New piece in the SA Current highlights crusade against the DSABC

Writer Michale Barajas at the SA Current has a new piece on Commissioner Kevin Wolff and his apparently fervent desire to get rid of the DSABC, Wolff says, because its standing in the way of his goal to privatize the jail.  I'm not sure why Wolff is so intent on pursuing privatization given its sordid history in Texas and the obstacles in the way, not the least of which is the Sheriff.  Why he would rather risk the safety of staff, inmates and the community in an effort to save a few million dollars is a mystery given how many millions they have in the budget in discretionary spending that could be curtailed.  When cutting budgets, public safety is usually not on the chopping block.

The Current article paints Commissioner Wolff as intent on going after the union.  His blatant anti-union position is part and parcel to his role as the lone Republican on the Court and I suspect that he is looking to cement his position amongst Republicans and Tea Party members but his reasoning in this issue is lacking.  I contacted Michael Barajas at the Current and gave him some additional information and hopefully he can bring us some more exposure on this issue.  Check out his column and leave some feedback.  As always, let me know what you think by commenting or emailing me.

http://sacurrent.com/news/bexar-commissioner-wants-to-break-up-the-state-of-sheriff-8217-s-union-1.1198787

Writer Michael Barajas has also written on the topic of privatization in the recent past.  Check out these stories:

Do private prisons save money? Sept. 7th, 2011 

Prisons for profit: Deaths, lawsuits don’t stop expansion of GEO immigration prisons Feb. 16th 2011

Chief Dovalina and the Sheriff paid a visit to Commissioners Court today

It was a beautiful thing.  Chief Dovalina had the Commissioners by the collar and was kicking them in the ass.  We saw leadership and focus.  He had figures and information to rebut the recent claims and innuendo from the Commissioners that the jail is fully staffed. This was so very much needed.  Specifically, he went to ask for 64 positions and he showed where over the course of time, 832 beds had been added to the jail but that the aggregate number of officers added to staff for those beds was... 14.  We have a sizable number of positions unfilled and with the newly proposed relief factor, our situation is bleak.

David Smith made the offhand comment insinuating that no officer had soiled themselves in the unit for lack of a break.  I know for a fact this happened as I personally know the officer.  Be that as it may, David Smith and the Commissioners are not concerned with anything more than the bottomline.  Their ultimate suggestion came down to re-assigning 46 "support" positions to the 'front line' directly supervising inmates.  These positions consisted of mostly single officers in various temporary duty assignments such as SERT STU (2), Triangle (yeah, thats a position thats just being wasted...), Fleet Maintenance (2), Fire Safety Officer (1), Environmental Officer (1), Tech Support (1), Yeoman Main Jail (5), Yeoman Annex (5), Facilities Services Supervisor (1 Sgt), Facility Services Staff (3).  There are others, but these are the ones I recall off the top of my head.

Mr. Smith put forth the notion that these 46 positions could also be used to assist the shifts on a daily basis saying: "the folks in these support positions need to understand that they may not be working in those jobs every single day as that is not what their position was budgeted for"  He has a point.  Of course, the reality is a bit different in that many of the jobs filled by those officers listed above are not being done by anyone else and would cost the county thousands in order to staff if this were a perfect world.

When pointing out the fire safety position, one of the Commissioners or it may have been David Smith made the comment that we have a fire marshal.  Yeah, we have a County Fire Marshal but he isn't going to be going around making sure the air packs are full, officers are trained in fire compliance requirements and dealing with the myriad of duties that Cpl. Moncus currently does.  Its almost like they expect the fact that they came up with an idea, that its perfectly plausible to implement without exploring further.

Just as the suggestion from David Smith that instead of full time employees to staff the jail that we become more 'flexible' in our staffing and employ part time employees or retirees to help augment our staff.  Has David Smith or anyone done a study or other research to see if anyone is interested in working at the jail for zero benefits and crappy pay in a dangerous environment with the amount of garbage that we put up with?  I'm sure they will be overwhelmed with applications. 

I guess I also have to speculate as to whether or not this army of part time employees and retirees that are slated to save the day will even have the proper training to be of benefit, but I'm sure Mr. Smith has that covered. 


More to come.....

Shady attempt at attacking our retirement by State Legislators

I found out today that in the past few months, 2 separate bills were introduced by a Republican from Houston (Kenneth Sheets) and Warren Chisum from Pampa sought to eliminate various retirement plans in Texas, specifically affected would be the TDCRS, which is also known as the "Teachers Retirement" but also encompasses tens of thousands of government workers, including Bexar County.  Its unclear why these guys wanted to hurt so many people.  

Legislative Session: 82(R) - Relating to creating defined contribution retirement plans for persons eligible to participate in the Employees Retirement System of Texas and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.

