Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 33
Item 33, consider and take appropriate action on legislative matters including, a, update on legislative activities, b, discussion of Travis County impacts of proposal state budget cuts in cshb 1 and ancillary legislation.
c, resolution in opposition to senate bill 971 and house bill 1765 relating to an emergency public service massaging network -- messaging, that makes more sense.
d, house bill 1844 relating to storage of local government records by the Texas state library and archives commission.
e, house bill 2702 relating to the application of statutes that classify political subdivisions according to population.
and f, amendments to the priorities, policy positions and the positions of other proposals sections of the Travis County legislative agenda.
>> good morning, judge and members of the court.
thank you very much for your time this morning.
I want to start with just some general comments about where we are in the session.
as you know, the house passed its bill the weekend before last.
the senate is still working to create a bill that can come out of the senate finance committee.
they are still working to try to find additional money, up to $5 million in additional money of nontax revenue that they would try to use in order to help put some more money into the senate version of the appropriations bill and try to sell that to the house in the conference committee process.
they are hoping that they will have that bill out of the committee next week and on to the floor of the senate the week after, but the negotiations continue.
we occasionally get snippets of good news saying oh, the senate put some money into this, the senate put some money into that, but it will remain to be seen what happens in the conference committee and that's really where the actual deals are going to be made.
in the meantime, though, the house has begun working on a series of what I choose to call restructuring bills, and in your packet, in your backup information, first of all, we have an updated memorandum from katy peterson in planning and budget office showing the impacts of the committee's substitute to house bill 1.
in some ways the committee substitute is an improvement.
you can go through that and see where some of the particular programs have gotten some of our funding to restored which we consider a good sign.
however, the house appropriations committee is looking at a series of restructuring bills, 27 total, and what they essentially do is change the process by which legislation which used to create a stream of revenue and dedicate that stream of revenue to some purpose, some of which were county-related activities, now says we're going to create a stream of revenue and then we are separately going to decide whether or not we're going to appropriate any of that revenue and how to appropriate it and we may not to which the revenue has been collected.
if I can give you a example of that, the state now collects money from -- from different fees that people pay when they go to court in order to help pay for longevity pay.
but one of these bills has a provision that says the longevity pay that assistant district attorneys or assistant county attorneys get is only in the amount to be set by the legislature.
and there actually used to be a provision in the law that you would -- you would pay your longevity pay to your assistant ad as and assistant county tarns and if the state hadn't paid it they would still owe the money.
now it says if we don't pay it, we don't owe you the money.
this changes the process where we don't know for sure whether longevity pay is an example.
another is juror pay.
the state has supplemented juror pay.
counties are required to pay at least $6 per day for jurors.
the state had raised that to $40 and had promised to make that supplement $34 a day from state revenue.
now he's bills would say you get in your pay what the legislature appropriate united states to you.
so it -- appropriates to you.
it may be less than $34, it may be nothing, it may be all $34.
that is going to be part of the budgeting process for the letting you are in the future if these bills pass.
we'll have that sort of uncertainty on a biennial basis.
we're watching these bills very carefully and we'll try to keep the court updated about some of the implications of those bills particularly for county government.
in the meantime, we are in the thick of it in terms of committee hearings.
committees are all meeting full tilt now.
the deadlines to get bills out of committees particularly in the house begin to arrive in early may and so a lot of committees are working very hard right now.
this week alone we have three bills that are on the Travis County legislative agenda that are being heard in committee.
one is our burn ban bill.
the senate version of our burn ban bill is being heard tomorrow.
senator wentworth is our sponsor on that.
our drive a clean machine cleanup bill that we -- that we filed with representative eddie rodriguez is going to be heard in committee tomorrow as well.
and so is representative rodriguez's bill on local option transportation funding.
the court remembers that last session that was a big push for the court.
there was a lot of energy devoted to that topic in the legislative session.
unfortunately nothing passed.
the process for passing such legislation this session I think are even dimmer, but representative rodriguez has filed sort of a comprehensive approach to giving local communities, local governments the opportunities to figure out ways to creatively finance transportation projects in their communities with voter approval, you know, in a variety of ways.
and this is obviously going to be important as long as the state remains unable to fund its own responsibilities in the areas of transportation.
