Travis County Commissioners Court
July 10, 2007
Item 30
Item 30, consider and take appropriate action regarding the creation of a new county court at law number 8. And we simply indicate this item may be discussed in executive session pursuant to 551.071 of the government code an notated and that's the consultation with attorney exception to the open meetings act. But in terms of the open court discussion, I'm looking at y'all and y'all are looking at me. Are we waiting on christian smith?
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> now, the reason I wanted this item discussed is that many of our prominent attorneys who have for years dreamed of becoming a county court at law judge apparently have seen this as an excellent opportunity for them to pursue career elevation, for they have asked me what does a Commissioner court and Travis County plan to do. And the timing on this is important. I have been advised of two things. One is that we do not have a courtroom available immediately, and the second one is that funding for this court is not in the preliminary budget at this time. Pbo has gotten f.t.e. Requests from various impacted departments, and if you add them up you get 21 f.t.e.'s and 1.7 plus 200,000, about $1.9 million. And even if we were to reduce that by one-fourth, say we found the space and started this in January, you're looking at I'd say at least a million even if we trimmed what we thought was avoidable fact. Be and the other question, which is why I thought maybe we would discuss in executive session is exactly how would the court go about filling this vacancy, whether we would try to make an appointment, whether we would try to catch the election cycle. I guess I feel some pressure to start providing as much information to those asking me what will Travis County do about this new court as soon as possible so they can make their plans, plus as a family we need to go ahead and make the decision today, right? Now, I guess we could decide to open this sometime during the '08 budget process, but whatever time we give it, we need to come up with funding. And typically we try to annualize the amount to avoid the full impact the second year. So even if we started a year, our tendency has been to provide full-year funding. We don't have to do that, but it certainly makes funding for the second year easier because you just fund the same amount. Whereas if say we opened it for six months and fund six months, we've got a 12-year hit in the next budget cycle. But y'all are here to tell us what you think about this court and what the starting date should be.
>> judge crane is our presiding judge this year.
>> david crane, presiding judge, county court number 3. We noticed this item on the agenda today and really I think we're just here to provide you information and partner with y'all in terms of planning for it. Obviously this process as you know started a few years back and we started back then thinking that we already needed it then. And of course we need it now. And by January 1st it's going to be created by law, be we will certainly have just as great a need then. Having said that, I sense that this is not going to be built out and we won't be able to -- it doesn't seem like it's going to be able to happen on January 1st. That it's created and we have a place to put a judge. But sometime in the next year we want to be part of the process whereby those details are worked out and I want to know and we all want to know what's going on because it's important for the community. And the other thing, it sounds like you've already found out about this, but once the new court is created a January 1st and then there's a primary in March and a general election in November of next year, there's going to be a lot of pressure on y'all. Not us because we're just waiting for the judge to be online. There's going to be a lot of pressure on y'all politically. And I know y'all have already thought that out it sounded like, but that will be into the mix of when and how it happens. And the judges and I are all willing to brainstorm with you about if it can't be fully built out January first, are there any bridge the gap solutions or what we can do. And we're willing to work with whatever we come up with. Did you have anything you wanted to say?
>> I just wanted to underscore that. I think our fear was that if we waited until all the construction dominos fell into place, we were talking '09, be and we're afraid of that because there is obviously a large caseload and as soon as we can divide that general jurisdiction bokt docket up, by five instead of four, be the faster we can move the cases through the system and certainly the more attention each judge can give each case, obviously increasing the quality of the justice we can provide in this county, we have talked amongst ourselves that if the court can be open in a place that may not be as optimum as ultimately planned on the -- it's the third floor -- that we would be willing to take some of the jobs that court 8 will ultimately have to do when it's in a full, functioning courtroom if we can bring the court online to help us earlier. I think the Commissioner even mentioned that a few moments ago. We're more than willing to -- as judge crane, sit down and see if we can come up with a way that will help bring the court online as quickly as possible. Whatever it takes we're certainly here to help.
