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2018-2019 Legislative Appropriations Request

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2018-2019 Legislative Appropriations Request LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATIONS REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEARS 2018 AND 2019 Submitted to the Office of the Governor, Budget Division and the Legislative Budget Board by Office of the Attorney General - State of Texas Ken Paxton August 26, 2016 OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FY 2018-2019 Legislative Appropriations Request TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Statement, Chart and Certification: 1.A. Administrator’s Statement 1 1.B. Organizational Chart 12 1.C. Certification of Dual Submission 15 Summaries of Request: Biennial Budget Overview 17 2.A. Base Request by Strategy 18 2.B. Base Request by Method of Financing (MOF) 20 2.C. Base Request by Object of Expense (OOE) 28 2.D. Base Request Objective Outcomes 29 2.E. Exceptional Items Request 30 2.F. Total Request by Strategy 31 2.G. Total Request Objective Outcomes 33 Strategy Requests and Biennial Change: 3.A. Legal Services 35 3.A. Child Support Enforcement 39 3.A. State Disbursement Unit 43 3.A. Crime Victims’ Compensation 47 3.A. Victims Assistance 51 3.A. Medicaid Investigation 55 3.A. Administrative Support for State Office of Risk Management (SORM) 59 3.A.1. Program-Level Request Schedule 63 3.B. Rider Revisions and Additions Request 65 OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FY 2018-2019 Legislative Appropriations Request TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE 3.C. Rider Appropriations and Unexpended Balances Request 82 Sub-Strategy Requests: 3.D. Criminal Investigations Division 89 3.E. Summary (Criminal Investigations Division Sub-Strategy Request) 92 3.D. Victims Assistance Coordinators and Victims Liaisons 93 3.D. Court Appointed Special Advocates 95 3.D. Sexual Assault Prevention and Crisis Services Program 97 3.D. Sexual Assault Services Program Grants 99 3.D. Children’s Advocacy Centers 101 3.D. Legal Services Grants 103 3.D. Other Victim Assistance Grants 105 3.D. Statewide Victim Notification System 107 3.D. Address Confidentiality 109 3.E. Summary (Victims Assistance Sub-Strategy Requests) 111 Exceptional Item: 4.A. Exceptional Item Request 112 4.B. Exceptional Item Strategy Allocation 114 4.C. Exceptional Item Strategy Request 120 Supporting Schedules: 5.A. Capital Budget Project Schedule 126 Capital Budget Project Schedule - Exceptional 134 5.B. Capital Budget Project Information 135 5.C. Capital Budget Allocation to Strategies (Baseline) 140 Capital Budget Allocation to Strategies By Project - Exceptional 144 5.E. Capital Budget Project Schedule: Object of Expense and Method of Financing by Strategy 145 OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FY 2018-2019 Legislative Appropriations Request TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Supporting Schedules (continued): 6.A. Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) 166 6.B. Current Biennium One-Time Expenditure 167 6.C. Federal Funds Supporting Schedule 168 6.D. Federal Funds Tracking 173 6.E. Estimated Revenue Collections 179 6.G. Homeland Security Funding 185 6.I. 10 Percent Biennial Base Reduction Options 187 7.A. Indirect Administrative and Support Costs 192 7.B. Direct Administrative and Support Costs 199 - This page left blank intentionally - Office of the Attorney General Administrator’s Statement Agency Overview Governance The Texas Attorney General, an elected constitutional office holder, is the State of Texas’ chief legal officer. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) provides legal representation to state officials and agencies, renders legal opinions, safeguards the Texas Public Information Act, and enforces civil penalties prescribed by the Legislature. The OAG protects individual liberties and seeks justice for victims of crimes through investigating and prosecuting criminal activities, specifically crimes of human trafficking, internet crimes against children, and fugitives in violation of state sex offender laws. The OAG promotes and defends families through enforcing the state’s child support laws and provides support to victims of violent crime by administering victim assistance programs. The OAG has four major operational functions: (1) provide skillful legal representation, counsel, and assistance to the State of Texas and its authorized entities and employees in the lawful performance of their duties; (2) ensure that Texas child support laws are enforced and child support is properly collected on behalf of Texas families; (3) provide investigative and prosecutorial assistance to seek justice for individuals from human trafficking, online sexual exploitation, sex offender apprehension, money