| TO: | Honorable Terry Keel, Chair, House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence |
| FROM: | John Keel, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | HB665 by Gallego (Relating to standards of competency for attorneys appointed as counsel to indigent applicants in certain habeas corpus proceedings.), As Introduced |
Costs to local governments to implement the bill would depend on the size of the county and the number of capital cases filed in each county. Counties with large municipalities have larger populations, but they also have a larger population of available lawyers with the characteristics required by the bill.
Both Harris County (population 3,470,000, annual budget of $970 million) and Dallas County (population 2,218,899, annual budget of $571 million) have large numbers of capital cases that are tried, but each county reported that the bill would have no significant fiscal impact on their budgets.
Conversely, smaller counties usually have smaller or no municipalities, smaller overall populations and, correspondingly, smaller populations of available lawyers with the characteristics required by the bill. They also have a smaller proportion of capital cases that are tried. Therefore, costs to smaller counties would be significant only in a year in which a capital case was tried in the county. Denton County (population 475,000, annual budget of $115 million) has had only one capital case filed since 1998. Parker County (population 88,485, annual budget of $39 million) reported that no capital case has been filed in the county since 1989.
| Source Agencies: | 211 Court Of Criminal Appeals, 696 Department Of Criminal Justice
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| LBB Staff: | JK, WK, TB, VDS, AB, KG
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