Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, March 29, 2011,
Item 32
32 is to consider and take appropriate action on legislative matters including, a update on legislative activities b, update on house bill 1 and city bill 1, generally appropriations act, c, house bill 1490 relating to the accumulation and payment of sick leave for employees in certain sheriffs departments, and d, amend mentsto the priorities, policy positions and the positions on other programs, other proposals, rather, section of the Travis County legislative agenda.
>> .
>> judge, Travis County intergovernmental relation, happy to be visiting with you today.
in terms of overall update of legislative activities, the last week and this week to come are very much dominated by the budget.
so what I'd like to do is take a minute and last week the house appropriations committee reported out the committee substitute to hb 1.
I would like to update the court where we stand in generally on the budget and also give you some information about where we stand vis-a-vis Travis County itself.
I have a handout for the court that I want to ask max to pass out to you.
>> let me interject.
>> yes, sir.
>> we will call up item 15 next.
sorry about that.
>> yes, sir.
>> if we can start with the second slide in your packet you just received.
as you know, the budget proposed by both house and senate at beginning of the session had bit cugs propose--cuts proposed from a two year budget of 183 billion the current budget the state is operating under, the house budget would propose a two-year budget of 156 billion, which is almost a $30 billion decrease.
and the senate would propose a budget of 158.6 billion, which is again, over $25 billion decrease in funding.
that is to be contrasted with what we are calling the current services.
that is if you take the level of services that the state provides right now in its currents budget and you extrapolate for population growth, inflation, other factors, new million dates--million date--mandates, that sort of thing, the actual budget request to continue current services was over 214 billion.
the numbers that were initially filed in the house and senate budget proposals represented at least a $50 billion cat in the budget --cut in the budget from current service levels.
those cuts would affect some of the key activities done by state and local governments.
if you look at the third slide in your packet you see dramatic cuts to everything from general government to medicaid to public education, of course, higher education, cuts to public safety and prisons, you see they are there in the handout.
although the cuts are not as high in terms of absolute dollars and percentage cuts, they are every bit as dramatic.
so the general budget picture for the state is very grim.
we're looking at really a very significant 20-25 percent in overall state funding and spending for the next two years.
senate, the committee report, the bill that the house appropriations committee reported out last week does make some improvements in that area.
it goes from $156.2 billion to $164.5 billion for the two-year budget.
so this is the house proposal that has been approved.
that does make some improvement in the budget and does make some improvement in some of those key services.
I do want to emphasize how much the need still remains unmet.
if you look at fifth slide in your packet.
no, I guess it's, yes, fifth slide in the packet.
you will see, for instance, they had proposed to cut medicaid from 49.4 million to 35.2 million.
medicaid just an example of the kind of cuts we're talking about.
they have now restored that to 39.5 billion for the two-year cycle.
but that 39.5 billion still rents a $10 billion cut in absolute dollars from the current biennium and rents almost a $20 billion cut from the need as expressed in the current services budget.
so you can see that even though senate bill, excuse me, house bill does improve on the original version, still makes very large and significant cuts to a lot of the services that people here in Travis County depend upon.
>> is there a way that we can maybe associate what this cut actually means as far as services that will not be coming to Travis County if this particular legislation goes through accordingly?
what I'm trying to do is get a tally of all the things that are going to be trickling down the path toward this court when it gets ready to make budget decisions.
of course, this among many of the things coming from the state legislature if certain bills pass will indicate to me that we have to prepare ourselves for the storm.
so I'm just trying to get a cumulative tally in my mind.
it would be good if the departments hearing this, I know they are, that hear the significance of these particular shortfalls in the current budgeting aspects are taking notes.
but it would be good to let us know what kind of impact there would be from the departments that depend on the type of money that is coming in from the stat.
>> Commissioner, as you know, the planning and budget office prepared an analysis of impact of the proposed budget on sort of direct funding received from the state through Travis County.
and they determined, I guess this was in late February, they determined that it would be in the $7 million range in direct cuts.
>> but I'm, I know about that.
>> yes, sir.
>> but there are some things here that I guess coming in, because the numbers are changin.
