Candidates in the May 24 runoff elections spoke in a public forum for the final time Thursday night at the Brownwood Country Club as the Pecan Valley Republican Women’s Club allowed eight minutes speeches from the individual in Brown County’s three races.

The most continuous comments came from the two Brown County Judge candidates – incumbent Dr. Paul Lilly and Shane Britton – regarding the current caseload in the courthouse.

Britton spoke first and said the following:

“We have a crisis in Brown County and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I give a lot of statistics when I talk, but I give facts. I have a folder that has a printout of the most current data and I printed it last night. I can tell you exactly every case that has been filed, every case that’s been disposed of, every case that’s had a hearing in the last three and a half years.

“There were 650 misdemeanors pending in Brown County on Jan. 1, 2019. As of the end of April there were 1,050 cases. We’ve added 459 cases, 40 percent of our pending cases have been added in the last three and a half years. We can’t continue here. That is a road we cannot continue on. We have to have a county judge who hears cases, who schedules cases, who hears them in a timely manner and who disposes of them.

“Juveniles, we usually file and I don’t know how many but I have the numbers, but I believe (County Court at Law) Judge (Sam) Moss has heard about 60 or 70 juvenile cases in the last three and a half years. That’s the job of the county judge, that’s not the job of Judge Moss. Judge Moss is overworked, you can look at the numbers. I’ve compared him to every county court at law in a county our size in the state of Texas. He’s doing twice the work of every other county court at law judge in the state of Texas, and that is because he is having to do his job and the county judge’s job. That is unsustainable.”

Lilly’s response included refuting claims in a story published on BrownwoodNews.com following the Brown County Republican Women’s Club luncheon on May 13. Lilly told those in attendance Thursday night that Britton said, “someone, or that a staff attorney at the State Commission on Judicial Conduct told him, or advised him, not to file cases in my court. I tell you what, I called the Executive Director of that commission and she spoke with her staff and none of them, she assured me absolutely none of them made that statement to my opponent and that my opponent, and this is her words, ‘ought to know better as a judicial candidate to even make a statement like that is a violation of the cannon of ethics and a complaint could actually be made against him if I wanted to do so.’ But I’m above that and I’m not going to.”

Lilly also stated Thursday night he did not attend the event on May 13 because, “ I was having tests done for a heart procedure and I had heart surgery earlier this week, but I wanted to make sure I was here to speak to you tonight.”

The original BrownwoodNews.com story with Britton’s comments can be found here.

Lilly’s comments regarding the caseload continue as follows:

“You’ve heard my opponent say my court is behind, I’ve heard him say my court is closed and that is absolute nonsense. Let me tell you what the Brown County court has done. As of last Friday, 510 probate cases. I am the original probate court for the entire county by statute; 123 guardianships, those also come to me by statute; 12 civil eviction appeals from Justice of the Peace courts, those are entire trials that we have,and we’ve had 12 of those over the past three and a half years. Again 510 probate cases, 123 guardianship cases, 29 civil trails, that’s where someone in our community can’t get along with their neighbor and for whatever reason they file civil suits, and those originate in my court; 68 emergency detention orders I considered, which is where I go to the hospital, to the emergency room and I visit with someone who has attempted suicide or talked about taking their life or is a danger, as a county judge I do that as well. And before Mr. Britton stopped filing cases in my court I heard 35 criminal cases which I can still hear again today.

“So that’s 777 cases, and each one of those cases has a case file number that is trackable. Anybody can submit an open records request to my office and we’ll give you a printout of every single one of them. Those are certified and documented … For a court that’s been closed, that’s an awful lot of work that we’ve done in three and a half years, wouldn’t you agree?”

BrownwoodNews.com also posted a story Thursday that provides information to the public on how to research the number of cases that have been heard in the county court system over the past three years. The link to the story on the county court workload discrepancy can be found here.

Both candidates also shared their thought on other issues as well.

Britton spoke first, stating, “Taxes are out of control, but taxes are a necessary evil. You have to collect some taxes to pay for government, but there has to be some limitation. The limitation on taxes begins with budgeting. The county judge is the chief budget officer for the county by statute, by state law. It’s his responsibility for creating the annual budget, balancing that budget, living within that budget, that’s his responsibility. Taxes begin with budgeting, taxes are not just some nebulous idea that we don’t know where they come from, they are a direct result of budgeting. We have got to get control of our budget.

“Taxes, those are your dollars, that’s your money, that comes out of your pocket. So what I want to do is I want you to tell us how you want us to spend your dollars. You may want to give a raise to law enforcement and I agree for my taxes to go up in order to do that … but you need to be involved in the process. The budget doesn’t need to be set and heard and considered at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning during commissioners court. We need to have these meetings open, at night, where people can attend. Ultimately it’s the county judge’s responsibility to create a budget.

“We’re going to go back to zero base budgeting, we’re going to start over at zero every year. We’re not going to take last year’s budget and say ‘what do you want to add to this?’ That’s what the federal government does and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it never goes down. Every year we’re going to go back down to zero and make all the department heads justify their expenses.

“Every decision we make at the Brown County Courthouse needs to be done out in the open and part of a public hearing. No more back room deals, no more closed offices, that’s how the county decided how to spend the COVID money, in a closed office in a closed room in the county judge’s office. That is not acceptable. This is your money, this is your government and you will be involved in it.”

Lilly later retorted, stating, “One of the first things I did was televise the commissioners court meetings. I couldn’t get the commissioners to hold the meetings at any other time or even on any other day other than Monday at 9 a.m. Since that’s when they’re being held, we televise each and every one live on our county YouTube channel. Anyone can watch them, anyone can call their commissioner with any concerns they may have.

“If you think zero based budgeting works then why do none of the 253 other counties operate that way? Because it’s not effective, it doesn’t work. I am the chief budget officer of the county, I take full responsibility for that and I’m quite proud of it. We have one of the lowest tax rates, I’m talking about your county tax rates, per our population throughout the state. We balance our budget, sometimes by dipping into our reserves so we do not have to raise the county tax rate. I’m quite proud of that.

“What we’ve been able to do over the past three and a half years is because of the economy, even through COVID, improvements in the economy and additional people moving to our county, new businesses and new homes going on the tax roll, we’ve been able to fund our law enforcement at a level we’ve never been able to fund it before. We were able to raise their salaries substantially both in the jail and in the law enforcement side.”

Also Thursday night, Precinct 2 County Commissioners candidates incumbent Joel Kelton and Joel Hoskinson spoke, as did Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace candidates incumbent Ted Perez and H.Q. Thomas.

The final day of early voting is Friday with polls open from 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. at the Elections Office. Tuesday, May 24 is Election Day.