Travis County Commissioners Court
February 3, 2009, 2009
Item 17
>> 17. Consider and take appropriate action on legislative matters including status report on drafting legislation to address Travis County legislative priorities, b, additions deletions or modifications to the legislative priorities adopted by the Commissioners court. C, briefing on legislative goals and bills of various Travis County officials and other entities. And d, Travis County position regarding legislative options to increase transportation mobility funding.
>> good morning. I have -- there are four subitems as you've mentioned subject on this agenda item. I would like to move through them pretty quickly if we can, but first give you an overview of what's going on with the legislative process. There are 119 days remaining in the session. The senate has made its committee assignments. At the end of last week there were no big surprises or changes in the committee assignments. The senate has begun referring bills to committees. I expect that the committees will hold organizational meetings possibly at the end of this week, more likely next week, and then the week after that. By the third week of February actually should be in considering legislation. So the senate is getting ready to move forward. In the house, the members were asked to turn in the cards with their preferences for committee assignments by the close of business yesterday, so the speaker's office probably is staying up all night working on moving the little cards around on the bulletin board and figuring out committee assignments. I was told this morning that they hoped to have them by the beginning of next week at the earliest. So once committee assignments are made in the house, then bills will begin to be referred in the house and those committee meetings will start probably more towards the end of February than this part of the month. This morning governor perry released a declaration regarding emergency legislation for this 2009 session. He designated five areas of legislation, three of them have to do with recovery from the hurricanes that struck the state, supplemental appropriations to state agencies and institutions such as the university of Texas medical branch in galveston, legislation to assist public and private entities with recovery from the hurricanes, and legislation to fix up the Texas windstorm insurance association, what used to be known as the cap pool, which covers -- provides homeowners and commercial insurance down on the tier of coastal counties and which obviously got hit very badly in terms of losses during this thing. He also during the -- during the hurricanes this past year. He also designated legislation to improve state schools and centers, and legislation to appropriate funds to tdcj to keep people from sneaking cell phones into the prisons. So those are the five emergency items that the governor declared today. With that in mind, I just want to -- the first item on the agenda is just to report to y'all of the legislative priorities that the county identified on December 23rd. There were -- we sorted out the ones that could result in possible actual piece of legislation. We identified five possible bill areas in the tnr area, 12 in the justice and public safety area, and one in the administrative area, and the pullout chart that you have in your packets show the status of the dralling of all those bills with a couple of updates in that we have circled back around to some of the legislators who are drafting legislation for us, have either made comments about either drafts that they have given us, checked in with them about drafting still in process and so forth. But the news to report is that probably on half of the issues that we're working on, we have legislation now and we're ready to talk to members of the Travis County dell dpaition or others about -- delegation or others about filing some of those bills for our legislative agenda. At this point I would just like to stop and see if there's any questions about that eight and a half by 14 spreadsheet that y'all have regarding legislative drafting requests.
>> questions? Okay.
>> only a comment that I'm thrilled that we have such a thing.
>> [ laughter ]
>> which thing is it you're thrilled about?
>> the spreadsheet.
>> okay. Well, we will keep that updated and I'll keep bringing it back to the court on a regular basis by way of keeping track of it. Then with respect to item 17-b, the list that we -- that the court approved on December 23rd, we approved or the court approved with the understanding that it might add to or subtract from that list over the course of the legislative process, but even that day as we are discussing a resolution from scenic Texas about supporting billboard legislation, the sense of the court that day was that they would like to see that, if you will, raised in priority so that it actually became part of the county's legislative agenda as well as being supportive of other group pressing that. So the motion I have for the court is that they would add billboards, billboard legislation to the list of legislative priorities for the 81st Texas legislature. And that motion is laid out in your packet under item 17-b.
