there to fill in. You get to the same place.
>> in part, Commissioner, if I can answer in terms of history, we have not had a new civil judge since 1983. With the legislature then authorized two that became judge garaldo and judge Davis. Obviously in those 20 years, those two decade, Travis County experienced phenominal growth and yet the legislature would never authorize and not authorize despite our repeated requests another district court for civil to take care of this growth. As the government of last resort, the county has had to step in and in essence in those two decades y'all have authorized three judges, three associate judges to take care of the slack that the state has not stepped in and taken care of. There's no question that the growth in our general civil docket, which is approximately 34,000 cases, about 10,000 of those are tax cases which move at their own pace, so we have 24,000 cases that are more active, probably close to 45, maybe 50% of those cases are family law. And so it's the type of docket that is subject to -- to associate judges hearing that under the Texas family code. The problem is that on every associate judge action, a district judge has to sign-off and operate in a supervisory capacity. It short answer, I believe it would help some. I知 not sure to extra extent. In part one of the things that we have been wrestling with in terms of a planning is it's difficult to know when we are at capacity. As an example, we dispose of about 16, almost 17,000 cases a year. And we are reaching everything on the jury docket, everything on the non-jury docket, which includes c.p.s. And family law. Well, we know we are at capacity -- when we know we're at capacity is when we are not able to reach everything because we don't have enough personnel. So far we have not experienced that, at least in my 12 year tenure at the district courts. One of the things that we are going to be watching quite carefully is whether or not we will be hitting that this year with these cuts and the visiting judge. So I -- I wish that I had a clearer snapier answer, but like was said to every complex question there's a simple answer and it's wrong. [laughter] so it's sort of --
>> who said that.
>> h.l. Binken.
>> oh, okay.
>> so it's a question that needs to be asked, Commissioner, it's stuff that's going to require more study and more research. [laughter] any other questions of the court? That I can enlighten you on?
>> when do you expect some sort of a final word from judge [indiscernible]
>> he sent out a letter, judge Biscoe, and the letter said basically that they are going to be giving precedence within the limited amount of money they have to cases that involve recusal, counties that involve complex [indiscernible] litigation, although because of tort reform we don't know about that, and priority to some criminal cases. Itas quite clear if you read in between the lines that it was not going to be business as usual and that we have to submit more detailed forms to judge schraub as to when we need the judge, why we need it, what cases they are going to be consideng.
>> okay.
>> thank you all for your action today on the consent calendar.
>> yeah.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, judge.
>> handouts.
>> there are two areas that primary areas that affects health and human services. One was the budget, the second was the reorganization of the state health and human services. In your packet we have actually outlined what we believe to be the potential impacts in a couple of the areas.
>> uh-huh.
>> the first area in health, on the side as it relates for medicaid, the loss of needy medicaid category for adults. We believe the possible impact on the rmap program is anywhere from $55,000 to $185,000. That's a typo, it's not million.
>> I was hoping that. [multiple voices]
>> our total budget is not that. And --
>> try. [laughter]
>> and the potential number of adults that are impacted are 345. Now, this is not the total number of -- number that are in Travis County. This is the number in Travis County that is outside of the city of Austin because those individuals that are in the city of Austin but of course -- would of course be on the map rolls. Of course there's been a lot of talk about the elimination of mental health benefits for chip enrollees. What I did was contact local mental health authority and last year they billed $100,000 to chip. Of course there are other providers of that service within the community, but what that would mean for mhmr is that that would be $100,000 for services that they can no longer have a payor source for. Of course they have increased our capacity to bill chip, but that can't be recognized this year. Also for mhmr, of course, they have to cut $400,000 in their fy '03 budget, they are expected to take a 9.6% reduction in their current budget, which amounts to $3.5 million. In the next list you see some of the actions that they are going to take in response to that $3.5 million reduction that they are required to do. A direct hit that we are taking from tprs, prevention and early intervention. 125,000 for Travis County healthy families program has been eliminated. Judge Biscoe you got a letter that you forwarded on to us to indicate that. We anticipated that several months ago. And where we have made plans to expand healthy families, we are not doing that. What we will do is try to maintain so that we will not have to disenroll the 40 families. Who maintain our standards. Of course this program impacts those families with children ages zero to 3 years old. The next area is not so clear to us, which is a child protective services, but we've had experience with state reductions in funding shifts in the past with c.p.s. We are expecting to see cuts in support services also for budget and evaluation and treatment and protective daycare. We also are expected to see a reduction in the reimbursement rates for foster parents and residential care. The caution there is that these costs would possibly shift to Travis County via the c.p.s. Board. But usually when service alternatives are not readily available, with state funds, then the staff would usually seek to have us respond to those needs. You see that we are -- we did have to -- extension service there was one state physician that was rifed in the county extension office, but basically what we are going to do is assign those functions to other extension agents. We believe that we need to continue or overall analysis of the state funding cut. We believe that we need to continue to monitor our expenditures during fiscal year '04 because given the economy we have experienced an increase in our demands, particularly in health care and emergency assistance. The things that I pointed out that were specific here would bed that to the already -- would be in addition to the already increased demands that we're seeing. I知 not going to review the other pages, but there are a couple of the areas that are more generalized that will have a possible impact on us and would just -- we are just continuing to Monday to see what happens with that.
