Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, February 22, 2011,
Item 18
Now let's go back and pick up 18.
it is to consider and take appropriate action on report of potential impact of proposed state budget cuts on Travis County programs and revenue.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners.
over last number of weeks we have been working very closely with the departments.
once the state had submitted their recommended budget cuts, we went back and began a process of referencing those cuts against some of the grants that we currently have, what our exposure might be in an effort to bring this information to the Commissioners' court.
which we are doing today.
basically what we have come up with, if you look over on page 5 of the spreadsheet that's behind the cover memo, you will see the total -- we can talk about the specific areas if you would like.
we've broken these up by departments just as a frame of reference.
I wanted to draw your attention to the bottom line.
the bottom line for the spreadsheet and I apologize for the small font on this theng.
the bottom line on the spreadsheet is that Travis County as of today estimates that we are looking at potential grant reduction dollars of about 6.9 million.
what that transz laits too to in terms of f.t.e.
is about 424 f.t.e.'s and that does not include the folks currently on the juvenile side.
the one area that we have not -- not that all of these areas shouldn't be of concern, but the one area that jumps out in particular to us, you refer back to page 2 of that report, you will see under cfcd there's approximately $2.4 million in cfcd and 297 f.t.e.
potentially impacted as a result of what's currently proposed at the state.
and what we kind of see, I've kind of drawn the analogy in our briefings to the court of this item is the analogy of a balloon.
when you squeeze on cfcd, a lot of times the only other alternative is to put them incarceration rather than give them probation for particular offenses.
and so not only are -- is that squeeze happening on the back end of the judicial process, but it's also occurring on the -- whaild consider to be the front end and the continuation end of the incarceration side.
consequently this one stands out as being one that could potentially have larger fiscal impacts on us as we go forward, and we've asked -- dr. Nagy I understand is providing a summation of some of the potential cuts.
we've also reached out to rest of the departments to ask them to do the same thing so that you will have in follow-up discussions in the coming week will be given some ideas as to what the impacts might be on the departments.
katy has prepared a very nice cover memo.
if you would like to her to, she can go through the bullet points.
we've given you as much of a briefing in advance of today as possible in terms of what -- just to gf you a walk through on this, but we're happy to answer any questions that you might have or get into as much discussion as you might would like to do so.
>> I think it would be important to hit the big points.
the bullets that she has.
>> some of the ones that looks like will be affected with the most, as rodney mentioned, a very large cut in adult probation, plus a cut in juvenile probation, which would estimate a loss of about $1.1 million.
our county's portion of the mixed beverage tax would be reduced by 22.5%.
we could lose about $1.4 million on that one.
>> is that pretty much what it says?
that's money the county receives from purchase of mixed beverages?
>> that is correct.
and right now we get about 10.3 percent and they would reduce that to about 8.2%.
>> and that's direct revenue to the general fund, judge.
>> two very large grant programs, lirap and the sheriff's taskforce have been eliminated completely.
the office of the governor of criminal justice division which gives us most of our grant programs for court programs has been reduced 55%.
the district attorney's public integrity unit reduced 11 percent, almost a half-million-dollar loss.
also reimbursements from different things, indigent defense, indigent starflight have all been significantly decreased.
of course there are items that we can't quantify immediately such as the effect of on our jail population, if a state jail unit closes, we don't know if they reduce their transportation costs and also as rodney mentioned, if cscd does not have the staff to handle as many probationners, that may not be an option for judges when deciding court cases.
>> is that auto theft, that little program for the sheriff, is that similar basically to what -- does it work in conjunction with what basically Austin was doing, the city of Austin as far as setting up a bait car?
and of course they turn and with the keys left in the car and stuff like that to try to apprehend those particular persons that actually stealing theaz particular vehicles?
>> I'm not exactly the expert, on what the stories does.
I know it's a very large grant we get in conjunction with six other counties.
that we receive the money and then we disburse for others.
I believe it's a detective, a couple of law enforcement deputies that are funded by that grant program.
>> right.
because I think if it does work with the city of Austin, it seemed like I recall just recently where some f.t.e.'s were maybe jeopardized because of the person that was signed to that particular operation program.
and I know deputies are assigned to this, so I guess that's something that needs to be confronted by the sheriff as far as how he makes those adjustments.
but I think Austin is going through -- stint is going through the same struggle.
>> this is a multijurisdictional grant that we then administer out.
so the total amount for the county is not -- is that 300,000-dollar that you see, but the total of that program is 616,000.
>> okay.
>> so the rest of the funds are distributed amongst those participating entities.
