District attorney seeks digital-evidence coordinator as caseload rises; office cites more than 3 million items

Miss Parsons, district attorney, told the Commissioners Court her office requested a reclassification from a legal-administration secretary (hourly) to a salaried digital evidence coordinator at no net cost to the county because the role already existed in the staffing complement. "There's over 3,100,000 items of evidence that we are dealing with digitally in our office," Parsons said, describing the scope of the coordinator's responsibilities.

Parsons said the coordinator supervises three other discovery staff, provides internal and external training to defense counsel and law enforcement, and is working with local agencies to standardize file-naming conventions. "He helps those individuals. We've also looked at this and worked with the law enforcement agencies ... to be able to have quarterly meetings so that we can streamline and start long term having, like, a naming convention," Parsons said. The office presented the requested title change as a salary reclassification, not a new funded position; staff told the court the conversion is a personal/title change with "0 cost" to the county.

Parsons also referenced the county-level supplement changes driven by the state benchmark discussed elsewhere in the workshop but stressed the operational need for the digital-evidence role and supervisory responsibilities the incumbent performs. Court members did not take final action on the request during the workshop; the presentation was part of the ongoing personnel-review portion of the proposed budget process.