Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, August 3, 2010,
Item 19
>> now let's call back to order the voting session of the travis county commissioners court. And this morning we finished all of our open court items except one, and that is item number 19, consider and take appropriate action on the following items regarding the travis county code. A, update on the preparations for the publication of the county code to the county web side; b, establishment of content and use christ for the county code; and contribution, adoption of a unified style guide for the county code.
>> good afternoon, i'm director of records management and communication resources. And to my right is lisa rush, the manager of the law library, and i will explain her role in just a moment. If i could have the court recall this project, you may remember that on november 3, 2009, the commissioners court assigned a task force to do the following: to recommend a universal style guide for reformatting the existing code. That's one. 2, to collaborate with departments to differentiate between current and outdated portions of the code as it relates to the department and recommend he had it's for commissioners court review. Part of that process was meant to include the county attorney's office. Number 3, reformat the code for web publication. 4, recommend procedures for future maintenance of the code that could facility user friendliness and accessibility. The court assigned the following employees to the task force, tenley aldridge and roxanne bonner, jillian porter and robert resnick, susan verhoos, jesse savalas and lisa rush from the law library and she acted as chair of this committee. In addition, other participants included myself and joe haan, aide to commissioner eckhardt. You have a stellar team on this and i think it's useful to point out right now that, as you all know, these are very busy people with their regular jobs and they took this task on in addition to their regular duties. And i know that there were many nights and weekends applied to this thus far. And i think they should all be highly commended. Not only that, i'd like to point out john hilly's extreme usefulness especially in the last week. He's kind of jumped in and helped us go through the maze on this project. So we're all really thankful for john's involvement as well. With all of that said, i would like to relay the committee's efforts to date. The entire code is not on the web right now and that is one of the major goals, but portions of it are. And the committee in their study determined that there were six issues to be addressed. One is accessibility and usability in the style guide as related to this item as well as considering consistency of style and numbering. Three, they found that there's way too much information in this code, and i think the task force called it chapter bloat. 4, the organization of the document itself. 5, unincorporated amendments in the document. And 6, outdated information. What the task force found is that there are 90 chapters. And to be a little more specific in charting the progress, the committee has determined that 20 of the 90 chapters are ready to go to court for final approval. Now, that's after one final looksy from the departments as well as the county attorney. So of the 90, 20 are ready to go up now. And they are formatted correctly to go on the web, so congratulations to them for that. There are an additional 20 that the task force thinks can be repealed. And the reason they would be repealed is that some of the provisions have been sunsetted, they are outdated, and so now we're minus 40 of the 90.
>> so repealed in full or repealed in part? The 20.
>> ms. Rush.
>> i'm lisa rush, travis county library. For the most part repealed in full. A lot of these chapters date from 1995 and they've not been updated since.
>> we've identified the ones that can be repealed in full and those that we only repeal in part?
>> that in the task force's opinion can be repealed. They still need to be reviewed by the county attorney's office.
>> okay. I know we'll defer to the judgment of that stellar task force.
>> and the county attorney. And after that, there are an additional 20 chapters that the task force believes can be published once the amendments are incorporated into those documents, which could be a fairly simple process. So suddenly we have between 50 and 60 that may be eligible to go to web publication pretty quickly. Now, the remainder of the -- of the chapters are going to take some more work, and we may want to have a short discussion with court as to how we tackle those chapters with the departments. These are among the most complex of the chapters and they will require some work with the departments and with the county attorney's office to get them up to the level. So one of the things that we would like to do, i think the committee may ask the court to establish a deadline for departments to -- to work out their issues with these chapters, and it could be far in the future. It could be nine months or a year, for instance, is what the task force committee members had looked at. I think that -- i think that brings us up to date except for one last item from the task force. They would like to postpone item c on this list for another two weeks. We are this close to having the style guide and the formatting guide ready, but the full task force has not voted. There are many changes to it made between friday and today, between the chair of the task force, lisa, and the county attorney's office. So there's a lot of work that's been done just in the last week that the task force has not yet seen and they probably should give it a blessing before we --
>> two weeks would be enough for c?
>> yes, sir.
>> any objection to bringing back c on august 17th?
>> no.
>> okay.
>> and that leaves us with b, and i think that commissioner eckhardt is -- we've had some discussions with the commissioner about this and i think she may have some notes here to talk about.