>> yes.
>> they aren't consistent.
we heard that.
but here today we will send the significance of the cut is altered.
it's changed.
we heard some stuff last week.
in other words, there has to be a running tab.
that was discussed in February.
>> right.
>> this is March.
things have happened a lot since then.
>> with respect to the specific cuts directed towards Travis County that were identified by pbo in February, we do have a couple pieces of good news.
one of the cuts, for instance, was to the lirap program and the lip program.
>> yes.
>> which funds replacement of vehicles particularly for low income owners of automobiles in order to help us deal with our air quality issues here at Travis County.
some of that money has been restored.
so we now are hopeful that lirap will continue to survive the budget process.
the original proposed an across the board 20 percent cut in funding for adult probation programs saluting jail di version , some programs, some of which the county uses very effectively.
that 20 percent cut has been lord to 9.7.
we are still looking at a cut but not as dramatic as the one originally talked about.
I mentioned the auto theft prevention authority.
I think Travis County got $300,000 from that had been zeroed out in the original budget.
now there is some language in there about excess funds that could be put back into the community.
>> right.
>> as I made the note, I sort of borrowed from the princess bride but only mostly.
9-11 system funding, we reported to you katie peterson did a quick run through at the end of last week and we reported to you that 9-11 funding had been further cut but the cuts actually remain the same.
it is still a significant cuts.
as you know, we briefed the court about the fact the 9-11 funding comes to us through cap cogand had been cut from 20 to 15 million.
as far as we know that is still on the table in the house bill substitute.
criminal justice funding, a number of programs that work through the governor's office and bring money to the county.
the funding of those remains cuts at the 55 percent level.
so we don't know what the direct impact of that will be on county's.
I can assure you, Commissioner Davis, I think katie and the pbo people are continuing to gather information avenue see if they can quantify some of the direct impact on Travis County.
what you are really talking about, I think, is the indirect impact because when you talk about things like, you no e $10 billion cuts to the medicaid program, that is going the to have some impact on the people in our community.
whether or not it impacts direct funding coming to Travis County an is a government, there's going to be some enormous impacts.
and sherry flemming and her research people in health and human services have been trying to some extent reach out to the community and try to get some quantification of that.
>> right.
>> I hope that we can try to keep the members of the court and particularly our legislative delegation updated an is we do that.
of course it's a lot of work and moving pieces and everything changes every two or three days.
>> sure does.
>> we are trying to work on that.
I think the bottom line is we can hope that the cuts will not be as big as we were afraid they were going to be, but they are still going to be very significant.
again, both for the county as a unit of government and for the people that we serve here in Travis County.
that is really the bottom line of it.
in terms of process, here is what is going to happen.
Thursday, the house will take up hb 4 which creates an additional billion dollars worth of cuts in this year's budget.
I think the members of the court know, we're about $4 billion in the hole for this year's budget.
so hb 4 makes cuts to existing state programs effective immediately that will help save $1.1 billion.
then there's also hb 275, which is the bill to get $3 billion from the rainy day fund to help pay our billings for this biennium.
in a sense, we are already behind on our bills for our current year.
we're looking forward to the next one.
but these two bills will help to try to close that deficit for this current biennium.
that does free up some--
>> we don't anticipate any adverse impact on Travis County from hb 4?
>> we are looking the make sure what those cuts are.
but so many of those we have already heard about or already know they are out there.
we saw the example, think with court a couple weeks ago, where there was an item that the court though approve where a stream of funding for an existing program was going to be cut.
we may see some more of that, judge, but we have not yet been able to identify that in hb 4.
>> just here from cpi today, their $60 was cut from a three-year grant.
even before hb 4 hit, we know that administratively they are cutting things that important to us.
>> exactly.
there may be some more of those cuts coming.
I should tell the court when they were discussing the rules by which they will consider these two bills on Thursday and then consider the committee substitute for hb 1 on Friday, which is the budget bill, there was actually discussion of can we offer amends mentsto make even more cuts.
certainly there is some sympathy or some sentiment on the floor of the house and the membership of the house to make even more dramatic cuts in the state budget than the committee has recommended.
so we will see how that goes.