>> I have one question. On social service, providing basic needs, even with this medicaid deal, looking at having to increase from 55,000 to approximately $185,000, is there a total, a grand total that have been attributed to this particular document as far as what we know at this particular point as far as with the cutbacks from the state and anything else --
>> no, we don't have a grand total because we have --
>> running tab probably, but --
>> we don't know some of the specifics of the reorganization. It's embedded in the re-- embedded in the reorganization are several cuts, we really need to see what the fallout there is.
>> yeah.
>> let me explain the 55,000 to 185,000. We don't necessarily control the -- the people who will actually seek services from us and actually engage in an eligibility process with us. That's why you are giving the range. We only know what the potential population is.
>> that 345 number as far as the adults, is just the range of services that would -- would come up --
>> the number of people that are enrolled in -- in that program, that live outside of the city of Austin, in Travis County.
>> okay. I guess at some point it would be good, assuming the fallout occurs, the amount of moab that we may have to look at as far as continued service for those persons that -- [indiscernible] will not be --
>> I think where we'll see that evidence is in the demand itself. Part of that I think we will be able to attribute to cuts. The other partly probably be due to the increase in demand that we have been seeing for the last two years in our services.
>> okay. Thank you.
>> thanks, stephen. T.n.r.?
>> carol joseph. We haven't completed the review of the budget and the effect that any of the changes to the budget may have in the -- in our costs to t.n.r. However the two that we know for sure that we -- that may have additional costs, we submitted, we anticipated 1204 and we submitted during the budget process as a combination of the reorg in the 1445 additional costs associated with that for about $360,000 excluding capital and that includes 7 f.t.e.'s. The other bill -- that was house bill 1204 and then previous legislation 1445. The other one that came up that -- that we were not actually following is senate bill 277, it has to do with the cost of the professional engineers, what they did in that bill is they deducted -- they eliminated the actual costs of the renewal of the registration, in addition they have now added to the requirements p.e. That they have to have 15 units of continuing education and the board of engineer will now set the cost of the registration fee. And it used to be a $225 a year. I don't know that that's going to go up. But the additional cost is the training that it will be required to continuing education. We rounded that out to about $30,000 additional training costs because we have a lot of 15 engineers and average cost of $125 of cue. So that's basically the mean to that we have so far identified just cursory review, there might be some potential revenues, in some of them, but we really haven't delved completely and continue to review them and will continue until we get to the point where we know for sure that that's it.
>> there would also be workload issues related to that in terms of folks needing to go get their cle credits, from getting our 16 hours in, it's usually at only certain approved kinds of venues, forced into all going about the same time because you just don't have opportunities every single week to go ahead and knock off a few hours here or there.
>> you are hopeful that they are in the city.
>> yeah.
>> exactly.
>> we don't know yet. I mean, we haven't even looked into it, we know that's an additional cost as it is now required.
>> yeah.
>> okay. Thank you.
>> judge, i've had a couple of bills, I apologize that I wasn't here at the work session last week. I believe all of mine are basically programmatic issues, no financial. Although a couple of them could -- senate bill 705 deals with the donation of -- of property by counties of currently we can only sell it for -- for do sealed bids, then we can try to give it to an organization. Now before we try to sell it or do sealed bid, we can dispose of it by just giving it to a charitable organization within the county if the court determines a couple of things. It would likely result in no bids or bid prices would be less than our expenses. So we now have that option available to choose. Senate bill 850 now allows local governments and school districts to prohibit contracts or other transactions with delinquent taxpayers. Currently, we have in all of our contracts we have a clause in our contract that states if the contractor wins the award and they owe us taxes that we will recover those payments to us in the first payments that we make to them. I professionally think that's the course of action that we intend to take because the intent is to collect those taxes, I didn't think this was really that good of a bill, but harris county really wanted it. All of our purchasing meetings we have all discussed or i've given my opinion that I think we should continue the contract with those folks and collect those taxes, but of course that will be at the court's discretion if you all would like to now consider those folks actually we don't have that many. And the times that I do recall where someone owed us taxes, before contract was awarded, they would go and pay those taxes, so I -- I personally don't think that the bill -- this is a bill that we should implement in the county, I think that we should continue to do business as we have done it.
>> okay. [one moment please for change in captioners] as they need to be. House bill 2004, I don't know if david briefed out this one. This now allows the Commissioners court to deliberate in a closed meeting regarding business and financial considerations of a contract being negotiated. So now if we are in -- currently we cannot go into executive session and discuss contracts negotiations for any reasons unless we're in litigation. Now you have the authority to have those discussions in executive session to discuss the business or financial america fthat deal.
>> I have to thing of in terms of where that largely has been interesting. Has to do with us deciding to purchase a property and having to make that business decision about it's better to purchase that building and for what dollar amount do we want to throw out there in terms of the negotiating position and making a business decision about whether we lease or own. That's always been entertaining in terms of, you know, having to let out what our negotiating strategy is while you are trying to purchase something and there may or may not be somebody else doing the same kind of strategy. They don't have to tell everybody.
>> this will give you all some more freedom to do that. And there were -- there were a lot of other bills, but I really think that those are the main ones that I need to do let you know about. Like I said, I don't think -- of course, the mandatory pre-bid, we now have that back. We lost it for about two or four years. Again, my professional judgment is that we use those very sparingly because it does limit competition. The policy in my office is that those are only approved by me. If the buyer wants to or the department wants mandatory pre-bid, they will have to get my approval for that and i'll be very sparing on that. Those are the ones I wanted to update you on.
>> move lunch until 1:30.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
Last Modified: Wednesday, July 1, 2003 5:52 AM