Travis County Commissioners Court
September 18, 2007
Item 2
2. Let's go to the introductions. Number 2, introduction of steve capelle, c. Craig smith, daniel bradford and chris gilmore to the Commissioners court. I know they are eager to get back to work so we'll go ahead and take them out of order.
>> we'll try not to take much time because I do need them to be working in order to justify their salaries. As you know, we have a long-standing tradition that when we hire a lawyer who represents the Commissioners court and the other elected officials, we like to take the opportunity to come and introduce them to you formally. We have several here to introduce this morning who have actually been hired over a period of several months. Someone forgot to set this on the agenda and since it was someone fairly high up in the county attorney's office, we don't want to name that particular person, and was reminded that, gosh, we have several attorneys that we've hired that we haven't introduced to the court. So we're doing four this morning even though they have not all been hired in the last week. We are delighted to introduce these folks to you. The first one I want to introduce is steve capelle. Judge steve capelle. Who sits to my far left. Is he a graduate of the university of Texas law school. I first met steve when he was the executive director of the Texas district and county attorneys association when I came to work in the county attorney's office back in 1981. And he holds, I think, the distinction of being the only person who has been both the executive director of the Texas district and county attorneys association and the executive director of the Texas criminal defense lawyers association. Though he's been on both sides of those associations. He's also served years ago as an assistant district attorney under ronnie earle and subsequent to a couple years of private practice was appointed as a federal magistrate, and I had the pleasure and the honor of trying a case or two in front of judge capelle. After that, he went to work for the attorney general's office, and we were very proudly successful in recruiting him away from them to replace eric shepherd, who some of you may recall was elected as a county court at law judge and therefore no longer able to be the director of our litigation division. Our litigation division has envisioned that represents the county and its elected officials and employees when they get sued. Eric had been the director of that division for many years. We promoted shereen thomas to replace eric and have hired judge capelle to fill the position that she had been in. So we are proud to introduce judge capelle to the court as one of the lawyers we've been successful in adding to our staff. The second person I want to introduce is craig smith, who sits to my immediate right. And craig smith began practicing law in Austin in '79, and I think that's about when I met him. I have known craig in the courthouse and around Austin all of the years that I can remember that I've been practicing law in Austin, and I have always had profound respect for craig, as has everyone that I've ever known who has known anything about his legal practice. So when craig contacted us and let us know that he was interested in working in our office, I was both very surprised and very delighted, and the first thing I said to craig was, you know, of course we're going to find a place for you. As it turned out, we had a place for craig that was perfect. During his practice here in Austin, he has practiced delinquent property tax collection, he has practiced general collection law, and he has practiced bankruptcy law. All of which are the precise things we do in our tax collection division, and we had a position open in that division and that's where we have hired craig. He works in our tax collection division now. He is board certified in consumer bankruptcy law and he's a member of the college of the state bar of Texas. So those are additional credentials that qualify him for the particular position we have put him in. He also comes from the university of Texas school of law, and in addition is a volunteer -- is a volunteer with the volunteer legal services of central Texas. But that's not all. We could have put him just as easily in environmental enforcement had we had a place for him there because he has served as president and now serves as secretary of the board of directors of the barton springs, edwards aquifer conservation district. He serves as a director of envision central Texas. He serves as -- or has served as vice chairman of the city of Austin environmental board. He has served as a member of the city of Austin watershed protection master plan citizens advisory group. And he has served on the Travis County and city of Austin community conservation plan working group. So outside of his legal practice, he has had an active public service practice which would by itself qualify him to work in our environmental division. So some day we may wind up actually putting him there. And as a long-time friend of mine and somebody that I have profound respect for and somebody who is imminently qualified for more than one task in our office, I'm proud to introduce craig to you this morning. Some of you may remember that we lost tom nuckols to the city of Austin. I say that tongue in cheek because I know that all of you remember that and all of you were very wernd about that. We pressed to you that we had some trepidation about trying to replace tom. And I mentioned before that one of the things we never replace is the knowledge and experience that people acquire working in our office. So we couldn't replace that with tom, in tom's case, but we have replaced him with an extremely well-qualified real estate attorney. This morning I am pleased to introduce christopher gilmore, who sits to my far right. Christopher, by the way, didn't graduate from the university of Texas law school, he graduated from st. Mary's law school. Prior to that he got a degree in finance. And while he was in law school, he also spent a little time attending oxford university, which impressed the heck out of me because when I was in law school, I don't think oxford was much interested in me, so I was pretty impressed with that. He is board certified in commercial real estate law and farm and ranch real estate law, and he is a published author in the area of real property. For five or six years, he was an attorney for the university of Texas system doing their real estate work, and then was in private practice for a couple years in houston. And I'm guessing that living in houston is what motivated him to want to come to work in our office. But anyway, he did, and we were proud to hire him. He will never replace tom's knowledge that he accumulated, but we are hoping that he will replace tom's expertise and will accumulate that knowledge. The secret, however, is that we actually hired chris in order to prove that you don't have to be bald to get hired in the county attorney's office.
