County Judge gave me an emergency response plan to review. It appears to be a "one size fits all" plan prepared by someone at our COG. Part "U" is the annex for the County Attorney (CA). In the action part of "U" the CA is tasked to perform a dozen or so functions in various emergencies. (I did this stuff all the time in the Air Force and spent lots of time as legal adviser to on-scene commanders during real emergencies.) However, these taskings in the COG plan go far beyond my statutory CA responsibilities. They purport to establish tasks and actions for the CA to take which all fall within the area of civil law legal advice a/la GA 0153. And, as Scott pointed out, absent statutory language, we are not obligated (and for some of these tasks, perhaps not even authorized) to perform.

Some things are pretty risky, like "advise the County Judge when he may declare a riot and remove all persons from the streets." I don't have any problem with doing all this in a real emergency, but should I address this at all to the Judge? to the COG? Whoever wrote the legal annex either knows a lot more about CA duties in emergencies than I do, or they didn't consider the lack of statutory responsibility.

Ideas?

You're right to be suspicious, Mike. It sounds at first blush like a host of unfunded contractual mandates that you don't want to take on. I suspect that, in reality, it's more a case of some grant writer at your COG being unaware of how county government works and what the relationship really is between the county attorney and the county. For a long time, Texas courts have held that the county is authorized to retain experts, including attorneys. There is no express prohibition against that expert being the county attorney. But it is a contractual, rather than a statutory, matter. If you agree up front to these additional contractual obligations, without an adjustment of consideration to be provided to you by the county, then you're probably stuck doing it without being able to ask for more compensation. See Tex. Const. art. III, sec. 53. Thus, it may be advisable to clue in your commissioners court that you're willing to take on the extra duties (if, in fact, you are), but there will have to be contractual consideration for doing so since it's not among your statutory duties. Or they can hire a $250-plus-per-hour rug firm out of Dallas or Austin to do it for them. That's the beauty of free enterprise.

Actually, you can thank the Osama crowd for this one. The emergency plan is a FEMA critter, passed through the state, COGS, and into the counties.

Thankfully, my county judge allowed me to look it over carefully before adopting it, and we made several revisions to fit our small county. One revision involved not passing the section under discussion!