Travis County Commissioners Court
February 21, 2006
Item 8
Number 8 is to discuss and take appropriate action on plan for compliance with senate bill 1863, criminal fines andfees, collection and rd issues.
>> morning. Today we have at the table on my left deanna ramirez on the pbo staff, judge bembry, judge good win and mike wickrin. We also have donna farris. Representatives from the constable ooze office, beth, various members. I want to say first that I want to express my appreciation to everybody that has been working on this senate bill 1863 compliance. All of the judges, the district judges, the county court at law judges, the justice of the peace, the auditor's office, the tax office, i.t.s., county attorney's office, cscd, and I think that -- dusty, I didn't recognize him. Him and his staff have worked very hard that are coming up with an implementation plan to be in compliance with senate bill 1863. We have the recommendation before you that is a conceptual recommendation. We have many, many details to work out. And some of the financial numbers, I know that mike and his staff gave us some corrections on Friday on some of the projections. What we do know from the office of court administration, that in other counties where there have been centralized collection units that they have more than paid for themselves. I know that the office of court administration made a presentation to this court. I think it was a little over a year ago, in which they used a multiple that I think at that time was seven to one. I think that's aggressive. I think that we can assure you that whatever you spend in collections will be returned -- you will more than cover the money that you expend. And we've tried to make some estimates on the number of cases that would go to central collections. The truth of the matter is until we sent that central collection unit up, I don't know if we know the exact number and how much work there will be on the jp side in getting those cases ready to go to the central collections unit. So there are some unknowns as you can see in our recommendations. The staffing, the recommendation, is to centralize the collections of delinquent fines and fees in the tax office. And your tax assessor collector and dusty knight have endorsed the concept of a central collection unit located at the tax office. As far as space, there has been some preliminary run-through by facilities and they essentially have identified some interim space that could be used inside the airport facility in the interim until the second phase of airport is built out, and then there's a recommendation that they can bring before you that would modify some of that space in the buildout for this central collection. What I壇 like -- we did -- after we sent the backup information out and had some conversations with y'all individually, I think one of the recommendations that y'all were unanimous in saying that we needed to send the third-party vendor contract out for bid. And we had recommended an amendment of the existing pilot program and we do understand your request to send that out. So we'll take these recommendations up, we're open to any questions you might have about the recommendations, the judges here to ask answer any questions. Mike's here from the auditor side, dusty and rene are here from the tax assessor collector's office. So we're open to suggestions. I will be asking for action on the recommendations once we've answered any questions you might have.
>> could you tell us, please, what is the cost of not doing anything and not being in compliance with these new mandates?
>> last year we had an estimate of approximately 300,000 plus, I think, mike --
>> the money, the 10 percent that you keep, that the treasurer keeps if we timely send the money to the comptroller's office. I壇 back a little bit off of that. As you remember, we don't always end upkeeping all of the money that we do think we're going to keep either, but it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of, you know, probably 250 to 300,000 over a year.
>> I wanted to make sure that was in the record.
>> we did approve earlier today as part of the consent motion, I think, a request from the jp's for certain software.
>> that was a grant.
>> that was just a grant.
>> yeah, that's a grant contract for something separate. It's conviction reporting.
>> my question was about to be how that -- whether that software --
>> if it interacts?
>> yeah. On that one, that's a grant contract, which means we've gotten the money, but it has nothing to do with this collections effort.
>> no. It's for -- it's for traffic conviction reporting to d.p.s., and basically d.p.s. Is making the funds available to the local governments because if we don't report timely to the federal government, then the federal government starts cutting our federal highway funds. So d.p.s. Is very interested in making sure we keep those, and so are we. So that's why we applied for the grant and we got it. Jp's have been working with i.t.s. To find out what software should be purchased or implemented or whether it's internal programming we would do with current systems.
>> there is a different automation required for this collections effort.
>> that's correct. The recommendation is to extend the existing system that's being used in the county court at law collections program that's currently being run by the tax office. Extend it to the justices' offices and to the central collection in order to provide the collection software, ie, keeping track of what people owe that go on partial payments and then sending out the letters and processing. The recommendation number 5 here, the request to expedite that contract, I have been contacted by the county attorney's office and they have said that they will do everything they can to expedite that contract so we can get that credit card functionality inside the jp. So I don't think you need to take action on recommendation number 5. They have assured us they're going to do everything that they need to do to expedite that.
>> and then we have facts implementation for the jp's.
>> that's correct. And this does not intend to replace facts. Facts will be implemented in the jp's. This is establishment -- and by the way, facts is not currently -- it's baseline has a collection module in it. So this is intended with the implementation of facts, to interface with facts and there will be some enhancements that will be needed for the electronic interface as laid out in the backup. The current haimer system, as you can see in our recommendation, needs some enhancements in order to handle the jp's. We obviously have to have some programming completed in order to put together the buckets to collect the monies in. The auditor's office has indicated that in the interim until facts comes up that the same reconciliation procedure that's going on at the county court at law level would be acceptable. It's not optimal. I don't know if you want to make some more comments on that, mike?
>> when we set up the central collection courts for the county courts at law, we kind of accepted the reconciliation process that was possible with that scenario until facts came up. And obviously had hasn't come up as fast as we would have liked, but we could live with that same scenario on the jp's until facts comes up.
