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In a move designed to bring greater efficiency and a more people-centered approach to its legal operations, the Hays County Commissioners Court unanimously voted earlier this month to bring the office of general counsel back into the district attorney’s office.
The move to unite these offices will bring “new synergistic energy to the civil division of our office,” Hays County District Attorney Kelly Higgins said. According to Higgins, the district attorney’s office regularly has cases in which there are criminal and civil components. Merging these two offices will make each more efficient and “get better results,” Higgins said.
Hays County Assistant District Attorney Gregg Cox, in making his argument in favor of the move to the court, said the merger is beneficial for the county as a whole and his office in that the civil portion of the office is primarily focused on Child Protection Service cases. He added that the office will be expanding its scope.
One additional focus will be mental health.
“As prosecutors, we have certain tools that are available to us outside of the criminal justice system,” Cox said. “We have emergency detention orders and civil commitment that are in our tool kit and we can use [these] to try to keep the jail from continuing to be the largest mental health facility in the county. We can potentially divert certain people away from the criminal justice system completely, but still deal with the mental health crisis that they’re undergoing by using our civil section to provide those functions.”
Cox pointed out that there are environmental problems in Hays County such as illegal dumping, for which there are civil and criminal penalties that can be applied.
“If you need someone to clean up their property and it’s going to cost money, filing criminal charges — which causes them to then have to hire a lawyer and potentially face criminal fines, using up some of the money that might be available for the clean up,” he explained. “Sometimes, a civil remedy might be a better course of action.”
Cox said during the previous commissioners court meeting, the district attorney’s office requested additional staff be brought on to help with the large domestic violence caseload. This is likely to increase the amount of protective orders that will be handled by civil office staff.
Another reason a merger would be beneficial, according to Cox, is that it would ensure the office would be in ethical compliance while still being able to “use all of the tools in the toolkit.” He said the merger would not impact the role of General Counsel Mark Kennedy, particularly when he is asked to advise the court.
With this new scenario, Kennedy would stay in the county courthouse but “would take on a supervisory role of the civil side of our office,” Cox said.
According to Cox, this would benefit the court by creating an opportunity to bring a specific set of legal expertise to the table: a civil lawyer on staff who is well-versed in open records law; an attorney that has a broad base and a wealth of experience in what the general counsel is currently doing; and another one with Child Protective Services representation and regulatory experience.
Cox said the proposal to unite these offices also brings them back into compliance with the state statute that provides “the criminal district attorney’s office is supposed to perform the duties of both the county attorney and the district attorney — civil and criminal representation.” He said that the reasons for keeping the two offices separate in the past no longer exist.
Ultimately, the merger could save the county money by the need to hire fewer attorneys.
“We’ve had quite a few conversations about this, and I think it’s a great idea,” Kennedy said. He agreed the split of the two offices made sense at the time but is no longer necessary.
Kennedy said there has been a tri-fold increase in litigation for the commissioners court and having access to the additional attorneys from the district attorney’s office would be helpful.
“We responded to about 4,500 requests last year,” he said. Having additional staff, he added, would make that more tenable.