I expect both Thursday and Friday to be long days.
speaker has told the members of the house to plan not to be able to go home this weekend.
I think the last time, in 2003 when they discussed the budget, which was of course when they had big cuts, there were 342 amends mentsto the appropriations bill considered on the house floor.
they are expecting something like that this time around.
the amends mentshave to be turned in by ten o'clock today.
I'm sure there have been a lot of paper any waying into the house clerk's, chief clerk's office.
that is where we stand on the budget.
we will update next week in terms of the results and we expect that next week or the week after, the senate will act to pass out out of the finance committee its version of the bill so that we will actually have two versions of the bill.
then the senate can take floor action on that.
then we'll go to conference knee --committee and try to work all this out.
I think the senate bill will have more money than the house bill but will depend on borrowing from the rainy day fund.
and it will depend on votes from the house on money for the next two years from rainy day fill.
it's politically a disy thing.
the chairs of the committees have to of course get not only a majority of the members of the committees but the members of the respective bodies to support whatever they are going do on the budget.
we may reach some kind of stalemate before it all gets resolved.
that is the issue on the budget.
just a an example of the kind of things being talked about, there is now some talk going on over the capitol about trying to save some money in the budget by mandating managed care for behavioral health issues.
there is a program in dallas called the north star program.
there's some positive results in dallas county.
but there's a lot of reis is tance --resistance to trying to expands statewide.
there's some talk around the capitol about trying to man date for Travis County which would have certainly some kind of profound impact on how we deliver mental and behavioral health services in the community.
we're not sure of all the impacts.
we're trying to communicate with our legislators through integral care and some of the other organizations.
we're going to try to keep the court informed of that.
obviously, that is something that could have a big impact, again, on the community we serv.
>> this effort isn't by any of our delegation.
it's some other legislator from outside our region trying to impose--
>> we're trying to get to the bottom of this.
there was originally an effort to try to expand managed care behavioral health statewide.
>> couldn't they use us as pilo.
>> that didn't go anywhere.
then the effort saying the commission has to figure out but 60 percent of the state has to be covered by behavioral health managed care.
that didn't seem to go anywhere.
what we now think is happening, maybe either just a Travis County thing or county by county specific amendment that will be offered to hb 1 that will say bexar county goes under behavioral health managed care, trathe county goes under, perhaps on the theer they might be able to get it through one county at a time and not the appropriations process.
we don't know if it's just Travis County or other counties.
I have heard it both ways, if you will, Commissioner, but obviously something that would have a big impact on Travis County and we're trying to stay on top of.
and because behavioral health bleeds over into our criminal justice system and health and human services network, it's obviously going to be very important.
>> is this a way to balance their medicate cut since that has such a profound tech on that --effect on that community?
>> just a way to save money.
not necessarily from the medicate budget.
think behavioral health services are broader than just medicate portion of that.
>> but there is no funding for that man date.
>> the theory of the man date is that it would save money.
if they have budgeted say x dollars globally, theer --theory would be if we can man date that in Travis County, then we can do x minutes one or x minutes whatever it is that is the savings.
I think this would be in great trouble if they were trying to add dollars to the budget.
this is being framed as a cost saving strategy, judge.
obviously, we have to be on the alert for it as do the other, particularly the big other urban accounts.
>> have we chatted with hmr and healthcare district.
>> we have this morning.
we just heard about this yesterday afternoon.
we are sort of marshaling our facts and making sure we understand exactly the proposal.
I believe that, sir?
>> we need their take on impact.
>> we do want to get their take on impact.
I believe they are going to be talking to members of of our delegation today, probably as we speak, just to make sure we understand what is going on.
>> okay.
