Judge Bullock calls out Gov. Abbott for jail budget cuts

Young County Judge John Bullock had strong words for Texas leaders’ recent move to transfer badly needed funds for the state criminal justice system to Operation Lone Star, the border security measure initiated by Gov. Greg Abbott in response to a wave of border crossings by illegal immigrants.

Gov. Abbott said last week that he would pull $259.6 million out of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s budget to fund the program for the next 10 months. Operation Lone Star has spent $4 billion to keep thousands of Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guard members at the border.

But Young County Commissioners say they have more pressing problems: The commissioners recently joined other Texas counties in demanding that lawmakers use some of the state’s $27 billion sales tax surplus to pay for state-mandated mental health and criminal justice programs that threaten to crush county budgets.

Judge Bullock criticized Abbott and state lawmakers in an Oct. 31 statement, saying state budget makers need to come up with a way to fully fund the state jail system.

“On Thursday, Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Patrick and the members of the Legislative Budget Board transferred $359 million from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Budget to Operation Lone Star,” Judge Bullock said in a statement. “Despite the escalating number of state felons in the county jails awaiting transfer to TDCJ, no funds were transferred to compensate counties for the unfunded cost of holding these state prisoners in county jails.”

“Do not misunderstand, I want a secure and controlled border, south and north and coast to coast,” he said. “However, I believe the Texas Budget Board found a few billion in tax revenue they are hoarding at our additional expense.”

The commissioners voted 4-0 at their Sept. 26 meeting to sign on to a resolution adopted by other rural counties facing the effects of decades of defunding of mental health and criminal justice budgets by the Texas Legislature.

The commissioners also noted that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has been closing jail facilities and using the jail budget for other programs, while the backlog of county inmates rose 137 percent in one year. Those inmates cost counties almost $69 million each year, the resolution said.

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department, which is supposed to house and rehabilitate felony juvenile offenders, announced in September that it would also refuse new admissions. The cost for counties to hold each serious juvenile offender in facilities designed for nonviolent offenders is about $250 per day or $91,250 per year, the commissioners said. Commissioners recently approved an expenditure of $80,000 to guarantee a bed for juvenile offenders at a facility in Granbury.