Written by Ben Cox – Enjoying his first month in office, new County Judge Dr. Paul Lilly reflects on his new position.

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“It’s going really, really well. Everybody’s been a big help in getting me situated, moved in, and accustomed to the way things run at the courthouse.”

While holding the position for a month, Lilly has actually only been physically “in” his office for two weeks, thanks to state mandated training in Lubbock and Austin.

He says that there have been a few surprises with the new position. “I knew that prior to me taking office the commissioners had put out an RFP and accepted bids for the continued operation of the juvenile justice center and elected to go with True Corps. They had a couple of competitive bids, which were all pretty much the same as I understand.  It’s a fair market value, unlike before where we weren’t getting that. I’m here to represent the tax payers, not the taxing entity. So I want to make sure they’re getting the best bang for their buck, and I’m sure we will be with that.”

Lilly says he is planning to make some changes to speed some things up in the courthouse. “What I am trying to do is open a third full-time court here in the county court. The county court has original jurisdiction on all Class A & B Misdemeanors. That’s a lot of your DWI 1st offenses, family violence, assault, bodily injury and things like that.”

“They weren’t being held in the county court, they were being punted upstairs to the county court at law. He’s already overloaded with family court, so what I’ll be doing is opening up a third full time court here so that we will expedite matters considerably. I’m going to set up a plan where anyone charged with a criminal offense will be arraigned in 10 days. Right now, it can be as much as three or four months before arraignments. That doesn’t meet my standard.”

Lilly says there is good news coming in the way of jobs in the future, thanks to work preparing to b done in the county. “The Plains American pipeline is planning to run a second one underground, parallel to the first one. The way that helps us is there will be over 3000 jobs created with that pipeline, and when they get close to our area they will start advertising for positions, quite a few well paying positions. The company has also placed $1 million in an account and any of our volunteer fire departments within a 30 mile radius of the pipeline can apply for grants from that million for equipment and training as soon as the funds are released.”

Lilly says the grant process “dovetails nicely with Bob Contreras coming on board as the Grants and Government Affairs Coordinator and he is already ready and willing as soon as they announce those grants. It’s first come, first served, so we’re gonna get as much as we can” for our local VFD’s.

Lilly and Contreras plan to attend the next Fire Chief’s meeting to explain the process and how to apply for funds.

He says that there is something in the works, at an embryonic stage, that could save the court a large amount of money every year. During a recent Judicial Academy, “he people from the Texas Indigency Defense Commission were there. I was crunching the numbers and it turns out there is a good possibility that we could save the county $100,000 to $150,000 a year if we incorporated a public defender program. Even with their salary and benefits we could still be saving money. I ran it by the director of the Texas Indigency Defense Commission, and after he looked at the numbers said it looked that way to him, as well.”

Lilly says that conversation lead to the Commission offering it’s services to the county. “The Commission is going to do a feasibility study for us, for free! They’re going to come in and look at our case load, crunch the numbers, and deliver a report to me that I can take to the commissioners that will tell us whether or not we will actually save money. And the money we are spending on court appointed attorneys is just incredible.”

He says that unlike court appointed attorneys, the public defenders would “move things much faster through the court system because you’d have those attorneys in the courthouse every day. The indigent clients would be their number one priority.”

Lilly also speaks very highly of his fellow courthouse judges Moss and Ellis. “They’ve been a big help. Whenever I have a question I just pick up the phone or run upstairs and visit with them.”One Month 

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