Travis County Commissioners Court
January 17, 2006
Item 8
8. Consider and take appropriate action on request from court of appeals for the third district of Texas to assist with implementation of hb 11 regarding judicial compensation. That's either hb or sb. My hope today is that we discuss this, get the issues laid out. And get the answers and have this back on the court's agenda next week and have judge kenneth laws here if -- if possible. The letter pretty much contains the request. First there is a -- there is a pay increase for the appellate judges and these are the ones who work for the third district of Texas court of appeals. Apparently, historically, the county has taken part of their salaries anyway. Other participating counties were supposed to send us compensation. Some did, some did not, I understand. Most of them did. Some of the real small ones, I don't know that they would have made a significant difference. But -- but judge laws's opinion is that the new law provides a source of funding for 100% of this and maybe even a way for the county to get a little bit of strafe costs covered. -- administrative costs covered. In addition he's also asking whether the county is agreeable to paying some of the other benefits, the reason I think we need to take a little time is to try to figure out legally where we stand on this, from an auditor's perspective, what the situation is, maybe even touch base with some of the other urban counties, see what they have. I did have two or three meetings with the judge laws over the last three or four or five months and so here's -- he's agreed to coming over, giving us his perspective whenever we want to see them. I think as chief justice he is also like the administrative judge of the third district of Texas court of appeals, too. But there are several issue that's we need to lay out. One of the reasons -- part of these are financial budget issues which would have been nice had we dealt with them in our budget. However house bill 11 did not pass in time. It was very late. We had our own issues with that. But there are a couple of issues that need to be looked at. First of all, there is hb 11 did allow us to increase the supplement that we paid to the court of appeal judges. One of the questions that you have before you is do you want to do that, if you do want to do that, do you make -- make a change mid year here or do you wait until the next budget and include it with everything elseful that's one issue. The next thing is an analysis of that $5 appellate fee. That's a legal issue, analyzing that law to see how that impacts what we pay and the full ramifications of that. So that needs to be looked at, senate bill 41. The third issue is whether or not these judges are on our payroll and considered employees of Travis County and there are many, many issues involved with that. Many of which are legal and the county attorney will brief you on those issues. So I jump in anyone if you can see issues more than this. But it's not that simple.
>> on the legal issue, we should take that into executive session whenever we go in with the other stuff. Susan, we have provided some compensation historically. But have we just considered them to be like --
>> we considered them to be like an outside contractor, the reason for that is that we -- we do not have the authority to deal with them like we would an employee. So they have not been treated like an employee, that money has not gone through the payroll system, but it has in fact gone through accounts payable like any other outside contractor. Last year, I guess it was two years ago, Commissioner baxter brought that issue forward about them wanting to be on our payroll system. I don't know if the whole legal part of that was fleshed out. But it didn't happen. We sent them a check for our supplement as we would any other outside contractor.
>> clearly they are on the state payroll system? I have already viewed them as being state employees that we give some sort of a -- of a supplement.
>> help me understand the request. Because the letter was a little on the vague side. The pro rata share of the new increased supplement or the differential between what they were getting and what they are getting, is a similar letter going out to 22 other counties. I don't think that I understand the full nature of the request here. If they are asking us to pony up to our share, of -- of new -- of new total number, that's an easy one for me, because we certainly did that related to our own judges. But I don't understand the request.
>> would that be -- is that pro rata share part of the 3860 the differential between the 4640 and the 7500, because I had the same question?
>> right, I知 not understanding the nature of the request. Are they asking us to soak up all of the differential or a pro rata share of the differential, have they been equally generous in sending this letter to 22 other counties.
>> [indiscernible] budget and planning office. It appears to me by reading the letter that they are asking for Travis County to pay the full increase and to -- perhaps collect that difference from the other counties because [indiscernible] it appears that the way the wording is that historically we have taken that responsibility.
>> barbara?
