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Per you department's request I have reviewed the formula used by the Task on Indigent Defense to allocate formula grant funds to Texas counties to see if I had any suggested changes to the current formula. As you know the current formula is based on each county receiving $5,000 plus additional funding based on population. It appears from the emails that were forwarded to me there has been some concerns over the fact that some counties may receive a greater portion of their increase in expenditures since the Fair Defense Act than others based on the current formula. I have downloaded all eligible expenditures, grant allocations, and disbursements for all 254 Texas Counties since FY 01 from the Task Force's website to take a look at this issue. After reviewing this data, I would suggest that the formula remain simple but be based on total indigent expenditures rather than population. It appears some have suggested to look at just the increase in expenditures since the Fair Defense Act, but I do not agree because it could potentially harm those counties that were making a significant commitment to indigent defense services before the Act was in place and reward those that were not. I would also suggest removing the $5,000 per county from the formula as well. I seems to me that the fairest way to allocate grant funding would be to divide the grant funds available in the current year by the previous year's expenditures statewide to come up with a reimbursement rate that could be applied to each counties previous year's expenditures. This way every county would receive the same percentage of reimbursed expenditures and it would focus not just on the increase since the Fair Defense Act. Since all expenditures assist the county in complying with the Act, it makes sense to me that we use total expenditures not just look at increases since the FY 01 baseline. Here is the suggested formula. Each Counties Grant Award is = [(Available Grant Funding) divided by (Prior Year Statewide Indigent Expenditure)] Multiplied by each Counties' Reported Indigent Expenditure Here is how it would work this year for Travis County if implemented (I understand any changes would not be effective till FY 06). Of course the reimbursement rate for each year would change based on the available funds and prior year expenditures, but it can be easily calculated. Revised Formula ($11,000,000 (FY 05 Grant Funding)/$138,248,268(Total Statewide Expenditures))=$.0796 X $6,386,885 (Travis County FY04 Expenditure) = $508,185 in Grant Funding for Travis County. This formula would not change the total amount dispersed only the amounts to each county. The Revised Formula if used in FY 05 it would reimburse not only Travis County, but all counties 7.96 cents for each of the previous year's eligible indigent defense expenditures. This would result in Travis County receiving $508,185 compared to the current formula awarding TC $384,031 for FY 05. This is an increase of $124,154. I used this formula for all counties since FY 02 and TC would have received an additional $408,044 over this period had this revised formula been in place. I based this analysis for the revised awards for FY 02 to FY 04 on the actual amount disbursed since this information was available rather the original grant award. The actual disbursment is not yet available for FY 05 so I used the original award for this year. There is typically is a small difference between the original award and the actual dispersed award since some counties will actually not receive an award. I have attached an excel workbook with three different spreadsheets showing my analysis. Please feel free to forward this information if it is agreeable to you or incorporate it into your own analysis. Let me know if you have any questions. Travis Gatlin |