>> my question for the jp's was about to be that we're almost looking at three new pieces of automation. And we know how skilled y'all have been historically, but y'all would be able to deal with this, I take it?
>> it's a tall order, but we'll do what we can. Our teams are going to be learning three new systems hopefully this year. But we will do what we can.
>> that means the yes in jp language?
>> that means bear with us. [ laughter ]
>> that means it's much more complex than it initially sounded when it came out of the legislation. And yes, we've all worked hard already and will continue to work hard to make all of those systems mesh. The detail is going to be in the technology and trying to make all of these systems interact with each other and with the various offices so that we don't have a really complex accountability problem. And that's a significant thing for the jp's because unlike the districts and county judges, we're personally liable for all of the dollars that come to our courts. And so we have a little bit more of a devilish problem when it comes to accounting for the monies that will be collected by the central collections group. And leroy and all of us have been kind of working on those details, so we're here to answer any questions and then tell you yes, we're going to keep trying just as we've worked really hard in the past. It gives us some new tools, but in essence it gives us a whole lot of tools at once and it's going to require a lot of assimilation by the offices and not just the jp's, but all of the various offices that we then report to, whether its accounting, auditing, the state, all those functions then are complicated by the fact that we're going to have two or three different systems coming down the pike.
>> okay.
>> [inaudible - no mic]. Dusty would attest to this, but there were some growing pains when this started on the accounting side from when we first -- when they first moved central collections into the tax office. It's working pretty well right now and I知 just saying I would expect probably there would be some growing pains with the jp's as well, but we will work with them and try and get those worked out as soon as possible.
>> the pilot program produced good results moneywise, but do we know what the net was to Travis County?
>> on the jp 3, third party vendor pilot program?
>> actually, I had in mind the county court --
>> the county court at law? Deanna, you had some numbers.
>> what I have in mind is that we invested quite a bit of money to put the program up. Part of what we collected goes to the state. So if we net out what went to the state and what it cost to put it up...
>> do you have that number handy, deanna?
>> right. And this is on the response to questions of the court members that was e-mailed on Friday. If anyone doesn't have it, I have extra copies on the second page or the back, what is the net revenue expenses of the county court at law collections program. We were calculating -- and these are rough calculations. Pbo did them at the last minute on Thursday and Friday. It was a net of $680,000 to the good revenue for the county from putting in the centralized collections unit for county court at law cases.
>> I need to say something on that because I don't actually think that that calculation is really probably very close to what is right. We need to go back and look at that number as well. The other thing is it's very difficult to say even if there was more revenue collected, where it came from. So you couldn't necessarily attribute it to the fact that you sprallized your collections -- centralized your collections. It could be that you had a lot more cases that went through, for example. So I just want to make it -- I知 not trying to say you shouldn't do this, I知 just saying that it would be -- you kind of have to take a leap of faith on some of this. It's also good for you to know that the revenue is more than the expenditure, but it would be very difficult for somebody to sit here and say I can pinpoint exactly why that revenue is more. And it would be even more hard when we get to the jp side of things. And I thought deanna did a good job in explaining some of that in some of her write-up because centralized-- the collections for the jp's is just one of the component that can drive their revenues, owb vusly more -- obviously more cases going through there would have more to do with that. The other thing is the omni program. Warrants. If you end up having a contract for a third-party collections for all jp's, you would definitely assume you're going to get more revenue from that too and it would be very difficult to take each of those pieces and say this is how much revenue I got from that piece, so it's very -- I think it's safe to say you'll have more revenue than you spent, but I couldn't say what it's really attributable to. Is that fair?
>> right.
>> my question didn't go to the scrvment jp, it went to the county court.
>> even with that.
>> can I sympathize?
>> sure.
>> we have numbers for -- the number you were just looking for, is that for '06 '062005?
>> that was for 2005. Let me tell what you what we did.
>> we have numbers for '04 and '03. We have prepilot numbers. Is it fairly able to dig those up and make the comparison that way?
>> yes.
>> but then like mike said you have to look at case numbers, as they've gone up, those kinds of things.
>> but in the end if there's money in the bank --
>> the difference --
>> if there's money in the bank, there's money in the bank.
>> right.
>> we do know from the tax office collection reports that they give us that for the year January 1, '03 to December 31st of '03. That's when they started, January of '03, that centralized collection at the county court at law level, through October of '05, they assessed $2.6 million of county court fines and fees. That would be state and county. Of that they collected 2,520,000 for an effective collection rate of 95.87. Now, they've had longer than a year to collect that, but I think the point I知 making is the collection efforts do produce revenue. And like I say, there are ambiguities on what piece of all this creates it. I mean, we send many, many -- you have one fte in each jp office filing omni and taking the flags off at d.p.s. That has been an effective way to do it. We have constables in every single precinct, jp's filing warrants and the constables serving them every single day. This is another tool of centralized collection and we believe that it's well worth the money that we're asking the court to approve to implement it.
