| TO: | Honorable Joe Driver, Chair, House Committee on Law Enforcement |
| FROM: | John S. O'Brien, Deputy Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | HB642 by Bailey (Relating to the training required for certain county jailers.), As Introduced |
The bill would authorize the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education to require a person appointed as a county jailer in a county with a population of 500,000 or more to complete 160 hours of commission-approved training not later that the second anniversary of the date the person was appointed. The 160 hours may include the preparatory training program. The bill would take effect September 1, 2005.
Under current statute, the required preparatory training program is 96 hours in length. TCLEOSE reports that if it were to develop the additional 64 hours of training, there would be a one-time cost to the agency of approximately $76,800. If the agency were to instead only approve county-developed courses, the agency would only incur administrative costs.
There are seven counties to which the population criteria would apply: Bexar, Dallas, El Paso, Harris, Hidalgo, Tarrant, and Travis. The counties assume they would develop and provide the training.
Harris County reports that the sheriff's office employs approximately 500 jailers and that 152 of those have less than two years' experience. Harris County estimates that the cost to provide an additional 64 hours of training to just the 152 newer jailers would be $173,896 in fiscal year 2006, and to train new jailers in fiscal year 2007 would cost $139,257. The county's estimated costs for fiscal years 2008 through 2010 range from $92,750 to $100,154. These costs include hiring one additional trainer in fiscal year 2006, salaries of the existing and newly recruited jailers that would have to be trained, and supplies and equipment associated with conducting training. The costs estimated represent less than 1 percent of the county's overall budget of nearly $1.2 billion.
The Travis County Sheriff's Office reports that they already exceed the current required number of training hours for their jailers, and therefore the provisions of the bill would not have a fiscal impact on them.
The fiscal impact to the applicable seven counties would vary, but is not expected to be significant.
| Source Agencies: | 407 Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education
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| LBB Staff: | JOB, KJG, DLBa
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