County public defender office takes shape

The long process of unifying Travis County’s three separate public defender offices took another step forward last week.

The Commissioners Court reviewed draft bylaws for the oversight board the first time Nov. 2 and agreed to another voting session to work through details.  

The unification of the separate offices for adult, juvenile and mental health public defenders into a single office was officially effective Oct. 1, Organizational Development Committee Chair Andrea Marsh said in a progress report to commissioners. 

But more work is needed to merge systems, including human resources and case management, “or at least we need to figure out ways to make the data talk to each other more easily,” Marsh said. 

Identifying conflicts of interest has been particularly time consuming, she said.

“When the office merged, they had to identify potential conflicts of interest across the three programs and again across three case management systems,” Marsh said. “They started with more than 50,000 records. Now they’ve gotten it down to about 1,500.” 

Reporting on the process used to create the bylaws, Marsh said Travis County broke from the rest of Texas in an important way.

“Travis County really was a leader in incorporating community voices into the membership of the (Organizational Development Committee),” she said.

The committee includes a member from academia, a private attorney, a public defense attorney, two justice-involved individuals and two community advocates. An eighth member, the Commissioners Court representative, doesn’t have a vote. 

Reviewing the proposed goals and bylaws of the oversight board, Precinct 1 Commissioner Jeff Travillion said he would like to see more emphasis placed on hiring experienced attorneys. 

“If I’m fighting for my life or fighting for my record, I want to know that (the attorney) has litigated in this area before and maybe they’re even good at this,” he said.

The new bylaws won’t take effect and the new oversight board won’t take office until the funding grant ends March 31, 2024. 

Photo by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0.

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