>> this is a question really tied into -- I won't use the word bidding because I think sue would probably slap my hand and say an rfs, request for services is not a competitive bid. But as we talk about any kind of an rfs for a third-party vendor, I think we ought to have a lot of very good work done up front. And the two things of greatest concern for me are that we need an agreed upon matrix for evaluation because this has been heartache in cities and counties around the state of Texas and people just saying, well, that's not what I thought it was supposed to be -- and this is not what it was supposed to be. That needs to have very good work and everybody agree upon and sign off that that's the evaluation tool and what is weighted what way because it's been a mess in other cities. Also I want to make sure that as we put together that rfs that we figure in the balance. And I see stacy here and I appreciate you being here. The balance between the number of days that we are going to let our constitutionally elected constables work their cases. And I know that we kind of -- we got to a new place with judge good win when constable mccain came on board saying I would like the opportunity to do my job before this is just pulled and given to a third-party vendor. And I hope that that's something that has worked well to do what we can for those who want to do that work and can do that work and must do that work. But there is a point where you say okay, now it kicks over into another category. So I also want to make sure that we talk a lot about that in terms of finding that balance of how many days before it gets kicked in because I知 also mindful for the party-party vendors that the older it gets the harder it is to collect. So there's -- finding that blend, talking to other cities, talking to other counties, what is that right balance between letting everybody involved do their work? So those are just the thoughts I had up front.
>> Commissioner Sonleitner, we are actively coming up with the flow chart that would involve all the various offices, whether it's elected officials, jp constables or the centralized collections third-party vendors, etcetera, trying to have a systematic approach to that. Is it time to get to number one?
>> let me make one comment as a follow-up on 30-party vendor. -- third-party vendor. One of the items that the Commissioners court will need to decide either now or in the future are those older cases that do not allow third-party vendor to allow them to put the statutory 30% on top of them. I think that's prior to July of '03. In that case if the court decided that those would go out to a third-party vendor, then the county would need to pick up the percentage that the collector -- the third-party vendor charged. So that is an issue. We don't have to resolve it today. But we will be coming back to the court with a number of items. As we work through the details on the implementation of this, I know that as judge bembry indicated, the real work is in the details and we're working very diligently, everybody involved, to come up with the procedures, the specific procedures, the flow of these documents. So I just lay that out that that's another --
>> so you're directing question number 6, in which we also had a response from stacy as to the charge on that. I meant to bring that down and I didn't, but I do remember getting it. Stacy, thank you.
>> are we all on page number 2?
>> yes.
>> where the recommendations are? That's where you are.
>> I知 over on the cost where he's addressing the issue about the question 6 on the cost to send those cases to the address correction service.
>> that's mott my 6. My 6 is number six.
>> this is on the two-page on the questions that we asked.
>> if that was sent by e-mail on Friday, I don't have it.
>> let me clarify what -- on question number 6 it's estimated there's at least 150,000 active cases that an address correction service costs of a dollar per name would total 150,000. And I知 not -- I think that there may be a question as to whether or not the cost of that is a dollar per address. And we can investigate that with stacy to come up with a better number if the --
>> because we're not going to cover that today.
>> well, the item number 3 on my cover letter of recommendations recommends that the jp's process a mass mailout of courtesy letters prior to sending the older cases to a third-party vendor. And we can discuss that under recommendation number 3. The idea was that you would probably want to send your addresses through a verification process, and one of those verification processes cost a dollar per address. And I know that some constables prefer to send 37 cents out a card and that's how they verify addresses. The ones that don't come back are good. We can discuss that under three because I think several of you have some ideas about that third recommendation when it comes up.
>> yeah, the postcard works very well. I remember.
>> and 37 is less than a dollar.
>> I think in '81 it was a lot less.
>> from the jp's, am I correct that on these old cases, say three, four, five, six years old, there really is not time for the jp's to really work those now anyway, right?
>> in terms of staffing, I壇 say no. We're kind of like up to hear with staff, but there would be sufficient staff to coordinate such a run with a different office it it were outsourced through records management or something like that. It's just that when you have 30 or 40,000 cases a year, you keep moving forward, but it's hard to manage each single one of them.
>> well, I was just about to say when leroy asked me that question, I mean, 100% of zero is still zero. 70% of a dollar is 70 cents.
>> right.
>> so in the old cases we're not working anyway. If the county's share is 70 or 80%, that's a whole lot better now is what I知 thinking.
>> let me dispel an image that you're getting, which is that we're not working them. We work the cases everyday. We do show cause dockets, we do show cause letters. We have all kinds of in-house things that we do, and plus then we send warrants and the omni and all that stuff. We work them five or six different ways, whatever is available to us, either under the code of criminal procedure or some kind of legislation that allows us to use the collections programs, etcetera. And we're working them to the degree that we can do that. We just are not an internal collection agency from the standpoint of doing it this way.
>> which then these people would have another -- the access to financial records and that sort of thing that we don't have access to.
>> are we in agreement that --
>> we're in agreement there, yes, sir.
>> but judge, some of those cases do involve state court costs. And if the county's portion exceeds the percentage, we could in theory be upside down. That's why I think we want to look at them to see as a whole are we going to come out ahead. I believe that we will, but I think that's why we still want to have the conversation before we figure out yes, this is what we want to do. How much are the state court costs and would we be upside down after all? Would we be paying out more money to the state than we bring? In? We want to take a look at that and make sure. The collection letters, the i.t.s. Is going to try to help us get out before we even think about this process, that could seriously -- could drastically reduce the number of cases that we could have to think about sending out to reduce the 30%.
>> your purpose was to red flag that as an issue.
>> that's correct.
>> not have them back today.
>> that's right. So we can bring it back at a future agenda item.
>> I agree it needs to be looked at.
