Texas juvenile justice board must trim its own budget request by three percent

The board that runs Texas’s state juvenile lockups and oversees county juvenile probation meets in Fort Worth on Wednesday afternoon to approve the money it will ask the Legislature for in 2028 and 2029 — a request the state’s three most powerful officials have ordered every agency to shrink by three percent. Anyone who wants to speak has to email the agency by 5 p.m. Tuesday to get on the list.

Every state agency files a budget request in the summer before each legislative session. It comes in two halves: a base request capped at a spending level the Legislative Budget Board and the governor’s office set, and anything above that cap, listed separately as an exceptional item. This cycle, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows told agencies in a July 14 letter to “reduce its base appropriation request level by three percent.” Five things are exempted — school finance, debt service, pension and benefit costs, Medicaid and foster care caseload growth, and the new education savings account program. Juvenile justice is not among them. The department’s request is due to the budget board on Friday, two days after the vote.

The squeeze lands on an agency that has not been able to fill the jobs it already has. In its own filing with the Sunset Advisory Commission last September, the department reported 2,756 budgeted positions and 2,052 actually filled. The gap sits almost entirely in the five secure facilities: Giddings was budgeted for 438 people and had 267, Brownwood for 404 and had 225. The agency’s two-year budget for 2026 and 2027 is about $953 million, 95 percent of it state general revenue.

It is also an agency under federal scrutiny. In August 2024 the U.S. Justice Department issued findings that conditions at all five facilities violate the Constitution, citing excessive force, prolonged isolation, a failure to protect children from sexual abuse and inadequate mental health care. Those are administrative findings, not a court’s: the Justice Department’s own docket still lists the matter as an investigation, with no complaint or settlement posted, and the department told Sunset it is “uncertain how or when this will proceed.” Separately, the Legislature has put $304 million toward two new 104-bed facilities in Ellis and Brazoria counties, due to open in 2028.

This is a special called meeting, and the board’s posted schedule shows a regular meeting nine days later on August 21. A closed session on litigation, real property and personnel is noticed, but no specific matter is named.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• Manny Ramirez, Fort Worth — chairman; Tarrant County commissioner. Term to 2027.
• Cyndi Wheless, McKinney — juvenile court judge seat. Term to 2029.
• William “Will” Durham, Huntsville — juvenile prosecutor seat. Term to 2027.
• Edeska Barnes, Jasper — chief probation officer, small counties. Term to 2029.
• Luis Leija, Port Lavaca — chief probation officer, mid-size counties. To 2027.
• Matthew Marick, Krugerville — chief probation officer, large counties. Term to 2031.
• Joe Barton, Ph.D., Canyon — adolescent mental health seat. Term to 2031.
• Stephanie House, Liberty Hill — educator seat. Term to 2031.
• Shawn Thierry, Houston — public member. Term to 2029.

Roster: names, hometowns and terms from the department’s board page; seat categories and appointment dates from its September 2025 Sunset self-evaluation. The board was cut from 13 members to nine by Senate Bill 1727 in 2023, and the seat categories here follow that bill as enrolled. Staff: Shandra Carter, executive director; Emily Anderson, deputy executive director for finance and operations, who presents the budget request; Jana Jones, general counsel.