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On September 13 the State Office of Administrative Hearings Board presented their Legislative Appropriations Request at a joint budget hearing. An archive of the hearing can be found here.

Budget Committee Members

Jarred Shaffer, Office of the Governor

Blake Fall, LBB

Mathilde Mogensen, LBB

Lyle Blanco, LBB

Paige McGhee, Senate Finance

 

Shane Linkous, General Counsel for SOA

  • Baseline apportions request is $22.8m; flat from last appropriations cycle of $22.4 m for biennium
  • Consist of $13.8m of general revenue, $8.9m of inner agency contact
  • 3 exceptional items; asking for 10% pay increase for all employees; targeted salary enhancement to increase for field ALJ and IT; third request for capital expenditure for tech purchases to turn hearing rooms into hybrid zoom rooms, flexibility with witness location
  • 119 FTE, identified as higher turnover at 15%
    • Small agency
    • Tech improvement and judges eligible for retirement
  • SOA given administrative case tracking system because of last sunset report
    • Went live on June 1
    • Anticipate getting rid of two older systems for modern case management system which allows better accessibility for judges; SOA became paper-less environment since covid
    • System will allow to turn cases faster
  • First exceptional item: 10% increase pay for employees
    • Salaries are 85% of budget
  • Ongoing cost would be $1.9m biannually, 10% pay increase to all staff, including chief administrative law judge; there have been no pay adjusts since 2016
  • Reasons for increase; cost of living increases, most senior ALJ come from AG or equivalent so need to have similar salary pay to retain judges
  • Overtime, increase in number of cases from population increase, salary was not increased
  • Second exceptional item: targeted salary enhancement for about 20 field ALJ office
    • Any judge can now do any case with new case management system
    • Enable to distribute workload among all 56 judges, so field office asked to do more cases so 5% increase to bring salary closer to Austin judges
    • Long-term benefit, allows to compete with Houston and Dallas markets
    • Small IT staff, need to target increasing salary to recruit and retain
  • Third exceptional item: hybrid hearing room tech acquisition
    • One time cost of $243k
    • Enable to purchase tech hearing room statewide, allow for hybrid hearings
    • Broadcast open hearing on YouTube
    • Requested through DIR IT modernization fund grant; if grant comes through do not need funding
    • Cost of $93k per year to run the hybrid hearing rooms which is not eligible for grant
  • Writer updates: common during appropriation cycle for hourly billing rate to be adjusted
  • Proposing to adjust from $150 to $160 an hour to cover operating expenses
  • Portion of cost allocation goes to state-wide allocation from treasury and TFC
  • Suggesting update to list of agencies that are GR funded to help Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council, council has not been funded well to conduct hearings
  • Proposing increase in performance measures
    • Relatively nominal increases, cases received, cases disposed, and ALJ hours allocated to each case
  • Mogensen – Are you requesting to change group number or increasing in funding for exempt position salary
    • Increase in funding in group 5-6
  • Shaffer – how do you identify 15 of 31 hybrid hearing rooms
    • Grant proposal for 29 rooms long term, picked 15 largest hearing rooms, obligated to do Austin which paying currently with GR

 

Ann Bishop, Executive Director of Texas Public Employees Association

  • Last across the board pay raise was Dec. 1, 2014, fiscal year 2015
  • 27% decline in purchasing power since then
  • Starting salary in Texas for qualified attorneys is $220,000
  • Need someone with 10 years of experience before good administrative law judge
  • TPEA highly supports the request and across the board pay raise
  • SOA has high number of employees eligible to retire so losing experience and need to grow new staff