>> it may make sense to try to have a contract in place that allows you to deal with the ones that we know are going to be a little easier to deal with and have the option or whatever -- there may be a way to do that where you can have it as something that can be negotiated later as the cases that are before 2003. That would make the most sense because there are some other outstanding issues too on those types of cases.
>> and there are some things that we can do as jp's up front to minimize the number of cases that we're going to lose that 30% to. And that is do things like what judge bembry and I already do, show just cause dockets. Once a case is adjudicated, the county doesn't lose the 30% to capious pro fines. I believe that we keep every penny of the county portion once we've adjudicated guilt. So that could reduce the number of cases where we would be giving away 30% of the county's fines.
>> and I was trying to avoid saying this because it's such a bother some issue for large counties all across the state. We could issue capias pro fines until the cows come home but then we run into the jail overcrowding issues that are always before us and those are some things that we try to take into consideration when we address our cases. We run them as -- right up to the limit of do you really want to have 40,000 people arrested this weekend? The answer to that is usually no. So we try within the other limits of judicial process to try to work those cases, and judge good win is right, many of those cases then that are ready for somebody else to have a different approach to short of jail.
>> there is a recommendation number 1. We'll get to recommendation number 1 right after this.
>> in talking about this backlog since I致e got the two jp's here, can you please clarify for everyone, are we talking about the backlog has to do with cases that have already been adjudicated or is there another portion of them that are associated with a backlog of cases that have never made it to trial and at what point do you dwop them? Dismiss without prosecution.
>> we're trying to balance that. In our court we have a little bit of both. It's probably pretty evenly split. And there are other collection methods that we are doing rather than simply resorting to a dwop docket for criminal cases for a whole host of reasons or at least I haven't gone there yet. Things that aren't too invasive, like omni and different things like that. But that's something that we can certainly talk about.
>> I mean, I can understand pursuing to the inth degree, people that have already been adjudicated and they owe the money. But if something is an eight-year-old or 10-year-old case, why is that not that we unfortunately have to dwop it and clear a case, clearly something that has no hope this long after the fact of even getting an officer to come in and testify that so and so did indeed exactly that on that particular date eight years before?
>> Commissioner I think you have a good point. I can commend my constable. He's been working some of those older cases, particularly issuance of bad checks. It's not a simple no one else got hurt. And there clearly was older cases, and I think they're doing a great service to the community by working those older cases. Not all of them fit in that criteria, but they are doing that and they are meeting with some success.
>> and you're fine that these categories that you're talking about vary by precinct. We do a lot of the trial kind of stuff over in my court, setting them probably as you heard people complaining last year, 50 at a time. But at the same time we got all the folks who signed up for defensive driving are didn't come back in, the deferreds doesn't come back in, 20 something thousand warrants that are already -- there's something of everything and it's not as if there are cases that we just kind of ignored seven years ago. They're all, as I said earlier, being worked, but you're going to find varying levels of those depending on what court you're in. So we needed a process that encompasses all of that.
>> move approval of recommendation number 1.
>> second.
>> which is to develop appropriate outreach materials announcing the collections program and setting the expectation that all court fines and fees are due at pleading or sentencing. We will of course work with the judges. Now, are we doing this now at the county court and district court levels?
>> we will be. This is the county and district judges have met and have agreed to the recommendation of making -- having them as an expectation that they're due at sentencing and that they will shorten the period of time for the collection of those fines and fees for those who can't pay at the time of sentencing. Donna, do you want to comment any more on that?
>> no, that's correct.
>> let's bring everybody in that collects fines and fees for Travis County, get their input before we put the materials together, then the question is how do we get it out? Let's use channel 17, everything else at the county's disposal. Public education can take us a long way, right? And Commissioner Sonleitner is thinking simplify, simplify, simplify. Any more cushion of leroy's recommendation number one? We have committed to do this as part of the other program, correct?
>> that's right.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Number 2?
>> the number 2 recommendation is to fund two new f.t.e. In the tax office for the centralized collection of court fines and fees in the justice courts. Those 10 recommended 10 clfkses, 10 f.t.e.'s, would be one accountant, three -- three compliance officers, three office specialist seniors and three office specialists.
>> a total cost of how much?
>> do you have that cost?
>> for fy '06 the cost for the 10 f.t.e.'s for the March one start date is 228,255. And operating costs prorated with a March one start date is 251, 260. Then there would be one time costs for pc's, phones, programming, space of another $199,050. Total fy '06 cost of the recommendation is 479,655.
>> and have you identified a source of funding?
>> we have a recommended source. We being pbo. As you recall, we have a 100,000-dollar earmark on allocated reserve. We have recommended that the 48,000 for contract programming services for the unysis. And by the way, court had previously taken a vote not to do any enhancements or programming on those systems to expedite the implementation of facts. Joe harlow is in agreement with our recommendation that in order to do the conversation and implementation of the collections system we will need some contract programming so that it doesn't take away from the current staffing on the implementation of facts. We are recommending that that 48,000 be funded from the facts reserve. On the other items, the haimer programming, and that is a rough estimate of $100,000. Pbo would recommend that that come from the justice fund, technology fund. I don't know if the judges here agree with that. I know that they have other items that are being recommended or being worked on to be funded from that justice technology, but it does appear to pbo that the programming of that collection system, the intention is to enhance the technology capabilities in the jp offices. And to the extent that we can automate some manual functions that are going on right now through that enhancement, I think it would be welcomed by the jp's.
