A belated Happy New Year to all! This has been a quiet month on the legislative front as everyone’s attention pivots from special sessions to primary campaigns, but we do have a couple of items we wanted to bring to your attention before the impending three-day holiday weekend o’ weather. (Y’all stay warm!)

SB 22 grant applications and rules

Even though the final, official version of the rules for administering the SB 22 rural law enforcement grant program were running behind schedule, the Comptroller’s Office moved ahead with the grant application process. On Tuesday, January 2, 2024, that office emailed all eligible applicants in jurisdictions with a population of not greater than 300,000 with links to the online application for SB 22 grant funds. If you did not receive that information, please email them ASAP at [email protected]. The deadline for all applications in this first grant cycle is January 31, 2024, so do not delay.

This morning, the final rules as adopted by that office were published in the Texas Register. You can read those adopted rules HERE. They will officially take effect on Tuesday, January 16, 2024, and be referenced in the Texas Administrative Code as new Title 34, Part 1, Chapter 16, Subchapter D, Rules §§16.300–.306 (available HERE after this weekend).

The Comptroller received comments from seven different prosecutor offices as well as multiple other interested local officials, and the Register includes notes on reach request and why the agency did or did not act on it. You can read the full register entry for all the details, but some highlights include:

• Clarifying that only prosecutors (not counties) can apply for prosecutor grants. See §16.300(1).
• Requiring prosecutors’ grant funds to be used “to support the state purpose of ensuring professional legal representation of the people’s interests throughout the state.” Therefore, while “additional staff” hired using SB 22 funds are not explicitly limited to certain types of positions, any new position hire must support that purpose. See §§16.304(c)(2) and 16.304(g).
• At the request of two county auditors to clarify who qualifies as a “victim assistance coordinator”—as opposed to general office staff—the Comptroller notes that SB 22 did not intend for all staff to be treated as VACs and therefore adds a new definition for VACs requiring any such employee to be “designated to serve as victim assistance coordinator under Code of Criminal Procedure, article 56A.201, by a district attorney, criminal district attorney, or county attorney who prosecutes criminal cases and who is responsible for the duties listed in Code of Criminal Procedure, article 56A.202.” See §16.300(14).
• VACs must be employed at an eligible prosecutor’s office in order to qualify for SB 22 funds.
• Future SB 22 salary increases will be measured based on the person’s salary on the last day of an entity’s FY 2023, and those increases can be for both salary and hourly wages. See §16.304(h).
• Additional staff hired with SB 22 funds must be employees of a prosecutor’s office (as opposed to contract workers), but there are no restrictions on whether the employee’s work is performed remotely.
• Clarifies that grant funds can be used for costs incurred during a grantee’s 2024 fiscal year but prior to the grant award date. See §§16.303 and 16.306.
• Neither SB 22 nor the adopted rules create exceptions to a county’s ordinary budget-making process, so grantees must work within those existing statutory frameworks.

Again, for all the details, read today’s Texas Register entry. Remember to get your grant applications submitted before the month’s end, and for more general information about the SB 22 program, visit https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/development/grants/rural/.

Forensic DNA testing grants

The Office of the Governor has announced its annual funding opportunity for felony prosecutors seeking help with the costs of testing forensic evidence, including sexual assault forensic evidence. Applications for FY 2025 grants are due by February 8, 2024. Click HERE to learn more about this funding opportunity, which does not require any local match.

Prosecutor elections in 2024

We have done our best to gather information on all 281 upcoming prosecutor office races on the ballot in 2024. You can view the product of that work (updated with feedback to date—thanks to all who replied!) online HERE.

By our count, only about 20 percent of those 281 offices are being contested this year. For a Twitter/X thread of related observations about our data, click HERE.

And again, if you have edits or additions for our list, please email them to Shannon.

Bonus Lege Update course

In conjunction with next month’s Investigator Conference in San Marcos, we have added a live Legislative Update course on Friday, February 8, 2024, that is open to all. If you missed the live or online courses that we offered in 2023, this is your chance to get caught up with all the new legislative changes! Visit https://www.tdcaa.com/training/legislative-update-san-marcos/

for more information or to register online.

Scattershooting

Some recent stories you might find interesting:

• “The Texas Senate has its first female dean. What Sen. Judith Zaffirini hopes to accomplish” (Austin American-Statesman)
• “Legal challenge to Dallas County’s cash bail system ends after U.S. Supreme Court declines to step in” (Texas Tribune)
• “Broken promises: How marijuana legalization failed communities hit hardest by the drug war” (Politico)
• “Police Officers Are Charged With Crimes, but Are Juries Convicting?” (New York Times)
• “UK: Rapes and murders in the Metaverse could be treated as criminal offences, says National Crime Agency boss” (The Standard)

Quotes of the (Half-)Month

“We are deploying every tool and strategy that we possibly can. The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
            —Governor Greg Abbott, in a national radio interview about immigration last week.

“Message normally beats money, and the governor, to be successful, needs to educate, persuade, then mobilize voters on the rather narrow issue of school choice. It’s a tall order in a relatively short period of time.”
            —Brandon Rottinghaus, political scientist at the University of Houston, as quoted in a recent Dallas Morning News ($) article about the upcoming GOP primary races for the Texas House in which Governor Abbott has become an active participant.

“I didn’t know that marijuana could cause paranoia. They don’t even know what they’re smoking.”
            —Heather Bacchus, mother of a young man in Minnesota who committed suicide after multiple psychotic episodes triggered by excessive use of high-THC cannabis products, a troubling trend recently profiled by TheWall Street Journal (free).

[TDCAA offices will be closed Monday in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday]

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