>> is there a senate sponsor?
is there a senate sponsor?
>> I'm not aware of that and I could go look and I'll get back to you about that, judge.
>> and is there appear to be any statewide support of that?
because I think each particular county within the state has its own transportation needs, I guess, and as you know, this is not enough money to go around dealing with our transportation situation.
so I'm just wondering how much statewide support, if any indications have allowed itself to reveal if there is such support.
or has that been measured yet, tallied, any kind of way.
>> Commissioner, last session there was a very large coalition of counties and cities, particularly in the urban areas, north Texas, houston area, central Texas, bexar county, that was working very hard to try to help move this legislation along.
senator john cornyn was the champion of legislation along with senator kirk watson, and they were really pushing hard to try to get something passed.
I think this session the word sort of went out through the political grapevines that this legislation was not going to pass and so there has not been that kind of effort again this session.
but representative rodriguez is to be credited for filing his bill and getting a hearing on this bill and we're at least going to be talking about the need of local communities and the inability of the state to meet those needs as our communities grow.
so that's the situation now with that.
I'm not optimistic that we're going to -- I'm going to be reporting to you at the end of the session that we pass local option transportation bill, but I admire representative rodriguez for his efforts.
those are my sort of general comments for the court today.
I'd like to take up part c of your -- of the agenda item, judge, which is senate bill 971 and house bill 1765 by cyd miller.
these are bills that would create this emergency public service massaging net worked around the state.
and the idea is to have a series of electronic digital billboard, the very bright billboards you see sometimes run by -- set up and run by a private contractor that would -- that would sort of replace the current system of txdot billboards.
you all have seen those amber alert boards or the, you know, drive 55 and stay alive sorts of signs that txdot has set up on our state highway system.
that would replace that with these very large, very bright digital billboards which would be used to carry emergency messages.
when there was not an emergency message, they would be used to carry for-profit advertising.
you might drive by juan day and it would say about be on the lookout for such and such a car, we think a young person might have been kidnapped.
the next day it might say eat at joe's.
this proposal has gotten a lot of pushback particularly from the beautification community and the local governments.
one of the features of this bill it would override local authority in the areas where these billboards were set up, local regulation of billboards.
as you know, municipalities do have the right to control the design, size, contents of billboards to some extent.
and so there's a lot of pushback on this bill and what we have before the court today is a proposed resolution in opposition to the bill on a weekly basis I'm happy to answer any questions the court has.
>> move approval of the resolution.
>> second.
>> any discussion on the motion?
so the reason for posing it would be basically to -- opposing it would be to basically leave those decisions in the hand of local entities.
>> yeah, we just think it takes away local control.
it also endangers, I might add, Texas received some highway beautification act money as part of its transportation funding from the federal government, and this -- these signs would violate that act and therefore would endanger that funding for the state.
so there's also a funding issue.
and as I was just mentioning with respect to local option transportation, we probably don't want to turn down any transportation money that we're entitled to.
>> any more discussion on the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
item d, members of the court, is -- relates to house bill 1844.
this is a bill that would allow the Texas state library and archives commission to warehouse and store records of local government.
they currently are authorized to and do retain records, state records, but they also can -- this bill would allow them also to retain local records.
the head of our records management -- records management and communication resources division is here to explain in more detail.
we also have as our guest, a staff member from representative guion.
he is the author of this legislation.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners.
director of management and communication resources.
and it's a funny old world.
we've been trying to use the state library and archives records center for 20 years.
and the reason we've been trying to do this for 20 years is that the price structure is very advantageous to us.
the record center itself has been in business for four years, it's a stable operation.
the costs are significantly less than what we pay to commercial enterprises, particularly with the new contract we have with iron mountain.
the state library indicates they have room for about 50,000 of our records, which is between 25 and 30% of what we currently have in storage.
so we are wildly and enthusiastically supportive of this initiative.