>> do jp's have any problem with that recommendation?
>> as long as it comes with credit card capabilities, I think it's wonderful. I mean, that would really streamline us, it really could.
>> one of our biggest problems, drawbacks over this seven years that I致e been on the bench is that for the full seven years facts has been coming and we have not made any alterations to i.t.s. And therefore any of those challenges that we face trying to collect and go back on those old cases, Commissioners, had to be done manually. And that's why we say after a certain point we keep moving forward because the technology has not been there and we would welcome anything that helps us put all this together.
>> you have identified 248 of the 479 you need.
>> the remainder we would recommend come from allocated reserve.
>> are we able to hire five permanent people and five temporary ones with the intention to convert the temporary ones to permanent as needed? And here's why I say that. Before I joined the county, my impression was always that public entities have a hard time bringing in a certain number of f.t.e.'s and later reducing that number. During the 16 years that I致e been part of the county, that has been confirmed year in and year out. If we need to end up with 10 f.t.e.'s, me recommendation is we don't start there unless we start with five permanent and five temporary ones.
>> five regular at least.
>> five regular? That makes it more palatable?
>> it makes it --
>> more legal.
>> more at will.
>> what I have in mind basically is I don't know whether we need 10 or 15, but if we implement the program and we see us moving in the right direction, wherever the work and the number land is fine with me. , but I guess I have a little problem starting out with the 10 regular. And we think that that's the number, but the number may end up being eight or it may end up being 12. Whatever it ends up being, I can accept and fund. Dusty?
>> judge, let me comment on -- before dusty says something. I agree. I think that one of the difficulties that we have is hiring folks and then adjusting in a justifiable way with employees, but I also think that we have an issue with hiring competent people if they are going to hire on as a temporary. And that -- I mean, and that's -- I think that's just the cold hard truth of it. Now, I don't know why you can't hire people as regular, call them whatever you want, and they understand and we understand as a court that if something's not working, then we have justifiable reasons for diminishing the number of folks that we have. I mean, I would rather go into it that way, but if -- from a training -- getting people that you know that you're really going to get something out of, making sure that they are trained, I would rather at least consider -- if we're going through, if we're going to go through this, which I don't think we have any choice because of 1863, then I think that we need to put our heads to the commitment -- making a commitment to do the right thing. So that would be my only question if we were going to do this with five regular and five temporary if that's the way to couch that thing, barbara. So I知 open for suggestion about that.
>> and I want to second the judge's motion. I just think it's -- it works well, though, in trying to ease into something. You figure out what other issues need to be addressed in the meantime, and so you don't just jump in completely and then figure out later that you have to retrofit. So that's why I would be for five regular and five temps.
>> we do have a good record --
>> you're talking about 10 people either way.
>> if the temps work out well, there are cases that they do.
>> if you hire 10 people, one or two of them will not be what you thought they were in my view. And if they're hired as regular, it's a lot more difficult to find another job for them at the county and bring somebody else in that may be suitable. The other thing is that this is one of those areas where if we do it right, then we ought to fund it to the level necessary. Which is why I say that if we need 11 or 12 people, so be it. I just think it hard to make that determination up front. It is easy to make it, though, as the work goes on. But mr. Knight is the one out there in the fire --
>> good morning, dusty knight with the tax office.
>> good morning.
>> I had talked with leroy about this. I haven't had much time to talk to the jp's about this. Our thing was currently, just to give you an example, we hire evans temperatures right now for voter renl administration. When we get a huge number of voter registration cards that come in that need to be data entried, this particular thing is we've laid it out today and it's subject to change as soon as we work through the plans with the jp, today was one person to deal with the accounting. There are -- my understanding there are 600 different types of fines and fees that can be assessed for five different jp's, 600 times 5, three hundred different ones and each have different buckets to go into that the auditor wants us to make deposits the next day. This is a huge thing to be dealing with. I don't have staff. One has to be an accountant to keep up with the numbers. Three of the four people are going to be doing the interviewing, the finding out the data, that type of thing. Two or three of them. These numbers are flexible. As I say, it will be the back room people that they never showed up, we've got to start doing skip tracing, get out letters to the background people, and this proposal as we have it today, three were just going to have to data enter the information into the system for us to get started with. Back to where I was, in talking to leroy, it had been my assumption we are better off going to -- I think the county has a contracted services people that we go to and say I need three data entry operators tomorrow. I don't have to worry about interviewing them. They're here everyday. If one of them doesn't show up, the contracted agency sends us somebody else so that we have this. We're talking in the neighborhood of -- I haven't gotten a good handle on the numbers yet, but anywhere from 30 to 70,000. Currently, to give you a feeling, the county courts at law is 4,000 cases a year and we have four people dealing with 4,000 cases. This is going to be a magnitude of 10 to 20 times that.
>> are you contracting out?
>> not there, no, sir. We are contracting out currently for voter registration.
>> but is the intention to contract out for this piece of the work?
>> I知 hoping that we can find a way working with facts, working with the jp's, but at some point in time there will be an interface between systems so we don't have do the data entry and those can be eliminated entirely. That's the hope. So yes, it would be best if we were using a contracted services people that just say your services are no longer needed. That had been the best for everybody. I don't like to hire county employees and tell them they don't have a job anymore, especially if they've left a job to come to this one.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> we work toward the others being some of temporary. I have no problem.