>> from a facilities perspective, I guess we're looking at September of '08, right? The beauty that have for the Commissioners court is assuming we can legally do it, then we would let those who want this opportunity to demonstrate to the Travis County voters in the primary and the general next year of that. You never know whether you will have opposition in both of them until after the filing deadline. But what I'm hearing you saying is if we can come up with space in the cjc, y'all think y'all might be able to make that work on a sort of down-scaled version.
>> I think we were all in agreement that we're all willing to do whatever it takes to get it online so that we can -- and then as you can put it in the more optimum position, then turn some of those duties back to whoever the court 8 judge ultimately is.
>> a campaign issue, if you elect me as a judge, I'll work in the evening when there's a court open, a court space open. That might be -- that might promote somebody to get out there and use that.
>> that's all right started making the rounds. Maybe they stole it from you from last year, Commissioner.
>> do we think there is space for a mini courtroom on the third floor?
>> roger el khoury. Talking about the cjc third floor. We have included in the budget for the construction funding for the courtroom on the third floor of the cjc. If it -- if the funding is approved, then it's going to take at least two months in fy '08 for the project and it takes about six to seven months to construct. So we're talking about until may or June of 2008 until we have those two courtrooms ready on the cjc. Cjc, according to the plan.
>> I understand this morning there were 50 people today at jail call.
>> thanks for coming over.
>> and this is accord to go our plan from last year when we came fwashd and said the planning and design this year and construction next year, if there's any room at the (indiscernible) building right now, we submit in our budget in fy '08, for several department to move into the spaces. So in the coming month we'll have our budget hearing and discuss those options and we'll recommend that they should move into the (indiscernible) buildings.
>> office space --
>> there will an small area called shell area on the second floor. I'm not sure at this time if it can be fit for a temporary courtroom or a courtroom area or something because we need to allocate the space and the court approve the space and see how much is left.
>> but y'all's point, judge crane, is you would like to see the courtroom up and running on some basis as soon as possible.
>> if we could. If it's possible. The sooner the better for us if I have to be pressed on the issue, of course.
>> and are you advocating for some sort of interim type of docket if we can't have a fully tricked out courtroom with appropriate staffing?
>> well, I think that after we investigate it, all the parameters and possibilities, if that's the best we can do, certainly we would want to do that. And for example, if it's in a place where prisoners can't be transported, the other judges would do the jail cases, for example. And we'll be able to work around those types of things. If by doing that we slow up the process whereby the final end product comes on board, we'd want to talk about that too. And so that's why we're here to have a cushion about what's -- we're here to have a discussion about what's the best way to go forward and talk with y'all about it.
>> is there an ongoing dialogue between facilities and court administration about what all the possibilities are?
>> we started this for about several months ago, but mainly for those departments I mentioned before. Yes, it was a discussion that was going on on that.
>> I took it before the governor had authorized that new court, it was bad nuk luck for us to talk about what we were going to do about it. So I had declined to talk about it until the bill was signed a few week ago. So our discussion part of it is new.
>> maybe we can have a discussion outside this courtroom first and then the final one in this courtroom before we take action.
>> judge, it does say budget hearing, doesn't it, in his plan for '08 in the budget request in.
>> we have a budget hearing for the space location on the first and second floor.
>> okay.
>> unless there's agreement on it. If there's agreement. But if there's disagreement between pbo and the department, normally --
>> [ inaudible ].
>> what you've requested is not necessarily what we're discussing today. If we do that, how would it impact the full scale court with appropriate f.t.e.'s that will function just like all the others? If we get a month or two of use out of sort of temporary court, but it adversely impacts the permanent deal, it may not be worth it. If we get nine months' use, it may be be worth it to slow it down a little bit. But it's hard to make that call without the t's being crossed and the I's dotted. I look forward to the next discussion. Thanks for coming over.
>> john, we do have a couple of legal questions on this, so it should be fairly fast, but we will meet in executive session on this one.
no. 30, we did not discuss -- john says that we got -- copied a statute and he gave us some advice in open court, whether we liked it or not. So no further action required today.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 1:02 PM