Story and photos courtesy of Steve Nash – Special Contributor to BrownwoodNews.com

Brown County Judge candidates Tom Munson and Patrick Howard spoke at a mini-forum Friday hosted by the Brown County Republican Women’s Club, at the Brownwood Country Club.

Munson and Howard face each other in the May 26 Brown County Republican Party runoff election. Early voting is May 18-22.

The candidates answered questions read by club president Suellen Dammann, including:

Question: When you walk into the physical office of the county judge, what are your thoughts? What are you going to do? What’s going to be your first priority? What have you done to prepare for this position?

Munson: I think it has a lot to do with the timing of when we might take office because there’s some question about when that might actually happen. If we were elected and placed into the office early, before the end of the year, it kind of depends on where we are in the budget cycle.

The first thing would be, dive into the budget, get going on it because there’s not much time in my mind to really do a good job on that. The second thing is to get the actual courtroom, the constitutional county court, going and start hearing cases and let’s move along with that in coordination with the county court of law and the district court in the way that they deem is the best way to move forward. 

Howard: The first thing and really the easiest thing for me is we need to get the courtroom moving. I don’t think the county understands how much the backlog of cases is costing the county. It’s costing the county both in moving cases to justice and giving people relief from cases that have been pending for a long time.

But it’s also costing us millions of dollars. And what I mean by that is we have people in jail that have been there 60, 90 days and getting out of jail, $75 a day times hundreds. You get into these hundreds of thousands of dollars very quickly. Working on those cases for 20 some odd years, I have the ability to do that immediately on day one in the office. Mr. Munson is right. If we come in the middle of a budget cycle, we’re going to have to get immediately started on that.

The county serves the jails, serves the sheriff’s office, serves the county clerks, serves the treasurers, the auditors. These are all parts of the county. Working in the courthouse for the last 23 years, I have the experience and the relationships with all of them to be able to step in on day one, which will save us money and put certainty into business.

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Question: The county judge position has two roles in Brown County. What will you bring to the administrative side and what will you bring to the judicial side of the county judge position? Why are you the best person for each of those jobs?

Munson: I’m going to start with the courtroom side. I’ll bring balance. I’ll bring an even temperament. I’ll bring a reliance on facts. Not rumor, not speculation, not a guess. Whatever comes through that court, it has to be a proven fact before you can make a ruling on it.

On the administrative side, I’ve run a company across the road for 35-plus years. It’s fairly complex. A lot of employees, big budget, a lot going on. The county’s a very different structure, so I’m not going to pretend like I’m the one that can go up there and make all the decisions, but I have a lot to offer with regard to helping the county run in a more business-like manner.

On top of that, I have a lot of experience with financial statements and looking at a variety of institutions of all kinds. Not just companies, but the quasi-governmental agencies, nonprofit agencies. I’ve done that my whole career. So I feel very comfortable in getting into the finances of the county, looking at the budget, looking at the financial statements, and kind of dissecting them to come to a good place, ultimately.

Also, I just want to say about the backlog. I checked on that yesterday. As I understand it, the backlog, really, there’s not much of one because they worked hard to create that.

Howard: In practicing law, there’s been a lot in this campaign about my experience in the courtroom. I have well-rounded legal experience. I’ve practiced in a small legal office. We’ve talked about fiscal responsibility and efficiency, and I’m not saying there’s no one more efficient than a small business owner because we know that every dollar we save is a living dollar in our family’s pocket. I will bring that to the office. As far as being well-rounded in the administrative, I have represented multiple companies and workers in aggravations.

I’ve represented multi-million-dollar companies in contracts. I’ve worked with Valero Energy Corporation, which is a billion-dollar corporation. And so I bring lots of legal experience on the administrative side of things in addition to the 20-some-odd years of working these cases. These are important cases.

The judicial cases are important. Guardianships change people’s lives. Juvenile delinquency cases can help and change people’s lives. Estates waiting to sell your loved one’s affairs change people’s lives. There’s nobody who’s done more criminal work in Brown County than I have in the last 20 years. I believe that my experience is well-suited both on the judicial and the administrative, especially for this job where I’m going to be working administratively with the same groups and the same types of people I’ve worked with for 23 years.

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Question: According to the debt service schedule on page 74 of the budget, Brown County’s total debt is $3.9 million. Brown County has more than $9 million in undesignated or unsigned free cash. I’m only referring to the general fund. We’re holding on to debt that costs the taxpayers almost a million dollars per year in interest. Is this situation acceptable to you, or would you try to change it, and how?

Howard: I don’t think it’s acceptable. And how’s the best way to approach debt? To me, it’s to quit spending money. I propose that  what we should do with our budget — and we had a great speaker here last time that talked about that, our budget has been going up above the cost of living increases and inflation.