>> the letter is clearly asking for us to pay the full amount that the court is willing to approve as the amount that we will be paying. There is a chapter in the government code, specifically chapter 22 section 204 that says that whatever Travis County pays it is to build the other -- bill the other counties in the district and the other counties shall reimburse us for their share of the costs that we incur for the -- for the court of appeals. So the appropriate way for them to address that because of -- because of the context of that section is ask us to pay whatever they want to be paid, whatever you are willing to pay them, then us to bill the other 22 or 23 counties that are involved and that those counties -- get those counties to give us the money back. We are currently doing that, looking at April's notes, about $387 a month that the other counties were being asked to reimburse us.
>> [indiscernible] [inaudible - no mic] pull the name out of a hat or --
>> largest, plus headquartered here.
>> largest.
>> but that's statutory, been that way for a while now.
>> I don't know the statutory law. I知 saying have the counties in this district, in this region just [indiscernible] wondering why, what was the amount of money. Commissioner Sonleitner is saying well what is our equal share and how is it going to be collected? It hasn't been done like that in the past as far as Travis County actually being able to go and get money that we have already spent.
>> I would have to look back at the legislation -- [indiscernible]
>> how long it was in effect that way [multiple voices]
>> collect money.
>> for a while. And I can go back and do a legislative history on why, but I don't have any idea why the legislature made that choice. [multiple voices]
>> yeah [multiple voices] bill them and they have to -- have the other counties been diligent about reimbursing us.
>> I need to check.
>> you need to check all of that stuff.
>> but this -- my guess would be most of them have been facial diligent. Probably some -- fairly diligent. Some of them have not. Some of them the contribution is very small judge law says.
>> any questions that we would make just the way counties operate, any questions that we would make right -- any increase that we would make right now would be out of their budget cycle arrest well. I don't know if that will impact -- cycle as well. I don't know if that would impact their ability to pay or not.
>> do we have a sense, since this is all brand new, went into effect at least the collecting of the fee, several months depending on what the county you choose to believe before the actually law goes into effect, what if the funds are insufficient to cover what they have asked us to do? We have had a similar where the "lege" promised on a supplement for the prosecution that we will cover it unless we don't have any money. Guess what? They ran out of money. Us trying to do the right and honorable thing to follow through on the wishes, they basically stuck local property taxpayers with their wish to look like the good guys and gals, stuck local property taxpayers with actually paying the bill. I知 treeg to get no unintend consequences here. Doing the right thing.
>> the purpose of laying this out was to get the issues. I don't know if it helps to conjure up frightening possibilities. If we don't like it, we don't do it. If it looks like -- of course we have to comply with the law, though. But it gives us the option of increasing the supplement or not and provides a source of funding, then we have to figure out how realistic the source of funding is. The other thing is that the ability to cover administrative costs is one part of it. The other part is whether we want to agree to incur that additional responsibility if there is one. Now, I mean I think we do need to know from the other two, 22 counties, have they been paying us or --
>> we will get that for you.
>> this is another question of fact. Does a group of state employees have the right to opt out of being on a state payroll system related to benefits? I mean I would find that very curious, especially when we went through a very tortured process, I was very sad that our folks would, the probation department, through the state employees, had to move over from our benefits that I think are very good to a system that was lesser if you are from Travis County, it may have been better in other counties, but for folks here, we had to mess -- they had to leave our benefits. Do they even have the right to opt out and become -- be in somebody else' system.
>> my understanding is that they have no desire to get out of the state system. It is our -- the desire is that this would be like a second one for this part, it only covered this part.
>> that's my understanding, judge.
>> that's what they are asking.
>> and -- and neither of the new laws that the -- the fee or h.b. 11 dealt with that issue.
>> here's one of the things, this is a very small amount $7,500 per judge of them perhaps wanting to piggyback on our health insurance, my goodness, they wouldn't even come close to contributing anything close if there's -- let's god forbid any of these folks have a heart attack. They won't even come close to covering it. All of a sudden -- I知 not getting this.
>> I have got some -- [multiple voices]
>> rules being set up for the health benefits here.
