Medical examiner requests pay boost and flags staffing, transport-cost increases

Tracy, the medical examiner, presented the office’s FY27 budget request and asked the court to approve a modest salary increase for her position while noting workforce strain in investigator and clerical ranks. She said the office has cycled through four part-time investigators in under a year and that she has been covering clerk duties and investigator shifts to keep comp time down.

"I wanna say it was probably around 20,000," Tracy said when describing an apparent increase in charges from Tarrant County for transport services, and she asked the court to set up another face-to-face meeting to reconcile conflicting information about stabilization after year three. Tracy also told the court she had to decrease a repair-and-maintenance line because the office no longer has a generator and requested modest increases for vehicle maintenance and general supplies to outfit older trucks.

The court’s commissioners pressed for clarification on two separate cost items: the inter-county transport charge (the roughly $20,000 increase Tracy attributed to Tarrant County) and a separate request to increase her own salary by about 8,700 (roughly 10%). Commissioner (speaker 6) summarized that Tracy had benchmarked Johnson County and argued market pay there is higher, and commissioners asked Tracy to provide job descriptions and follow up in the budget committee before final decisions. The court agreed to schedule a follow-up meeting to resolve the transport charge discrepancy and better document the proposed salary step increase.