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Commissioners approve $220,000 transfer to cover pretrial electronic-monitoring costs; officials warn total FY25 shortfall larger
Summary
Travis County Commissioners on June 3 approved a $220,000 transfer from an earmark to Pretrial Services to pay electronic-monitoring device invoices through July 2025, while budget officials warned that projected FY25 device costs could exceed available funds by roughly $900,000–$1,000,000.
The Travis County Commissioners Court on June 3 unanimously approved a request to transfer $220,000 from an earmark against the county’s allocated reserve to the Pretrial Services Division to cover electronic-monitoring device expenses through July 2025.
Travis Gallant of the Planning and Budget Office asked the court to approve the transfer to help pretrial services pay immediate invoices. Miranda Besampos, also of PBO, detailed recent spending: “Pretrial services FY 2025 revised budget for the electronic monitoring devices is just over $2,200,000 and their expenses from invoices from October 2024 to April 2025 was just over 1,500,000.0.” PBO projected an additional $1,600,000 in device expenditures from May to September, yielding a projected FY25 total of just over $3,100,000 and a gap of about $934,987 without additional funds.
Officials said the increase reflects two trends: the county is covering a larger share of device costs that defendants once paid, and device contract prices rose after a March 2024 procurement update. Jackie Van Warmer, county executive for Innovative Justice and Program Analysis (IJPA), said IJPA will work with Pretrial Services to review data, assess supervision practices and align conditions of release with best practices. “We also wanna look at validation of the risk assessment tool that’s used,” Van Warmer said; staff noted the tool was implemented in 2012 and needs local validation and updating.
Stacy Brown, division director of Pretrial Services, said the office is seeing more diversion cases that require device funding and that the device caseload has increased in recent years. Brown and PBO said the $220,000 transfer will help cover immediate invoices but will not eliminate the larger shortfall projected for the fiscal year.
Court action and vote: Commissioner Gomez moved the transfer; Commissioner Shea seconded. The motion passed unanimously.
Follow-up and next steps: PBO, IJPA and Pretrial Services will review device use, cost drivers and supervision practices and return to Commissioners Court in July with an update and a funding plan for the remainder of FY25; IJPA said it will consider best-practice steps such as stepped-down monitoring, validation of risk-assessment instruments, and review of court-ordered release conditions.
Background and why it matters: Pretrial electronic-monitoring devices (SCRAM, PAM, RF/house-arrest and GPS) are used to supervise defendants in the community. Officials said the county’s funding share of those services has grown — from roughly one-third of invoices in earlier years to a projected majority in FY25 — and device-price increases and more device placements are driving higher costs. PBO said those combined changes explain most of the projected overspend for FY25.
What the court asked for: Commissioners approved the $220,000 transfer to address near-term invoices and asked staff to bring back a comprehensive funding and operations plan in July. PBO warned that while the transfer helps in the short term “there’s still gonna be $712,000 short this year” under some assumptions; in its memo PBO estimated the shortfall nearer to $934,987 if no further adjustments are made.