>> so moved.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> wonderful. On to item 17-c, there's really several parts to this. Basically I provided a list of the priority legislation being tracked by the Texas association of counties and by the conference of urban counties, but that information is behind the cover memo in your packet. I'm happy to answer any questions about those. Both organizations, of course, are focusing on legislation of interest to counties, looking at land use is obviously a big priority, environmental issues in general. Obviously issues having to do with appraisal caps and revenue caps, appraisal reform is a big issue now being talked about at the capital and both organizations are following that very carefully. Fortunately members of the category 4 are very active in both associations, so I feel like the court is pretty well briefed on what they're doing, but I'm happy to answer questions about that. In addition to that, I want to mention to the court four specific ideas for legislation that have been brought to our office by other county officials. And those are on page 2 of the memo you have under item 17-c. First, legislation to increase the amount of the fee paid by a defendant for a peace officer's services in executing or processing an arrest warrant from 50 to $75. Secondly, relating to the payment of a special expense fee on a grant of deferred disposition, that's being promoted by justice of the peace susan stig. Number three is legislation relating to long gentlementy pay for judges and justices. And the fourth is legislation related to creating the position of residing criminal judge for Travis County. With respect to items 2 through 4, at this point all we would be asking the court to do is give us your blessing to go ahead and work with these elected officials in terms of getting language drafted and vetting that language with our legislative delegation and of course eventually with the court. With respect to number 1, we do have a draft resolution in support of the issue of raising the warrant fee from $50 to $75. The court in the past has indicated support for that concept. This would allow the court to go on record in terms of a resolution. There's a draft in your packet and there is a suggested motion for the court to do on the first page of your memo.
>> in regard to this, numbers 1 and 2, we have seen both of these previously to my knowledge. The first being a bill that we did have last year that ended up not passing regarding the increase of the fee. The second I just wanted to alert y'all, the language is absolutely accurate, but it can lead to the misperception that this is an attempt to increase expenses for deferred disposition. It's not actually -- it's just a procedural change so that the jp's can take a check for two different cases before one is ultimately disposed of by deferred adjudication. It doesn't change the amount someone pays, it's just a procedural fix for convenience.
>> it's to make it so that the defendant doesn't have to come back down from out of town in order to pay a second fine or fee.
>> doesn't have to wait until their deferred disposition is completed to come down to pay the fine. They could pay it in advance and let the clock run and not have to put on their calendar, sure and come back down or else a warrant will issue. It's not only a convenience for the defendant, but it also could reduce costs to us later on for someone who just forgets to come down and pay their fee when their deferred disotion runs. On 3 and 4 I need to do a little -- I don't know enough about 3 and 4 to be able to --
>> you just want directions to proceed on 3 and 4, right?
>> and probably the first thing I would do when I proceeded is to write up a little one-page summary of each idea and circulate it around to the members of the court. At this point we're just concerned that we try to get ledge council involved and drafting language and get something through one of the members of our legislative delegation and that's the -- my intent would be once we have language, I would come back to the court with a fuller explanation of what the proposals are about, have the pros and cons. Ask the affected parties to come and be prepared to present their case to the court, if you will. So at this point I'm just trying to move forward with the background process that we need to do.
>> move approval of 1 and 2.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Move that staff be authorized to work with the impacted officials in 3 and 4. Z to further the matter and present back to the Commissioners court at the appropriate time. Discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank y'all very much. Number d, 17-d, has to do with the discussion that the court had last week about a county position regarding legislative options to increase transportation mobility funding. This was -- mr. Gieselman brought this topic up last week, and the court asked us to come back this week with a follow-up discussion for y'all. If I can, let me just summarize the context that we're operating in. The idea of giving local jurisdictions authority to raise their own money in order to fund some of their transportation projects has caught on both at the city and county level and with the legislature. I wouldn't want to dpairn tee that anything -- guarantee that anything will pass, but there seems to be a lot of interest in this idea. Various counties are working on the idea. The conference of urban counties is tracking it, the Texas municipal league is involved in this. So what joe brought to you last week was a policy paper that had been put together by central Texas coalition for transportation solutions I think is the name of it, and they wanted to propose a specific menu of items that might be included in legislation. I think joe's approach was to say let's back up a step and let's approve some principles that would give us direction in terms of what to support, whatnot to support as we continue through the legislative process.
>> (indiscernible) after executive session this afternoon. We probably ought to read this before we do. The other thing is that in an executive committee of campo yesterday we did discuss this briefly, so it's kind of a big deal.
>> yes, sir.
>> but rather than rush through this, I think we ought to call it up this afternoon, give ourselves over lunch to take a look at it. How's that?
>> that's fine. I feel a lot better that way. These options are big deals, right?
>> yes, it is.
>> so let's indicate our intention to bring up 17-d this afternoon, probably either before or after executive session. Is that all right, joe?
>> that's fine.
>> good work. That's a lot.
>> thank you.
>> we'll see you this afternoon.
>> do you want to go to 18 now?
>> no, sir. I had our county clerk stop everything she was doing to come over.
>> see you later.
>> let's leave some work for this afternoon, mr. Echstein.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 2:36 PM