>> that is just an example of the kind of things that are out there in terms of this budget discussion.
let me switch gears all bit and talk briefly about what we are doing with some of our bills as members of the court know.
last week we had a hearing in the land resources management committee on our buffer zone bill, hb 662.
the bill was left pending in committee.
frankly, we did not get the warmest reception we could have asked for.
so we have a loft --lot of work to do to move that bill forward.
we are talking strategy with our legislative sponsor as well as among ourselves in terms of that.
yesterday we had a hearing on senate bill 1044, our conservation easement bill, really a joint project between us and the general land office to expand the Texas farm and ranch lands con vakes program created in 2005.
the hearing went well and that bill left pending about you we are optimistic about the success of the bill.
final, hb 1174, judge, a very controversial burn ban bill that would give the Commissioners court the authority to the fire marshal ability to lift a bill ban before expiring or without a meeting of the Commissioners court.
that will be heard on Thursday.
>> let me back up a little bit on that hb 662.
>> yes, sir.
>> I want to be sure that the residents within my precinct were aware of the actual witnesses that appeared in that particular hearing last week.
several persons that were there from the community, a lot of folks in support of the particular bills.
I'd like to thank those that did speak on that particular bill.
of course, now they are aware of the entire community that we have been working with.
>> yes, sir.
>> now know that their voices have been heard and authority now aware of that.
so I just wanted to make sure you understand that.
>> yes, sir.
and sthere were a number of people from the community that signed in in support of the bill but did not testify.
there was one person from the community that did testify.
>> right.
>> and that was very helpful.
but as you know, Commissioner, there's a lot of opposition from some of the regulated industrie.
>> I understand.
>> to the bill.
we do have an uphill battle on that bill.
>> I understand.
>> which bill?
>> 662, the buffer bill.
>> okay.
>> public policy priority came, not center, the other one.
you know, the one that has the ut rejents all.
>> Texas public policy commission came out against.
we did get cards from some of the fellow counties and the Travis County association of counties and conference of urban counties.
>> yes, sir.
>> very supportive.
>> with that as sort of a generally overview of where we are legislatively, I do want to bring up one issue court left pending last week, hb 1490, the bill that would require the county to allow certain sheriffs officers to accumulate and be paid for up to $720 hours of sick leave.
as you know, the court heard about that last week, took some testified, asked some information, asked for some further information.
I have travis here.
I did want to sort of focus on the court on the question of this is a bill about whether the state can man date that the county does this.
so I think travis has gotten some information about what the impact would be on the county for the court's consideringr consideration.
>> last week I asked specifically some questions to travis to look into the situation of what kind of impact this would really have over all.
and because it's legislation, this shall legislation, meaning we must, don't have an alternative, is to fund this.
but what is the overall impact just on the sheriff department.
his rankand fill and also law enforcement within his shop, and also what type of impact that would be on if the entire county employees, which we are all one big family here, what kind of impact would that be if we were to look at this as far as providing the type of 720 hour policy that we have maybe mandated to do under this particular bill.
and also, the point I wanted to make sure that we understood what it would cost the average impact on the homestead, that actual cost.
quite a bit of research done into that because we want a real good full blown picture of exactly what is going on and the financial impact that it will have on our budget this year.
so as I'm looking at all of it.
thank you.
>> judge, exist did--existers.
>> thank you, trarf is--
>> based on some questions I went back with some assistance from the office and recalculated all the numbers based on more recent data.
the data we presented last time was based on when the bill came up two years ago.
the data now is based on a run as of September 30, 2010.
the revised number, just looking at a snapshot in time at this time for the sheriff's office, is about 9.2 million.
last time it was about 8.8 million.
Commissioner Davis asked what would it be if this was applied to all other departments.
so i, with everyone's assistance I redid that, and that is about 9.7 million.
and those totaled would be about 19 million.
again looking just one particular snapshot in time.
Commissioner Davis wanted also to understand what the impact would be as far as the tax rate if the court adopted this.
for the sheriffs office, last time I mentioned I thought it be would about a million or so dollars a year depending on how many people, how behavior would change and how many people near retirement would terminate because of this policy.
relooking the a at the numbers, page two of the memo, different categoer, people in the sheriffs office and other departments, how many hours they have, and also what they are tenure is plus the incremental impact of the payout to the county and also what the average payout would be per person.
all those numbers include not only the salary payout but also related benefits calculations.
in looking at the sheriffs department, again, I have estimated one to two million.
