| TO: | Honorable Mike Krusee, Chair, House Committee on Transportation |
| FROM: | John Keel, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | HB931 by Chavez (Relating to the penalty for failure to yield the right-of-way.), As Introduced |
Costs to local governments to implement the bill would depend upon the number of failure to yield citations issued and the number of those citations that would meet the requirements of the bill. Tarrant County reported that no significant fiscal implication to their operations is anticipated. However, Harris County reported that, even with only two cases a day that would meet the requirements of the bill, an additional $500,000 per year would be needed in investigative time for deputies, costs to the district attorney in increased personnel time, additional court costs and the costs of additional jail time. These costs are in addition to the seven to ten days of programming time the county would need to modify their court computer systems to be able to track the cases that would meet the requirements of the bill. The City of Houston reported that they would need six weeks of programming time to modify their systems. When combined with the additional cases from the municipalities in Harris County, the county reported that costs could exceed $1 million per year. Revenue from fines and fees would not completely cover the cost; collection rates for misdemeanor cases in county courts average about 58 percent. Based on a $1,000 fine, applied to each anticipated case, fines would generate $580,000 in revenue, for a net cost to the county of $420,000 per year and a total five-year cost of $2.1 million.
| Source Agencies: | 405 Department of Public Safety
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| LBB Staff: | JK, RR, VDS, AR, KG
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