Travis County Commissioners Court
June 2, 2009,
Item 20
Now, 20 is to receive -- I'm looking over at cdbg.
20, receive report and take appropriate action on the legislation before the 81st Texas legislature.
okay.
>> judge Biscoe, Commissioners, good morning.
i'm pleased to report that for the first time that I've reported to you in 20 weeks the legislature is not in town.
they may be back soon, but the legislature did adjourn sine die last night.
what we have handed out to you this morning is a quick summary of where many of the legislative priorities of the county ended up in the legislative session in addition to as well as -- and we also want to report on some of the other bills that were not strictly speaking county priorities but which the court adopted as priorities and which we worked on.
so if I could just begin by looking at page 1 there, the top page, you have county land use authority.
as you can see, our storm water management bill passed and is on its way to the governor.
but none of our other bills passed.
we managed to get the barton springs, edwards aquifer conservation bill on to three different bills, all of which were -- none of which were successful in keeping that provision on it.
there was an ex police it gubernatorial veto threat so that bill did not go forward.
our bill words bill became the last item killed on the house local and consent calendar on the last night in which a bill could pass.
so a number of these bills got very close to passage and we're proud and pleased with the success we had at getting it forward, but, of course, land use issues and county regulatory authority issues continue to be very vehiclessing issues for the members of the Texas legislature.
on the next page with respect to transportation and local option funding, that bill did not pass.
senator corona's bill did not pass nor did his effort to put it on the Texas sunset bill.
i'm sure if you followed the newspaper and t.v.
over the weekend you know there was quite a bit of drama involved in the signing of a conference committee report on the txdot sunset that had stripped out the local option transportation funding provisions and was signed without depending on who you listen to, without the input of senators corona and watson, who were both members of the conference committee on txdot sunset.
ultimately house bill 300 did not pass so there is no txdot sunset legislation.
there was a house concurrent resolution passed by the house yesterday that would have extended txdot's life for another two years.
that did not pass the senate.
so as of now the Texas department of transportation along with the department of insurance, the racing commission and a couple other agencies is scheduled to be phased out of existence.
obviously there is a lot of talk this morning about whether or not there would be a special session in order to revive those two, particularly txdot and the department of insurance.
as of now the governor's office is saying they think the state can do just fine without having to have a special session about those agencies now.
but it appears to me that both the house and the senate believe that a special session is needed and seem prepared to have one if necessary.
but we've not had any indication from the governor yet that he will do that.
fund 6 diversions, which seemed like such a good idea at the time and was the subject of much legislation and a lot of talk early on in the session, did not pass.
and I have to admit I'm somewhat surprised by.
that I actually thought that there seemed to be a legislative con sense thaws at the -- consensus thaw at the minimum what we needed to do to improve the transportation system in Texas was cut off all the billions of dollars flowing to our nonhighway related agencies, and that did not succeed.
with respect to criminal justice reform, we had a very successful session.
roner jeffries and the criminal justice policy, many of the recommendations were adopted, as you can see on your report.
the final area I would want to report on is the area of what I call courts management.
there were a number of bills that we had including one to create a special program or a special process for handling court fees and deferred disposition cases.
justice of the peace susan stigue.
it ran out of time in the house but we were successfully able to graft it on house bill 54 and it has passed and is on its way to the governor.
with courts to longevity pay and creation of special court fees those areas -- those bills did pass.
the one bill that the court had taken a position on with respect to how the courts operate or criminal justice operates was the warrant fee increase.
that bill did not pass.
at the bottom of the page, of course he mentioned the early retiree health benefits option bill which made it into committee, did not pass out of committee but then got on to another bill and was stripped off that other bill because of opposition from public employee unions.
so we have a mixed report to give you today, but we think we learned a lot in this session.
i certainly want to take time to recognize greg knapp, our legislative consultant who in my opinion did a fabulous job for the county and did a very good job representing us.
i'll tell specifically since judge seig is here that he single-handedly saved her bill.
worked with corona's office, got it amended in the senate, worked it out with the house sponsor that he would accept that.
so greg did a -- in my opinion, a very good job.
i also want to recognize my assistant veronica and our legislative associates who put in lots of hours analyzing bills, tracking bills, going to committee hearings on behalf of the county, and I think we overall had a very successful session.
my intent is to come back to the court a couple times over the course of the summer with more detailed analyses of what passed, how it's going to affect Travis County and so forth, but I wanted to give a quick preliminary report to the court today.
>> what about house bill 3983?