>> can you make that work?
>> for a starter, yes, sir.
>> that's my thinking. We need to implement this as best we can. If we run into either expected positives or negatives, we give ourselves a little bit of room to deal. And if we can contract out for a lot of these services and the really they can do a better job than we, if that's determination, then I知 flexible as to how we proceed. But if you all just let us know. And part of the reason for the recommendation is really to give us the flexibility that -- that I think we ought to have.
>> as long as it's understood that we are aiming to get flexibility into this motion. Because I think we don't really have a sense of what we need to do. But where I do want to go is this. When we are talking about temporary county employees, folks who will take on a temporary status, come through our paf's, those are folks who ought not linger in a temporary status in terms of their benefits as opposed to a regular status related to their benefits. I知 not talking about the temps as in a temp service. But I think we owe it to folks if they are going to be on board, they ought to be flipped over to regular. Even if it's a pilot and their tenure may only be for one year or two year. I think we ought to not have people in limbo land in terms of being temps. We have temps that have been here for decades. To had he that's a regular employee, they ought to have that status.
>> I would suggest if it's friendly that in -- in the judge's motion, that -- that any temporary Travis County employees be -- I think it's a code 5 or something in which we actually give them benefits even though they are -- they have a stated period of employment, maybe a one-year period. So I think that addresses, Commissioner Sonleitner's concern, that we don't have people that don't have -- have benefits and that they can end up in extended employment periods.
>> it is '05. It is the '05 code.
>> well, I知 confused. Are we saying that we are going to hire the five as regular.
>> right.
>> butter going to use a service to do the others, so temp is not really something that we are doing. I mean, we are using a service, I mean, call them whatever they want, but I think they leave when they are not needed or, you know, if all of a sudden somebody is doing a great job, say, you know, we want to hire five more people as regular employees, then you do that. But I mean I think that the temps that's taken care of through the service; is that right.
>> that's correct, sir.
>> if the [indiscernible] exist [multiple voices]
>> what we are doing really is authorizing dusty and other affected persons to look into it. Because when you look at the contract of service, I mean, we are trying to promote efficiency, cost effectiveness and the bottom line, though, is we want to make for the county as much money as possible. Which means on the other hand we want to spend the least possible. But get the best quality of service. So somebody has got to weigh all of that. I知 part of this motion is if we can get that -- we hire regulars. If it looks like the best thing to do now is contract out for the other part, so be it. The motion is simply not to hire 10 regulars up front. But if later on you come back with a recommendation and look it makes all of the sense in the world to hire 10 regulars, I知 saying at that point I can deal with it. But I知 -- hopefully we will have jumped through the other hoops to get there. So --
>> my only point about the temps is that dusty and other offices have county temporary employees who are very good and may actually work well on this assignment, then they can back phil on the others. I -- backfill on the others, I want to make the point if there are county temps that are put into this mix, that we give them '05 status, not treat them as though they are -- they are less than regular employees when it comes to --
>> the dollar amounts --
>> by the way that is not the motion.
>> do include the --
>> that is not the motion, though. That's not my motion, that's not friendly. My motion is really five regulars and the other part either contract it out or temps. If later on somebody comes back, says this is a really good temp here. My question would not be let's give them benefits, my question would be why don't we convert them to a regular. I知 agreeing with dusty if we can contract out for the service that we take a look at that before hiring the temps. If the service is not available, or not available at what we think the right amount is, then we bring in temps to do it. I知 using temps in the Travis County policy definition of temps. And but I知 flexible enough, if there's a temp on board that's really working out, then I値l defer to the manager to come in and recommend what we ought to do. So at that point I would say, you know, maybe on two of these we ought to get benefits, maybe on three we ought not. Maybe on two convert to regular employees, maybe on the others we should not. I知 saying let's leave ourselves that flexibility. And -- and --
>> I think that will work.
>> I知 confused.
>> if temps are hired the motion is not to pay them benefits up front. That is not in the months.
>> you just lost me on the motion then.
>> my understanding of the motion is that -- at 5 positions as dusty laid out, they hired permanent with full benefits with regular. The other five positions be initially attempted to be filled through a contract and -- and you could budget it in contract services, whatever that we need to.
>> the other money for contract services or temps in that order. We are deferring to dusty's judgment. She's the one in the fire so we are saying make the call.
>> right.
>> if it looks to the group like this alternative strategy doesn't make much sense, you know, 90 days from now, 10 regulars are what we need, then I知 saying at that point I値l defer to the judgment of those who come by it.
>> it doesn't work out, we will come back to court and get direction at that time. If it doesn't.
>> after giving it the old 110% Travis County effort.
>> we believe it will work out.
>> I知 hearing the alternative to that is if it is a wonderful deal, from what I heard the judge maybe I知 wrong, it's like we can take these people from whatever status they are and make them regular employees if that's where we're going. That's what I heard.
>> right.
>> thank you.
>> later down the road. At the point -- I知 deferring to your judgment. I知 saying let's give ourselves that flexibility up front. Is that what you seconded?
>> that's what I heard, that's what I seconded. Any more discussion of that motion? Leroy's number 2 modified. All in favor? Show Commissioners Gomez, Daugherty, yours truly voting in favor.
>> abstaining because I still have a discomfort level as to having some of our county temporary employees not be granted benefits and I don't think that's a good precedent.
>> number 3.
