County to finally publish report on courts
El Paso County is finally moving forward with a review of its courts that has been very controversial with the judges in the county. County commissioners have been working on the Judicial Management Report for over a year now. It’s scheduled to finally be published this week, but the controversy isn’t over.
“Those numbers were not produced by the judiciary, for the judiciary, those were done for their budget needs,” said Judge Alma Trejo, who presides over the County Criminal Court at Law 1.
Trejo is one of many judges in the county to speak out about the report, arguing the metrics used aren’t what courts should be judged by.
“(Commissioners) need to find out how many people are in jail, what’s the cost, those type of budgetary questions that we do not need to measure,” Trejo said. “We need to measure our court’s availability for people that need the court.”
The judges had threatened to stop helping the county on the report at all, and are still moving forward with their own report to come out likely next year.
But commissioners argue that it’s important to have a better grasp on exactly how much the courts cost the county.
“We cannot make funding decisions without some fundamental data,” County Judge Veronica Escobar said. “And this data I think will help inform the Commissioners Court going forward, but I think will also demonstrate what the successes are. So if specialty courts for example are highly successful in reducing recidivism, or keeping people out of jail but in rehab instead for example, that’s something we need to know.”
Interim Chief County Administrator Betsy Keller is working to coordinate the separate efforts on this report from the judges and commissioners to make sure that work isn’t being duplicated even if the conclusions may be different in the end.