>> just with regard to b, the establishment of content and use criteria, one of the -- this goes to several of the issues that were lined out. Accessibility, of course, is the obvious one. We have a code and i believe that the only way one can access the official code is to go to the binders in the clerk's office. And how many of those binders are there?
>> 12.
>> there are 12 binders. That is the official code and that is the only official code. As an assistant county attorney, my experience with the code we could get it on an excell spread sheet in portions but it was not searchable and to get to the actual code you had to get to the binders in the law library and the county clerk's office. The other issues of usability, the chapter bloat, that's covered by b, the establishment of content and use criteria for the county. So what i would ask in relation to 19 b is that we as a court instruct the committee in collaboration with the departments aen the county attorney's office -- of course, the county attorney's office has representation on the committee as well, to look at the establishment of content and use criteria for the county code. And i would suggest that we be looking at it in -- in a fashion similar to the way statutory and administrative code distinctions are made where the legislative body has a statute and then there's a separate set of documents that's an administrative code that's handled by the departments itself, departments themselves as they figure out ways to implement the statutes. So that our code would really be just the county rules and regulations. Any kind of time lines, fee schedules, procedural steps, exemplary documents, templates, and that kind of thing, resolutions, commentary, that those be handled in a separate document aside from the code. But i leave it to the committee and the -- and to the county attorney's office in collaboration with the departments to come up with a clearer definition of what is code, what is not and how we should handle that. I anticipate that there are some things that are by law required to be in code. There are other things that by policy should be in code. And that there are other things that are just purely discretionary whether we want them in code or not. And i suggest the following: that on august 17th we consider adoption of the style guide because that goes to the content and use criteria. That on the same date we consider -- consider the up loading of the 20 chapters including the style guide that are in the committee's estimation ready to go. Do you all believe that two weeks would be sufficient for departments and the county attorney's office to sign off on this 20 as to whether they are good to go? And then i would ask that the following week, august 24th, that the committee come back having categorized the items currently in code and make recommendations to court about what categories should remain and which categories should be struck. In collaboration with the county attorney's office with language that is good and bright lined. One thing that we've struggled with over the years, i know, is that we come up with goals for what goes in code and what doesn't. But you can hate lawyers all you want, but they are really good at writing bright line rules so we know this is definitely code, this is definitely not, this is gray area, let's take it to the commissioners court and let them decide whether they want it in code or not. So that's what i would ask with regard to a time line. And then i would ask that we bring the item back regarding the other 50 chapters in -- 50 or so chapters in establishing a deadline of hopefully, i would suggest a year and allow departments to petition the commissioners court if they need more than a year to clean up whatever that code is. But to at least establish as a threshold time line a year to clean that chapter and make recommendations so that we can finally get our county rules and regulations truly accessible to those who are governed by them.
>> when did we appoint the task force or committee?
>> it was november '09.
>> when we say style guide, exactly what do we mean?
>> well, there -- i think that -- from our most recent discussions, i think that the style guide will actually be three separate documents. One is a guide for anyone who will write the code, and that may be the departments in collaboration with the county attorney, but there are certain rules and suggestions that are included in that.
>> rules governing?
>> how to write code.
>> this goes to like when you work on a law journal or at the austin american-statesman, capitalize the first letter of the sentence, capitalize all surnames, use 12-point font, indent the first -- that kind of stuff.
>> and that's where the ending idea that it will be readable. Now, this the content is between the departments and the commissioners court along with the county attorney. So in other words, the goal of the task force is not to write code itself but to -- but to help people to write it in a manner that is consistent and is readable. Now, so then the second part -- i said there were three. The second is a user manual. In other words, details. Telling people why things -- the best example i've heard from ms. Rush is that we should be using the font r.e.l. And r.e.l. Is the best machine readable font. So in other words, it will help us get it on the web. Some fonts you want to use, some you don't, and this is the most widely accepted font. So if everybody knows we're using r.e.l. For the font, the vowed can be constructed in that manner.
>> it can be read by voice readers, et cetera, by the font.
>> exactly. The third part of this is that we're hoping, and we have -- although the details haven't yet been taken care of, there is a formatting guide and we're hoping that there will be one entity within this county that will take what the users have created and put it into all of this. Into all of the right fonts, the right type sizes, spacing, et cetera. So there will be one person in charge of doing that. And we think we're pretty close to getting an agreement as to who that is and we'll be bringing that back as a recommendation to court. In other words, there's one keeper of the code and there's one person responsible for making sure that all of the rules and the style guides have actually been applied and they will be the final application.
