John, I'm not sure if this is a matter for your update but your post reminded me of a request which I have received from our "new & improved" county collections department. They want us to change our felony plea papers and judgments to reflect that fine and court cost payments paid during a probationary term will be according to a contract/agreement with the county collections department. This agreement does not happen until after a plea. Apparently, this language will be in lieu of our normal language setting out monthly payments, etc., paid out over a probationary term. I'm being told that this is a requirement of the Office of Court Administration and that the failure to do it their way will result in some sort of loss of funding from the state. My jaded opinion is that the collections department just wants "credit" for the payment of felony fines and court costs, the payment of which will be forced by the probation department/judges/my office rather than the collections department. Is anybody familiar with this situation in other counties?

Mike, I'm glad you mentioned that. I was wondering whether to look into the development of collections as a component of a plea. It didn't seem all that important, given the ability of a judge to include an order for payment as a condition. I'll check on this new development.

I'm also wondering whether anyone is seeing changes in their plea agreements on adjudications/revocations because of guidelines being adoped (voluntary) in some counties as a result of funding changes.

You might want to mention the now mandatory use of the OCA judgment form in felony cases.

I'm on that one, including a link to the website. Although the OCA (Office of Court Administration) hasn't yet said it, you can expect the enforcement of that provision eventually to come through TDCJ's ability to deny a transfer from county jail to prison until a defendant is "paper ready." And the legal definition of "paper ready" includes counties using the OCA's now mandatory judgments.

Always a hot topic, particularly when a defendant is serving time in another state and prosecutor or judge wants to know if they can plea the defendant out without him being present (mostly misdemeanors if I recall correctly). I got that question a few times with variations of the defendant wanting to plea out to dispose of the case and then conversely not wanting to plea out, using the fact that he had a right to be present. or so he argued, to push back the case. I'm pretty sure I never gave the right answer to that question, so a few more sentences on that topic might help.