As a midnight deadline loomed Tuesday, Dallas County commissioners scrambled to update and approve fees for sheriff and constable services.
Fee collection could bring in up to $4 million.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently delivered an opinion that county services fees within a legal amount range must be collected.
Commissioners called a special meeting to establish those fees, ranging from $150 to $400, by the Oct.1 deadline.
It sparked a tangled discussion over non-specified services and lawful amounts, particularly for evictions and mental health warrants.
Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said to commissioners that establishing the fee schedule now will help later.
"It's frustrating, but the law is that we can recover our cost and we can charge up to that recovery," he said. "Since the analysis stopped at mental illness warrants, that's what we're going to have to get to this year. Now, I think that we need to not wait until the end of next year, get every one of these other things figured out quickly so that we could have a discussion and know what we're doing."
Ultimately, commissioners approved all the proposed fee amounts, opposed only by John Wiley Price.
"Damn it, it is folly, it is flawed and we have no basis," he said.
Elba Garcia also expressed concern about rushing through such an important discussion, especially when there were number discrepancies across presentations and documents.
"I share [Price's] concerns," Garcia said. "I didn't have enough information other than we are not charging more than other entities and I don't like to vote in those kind of situations."
In some cases, the county had not collected fees in 11 to 30 years that potentially could have brought in a significant amount of money.
Precinct 1 Constable Tracey Gulley advised commissioners that her precinct alone worked more than 30,000 writs last year.
Price questioned whether service fee collection is possible.
"Not only are we not charging, what's the collection rate in regards to this stuff?" Price said. "On things like evictions and writs and writs of execution, you might do an attachment there. But I mean, you do a mental illness warrant. Who's going to pay for it? We basically have been absorbing that. And it looks good on paper to say it goes from $150 to $350 on a break even."
Jenkins said paperwork prohibited some fee collections and will be addressed.
Hospitals also were not always charged as a courtesy to help control their costs.
Jenkins said the county learned that hospitals are eligible for reimbursement.
"In many instances, they get paid back by the federal government for that fee, and so that's gonna be all around the benefits of taxpayers too."
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