>> I have got some approximate numbers as far as the cost, what we could -- just the additional changes. Currently within the civil court's leading mandated fees, there's $28,000 budgeted for this expense, if the court approved going to the maximum of 7500 per judge, it would cost an additional $17,000. The real increase would be if we had to pay for benefits because health care for just one employee is $7,300, which is roughly the full amount, of the supplement. So that would go from -- from $28,000 to over -- almost $97,000. So over a 68,000, almost a $69,000 increase. Almost 44,000 of that is health benefits. So that's -- the big cois going to be on the benefits side.
>> if we were to pick up 100% of them.
>> correct.
>> we need to find out --
>> I don't know why you would want dual coverage.
>> I think one of the things, judge, is that there is so much -- one of the big issues in this state, I was at a conference last week as you know and I mean one of the big issues for everyone is the cost of health care, what benefits you are going to provide and organizations have taken different financial and ethical substances of what they are going to provide or make available to the employees. This -- we in this county have taken a stance that it impacts people's productivity, attendance at work and also the -- the impact on the community to cut those benefits and so we have been -- we have taken a pretty good stance in terms of we think people need a reasonable standard of health care and what the county is going to pay. So it wouldn't surprise me, the state has cut some of their benefits. That many other people in organizations, it is one of the challenges that we have with our health plan period is would find ours much more attractive if they had a choice would prefer to be on our plan as opposed to a plan that has much lesser coverage. This may be the issue that the coverage that they have is not -- they don't receive it as good as the counties.
>> if we don't treat you as a county employee, our policy is not to provide --
>> that's right.
>> whether or not you become a county employee seems to me answers a whole lot of questions. That's a big leap from our current policies and practices seems to me.
>> right.
>> but I think that the --
>> not on the county retirement system, either. They are treated like an outside contractor rather than an employee of Travis County. What -- this is the big difference down there.
>> when you get beyond the compensation, or the additional supplement, it gets to be fairly complicated.
>> yes it does.
>> my guess is that they put together a wish list --
>> sure.
>> once you got to the county retirement system, basically that would want them to be able to fully count service here, even though it's for a very small amount of money and basically use the word double dip in terms of racking up of their service. It's one thing for it to be apportioned in terms of the two systems, but that -- there's a lot of things here that --
>> you are going to get a legal briefing. The law might answer those questions. You may not be into the policy issue there. There are some policy decisions here to be made in financial decisions but there are also some legal issue that's might make many of those decisions for you.
>> a precedent related to if we do it for this group, who else is outlet there. I have gotten a lot of them, sociaservice agencies that would love to piggyback on the county benefits. Some of the firefighters related to emergency service districts that do not have access to good policies through their esd. So it opens up a lot of --
>> [multiple voices] [inaudible - no mic]
>> be good to also noted what other urban counties are doing with this same situation in the state. I don't think that we are in this buy ourselves. And -- by ourselves. Since we are not, I think some research need to be looked and geared towards barbara, if possible, look at whether other -- what are other urban counties doing who have the same regional --
>> on my list [indiscernible]
>> contact them and see what they are doing, because it's -- it's a policy thing that seems to be state-wide. Since it is, we need to see what others are doing also.
>> for me I will need a copy of the transcript of this discussion to share with the -- with the judge. Any other discussion of this? We will take this into executive session for -- for some legal.
>> comment.
>> comments. Right. Now, based on what I知 hearing, instead of one week, we need two weeks on this.
>> it would be better, judge, if you could wait two.
>> okay.
>> 31st.
>> that would be fine. Fine.
>> January 31st, we will have it back on the agenda.
>> we are continuing to pay them the supplement that we are committed to pay. It isn't as though as you wait they don't get money that they are accustomed to getting as a county supplement. They are continuing to get that. So they are not -- they are not at risk with that.
>> sometime real soon, it would help to know what the other counties really have been doing.
>> yeah.
>> we can get you that.
>> yeah.
>> okay. Anything else on this item today?
>> thank you all.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
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.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, January 18, 2006 8:13 AM