I added two million on the high side because I saw that in looking at the number of people that would be eligible for the maximum 720 hour payout, they average about 19 years of service.
their payout would be a little bit under 19,000.
total payout is about $4.8 million.
that is why I included a range because again, I'm not sure how behavior is going to change.
I know it will change.
so that is ongoing impact will be about one to two million a year.
also about a $1.2 million this year to your budget having to deal with the auditory's calculation for compensated absences that we went over last yeek with you.
Commissioner Davis also asked about the impact on taxes.
the tax rate would be point 001 for one million or point 0022 for two million and that impact would be somewhere between $2.36 to $4.72 for the average homestead based on the estimated average homestead as of this point in time.
that number is constantly changing as it gets certified.
so that is the best information we know now.
we thought in looking at all the things that we talked about with the state, we're not sure we could absorb within the preliminary budget.
we would certainly be challenged based on what we have.
that is why we included the tax rate now.
it's possible if the court wanted to do this there could be some combination of reduction in services and incremental tax rate.
I don't know but I wantd to provide the worse case scenario.
Commissioner Davis also asked what would happen if the court adopted a policy that would, I guess, apply the sick leave payout in 14900 all employees.
that would be two to four million a year, about 2.5 impact to compensate absences this year and anywhere from 4.72 to 9.44 additional impact to average homestead.
I would like to remind the court when we give you the guidelines we estimated at that time that based on three percent of the effected tax rate, impact would be $52 to average homestead.
that impact would be overand above that 52.
the court asked questions about your time what the impact would be to other counties.
we contacted the other counties and only got one response, from dallas county, and they posed the bill and thought it would be about a $4.5 million annual impact to their budget.
I think that number is low because they used starting salary as opposed to calculating different levels.
that cost over five years would be about, a little under 22 and a half million.
>> questions from members?
what say you?
>> I'm james os, president of oca.
I had a chance to look at the information that travis provided to the court today.
we want to say first, the association I represent we're not trying to get a hundred percent of sick leave that all our members have now.
we're talking about up to 720 hours.
swee folks that have more.
I want to be sure everybody understands that.
looking at the snapshot Travis County did here of the breakdown of expenses, I'm looking at tcso employees versus regular employees.
we have a total of 1469 employees in the sheriffs department that this bill applies to.
there are 3,214 other employees.
if you look at these numbers, we're looking at the 720 first.
out of the 1400 plus that we have at tcso, 251 of those folks have 720 hours or more.
if you go down to the other employees, you have only 142 people that have that amount of time or more out of 3200.
you go to the section 480, the 719, you have 156 tcso employees out of 1469 and you have 173 out of the 3200 regular employees.
now, what that looks like to me is of the employees that are non-tcso they are already getting the sick time because they are taking more sick time.
I don't believe that tcso folks are healthier, we know we are essential and we have to be at work and we come in.
I'm a supervisor and I encourage my folks to come to work.
if you have a runny nose, come to work because we need you.
you are essential.
we have the have you there.
so I see big difference in that respect.
they are already getting this.
I know we said that we're talking about giving something to a third of the employees that the other two-thirds don't get.
if you look at the sick time taken, it's been done already.
you come down to figures that Travis County has at the bottom, the $1.2 million, that is based on I guess 50 employees at 30 bucks an hour.
in 2010 we had 22 employees that retired.
in 2009 we had 28.
nothing is saying we will ever have 50 employees retiring from tcso in any given year.
out of this 1.2 million that he is showing is a one had ever time cost here, 40,000 is already being paid .
we are asking for an additional 480.
there are already some costs.
>> no?
>> that is the incremental costs the amount we are currently paying.
if you look at the, this is an estimated ongoing.
everything I have shown is just incremental costs.
just the amount above what we are currently paying.
not the total costs.
>> okay.
>> one thing, you're absolutely right.
you had mentioned there's only about 30 people that leave.
you mentioned retirement.
it's also anyone that terminates with your department.
but I think that, and the reason I used one to two million as a range because I think the behavior is going to change.
another thing you mentioned about looking at the sick leave for tcso versus other departments, and you may be right on your assumption, but there's another thing, is that the average tenure is about 2.5 for other departments other than tcso.
since you can earn eight hours a month times two and a half years that is about 211 hours per employee that may be explaining some of that difference, why tcso people have more sick time.
may not be the only reason, but it's one factor.
