Dallas delegation beats back jail oversight bill
Legislature: Houston lawmaker says monitor needed in failed system
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/051207dntexjail.33b4c1a.html
10:09 PM CDT on Friday, May 11, 2007

By KAREN BROOKS / The Dallas Morning News
kmbrooks@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Several Dallas-area lawmakers and county officials helped kill legislation that would have brought more state oversight and more rigid standards to the problem-plagued Dallas County jail system, saying that the effort by a Houston lawmaker was ill-advised 
overkill.

"We want to assume the responsibility locally and take care of it ourselves," said Rep. Fred Hill, R-Richardson. "We don't need to do it by sending in another bureaucrat, whose salary we would have to pay."

The two bills won preliminary endorsement Thursday, only to die Friday in an unusual flip-flop over arguments that it was an unfunded mandate from the state and an issue of local control. The county's jail system, which has failed state inspections four times in a row, was the main target of the legislation by Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston. But the Harris County Jail has failed inspections three straight times, and 13 of 38 county jails across 
Texas reviewed this year were deemed substandard, lawmakers said.

The legislation would have cost Dallas County $2 million to bring its staffing up to proposed standards and would have put the county on the hook for an independent monitor if it continued to fail state inspections. The monitor bill failed on a vote of 76-56, and the 
staffing bill went down, 55-48. The Dallas County delegation split nearly evenly on each bill.
"It's definitely an unfunded mandate," said Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. "We want to work with the state, but it doesn't need to be onerous. We felt that this was being onerous."

The most recent state inspection found problems with maintenance and sanitation. A Justice Department report in December documented numerous cases of improper medical care that contributed to the deaths and injuries of inmates.

To address staffing problems, the county recently set out to reduce the jail population by 1,000 inmates. The legislation would have put into state law a ratio of one officer for every 48 inmates, a standard that the Texas Commission on Jail Standards currently calls for, and made it more difficult for jails like Dallas County's to get waivers to exceed that.

It also would have required that any jail failing inspection three times in a row would have to have an independent monitor on site for three months. The monitor would be hired by the commission and paid for by the county to review the problems at the jail and report them 
to the county.

Concerns by Dallas Reps. Dan Branch and Helen Giddings that the monitor would be instructed to solve the problems were fixed with an amendment Friday that required the monitor to only report findings to the county. Both lawmakers voted for the bill.

Rep. Jerry Madden, a Richardson Republican and chairman of the House Corrections Committee, also supported the measures, saying that the state has to step in to protect the public from problems before they get too serious.

"If your jail continues to fail and fail and fail ... for some reason they should be ignored by the state of Texas?" Mr. Madden said. "Is that justice to our citizens?"

But Mr. Turner, the bill's author, was pitted against much of the Dallas delegation, who argued that county officials were working to turn around the situation at the jail.

Mr. Turner slammed opponents for refusing to investigate problems in their own back yards – particularly after calling for a state investigation into a sexual-abuse scandal at the Texas Youth Commission.

"It's bad when we condone mediocrity," Mr. Turner said. "It's bad when we decide we're not going to support something to make something better because it's a local concern. ... How can you complain about the problems at TYC when you're protecting your own local jails on the same stuff? That's hypocrisy at its best."

Dallas County officials say they have been working hard to rectify problems at the jail. Rep. Jim Jackson, R-Carrollton, said the biggest reason the jail keeps failing inspections is that it needs a new smoke detector system that would cost $260,000.

During an intense debate, Mr. Turner pointed out that Mr. Jackson –  who was a Dallas County commissioner and chairman of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards until his 2004 election to the House – had been on the commission when the jail began failing inspections.

Mr. Jackson told Mr. Turner "you don't know what you're talking about" because the situation was being addressed. Later, the Republican said the state contributes to the problem of overcrowding and underfunding faced by the jails.

"We don't get any funding from the state," he said. "If the state wants to solve the problems, they need to spend the money."