>> house bill 3983 passed.
that is the bill that reforms the homestead preservation district legislation that senator -- excuse me, that representative eddie rodriguez passed in 2005.
the nature of the reforms actually were important to Travis County because the county -- the court had taken a position it was unhappy with the governing structure of how the homestead preservation district t.i.f.
would work, and house bill 3983 essentially improves that governance relationship to make it more of an equal partnership between the city of Austin and Travis County.
>> if we --
>> here's the point.
and this is the point of a lot of this.
under the guise of providing I guess property tax relief for the homeowners of east Austin who are predominantly black in this area, this legislation appears to provide a land grab by the community development corporation who I guess in a sense are the instrument, the very instrument that generates gentrification in this area.
they are the instrument of that.
now, I have not heard one citizen from this area in east Austin that have come down here to this Commissioners court and testify in support of house bill 3983.
not a one.
now, what I have heard is two members of the city council, mike martinez and laura morrison, please forgive me, laura, that have come here and supported this.
we have had residents -- lulac was here not long ago.
we've had members of the clergy, pastors of churches, residents that live in the area that have come here to oppose this.
i am going to submit to the clerk today a letter from the mckinney heights neighborhood association from a person by the name of hartwick, and I'm going to submit that to the clerk and it was dated April the 14th of 2009, opposing this type of legislation.
why?
because they weren't included in the process.
and, of course, they didn't think that I did and a lot of folks didn't think the idea of taking property off the tax rolls and putting a home on it is the proper way to bring about affordable housing.
there are other ways to do it other than this type of structure.
now, I'm going to submit that to the clerk as another form of opposition, and if those folk do not know where mckinly heights neighborhood association, it's bordered to the east by the airport, to the southeast by east 12th street.
to the remember tracks, also alexander, and to the north by martin luther king.
now, these folks are right within the district itself, this preservation district.
and this letter was sent to our representative eddie rodriguez, mike martinez, representative dawnna dukes and also the city manager.
and, of course, I received it.
and I've tried to display this particular letter to all the members of the court but I'm going to give it to the clerk today for public reference.
again, taking property tax off the tax roll and in an economic crisis situation where it won't be taxed again and all the other citizens of Travis County have to pick up the tab for property that the city of Austin will be taken off the tax rolls.
now, that is the nuts and bolts of this thing.
in the future if something like this is allowed to happen, gentrification will be so grand in that area that those folks living predominately black in this area will no longer be able to live in the part of the city which is a legacy for the black population in this city and I just I it's appalling, in my opinion, that this has been place and without the input from the community and the folks who live in this area.
so again I'm going to submit this information, the statement I just made on this and also a letter coming from the neighborhood groups in this area who have said they do not support such a bill.
thank you.
>> judge Biscoe, members of the court, I just wanted to come down and personally thank you for including our court fee bill in your package.
this is what I would call a house keeping measure, it's not major policy but it impacts day to day court collections.
i think it has benefits not just for us on the government side but also for our customers who come in and want an easier way I guess to pay their fees to the court.
the other thing, again, I want to compliment the staff and greg as well.
they did a very professional job with this bill, very impressed with that.
and last but not least, I was glad to see -- I went down as a witness in both the house and senate chambers.
i was the only one that gave testimony, but I went back after the fact to see who signed witness cards for us and we had the support of the county judges association.
i was there representing also the justice of the peace and constables association of Texas.
tarrant county was also on board.
i think that speaks well this is something that would bring greater efficiency to the court and I wanted to thank you all.
>> thank you.
>> and I do want to mention in connection with that there are I thought we had a very good working relationship with the Texas association of counties and with the conference of urban counties and that was productive for the county and we hope productive for t.a.c.
and for the c.u.c.
>> bruce elfant.
first have I to express my disappointment we didn't get the warrant fee passed but we've committed to sit down with chairman whitmire and see if we can find common ground to fund our work on executing warrants other than on the property taxpayers as the legislature is committed.
we'll be working on that during the interim.
the two bills that we got passed were the child support bill.
we were able to pull down more federal money for in the just executing child support capius, but the resources we have spent on attempts to try to find these people.
for Travis County it's probably going to be about $60,000 in additional revenue so we're pleased we were able to get that done because that was federal money just sitting on the table if we didn't do this.
the final bill that I have worked on for years is we doubled the handicapped parking fines.
and so for the public who is listening, if you are going to think that you can park in a handicapped spot and it's not going to cost you very much money, on September 1st it's going to cost you $500.
and I certainly enjoyed working with veronica and dieks, intact, he tracked me down in an auto parts store.
i think we had a strong presence at the capitol.