>> [laughter] we're proud to introduce chris gilmore to you this morning. He will be doing real estate work for us. Hiring chris opened up an opportunity for us. As you recall, you authorized last summer a year ago an additional position in order to hire somebody who could do real estate work and help out in transportation and natural resources. And we began immediately trying to fill that position and we had a terrible time recruiting someone. We were never able for almost a year to find someone that we felt was satisfactory to fill that position. We did what we always try to do, we didn't settle for second best, we kept looking for someone that would be appropriate for that position. When we hired chris to replace tom, we felt confident doing something that we've been thinking about doing but hadn't been able to do before that and that was to put julie joe in that position. Julie joe has worked in our office doing open records for a number of years and she had expressed an interest in branching out and doing real estate work and we wanted to let her do that, but she didn't have a lot of experience in that area. We thought with tom leaving and without someone to supervise her closely, we felt uncomfortable starting her. We're confident she is going to do a great job there, but by having chris, we were able to move her there and hire someone to do open records to replace julie joe. So in that capacity, I'm proud to introduce daniel bradford. I think you will all remember daniel, particularly Commissioner eckhardt will, because we hired him out of her office. He was working for her.
>> stole him is more appropriate.
>> well, that's, of course, all in the eye of the beholder. We are proud to get daniel. Daniel is another graduate of the university of Texas law school, but before that, he had a bachelor's degree from ohio state university, and I'll tell you a little more about that.
>> better no say that too loud around all these texans. Because our secret has been just fine.
>> full disclosure. But there is a story that goes with that.
>> you opened up something.
>> and he worked in the attorney general's office on the opinions committee for a couple years. And we felt that that imminently qualified him in addition to the fact that we were very pleased with his presentation to work in our office dealing with the attorney general's office with regard to open records decisions. The secret as to why we really hired him is kind of like chris' secret to prove we don't have to hire bald people. The secret of hiring him is because his undergraduate degree is in portuguese and latin american studies. He is fluent in portuguese, and I don't know another lawyer anyone, american lawyer, who is fluent in portuguese and how could we pass that up. We're proud to introduce daniel to you as the lawyer who will be replacing julie joe doing open records work, and I know that all of you are very glad to have that particular attorney working for you every time you get one of those open records requests. So those are the four lawyers that we have hired in the last several months. We are proud and pleased with each one of them. Delighted that we were able to convince them to come to work for us and glad to introduce them to you.
>> welcome to each one of you.
>> any comments? Jim said a whole lot, but maybe he overlooked something.
>> my only comment is I forgive you.
>> [laughter]
>> none of these folks know me very well. Don't let them make comments, please.
>> look forward to working with all of you. Thank you.
>> next time the county attorney's office will wait its turn.
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, September 19, 2007, 18:30 AM