>> I think that the way that operates and of course I'm probably totally speaking out of turn here, but the epicenter of where the autos are taken from is the major municipalities.
and then taken to other counties to chop shops.
so that's the necessity of the multijurisdictional grant.
and also in 21-h we've already received notification that our portion of that grant is at least reduced by 7,000 today.
and I don't think that figures -- that is included in this larger cut that's coming.
and it goes something to what major claire was speaking of in regard to looking to the private sector for assistance and the detective work necessary to detect those patterns.
>> so we won't be accused of being sliewlt naysayers, what's the good news coming from the legislature?
>> the good news is it's not -- the good news is it's only seven million and not 14.
>> although frankly we don't know whether it is because I see that there will be multiplier affects here.
what we see here on the page is seven million dollars' worth of cuts in state grants, but what you were asking for in agenda item 19 with regard to our various divisions identifying five percent in each one of the divisions, the point of that is for our various services to locate where those program cuts are going to generate a higher local need so that they can prioritize for that where those cuts will contribute to -- will end up rendering whatever that program was totally ineffective because the money is now too small to even go forward with these programs. And then I would also ask that we look at a third multiplier in the program cuts elsewhere, like to the city or to the school district or to the various service organizations creating a shifting, a horizontal shifting at the local level where various entities will be asking -- local entities will be asking us to pick up more of what they used to do under state funds.
>> by way of context, one of the things that we've talked about is according to the cuc report, the state is proposing to shut down one of its housing units for inmates, and what we are -- we have talked about internally is that we do a pretty good job of getting paper ready inmates out the door but should the state start backing those days up to their 45 days or even beyond, what the impact of that might be on our adp.
and just by way of context, if we increase our average daily population by 48 inmates, that translates to a cost for one post of approximately $250,000.
and so there is an escalator or a multiplier in there based on what the state does at their -- on their level and how that comes down and pushes down to the county.
>> and that's not figured in your seven million.
the seven million is a cold number.
it doesn't include a multiplier effect that we are highly likely to see.
>> and I want to pick up on that as a perfect example of what is happening over at the capitol.
rodney pointed out the fact that we are not required to -- the state is not required to reimburse Travis County for what they call paper ready inmates.
people are ready to go into the institutional system, have already been convicted and sentenced and are ready to go into the system until 45 days have passed.
we are now getting them out, usually in range of one to to weeks.
at a meeting of a subcommittee of the house appropriations committee last week, where they were discussing the general trend across the state, which actually Travis County does better than many other areas do.
the question was why aren't you making the counties hold all of them for 45 days.
so that as a matter of state policy, they would say, and we're not going to pick them up until we're getting close in on that 45th day.
so again, that's a perfect example of before this is all over, we might even see that kind of -- those kind of additional things come down the pike.
there has been a lot of conversation in the newspapers the last couple of weeks about the rainy day fund and about how legislators are actually being persuaded that it may be necessary to access the rainy day fund, although everybody is still formally saying they're not going to do that.
if they do access the rainy day fund, it will be to help with article 2, which is the health and human services and with article 3, which is public education.
counties should not on -- I don't think we should work on the assumption that anything that you just heard is going to get any better between now and the end of the session, judge.
so I guess the good news is today it's only seven million dollars.
>> I think that we've got that message very early on.
and so it's no surprise to me at all that we're going to have to start figuring on what the total amount is that the counties -- counties, not just Travis County, but counties will have to absorb.
it's all of the local taxpayers.
so it just sounds like it was just waiting for the final number to come through.
>> do we anticipate a higher number from the comp troll comptroller's revenue projection?
>> I think it will be a little bit higher, but not much.
>> is somebody putting together a list of the adverse impact of united states congress decisions?
that's in good shape right now, but I think the bill before congress cuts it pretty much in half.
I don't know whether it's half of the new amount or half of the prestimulus amount.
>> one of the things we need to focus on after we've got this solidified a little bit more, one of the things we need to focus our attention is just that, as well as we mentioned earlier, working with the affected departments to prioritize these particular programs in the context of all of their programs to make for sure that we are identifying if there's any particular overlap.
if there's any cross of other programs within other departments, and how we can look -- working together look to see if we can find some efficiencies in our current programs, in our current grants.
and try to look for every opportunity we can to begin to look for some savings.
>> that I think is the silver lining, is finding collaboration internal to Travis County as well as collaboration across local governmental entities and other service providers to achieve a higher degree of efficiency.
that I think is the silver lining.
>> the other thing is the measurements and the impact of certain programs that we have.
not only must they be efficient, but they have to be really effective to they're really reaching people who need to be.
and if they're not, that would be one reason to say let's back off on this and do something else that will work better.
>> and that's one of the things that we internally have been discussing is it's real easy to report numbers, numbers of clients served.
and that's significant, but at the same time the outcome indicators that come along with that are equally important in determination of whether a program is actually successful.
and you heard roger jeffreys talk about that a few months back.
>> absolutely.
>> move that we recess until 1:30.
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
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, February, 2011 2:19 PM