>> great, thank you.
>> thank you.
any other questions or comments regarding legislation?
>> what was the house bill number for judge stieg?
>> it was added on to house bill 1544.
one other thing, last we talked about house bill 1506 which was the bill to do gps monitoring in family violence cases.
there was a concern that the legislation has drafted would have placed an unfunded mandate on counties.
we were able to work with representative herrera in the house and senator west in the senate, largely with the leadership of guerra and the people from pre-trial services that went and explained how this all worked.
what is nothing going to happen, that legislation is in the case of an indigent defendant, the imagine state will have the authority to set a fee for the use of a gps monitor based on a sliding scale aadopted by local rules.
it can be customized, local controls by our judges.
contracts, entities who provide those services, a vendor who provides gps services will have to agree to accept that amount as payment for that defendant's use of the service.
so it immunizes counties against being -- it permits judges to give some consideration in terms of indigent defendants for this technology, but immunizes counties from having to pay any gap between what the contract rate is and the rate for the indigent defendant is.
>> very good.
>> I'd like to make a couple of comments to county authority bills.
i think that we need to -- or I would personally like to say thank to you some of the alliances we built in the community with the real estate community and the home builders for pushing forward some of our bills.
i think it's important that our constituents who are looking -- supportingsing us and wanting us to get more county authority to know that it's very hard to beat the lobby big money interests and the special interests that work behind the scenes on these bills.
the buffer bill, for example, which we were specifically trying to get to buffer incompatible land uses against places like schools, the aggregate industry, the -- it was one of those that worked against us.
the big money like that is just very hard to overcome.
it's going to take more and more alliances in the future working together.
special calls from special interest to the governor.
defeated the barton springs, edwards aquifer ground water annexation bill.
that is a critical bill to us.
it will now cost it much more money to put in a ground water district which has been mandated by the s.e.c.
i want our constituents to know we worked very hard and did make some progress forward with these bills but there's still a very long way to go and I do appreciate those who helped us get where we did go this year.
>> I would like to echo those sentments and say as far as the land use bill, it was truly an instance yet enof some very popular positions put down by a very small number of people.
so those of us who are in support of land use will keep trying.
i also wanted to thank -- I just got a tremendous amount of help from you, dieks, veronica and peter in my office.
it was a pleasure working through this legislative session.
we didn't get everything we wanted, but we did make some very good alliances in areas where we didn't have those relationships before and we're building upon them and it's thanks in great measure to you all.
>> I forgot one thing.
we really need to thank -- all of our local legislative reps.
senators and representatives, and I want to give special thanks to senator watson and representative bolton because they kept after the bill protection for highway 71 until the ultimate hour.
and that was killed by one representative from vernon, Texas.
>> but as long as we're giving special praise, I know you've got a thing about eddie right now, but rodriguez passed against enormous odds storm water management which is our big success in land use management and authority.
and also fought the good fight on impact fees and got it about as far as anybody has ever gotten impact fees.
>> I would like to make sure that those folks, representative bolton with house bill 4175 dealing with land use is something that we are continually having to struggle with as this county continues to grow.
it's going to continue to be a hardship on counties if we aren't provided with the tools to determine something as simple as buffer zones where industries can locate, where those industries will not interfere with receptors such as maybe churches, schools, residences and things like.
that it's an agreement -- agreement -- it was a good bill and it did go quite a long ways so I'm just telling her not to give up because as we go through this process, we are challenged each one of us who is in charge of the precinct and the judge has to also make calls on land use type situations.
and without those tools to govern us and to help direct us to determine what -- what can go where and who is there or either create buffer situations or to mitigate the situation if there were not certain buffers, those are very critical points.
i'm telling them not to give up because we're not giving up.
i know I'm not giving up on it.
and also the bill that dawnna dukes brought before this court, house bill 1195, which in my opinion was very devastating to a community that has been overwhelmed with landfills, and, of course, this would have basically not allow landfill to go near weberville.
so I'm just wanting them to keep it up.
dawna brought the legislation because the community definitely wants protection from this and not having land use authority.
as I just mentioned before, we are kind of handcuffed, but this other instrument under house bill 1195 would have given us some type of relief as far as that landfill being located in that area.
so again, we have a lot of challenges before us, but I think we're here to meet those challenges and I think we've done a pretty good job this year, but it's a heck of a lot more room to grow and do more.
thank you.
>> we'll have this item on for followup discussion.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 2:00 PM