Battle brewing over Texas public pensions-over-texas-public-pensions-1802578.html 

Attack on TRS pensions draws heavy fire

Bill to Undermine Guaranteed TRS Pension Benefits on Committee Agenda Tuesday

Basically, had the bills passed, you would have been grandfathered and allowed to stay in the TCDRS but anyone new coming on after Sept. 1st 2012 would have been forced to get a 401(k) or something similar for a retirement option...bully idea.  Anyone remember when the economy crashed for the first time a few years ago and how most people with 401(k)'s lost 50% or more of their value?  This is why when former President Bush suggested 'privatizing' social security and investing it in the stock market was such a spectacularly bad idea.  Rather than have a guaranteed retirement plan, you would likely see a reduction in benefits paid to you over time.  One bill is dead and the other was left in Committee back in April, presumably still on life support.  Contact your representative and fight this.

So, my next question is; WHERE IS THE DSABC ON THESE THINGS and why aren't they spending the members dues on getting into the fight on this?

Suggestions:

Hire an actual, honest to God labor attorney to protect our interests in the Texas Legislature.

Have a designated union representative be the DSABC watchdog for legislative issues.  These bills were introduced back in March and we should have been on the case day one.  Maybe we were...I don't know because I'm not a member of DSABC.  If so, let me know by commenting or email me at bexardeputyissues AT gmail.com

Some things that the Commissioners and David Smith aren't really thinking about...

So, the Commissioners and David Smith have a new relief factor to play with and you probably just got done doing your mandatory overtime.  They want to staff the jail for approximately 3,800 inmates.  Should our population exceed that, we would farm those inmates out to other counties and pay those counties to house them.  As you probably know, we ship inmates to Zavala and Frio counties right now.  Frio houses approximately 24 inmates at no cost to us in Bexar Co.  Zavala County, on the other hand, charges us $45 a day per inmate and has done so since July 29th.  Right now, we have 100 96 inmates there.  $45 x 96 = $4,320.00 per day.  To be fair, David Smith, in his budget proposals, has always said that we can ship inmates out to other counties for 'short periods of time'.  Whats a short period of time?  Is it the same length of time that its going to take to add officers to be able to properly staff the jail when those 96 inmates come back from Zavala?  Honestly though, I don't see them coming back as a real issue at this point because Zavala County is making $1.576,800.00 a year off of the taxpayers of Bexar County.  Since July 29th until today, which is August 29th, its been 31 days of a windfall for Zavala County to the tune of $133,920.00 with $4,320.00 to be added every day until the inmates come back.

Lets look at some other issues.  Lets say the jail is now staffed "on demand" and everything is rolling along.  Officers are working mandatory overtime and seeing less and less of their families.  Zavala county is making a fortune off of our taxpayers and the County is saving tons of money that they can spend on other things or giveaway to deserving groups and organizations or pet projects.  Now, somewhere on the other side of the world, we get involved in another military adventure similar to Iraq or Afghanistan and all of a sudden, a number of our officers are called up to active duty.  I don't know how many officers we have in the military, but I know its considerable.  For the sake of our discussion, lets say its 100 officers across the board.  So, now we are down 168 officers presuming nobody else has resigned, retired or been fired.  Just for fun, lets say across all the shifts, we lost a total of 30 more officers to attrition, so now we are down 200 officers.  See where I'm going with this?

I don't think David Smith or the Commissioners are looking at the "buffer" we would need to offset the issues we just looked at.  I think TCJS, in determining our relief factor, do take into account these factors and it may be why I found every other county in my research to have their relief factor in place for maximum occupancy of their facility rather than just for the number of inmates they currently have.

We also have to look at our attrition beyond the 64 positions that are going away.  We lose approximately 5 officers a month to retirement, resignation, termination etc.  So, the 68 positions actually turns into a hell of a lot more.  I may be completely wrong here, but I'm predicting that our resignations amongst our younger officers will increase.  Even several months ago, I had a new officer asking me if he thought it was wise to stick around or try to find a better job somewhere else due to the uncertainty of jobs with the county.  He was right to be concerned.  Hell, if I was a new officer or even so much as only 5 years on, I would be looking for a new career.

Then there's the safety issue we have yet to even talk about.  Did you hear about the group assault the other day?  How about the other one the other day?  Or the other one?  You know and I know what we deal with but the public (and some public figures...George Block I'm looking at you) don't have any idea how dangerous our facility has become and its getting worse almost every day.  Thankfully, so far, no officers have been targeted by our inmates.  As you know, our gang problem is out of control and if the Orejon's go much further with the Mexican Mafia, we may have a bloodbath on our hands.  Its not a question of if, but when.  Isn't it comforting to know that your safety is in no way a factor in the proposal to let those 64 positions go away?