JP offices tell commissioners Tyler software rollout is consuming clerks' time; judges seek tech‑fund pay boosts

Several justice‑of‑the‑peace judges and their chief clerks described prolonged problems with the county’s Tyler (i3 Verticals) case‑management system and asked the court to offset additional IT workload with targeted pay increases.

JP4’s chief judge described a long list of rights‑and‑roles questions and related mapping errors, saying chief clerks are spending hours every week in meetings with the vendor and county IT. “Tyler admitted this year all the OCA reports that we have submitted to Austin since we went live with Tyler are wrong,” one JP said, adding county staff have had to open repeated tickets and handle mapping and payment issues that should have been preconfigured by the vendor.

Justice offices reported concrete fiscal and operational impacts: credit‑card payment receipts that did not reconcile in the system, incorrect Omni/fee transfers that redirected state shares to the county during the conversion, and repeated ticket escalations that create cross‑office reconciliation work. Presenters said these problems have forced them to divert staff time from core court duties to IT troubleshooting.

Requested remedies included using the county’s justice/technology fund to pay a portion of chief clerks’ raises (presenters said the fund could support a 10% raise; several judges requested up to 20% though auditors warned it would exhaust the fund). Judges also urged the court to secure dedicated, recurring Tyler training hours and a stable vendor contact to reduce recurring ticket volume.

Why it matters: the software affects case processing, fee accounting and state reporting across multiple courts. Judges framed the request as a workforce and reliability issue: chief clerks are doing work—mapping, reconciliation, vendor coordination—that judges say should either be part of vendor deliverables or compensated as additional duties.