>> i know it's a long explanation, judge.
>> but we haven't done that in nine months. Would we be able to do it in two weeks?
>> yes, judge, in fact, we thought that we were going to bring those first 20 year today, but those last-minute negotiations between the task force and the county attorney that -- but that's been great because they've been fine and all their suggestions have actually been wonderful. So the answer is yes.
>> and i guess my last question is, is it possible for us to find a county that we think represents best practices in this area from which we can borrow that information?
>> i think that's a ms. Rusk question.
>> we've been borrowing and stealing from dallas county.
>> i like borrowing.
>> their code is up on line and it's very searchable. It does use a sansara font too so it has the readability issues covered. It seems to be well organized and it's just one that i've gone through first. And one of the things they do in that code is put out at the very front of the document what should be included in the code and how it should be arranged and -- anyway. I think dallas county does a good job.
>> another dividend to having the code online, it might not be immediately apparent, in some respects what is required of us by state law is very -- the -- sometimes bizanteen is best illustrated by our code. For instance, if one is looking to the regulations that apply to their subdivision plat, but their plat was filed in 1965 and it was amended in 1984 and it was amended again in 2008, there will be at least three versions of our permitting codes that will be applicable to that one subdivision plat. And i think it would be valuable for us to be able to point to that in a very accessible way that this is what's required of us as a government and this is what's required of our constituents thereby.
>> that's a good point, and also if you look at the way that the code is now, that's a very difficult thing to ascertain. Particularly with amendments. And dealing with this -- this is one of those endeavors that web publication is almost designed to help.
>> so this is -- this is not an effort that will be done this year or next year. This is actually an ongoing effort which we've always been engaged in, it's just a difference of moving that effort from those binders on to a web platform.
>> i agree.
>> but is it so complicated that it will take us two to three careers to complete it?
>> well, judge, i think the complicating factor for -- are really the largest chapters. And i think that we are -- if the task force is correct in this assessment, we are just a month, perhaps, as little as a month away from publishing 60 of the 90 chapters. And it's really just 30 that we're going to be concerned about. In applying that one-year deadline. And many of those may not be very complicated. I think it's probably true to say that there are really just 5 to 10 that are going to be very complicated. Is that correct? No, okay.
>> no. 30.
>> well, there's --
>> members of the task force -- task force members have other duties and responsibilities, and so it's difficult for them to quit everything else and work on this. But is this one of those projects where a little outside help would expedite things? Or do we think it should be done totally in-house?
>> i don't know the answer to that question, judge.
>> think about it between now and when we come back.
>> okay. Good.
>> and my thinking is we have talked about this for a long time, long before the task force was appointed. You know, that was sort of the culminating act, but we had agonized a long period up to that point. And i don't know that we really fully appreciated out complicated this was or what it would take to get done. So if bringing in outside help would complicate matters further, we ought not do it, but if we think it will really enable us to complete this project, then i think we ought to consider doing that.
>> i appreciate you saying that, judge. And i think we should have an answer to your question in two weeks.
>> so if ms. Rush is still a full-time law librarian?
>> some say more than full time.
>> she was on the parks committee as well.
>> just for curiosity, of the 60 chapters you have your hands around, how many of the 12 volumes does that represent?
>> oh, gosh.
>> well, when you consider that one of those volumes is just one chapter, i guess you could say it probably represents about seven of the volumes.
>> some fairly significant poundage.
>> but we would still need to keep the binders. The binders are the official copy of the code. They will not go away.
>> we wouldn't dare think about messing with the binders, ms. Porter. Anything else? So we don't need any of this, just an update. But we're bringing back b and c, and at the earliest august 17th. Is that right?
>> and pursuant to b that we will be looking at uploading of the 20 chapters including the style guide as well as a committee categorization of what should be code, what shouldn't be code and county attorney's refining an actual provision about what's code and what's not and what is discretionary.
>> you'll give us new and different agenda wording for the new b?
>> sure.
>> i eagerly anticipate our next discussion of this fascinating topic.
>> thank you so much, judge.
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:
Tuesday, August 3, 2010, 2010 12:30 PM