>> move approval.
>> second that.
let me ask a couple of questions.
and what as far as the cost savings -- have there been a comparison and analysis that have been set forth to see what we are contracting as far as warehousing our records as opposed to using this here, in other words, comparing the cost savings of what we're spending and what it cost us before the savings.
>> yes, sir.
we've done significant cost benefit analysis for this.
>> what did you come up with?
>> well, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the answer is for particular types of records that we have in storage, the costs are -- are much, much lower than the commercial rates.
and this is interesting because the new contract in place, we're looking at the potential of moving as many as 100,000 boxes of records from another facility, from one facility to another.
or one facility to several different facilities.
so the answer is yes, it is significant cost reduction to the county.
>> okay.
>> and we do have a resolution in support of house bill 1844 before the court.
>> any additional comments from the representatives' office?
>> yes.
good morning, judge Biscoe and Commissioners.
it's a pleasure to be here, of course.
representative geng wishes he could be here, he is tied up in meetings with the public education committee.
certainly on his behalf I would like to extend our gratitude to Travis County, mr. Eckstein, mr. Growberg for their support on this legislation.
representative guion 1 is currently serve as the chairman on tourism and this bill right here is, you know, expands the commission's sole responsibility from just micro filming local government records to also storing them.
and this would allow for more economic and efficient storage of state records, further ensuring that information will be available whenever needed.
like I said, certainly we appreciate this resolution.
representative guion expresses his gratitude to be able to pay homage to this bill with the resolution.
>> thank you.
I'd like to have from steve, if possible, some money figures on what we actually are saving coming from the old wave doing business as far as what we're doing here, if you can provide those figures to you later.
>> be glad to, Commissioner.
>> I would really like to see what the numbers are.
thank you.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
tell the representative he's here in spirit.
>> all right.
thank you.
>> thank you.
>> mr. Eckstein.
>> the next item house bill 2702.
as members of the court do, we do a census once every decade, and once the new numbers are in, the legislative council and the legislature go through all the different bills we have that have some sorts of population thresholds or bracket and tries to adjust those on the theory that when the legislature originally passed the bill, let me give an example.
that said, say a decade ago, all cities with a population of greater than 2.5 million.
well, when the legislature would have passed a bill eight years ago that said that, that would have applied only to the 70s houston.
that was the only city that large.
we now have houston over 3 million and several cities creeping occupy the 2.5 million.
what the legislature does through this council and bill is adjust all those population brackets in order to continue the legislative intent of covering whatever group of cities, counties, whatever people were intend understand the original legislation.
that is taking the shape of house bill 2702 this session.
there was some discussion last year of a provision that would affect Travis County that had to do with how we calculated the workweek of sheriff's deputy employees.
it's a special provision unique to the sheriff's department, but it applies to counties with a population of greater than a million.
and it would require that pay be calculated on a seven-day workweek schedule as opposed to the option of having a 28-day workweek schedule, which counties under a million have.
because, of course, Travis County now is right at a million, we're at a 124,066.
we now would fall within that bill.
the question for the court is whether the court wants to seek to be included in the provisions and to adjust that population bracket up to 1.5 million so as to reflect the original legislative intent that that provision would apply only to the bigger counties, actually the four bigger counties, harris, dallas, tarrant and bexar county.
>> I recall that we spoke with the sheriff favorably about the action being taken once we reached a million population.
have we got input from the sheriff's office?
>> my recollection, judge, is that there was a conversation that the county was thinking about moving to the seven-day workweek anyway and that that discussion would continue, but that this would provide the county with more flexibility and the sheriff's office with more flexibility.
I have not spoken with the sheriff directly about this bill at this time.
>> I think that there is -- I agree that where population bracket is not the underlying -- not the underlying rationale for the application of the bill that is correct we should seek to change brackets.
but on this I think the population bracket is the rationale for till been a that's borne out that we use the same counties above that million dollar bracket in our market salary, for instance.
if we're going to use them for market salary survey, I think we should be held by the same standards.
and after all, unions are the people that brought you weekends and tcso employees to serve weekends the same as others.
so I would not be in favor of us changing the bracket or seeking to change the bracket as it applies to us for this statute.
