Travis County Commissioners Court
March 21, 2006
Item 29
29. A, consider and take appropriate action on request to ratify letter of intention to file application for state grant to fund study of whether Travis County should establish a mental health public defender office. On that one, tell the court what you have done and why. , ms. Pierce. What did you talk the county judge into doing with you?
>> okay. Good afternoon, Commissioners, judge. In the backup that I provided last Friday, I believe, is a two-page memo with a brief overview on where we are with the public defenders office. If you'll recall in February the court voted to have criminal justice planning do a feasibility study for having a public defenders office for Travis County. Our first meeting was on March the 10th and over 30 folks attended this meeting, a very diverse group of people. Including the Texas taskforce on indigent defense, specifically bryan wilson. And he brought up the fact that there is a grant that had just been submitted or placed to the county for $500,000 as a max, but there was a very stringent deadline for that, and it is April 21st. And during our meeting on March the 10th, criminal courts administration submitted a grant to the taskforce last year for mental health programs, and it was denied for a variety of reasons. And what I noted in here was that the taskforce, the review committee stated that it was a very innovative, outside the thinking program. They were a little bit concerned about the will assignment, how on the mental health defenders how they're currently being assigned. They were also concerned that some of the social workers might be directly supervised by the judges. So that grant was denied by the taskforce, but what suggested during our meeting a couple of weeks ago was to take a look at some of these reasons if we can correct them, let's go ahead and resubmit that grant. It was strongly suggested that we do that. Until such time we're going to wait to do the feasibility study for the entire public defenders office. But what we did do is last week we met with a subgroup of folks, and we did decide that we wanted to submit this grant. One of the things we had to go was submit a letter to the taskforce by 5:00 yesterday. I know that was very quick turnaround. And it's kind of strange. We had to submit it online. It's kind of an application. I submitted that as backup. Actually, I just submitted that to y'all because I turned it in yesterday at 5:00. But this is --
>> so the deadline was 5:00 yesterday to indicate to the state that you plan to file an application.
>> that's all it is.
>> and the meeting where we discussed this and thought it would be a good idea was -- that was last week, right?
>> yes, sir.
>> yeah. So we didn't have an opportunity to -- the next court session was today. So we decided to go ahead and get the letter in to preserve the application.
>> that's strictly all it is. We also had to have a letter signed by wunl one of our judges and we faxed it off before 5:00. Really all it is is to advise the court that we do intend to move forward to reply for the mental health grant. It may be very -- we may come down to the end of the day realizing that it's not feasible for us to do that, but in order to apply we had to submit this order of application yesterday by 5:00.
>> you just need to ratify?
>> move.
>> second.
>> that's 29-a. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. And b really is just a status report of for us to kind of recall what happened last name thyme, right? And there were some issues. Everyone seemed to be supportive of filing a similar application. This year the focus would be to appoint a public defenders office for mental health clients. So the question is how would you work that, what would be the judge's role, has everybody bought in, which would be the criminal defense bar, county attorney's office, all the other partners.
>> yes, sir. And all of those parties were on board six or nine months ago. So I really think what we need to do is look at the grants and areas that we need to improve on or correct and resubmit that. I really don't think that it's going to take too much time for us to get to that point.
>> and the court would have an opportunity to review the application before the deadline this time. Right?
>> yes, sir. And travis, when would be the deadline for us to get that in?
>> April 21st.
>> I’m talking about to get it in front of the court.
>> I think Travis County planning and budget office. I think on our current deadlines, the application is by April 6th, so we could post it -- I think it's the 21st, which the court would meet on the 18th, which would be to approve it. And just kind of discussing maybe what we can do is maybe put together a one page summary for the week before the 18th just to give the court an opportunity to take a look at it. If they still have questions if they have the ability to make changes to the grant for the 18th just because the deadline would be the 21st. But to give you some opportunities since there could be some policy decisions involved.
>> summary or the draft grant?
>> I think we can try to give you everything we possibly have at that time.
>> everybody seemed to be motivated to go ahead and put it together and give it our best shot.
>> we're meeting again tomorrow at 2:30 in the county attorney's office, so we're moving on it very quickly.
>> okay.
>> so that's just a status report on b. Any objection? Then we'll proceed. Thank y'all.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, March 22, 2006 7:57 AM