Travis County Commssioners Court
July 15, 2003
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Item 19
19 is to discuss proposed changes to fy 2004 fines and fees and take appropriate action. 19-a is medical examiner contract autopsy fee increase from $1,500 to $1,800 effective January 1, 2004 and b, medical examiner expert witness testimony fee increase from $300 to $500, effective January 1, 2004 also.
>> good afternoon, judge and Commissioners. This is part of an agenda item that I think y'all will see more often as we get deeper into the budget office and you should start seeing more fines and fees being brought for routine approvals that are required during each given fiscal year and also fines and fees that we're requesting to have be modified in some fashion. The first one up to bat in this case would be the medical examiner's office. The medical examiner's office received a legislative change, house bill 2703, which required a certification process for all medical examiner laboratories. This is going to require based on the total volume of autopsies done by the office, this will require additional staff and additional build up of their building. In examining the medical examiner's operation, planning and budget office working with that department determined that the source of funding for this expansion may be an increase to the out of county autopsy fee. The work load in the office is roughly 60% out of county autopsies, and the work load continues to increase every year. What we're recommending is an increase from 1500 to 1800 on the autopsies. This will have the combined effect of the out of county autopsies temporarily. We think it will eventually start increasing again, which will allow the department to start increasing the certification effort and it will also cover the costs of the additional construction and the additional staff and equipment required to be certified. I've provided a memo explaining what other counties are doing regarding out of county autopsy fees. I've since learned that I was mistaken in a belief that Travis County would be the most expensive. Travis County is currently working on modifying their fee going from 1500 to 2,000 per autopsy. They haven't approved that yet, but that's what's currently being discussed in harris county.
>> does the changing of the out of county fiat all change the amount of money that dr. Barayrdo or the other doctors are paid to do the out of county autopsies?
>> no.
>> so all of this money would a accrue to the general fund?
>> yes.
>> I wanted to make sure that was in the record.
>> I notice the effective date was January 1. Why isn't it October 1st?
>> we've consistently in the past done it on a January one to allow the other contracts with toprovide this. In the past it's been January one, so the budget office wanted consistency with what we've done in the past. There's no reason that it couldn't be October 1.
>> if you think there will be a lull, I don't know that I would delay the commencement of a lull three months if the purpose is really to reimburse us expected additional costs from the state mandate. We get used to saying that word when they do that to us, allen, mandate.
>> yes, sir. [ laughter ] we do expect to drawback to the fee increase.
>> I would rather have a drop during the christmas time and let our folks get some deserved time off than afterwards.
>> any problem with that? If we do it effective October 1, that really gives us August and September to get notice. I assume it would take us a couple of weeks to get ready. What if we do that, if dr. Bayardo has serious problems and we think that more time would be appropriate.
>> I think the reason they came up with the January date is we have to send letter out to everyone, but there are some folks that we got back from staff that are on different budget cycles than we are. So that gives them that time to prepare their budget and have the money available. Not everyone is on the October time line.
>> can we be selfish just this one time?
>> you're the judge. [ laughter ]
>> I think it's appropriate because the state mandates aren't waiting until January. We've got to start gearing up for this.
>> that's why I would go ahead and -- I would give 60-day notice. Some of the counties are on the same fiscal cycle that we are. The others, unfortunately, they do have a choice of not asking us to do additional work until then. This is the kind of work that really has to be done anyway, and if we encourage -- incur some expenses in doing it, then we need to go ahead and gear up to meet the state mandate almost immediately because what we said during the little work session we had is it made sense for us to implement about half of it over the next 12 months and the sec half over the following 12 months.
>> leroy has reminded me that there may be some circumstances, and we would have to talk to the medical examiner's office further, of our agreements with -- on track in contract with those agencies, we may have to wait to change the fee.
>> I'm thinking that we legally can do this and then the county attorney will have to take a look at this anyway. To the extent that we are bound legally to continuing the fee until some period. I assume that unless there is some sort of escape clause.
>> I don't have a copy of the contract here. I know when jim and I talked about this issue, he said one of the nicest things about the contract was that the fees changed automatically when the court indicated that they did, but I would have to make sure what it said about notice to the other counties.
>> i'd give them a 60-day cushion, but I don't know that i'd give them five months unless we have to.
>> I agree with you on that, judge.
>> how many counties do we serve as far as autopsies?
>> we've got 44 currently, but there's one coming online, so we will have 45.
>> 45?
>> yes, sir.
>> okay. And I guess these counties, they're well aware of what the mandate that came down and stuff like that as far as certification, a lot of the things that we're doing, they're pretty much probably aware of what's going on. I don't think it's anything new as far as the changes and stuff like that. I don't really see the justification as far as letting us go to January if we can do it in October.
>> so judge, your motion is October 1st on both fees and it would be brought back only if the county attorney lets us know that there's some issue related to contractually whether that is not a possibility? I will second that.
>> yes, ma'am, that's the motion. Any more discussion? Any comments we need to receive?
>> the fee has been reviewed for quite some time. So we reviewed it and recommended a modest increase.
>> the only other comment on that is just asking -- I want to make sure that when we're doing here will offset all the expenditures and anything else that will be incurred by the medical examiner, in order, they don't have to come back to us for additional monies because we didn't foresee anything as far as taking care of all of us at one time. So that is a legitimate concern that they won't come back and revisit us on anything different.
>> we received cost estimate for certification from the medical examiner's office and proposed a two-year phase-in for all of those costs. So you will see costs next year related to certification, but it is tied to a package that they submitted this year. Not all the increases are in the fy '04 preliminary budget, but they should expect to see some more in fy '05. But we're accounting for both of those changes with this fee.
>> with the fee increase that we're looking at. I wanted to make sure of that and on that we cover all bases now. Okay. Thank you.
>> motion it to approve both a and b effective in both cases October 1 of 2003. Favor? That passes -- all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
Last Modified: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 11:52 AM