>> 3 is to do with the -- with the judge's recommendation that we do a -- not all of the outstanding cases, but starting with the most current delinquent cases. Prior to getting a third party vendor through the r r.f.p., rfs process of sending out some courtesy letters to the defendants and cleaning up as many of those as we can in the near future.
>> j.p. Is on board? Here?
>> yes.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> suggestion?
>> is this the place where we were supposed to discuss whether the -- whether we are going to go with the send out the letter and the no response back will give us the sense of whether that's a good address or not? This is --
>> letter versus post card?
>> we could talk right now, yes. We could do the boast card or we could -- post card or the letter. Postcard are cheaper.
>> they will accomplish the same thing.
>> right.
>> could be the savings come from giving us the updated address, service from the post office that does that as well. So -- so you could do both this one post card.
>> this is to say now you owe us x amount of money. If you don't pay up by this deadline, that amount increases to another amount. So this is your courtesy opportunity to come in and pay up.
>> uh-huh.
>> right?
>> it's kind of a -- kind of, you know, collections is coming on top of everything else. These people already owe a bunch so yes, sir.
>> okay. You all will decide in what cases this letter would be appropriate.
>> yes, sir.
>> do you really think that you get anywhere with this? , I mean, when you -- we're talking about mailing these things out to people, some of them,, I mean, may not even be alive or anywhere near around. And then even the ones that get them -- what are they going to do? I mean they are going to laugh. They are going to go I have this ticket out on brodie lane in 1991, are you kidding?
>> [multiple voices]
>> I had great return on those postcard when I used to mail them out. I would get a check or a money order in the mail. Sometimes from europe.
>> Commissioner, we are doing that on like say 200, 300 cases for a show cause docket. These cases can be from 1996. We get responses. We do.
>> you think we will get enough response out of this to pay for the mailing.
>> we get enough response to pay for the postage, I believe so. We will also find the one that's we can't find.
>> if you think that you can get enough to pay for the postage, I mean I知 just questioning that. But, I mean, you all --
>> some have just forgotten about the check that wrote at u.t.
>> sometimes someone else in the household sees it [laughter]
>> we are going to tell your mother.
>> spouse, mother, father.
>> that person is new to the household. They are going -- [laughter] what is this? I think that I will go down there and pay for it. I don't think that's --
>> it happens, it happens all the time.
>> Commissioner Daugherty, it also accomplishes something else. Which is sort of to alert people that we have something new coming down the road. Because if not we are going to have a lot of really strongly unhappy people calling and coming by and the more we can give them up front I think the better off our offices will be. To -- to eliminate some of the agony.
>> well, maybe I知 not really understanding the ones that you are going to do. I mean, after having been to y'all's offices and seeing rooms and boxes of these things, I知 willing to -- you know, to raise the flag and go there's -- there are 150,000 cases. I mean, this is -- if you started tomorrow trying to take on what we are actually trying to do to keep up, it's just a matter of six months until everybody he is under water again. It's not because you all aren't working. You have so many people that are doing unlawful things. And I -- you know, I知 willing to look at this and I know that I知 such a strong proponent of third party, because third party makes their living doing it. And third party shows, I mean, that doesn't mean that the constables don't work hard, that doesn't mean that you all don't sign like crazy, I mean, on the weekends and the evenings the things that you have got to do. The numbers are just so overwhelming for you. But, you know, if you all think that this postcard got, you know, former constable and two judges s staring at me, I think it's a good idea, I will put my hand.
>> not that I知 admitting to a prior bad act. However I can tell that you parking ticket that you get at the university of Texas when you are a freshman sometimes you might blow them off, but when you get the last minute card saying unless you take care of this you do not graduate, believe me, it was a very effective mailing. Not that that was anything that I knew anything about.
>> well, I think, I mean, if you can put that kind of language in there, I mean,, you know, like no more desserts or whatever you want to put. Just -- [laughter] whatever moves people to do it. I mean, I知 all for that, I mean, --
>> let me make a comment. The estimated 150,000 cases that we have put in the backup, those aren't all ready to go out to a third party vendor. One of the things by sending out a courtesy letter would do is to complete some of the actions that the judge's office need to do in order to forward those to a third party vendor. So those are, you know, that includes presumptive cases that, you know, they don't have judgments and everything else, that number. That's just total open cases. So -- so I think that -- that based upon, I mean, we've had this conversation with the judges and it was their recommendation that we do this. And I think that it's worth a try and if -- if we don't, if it's not successful in the first part of it, we obviously are going to work the cases initially that are the -- the least amount of time that they are overdue. So we will be getting the best ones first.
>> [indiscernible] give us a definitive number on this? I知 willing to -- to vote for it because it looks like the two j.p.'s want that. But I would like to -- in 90 days or whatever it is, ones the cars go out exactly how much was spent on the the mailer, how many dollars came in in 90, 120 days, you all tell me whatever it is.
>> it could be, when we are reviewing the process and we are talking or meeting with each other, which we try to do monthly, that we alter that process so there's no quite the total group. Obviously it would be -- it would be the best targeted group that we could come up with because I can tell you from summer experience, summer after summer after summer, when we bring our college temps in and do the show cause letters, then we always generate revenue off of those. So there is -- there's a percentage you get from each contact with the defendant. Whether it's my office, the constable's office, et cetera. So I think going into this, just reiterates the two things that I really am here to push. That is we have to have the technology to come up with that list, we have got to have the technology to track that list. So that we can look at our productivity in a whole number of ways. The second of which is we have to have those credit cards because the number one question of the day is can I pay my credit card.