>> let's look at the 720.
>> okay.
>> tcso employees have 19.1 years and the nontcso has 20.8.
>> right.
>> still many more employees in tcs that have more than that amount of sick time.
>> you're right.
>> I'm looking at the overtime budget you talked about.
>> uh-huh.
>> I believe you said the overtime budget for this year is adopted at 1.4 million.
>> correct.
>> as lan year --last year you have a cost of over two million.
>> that is correct.
>> we talked about last week maybe it's folks taking off because they are not getting paid for sick time.
I think if some of the folks start getting paid for sick time behavior will change.
they will come to work instead of taking the fml they are doin.
>> it is possible.
if I was, I guess I would make a decision, if this bill changed, that should I go into work whether I'm sick or not sick.
if I'm sick, I may make the choice to go into work anyway just because I know I will get paid for the sick time.
it is going to change behavior.
I can't tell you how much of that cementel amount, you know, above the budget of sick time is based on how many people use it for sick time, vacation, changes in population, any time of emergency that may occur.
I couldn't tell you how much , I have attempted and it's not attainable.
>> travis, you raised a point about behavior, treating sick pay as health benefit rather than compensation.
if it's treated as health benefit you take sick time because you are sick.
this bill would transform it into a compensation rather than a health benefit predominantly.
>> how many overtime is budgeted?
>> a little bit under 1.5 million.
the dep spent about two million last year.
the reason the department just redirected mostly vacancy savings from open positions overtime which is approved as automatic just --adjustment as part of the budget rules.
we're seeing if they can stay within the budget.
>> it's an uphill that would be hard to justify.
>> if I can make one final comment--
>> therefore, I move that we oppose the bill.
therefore, is there a second?
>> second.
>> discussion on the motion?
not to cut you off, but to cut you off.
all in favor.
>> hold it judge, I have a couple things I'd thrike to say.
>> discussion a the motion?
>> it is a discussion on the motion.
>> we pretty much said it all last yeek and this week.
go ahead.
>> no.
I'd like to find out exactly, as far as some of the concerns that the sheroffice and other folks in the county, we have laid out a pretty good breakdown of what this type of impact would be on the tax payers of Travis County.
I wanted to look at both sides because I felt that if we are going to look at 720 hour type policy for sick leave, it should apply to everybody.
the sheriff, this applies not only to the law enforcement persons within the sheriffs's department but also applies to the rank and file if I'm correct.
if it does, that means what about the other rank and file of the county that we have.
I'm not trying to put take down anybody here.
as I stated before, I'm trying to look at the best way that we can go ahead and go into a budget year where we can live with the budget.
today we saw the impact of what aid had to do.
that was to lay off a whole bunch of folks to try to meet some very very tough budget concerns.
as I stated before, I am really not in the business of wanting to lay off anybody.
not in Travis County.
but we are going to have some very serious challenges.
and I just think it's going to take all of us to hold back and take a wait and see attitude to see how are we going to land with this budget coming from from the state legislature on unmandated type financial situations that we have to impose on.
because who is going to have to foot the bill?
the folks that fit the billion are the tax payers of Travis County.
we are all tax payers of Travis County.
so it's come to that for me.
and I want everybody to understand that.
>> anymore discussion on the month eggs?
>> just so mention the issue of the sick pool, that has been examined and we should probably revisit that discussion through the employee compensation and benefits subcommittee.
although there is short-term disability insurance at a very very low cost and it's probably more equitable as a process than the sick pool because there's quit issues probably insurmountable.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
sorry, y'all.
anything else?
>> last week the court approved draft language for criminal manage straights bill.
think in--magistrates bill.
I think in order to get the bill passed we need to add it to priorities list.
it is a county policy position but if we add to priorities list it will give more focus on our efforts to move it through the legislative process.
>> I move that we move it to the priorities list.
>> discussion on the all in favor.
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> judge, members of the court, thank you very much.
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.
