Where Will The Money Come From To Pay For The Polygamist Raid?

Those of us who follow the state budgeting process have been waiting for a few weeks now for “the other shoe to drop,” so to speak, concerning the raid on the West Texas polygamist compound. I think most people realized that the state would be paying a heavy price tag for the affair. Of course, because of the way district court systems are set up and funded in Texas, the county where the raid occurred will pay a big price, too. The latter is something a lot of people don’t realize, as they assume the costs for all things judicial magically flows directly from the state’s coffers.

Of course, it doesn’t:

With court costs expected to top $2.25 million — even before lawyer fees are included — legal proceedings from April’s raid on a polygamist group’s ranch near Eldorado promise to be a budget buster for rural Schleicher County.

The county of about 3,000 people, with an annual budget of $3.9 million, cannot hope to handle the expense alone, District Judge Ben Woodward said during a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday at the Capitol.

“I’ve come here to run up the red flag for the judiciary branch,” Woodward told the committee. “We need resources.”

Most of the expense will be borne by Schleicher County, where more than 450 children were removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in April and placed in foster homes across Texas.

Most court costs are related to the ongoing Child Protective Services custody cases, but the estimate also includes expenses related to anticipated criminal charges, Woodward said.

For what it is worth, $2.25 million is a figure that probably won’t even scratch the surface if the county figured in all the costs related to criminal charges. Trying a bunch of child sex abuse cases won’t be cheap, and the most significant expense will probably be for court appointed criminal defense attorneys. I have no idea what the hourly rate indigent defenders are allowed to charge (a rate set by the district judges in the area is for non-capital offenses), but even if it is a paltry $40 per hour, $2.25 million won’t cover both the civil and criminal costs if a large number of the sect members ultimately charged (again, assuming a large number are charged) require court appointed counsel.

The long and short of it is that this could bankrupt Schlicher County unless the state steps in. My question is, “when will the state step in?” Given that the county is actually nearing the end of its fiscal year, if they are a typical rural county, they don’t have gobs of money in the bank and probably don’t have much in their reserves beyond what standard accounting practices demand government bodies keep in reserve. If Schlicher County is actually waiting until the 81st Legislature, that worries me because it stands to reason that they will be in a budget crunch from day one of the next fiscal year as they balance paying the expenses for this case with paying for their regular expenses.

For some reason, I’ve always been under the impression, though that may be admittedly misguided, that the Governor and the Legislative Budget Board could step in when situations like this arise and ensure that funding is available for such things without waiting for the legislative appropriations process. If that’s not correct (and I trust one of my regular readers will email me and set me right if it isn’t), then it stanCapitol Annex › Create New Post — WordPressds to reason that legislation should be passed (or a constitutional amendment, if that is what is required) to allow the LBB to step in when circumstances like this arise.

It just doesn’t seem fair to leave a rural county like Sclicher County on the hook like this.

The other side of this coin is, of course, the massive amount of state expenses:

It will cost taxpayers $21 million to care for a polygamist sect’s children over the next year, the Health and Human Services Commission estimated Monday.

Foster-care payments for more than 450 youngsters removed because of possible child abuse at the group’s Eldorado ranch will cost nearly $1 million a month, commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said.

Virtually all of the sect children are deemed to need a “basic” level of service, which at $39 a day is the least costly of Texas’ four levels of paid foster care. Nearly doubling the monthly cost, however, is the fact that many – a precise number was not available – are staying in emergency shelters. The state pays shelters $106 a day.

Ms. Goodman said other monthly costs will include $325,500 in health care, provided under the state-federal Medicaid program for the poor; and $425,000 for an additional 70 protective services workers – as soon as they’re hired.

As with any estimate, $21 million is also probably a low-ball figure. Of course, the Senate Committee with oversight over much of this process is worried about the implications the case will have on other foster kids:

Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, told social services officials Tuesday that although she backed the state’s decision to rush hundreds of workers to West Texas, she worries its preoccupation with the high-profile case could leave youngsters elsewhere unprotected.

“We are very grateful for those [CPS] people that moved quickly, but I don’t want to read in the newspaper that because we moved people in to deal with this situation, we had an incident that should – could – have been avoided back home,” Ms. Nelson said at a special Senate Finance Committee hearing on how much the raid could cost taxpayers.

I almost have to laugh at this one, because health and human services agencies in Texas always seem to raise their “red flag” only following a media expose.

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