>> you bet.
>> a lot of these people would not be in those files today had we had credit cards when they were standing at my front counter.
>> I agree.
>> the ability to take credit cards will exist when?
>> it's the -- the contract is moving through the county attorney's office as we speak right now. I have had conversations with the county attorney's office, they are doing everything they can possibly do to expedite that contract.
>> do we have the automation once the contract is done.
>> the automation that the judge is speaking of is the hamer situation of getting it in.
>> 30 days, 60 days, 45. We are hoping that we are within five weeks of April 1, but we are pushing it as hard as we can to get everything in place.
>> well, let's hurry up and approve number 3. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. There was a motion and a second on that one, right if.
>> okay. Number 4, mr. Nellis.
>> number 4 I think the -- the recommendation at this point is to put out an rfs or rfp for the third party vendor.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> that's what we promised to do when we put the pilot in place anyway.
>> that is correct.
>> all in favor?
>> judge, let me ask -- I guess there is consideration that msb has the present contract now with three through the end of the year, so I guess that -- that does -- that doesn't include melissa's camp with msb?
>> I would have to -- I would have to, you know, have the county attorney indicate to us on that contract. I would assume that the -- that the cases that are out with msb, that have been referred to msb, that they retained those cases until they collect the amounts. Msb currently remitts to the county upon the complete collection of those accounts. So I think we will need to -- to verify exactly the interaction between the rfs and the current vendor on that. I don't know if the county attorney has any comments on that?
>> I would say you need to decide what you want to do and we will write the papers to accomplish what you want to do. If -- if you want to retain msb for -- for melissa's precinct for the reminder of -- remainder of the contract period, have that precinct move on to the other contract as a result of the rfs. We can write it that way, we can write it so no more cases are sent to them after the new contract is put in place, that they finish out the detail on everything that they have already received. It's just a question of -- of you need to decide what you want to accomplish and we will write it whichever way because that's a policy decision.
>> you are presume being -- presuming that they would not be the successful recipient of that. If they are, it's just a matter of transitioning on. I want to make sure with this motion we are not signing off on an rfs, that that rfs is going to come back to the Commissioners court for approval, because there are things in there related to what are the terms, what's the evaluation matrix. Like there is stuff in there that needs to be looked at up front, not go forth and make it happen. We have people saying I didn't know that's what we were approving.
>> yeah. And a couple members of the court had commented to me on the recommendation that they felt perhaps through the purchasing office it would be well to have several vendors coming in and say what kind of services are currently offered and we have done that with the health insurance contract, several times. And we -- we defer to the purchasing agent to set that up and then representatives from the groups working on this would sit and ask questions because -- because I think it would be helpful in the drafting of the rfs to have through that fact gathering before we write it. To answer Commissioner Sonleitner, we have every intention to bring back a draft, plenty of time for the court to -- to make comments on the draft of any rfs or rfp that goes out. We do want to go through that process.
>> I want to make sure that they are answering questions, Travis County puts forward as opposed to it is a vendor driven process where they answer it in the way that they want to answer it. We teed to be completely in control -- we need to be completely in control of this process in terms of saying this is what we want, this is what we want to contract for, these are the measurables, these are the performance measures, et cetera. Here's how we are going to evaluate it. As opposed to we get something in a form that is not in the form that we can properly evaluate it.
>> that's why leroy is bringing it back to us, right? Any more delay or discussion?
>> I do, please. The tax office has been dealing with the office of court administration and the governmental collector counters of -- anyway, the collectors groups. And there's a lot of discussion in these groups about just exactly what we are talking about, they have done it in a lot of counties, cities, municipalities, all kind of things throughout the state. The first thing that we need to do is we need to know what it is that we are doing. Which we are still working on that from what I can tell. My preference is that we come together with an initial plan of what we are going to do. We discuss with g canned others that have done this for years, find out the very things that Commissioner Sonleitner is doing. There are matrices that people have put together. There is no management in this. Tax office people managers we have plenty of other things to do that are trying to deal with this. It's going take some time. If we can get a lot of these good things that have been done by other agencies, harris county, all over the state. Put this together, it would be very beneficial to us. This is I don't want to put the cart before the horse. We need to find out what it is that we are going to do first. If this doesn't happen until next fall, so be it. I understand that we want to get the biggest bang for our buck, but first off we have to know what we are doing. I have talked to these guys, it's like what specific things are you doing before they want to get off into it. If I am sending out two or three letters, that has an impact on what their return investment is going to be. If we are working really hard, there is no low hanging fruit. So that's what we have to put together a plan, get with the other groups that are out there that have done this, gone down the road, be and the to use that. So to me this is not rush into it, you all are going to see something next week.
>> and get all of the parties together, have them all at the table.
>> all right.
>> all of this in the motion.
>> can I say something really fast? There are elements of this dictated by the comptroller's office who is going to audit where -- yes, we will have a system, we are developing that will encompass those components. We have no choice. That's what we will be audited on. So --
>> let's incorporate all of this, leroy. All in favor of the motion? Show Commissioners Gomez, Daugherty, yours truly voting in favor -- that passes by unanimous vote. [laughter]
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, February 22, 2006 10:26 AM