>> mr. Reeferseed, brief comments.
>> thank you.
I'm so fascinated by this.
I'm just a little -- I'm leaning towards agreement with you, ms. Eckhardt, but I'm just not sure, it seems to me that might be kind of backwards.
if you are -- you are for the Austin being counted as one of these -- because of our growing population, just because of that because that's really the proper criteria.
doesn't have to be just houston.
just applied to houston, but now I applies to us.
>> I think it's the proper criteria for all labor that their workweek be a week instead of 28 days.
>> I concur.
thank you so much.
>> in the backup material, the memo written last summer regard what would be the fiscal consequences of going one way or another, that probably receives -- but if the court wanted to reserve that flexibility, they would amend the bill which is why we brought this before the court today.
>> will we have another week?
>> certainly.
>> I think we ought to touch base with the sheriff's office and the sheriff himself.
find out --.
>> it definitely does have a fiscal impact, but the fiscal impact is borne more by our pops pay scale -- I mean it's affected by a 28-day pay scale.
>> the final item is changes to our legislative platform or legislative agenda for the session based on some of the changes we're making today.
you have a motion writ rite in front of you.
I would note that under the policy positions, we -- I suggest you add to the taxes revenue budget administration part b there is the support of legislation giving Travis County more flexibility to determine pay periods.
that's exactly what we just talked about.
I would recommend striking b and ask the court to adopt the motion writing as respect to 1 a and 2 a.
>> and that's in the backup from your agenda submission?
>> yes.
this was submitted as -- it may have been at the back of the memorandum.
>> it is.
>> as opposed to the back of the entire packet.
>> what you are doing is simply --
>> another week on that, judge.
>> what you are doing is add the bill that we approved.
>> yes, sir.
this would have digital electronic billboards and storage and maintenance of paper records out.
>> if we do I next week, is that okay?
>> that would be fine with me.
let just bring it back.
what about revenue caps, appraisal caps, all those caps bills?
>> there has been some -- the leading is senate bill 720 by senator tommy williams. Senator williams had a hearing on the bill a couple weeks ago.
the county auditor testified at that hearing.
there was a lively discussion about the topic.
there is talk that -- I think senator williams has made a couple efforts to try to bring the bill back up for vote, but I don't know if he has the votes for it in the senate finance committee.
in the meantime, we're keeping an eye on all the other bills.
all the cap bills have been heard in the senate and we have heard from representative hildebrand, chair of the house ways and means committee, he will probably give approval in the house at the end of this month.
>> what happened in committee after the hearing?
>> the bill was left pending.
and we're doing everything we can to make sure that he doesn't have the votes to get the bill out of committee.
>> okay.
>> as of today, there are 49 days left remaining in the session and so we're seven weeks out from the end.
>> let me ask this.
can you track, I think it's a bill signed by representative king on redistricting initiative I guess to sheet they have t redistricting category they have say in before the redistricting committee, there has been a bill filed to bypass the justice department and, of course, that would go to the -- anyway, the justice department, the united states justice department and then go exactly to the point I understand it goes directly to the three panel judge out of washington, d.c.
>> yes, sir.
>> and if that is the case, could you tell me the bill number and the movement of that particular bill?
>> I know exactly which bill you are talking about and we'll get that information for you, Commissioner.
>> could, that will be go to know.
>> it would require the attorney general or direct the attorney general to bypass the justice department in the pre-clearance process with the redistricting maps and seek jurisdiction of special court in d.c.
>> I think that's pretty important.
but what I'm trying to also get, it just appears with the pace that's taking place over at the legislature, it just appears that there may be a special session, it just looks that way with the way things are going.
it just appears they are not going to be through by the required time, but we'll have to wait and see.
>> I'm personally not planning any vacations this summer.
>> [laughter] I have a feeling --
>> thank you.
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.
