From the President

This being the first of my monthly columns for County Progress Magazine, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the County Judges and Commissioners Association of Texas for selecting me to serve as their president this year. I’m looking forward to working with the Association staff and the County Progress staff to get the message of good county government out to you.
By way of introduction, I’m originally from Falls County and have served almost 30 years as a Tarrant County public servant. Currently, I’m serving in my sixth term as Precinct Four county commissioner. Before being elected as commissioner, I served a total of nine years on the Saginaw City Council, including six years as mayor. While serving on the Saginaw Council, I retired from Southwestern Bell as a department manager after more than 30 years of service. As a member of the Tarrant County Commissioners Court, I chair the Tarrant County Bail Bond Board as the commissioners court’s appointee, serve as president of the Tarrant County Housing Finance Corporation, and also serve as vice president of the Industrial Development Corporation.
In 1993, the governor of Texas appointed me as the first county commissioner to serve on the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS). During my six-year term, I served as vice chairman of the Commission.
I have had the opportunity to grow up in a rural county, which gives me insight on special rural concerns, and I have lived most of my adult life in a growing urban county, which provides me with experience finding resolutions to their complex problems. I hope my monthly messages, as well as my service as president, will meet the special needs of all the members of the Association.
County jails are a special focus of this issue, which will always be timely and at the top of the agenda for every commissioners court in the state as one of the most expensive and important roles of county government.
As a former member of the TCJS, I know how hard Texas counties work to keep our jails operational, and how important it is to have a good working relationship between our commissioners courts, our sheriffs and the state.
With the state’s prison system quickly approaching capacity, there will be pressure on county jails to provide some relief; at the same time, our already-stressed county jails are filling up due to the booming growth of our local communities.
The recently completed 80th legislative session demonstrated significant efforts to encourage programs that will provide alternatives to incarceration at the local and state levels. In Tarrant County, we have initiated a program to assist in the re-entry of felony offenders into mainstream society to, hopefully, reduce recidivism and to help keep our jail population under control.
The 81st legislative session will likely see additional efforts to address and improve the prison system capacity and, by extension, the jail capacity problem facing all counties.
There are still several issues to be addressed that affect our county jails. The 45-day, duty-to-accept period is becoming a burden in many counties. Also, technical parole violators