State of Texas owes counties $2.6 billion for indigent defense costs

Texas county commissioners say the state of Texas owes its 254 counties about $2.6 billion for the cost of providing indigent defendants a proper trial defense.

The San Angelo Standard-Times reported the figure was highlighted by Tom Green County Precinct Commissioner Ralph Hoelscher, who mentioned it at a Commissioners Court meeting Tuesday and told commission colleagues that the West Texas county alone is owed $18.5 million dating to the 2001 start of the state indigent defense program.=

“This is not right. The state is not paying us for the work we are doing,” he told colleagues, adding that the state has covered about 7 percent of the indigent defense costs Tom Green County reports.

“The county is on the bottom with the state – we’re a part of the state – but we’re on the bottom. And if the state decides to not pay, it just falls right down here and we pay it, we’re forced to pay it,” he said.

“What are we going to do about it?” he asked. “When the taxpayer doesn’t pay, we have a collection agency that goes after it and they take property and everything,” he said. With the state, “We don’t have any recourse, to go to the state and say, ‘Hey, we need this paid.'”

But when the counties appeal to the Legislature to cover the costs, lawmakers say the reimbursement lacks the priority of other needs, said Cary Roberts, a spokesman for the Texas Association of Counties.

Roberts said the figures are based on data from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, a standing committee of the Texas Judicial Council that is the policy-making body for the state judiciary. They comprise all of the indigent defense costs that have not been reimbursed by the state since 2001.

“It continues to be one of the cost drivers that continue to make it difficult on counties to balance their budgets,” Roberts told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Tom Green County Judge Steve Floyd, who presides over the county commissioners, said he hoped the public applies pressure on their state lawmakers to cover the unfunded mandate, the Standard-Times reported.

“Our taxpayers are hopefully being made aware of what’s driving our property taxes. Everybody is at their limit on what they want to pay on property taxes, I’m sure, and that’s probably the most graphic example we have of what drives us locally. So share that information,” he told Commissioners Court colleagues.

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