Jerry Hoagland: Court reporters are cleaning up
09:15 AM CDT on Wednesday, March 14, 2007

State laws related to court reporters in the district and county courts are badly broken and are in need of a major overhaul. Consider the following statutory protections given to these public servants:

First, state law says that the court reporter is the official owner of the trial record, so when people need a transcript of the court proceedings, they must purchase a copy directly from the court reporter. Payment is made to the court reporter and not the county, the court reporter's employer. If the county is the party requesting a copy of the transcript, the county must pay the court reporter for the transcript.
 

The county should be the owner of the trial record, not the court reporters. Many times the court reporter involved in an old case has moved away from the area or has died, making it difficult to secure a transcript of the trial proceedings.

Second, state law permits the district judges to set the salaries for their court reporters. All other county employees have their salaries established by the Commissioners Court. The district judges in Collin County have been particularly generous to their court reporters. The judges order the county to pay their court reporters $84,905 a year! (Misdemeanor prosecuting attorneys in the district attorney's office only earn from $51,334 to $68,994 per year.) Something's wrong with this picture.

Third, state law permits the court reporter to decide how much you and I will pay for a copy of the transcript. They charge $4 per page (double-spaced pages) in Collin County. One court reporter in Collin County was recently paid more than $150,000 for the year as her salary (including benefits and transcript compensation). This is the amount of money paid to her by the county. She received additional compensation from other private parties requesting court transcripts. Not bad for someone who isn't required to have a college degree, wouldn't you agree?

Fourth, state law gives court reporters six weeks of paid time off per year to prepare their transcripts, which they can then sell the back to the county. These six weeks are in addition to four weeks of paid vacation and two weeks of paid holidays, so you end up paying for 12 weeks of paid time off!

Collin County spent more than $2 million last year to compensate 14 court reporters. That's an average cost of more than $143,000 per court. I believe this expense could be cut in half if the judges could be persuaded to embrace electronic court reporting. You should talk to any of the judges you know, if you would like to save $1 million next year.

You should also contact your state representatives and state senators to demand that these laws be changed. We should not hold our state officials responsible for any poor legislation that existed when they were elected to office, but they should be held accountable for letting bad laws stay on the books, once they become aware of the existence of these statutes.

Jerry Hoagland represents Precinct 2 (Southeast Collin County) on the Collin County Commissioners Court. His e-mail address is jhoagland@collincounty tx.gov.