We’ve been spending more money than what would have kept the status quo. And so I think when we talk about paying off debt, we need to quit spending money, first of all. And we’re not going to be able to quit spending money as a county, but we need to quit spending money on things that aren’t priorities. I’ve talked about priorities being law enforcement, being essential public works, being veterans, being county workers.

We should be spending money on those first, and then spending money on other things second. And then, not only that, but be looking at grants, outside funding before we spend money on discretionary things. If we can quit spending as much money and quit spending as much taxpayer money, we’re going to have more to pay off the debt, and that’s going to save us money.

Munson: What I hear you saying to me is more about should we take some of our surplus and use it to retire debt. In that regard, I don’t know. And here’s why. One thing you need to remember is that the money that we have in surplus, we earn interest on. The county treasurer talked about that a lot in his campaign for office. So we do earn interest on that. There’s a net that occurs.

And I don’t know enough about the debt that exists to know whether it can be retired early. Because sometimes when you issue a bond, you’re saying it’s not necessarily callable, where you can call that back. So I’m just talking about things that I know in the background that I don’t know specifically applies to the debt of Brown County. So I think you’ve also got to be careful.

Remember that $9 million feels like a lot, but I believe we went through about $2 million of that last year. So our cash balance has gone down significantly in the past year. So we need to be careful, because you really do have to have a reserve. You want to be careful you don’t put yourself in a position where, now we’ve got to go borrow money. I think that’s a good question that deserves more thinking about.

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The candidates made closing statements.

Munson: Why did I enter this race? In all honesty, it’s because I believe I can do a good job. I’ve mentioned that I used to work for the company across the road, Landmark Admin is what it’s called now. It’s running itself. They don’t need me anymore.

So I have time to do this job. I have a unique skill set. I have a unique background. But as far as I know, the county’s never had this offered as a county judge.

But I have a business background that I can use to work with the leaders of our county to try to make it run better.

So I think, yes, we want to do what we can to not spend money in a wasteful way. We just want to be sure that we spend it in the best way. What is the best way to do something? What’s the most efficient way? What are you doing that you wish I didn’t have to do it that way? If I could do it this way, it would be better. We will talk about that.

So I feel like my business experience is unique and can help in the running of the county. I want to make this clear. On the legal side, I have been a licensed attorney since 1989. Since I’ve come to Landmark, I’ve been involved in the legal business in one way or another for basically almost every day that comes by, whether it be contracts or litigation. It’s a pragmatic approach to the law where you look at the facts, you think about what’s the best way forward, and you move forward.

You mentioned Valero. I’ve dealt with that. We’ve negotiated contracts on our own. So I’ve done that, and on the legal side, I’m a balanced person.

I’m fair. I think you can find that if you’ll talk to people that know me throughout the county. I have tried over my time in Brown County to do what I can to help it be a better place. I have served on a lot of different organizations that are geared toward helping people.

Howard: I’m not going to talk so much about qualifications or experience. I’m going to talk about ideas.

We’ve been here for 23 years. We’re not newcomers to Brown County, and we’ve talked about coming to Brown County and why we came here. Absolutely it offered a whole lot.

We are running towards the vision of the future. That doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate what’s happened before, but it does mean we have a different perspective. We think Brown County is ready for a different perspective.

As we’ve traveled through this county, we’ve heard over and over, and we have put our feet where our mouth is. We have been to every part of this county, and we’ve met with all different types of people, all different types of groups, and they keep saying we want something different for Brown County, and that’s what I’m running on. I hope to bring dignity.

I hope to bring long-term stability to this office. I’m not anti-anybody, and what I mean by that, and I guess the country club is the best place to say I’m not anti-the country club. We are running an inclusive message, which means we want to bring everybody in.

That’s not excluding anybody. We would like to move towards the future of Brown County. Now, let’s talk about some ideas.

Let’s talk about administrative. We talked about administrative versus judicial. They’re related. We have four commissioners on the administrative side. Effectively, you have five county judges on almost every administrative decision.

It’s important to understand that. Judicially, you have JPs. And so when we talk about whether it’s 80% administrative or 20% judicial, you have the JPs that do their own separate job. The county judge is those two combined.

We branched this whole legal business. We built it from the ground up. Our administrative experience is directly relevant to the job of the county judge.

We’ve worked for sheriff’s offices. We’ve worked with 40 other counties. It’s important.

That’s dozens of other county judges, hundreds of sheriff’s officers, hundreds of different employees. With that experience, we know what works and what will save you money. Our practice is well-rounded.

We need to get competitive bids on our contracts. And if we don’t like them, we need to re-bid them. We need to spend our money on priorities first, law enforcement, veterans, essential public works.

As far as discretionary expenditures, those things you’d like to do and I’d love to pick the fairgrounds. But what have I talked about over and over and over? We’re going to try to fix the fairgrounds on grants and public money before we ask for taxpayer money.