Indigent Defense Board May Require Public Defenders to Report Their Salaries

The state board that pays for court-appointed lawyers meets Aug. 21 to decide whether public defender offices must start reporting what they pay their attorneys, and whether counties that file their spending reports late should face a penalty.

The Texas Indigent Defense Commission does not employ defense lawyers itself. It sends grant money to all 254 counties, sets standards for appointed counsel, and collects the spending and caseload numbers that are the only statewide picture of how Texas pays for the lawyers it owes poor defendants. The reporting item would attach two new conditions to that machinery: salary data from public defender offices and from the managed assigned counsel programs some counties use instead, and consequences for a county that misses the annual expenditure report deadline. The commission has published no proposed rule text for either, and nothing found in its posted board materials explains what prompted them.

The salary question is not idle. The commission published a study of public defense pay in 2024, and in June its board approved a budget request for the next two-year cycle that asks the Legislature for $64.1 million to shore up existing public defense systems, competitive salaries included. Whether the reporting requirement is meant to build the evidence for that ask is not something the commission has said.

Money runs underneath the rest of the agenda. The commission’s grants come out of the Fair Defense Account, funded mainly by a slice of criminal court costs, and the commission has told the Legislature that collections are running well below what it was appropriated — court-cost revenue down roughly $4 million a year against 2018, and the jury-fund transfers that once added about $6 million a year no longer projected. The board takes up its 2027 budget, formula grants for next year and a set of grant requests tied to Operation Lone Star, the border enforcement program whose arrests in a handful of small border counties the commission has funded defense for since 2021.

Watch whether the salary requirement and the late-filing penalty are adopted Aug. 21 or merely authorized for a rulemaking that would come later.

Meeting at a glance

Commission members

• Missy Medary, Corpus Christi — chair; presiding judge, Fifth Administrative Judicial Region.
• James D. Bethke — vice chair; governor’s appointee.
• Jimmy Blacklock — chief justice, Supreme Court of Texas.
• David Schenck — presiding judge, Court of Criminal Appeals.
• Brent Hagenbuch — state senator.
• Phil King — state senator.
• Joe Moody — state representative.
• John Smithee — state representative; chairs House Criminal Jurisprudence.
• Emily Miskel — appellate justice; chairs the grants committee.
• Alex Bunin — governor’s appointee; chairs the standards committee.
• Jay Cohen — governor’s appointee.
• Valerie Covey, Georgetown — Williamson County commissioner.
• Richard Evans, Bandera — Bandera County judge.
• James R. Woolley Jr. — governor’s appointee.

The roster follows the commission’s membership page, checked against a June 2026 commission release naming Medary as chair. The commission’s own materials give its size inconsistently — its website says fifteen members, a June release says fourteen — and only seven of eight authorized ex officio seats are filled on the published list; which seat is vacant could not be established. Hometowns are published for only some members. Executive director: Scott Ehlers. Meeting contact: Deputy Director Wesley Shackelford, (737) 279-9208.