laundering, white collar crime, and crimes committed by transnational organized criminals, and to detect and refer cases of Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse; and (4) assist in the compassionate and effective delivery of crime victim services by offering information, resources, funding, and education to crime victims and the organizations that assist them. The OAG is referenced in statutes thousands of times, with many legislatively required functions. The OAG relies on a mixture of General Revenue (GR), General Revenue-Dedicated (GR-D) Funds, Federal Funds, and Appropriated Receipts to operate effectively among the four major operational functions. Legal Services Overview The OAG oversees the state’s civil litigation matters and divides the cases among eleven divisions to cover both defense and enforcement actions. The OAG Civil Litigation Divisions filed 27,247 cases and recovered over $160 million to state GR in FY 2015. From FY 2011-15, these divisions recovered more than $1 billion to state GR. These cases include matters involving bankruptcy and collections, civil Medicaid fraud, consumer protection, environmental protection, and transportation. The OAG’s litigation divisions also saved state taxpayers a significant amount of money in defense of state laws, agencies, officials, and employees. The OAG defends the state in various lawsuits including: (1) administrative law matters; (2) regulatory and financial matters; (3) employment litigation; (4) tort 1 actions; (5) challenges to the constitutionality of Texas statutes and the state’s administration of programs such as public education, the prison system, Medicaid, the foster care system, and the state hospital system; (6) law enforcement matters; (7) tax suits; and (8) personal injury and property damage suits. The OAG’s Legal Counsel Divisions fulfill critically important non-litigation functions. The General Counsel Division protects taxpayer dollars by reviewing outside counsel contracts before state agencies hire private law firms, reviewing legal billing statements from agencies’ outside law firms, and conducting legal reviews of the Texas Department of Transportation’s (TXDOT) billion-dollar comprehensive development agreements. The Open Records Division (ORD) issues written decisions under the Texas Public Information Act to provide access, transparency, and clarity relating to public records, provides legal advice and research to the legislative and executive branches of the state government, and coordinates conferences on access to public information. From FY 2011-15, ORD issued over 110,000 letter rulings in response to governmental bodies’ requests to withhold information. The Public Finance Division reviews proceedings for all bonds, public securities, and similar obligations issued by state agencies, cities, counties, school districts, institutions of higher education, and other governmental entities or instruments of the state plus certain non-profit corporations created to act on behalf of political subdivisions. Finally, the Opinion Committee researches and drafts legal opinions in response to questions of law posed by persons authorized by statute to request formal Attorney General opinions. A key component of the OAG is the criminal prosecutions and criminal investigations that are conducted on behalf of the state and the assistance provided to local law enforcement agencies and county and/or district attorneys when requested. The Criminal Justice Divisions have legal sections which provide assistance to local jurisdictions where the county may not have the resources available to investigate or prosecute a complex case, where a conflict of interest prohibits the local jurisdiction from taking part in the case, or additional expertise from the OAG may be necessary. These areas of criminal prosecutions include violent crimes and major offenders, white collar crimes, and public integrity, human trafficking and transnational/organized crimes, and juvenile justice intervention. In the OAG’s Criminal Appeals Division, the OAG defends the validity of state felony convictions and sentences when they are challenged in federal courts through direct review in the U.S. Supreme Court and through federal habeas corpus review. The OAG conducts criminal investigations and apprehensions including proactively investigating cyber-crimes such as child pornography, solicitation of minors, identity theft, and fraud, locating and apprehending convicted sex offenders who have failed to comply with mandated sex offender registration requirements, and conducting digital forensics investigations. The Criminal Investigations Division has four units that handle criminal cases in which OAG investigators’ experience fulfill a service area need within the law enforcement community. The Criminal Investigations Division units include: (1) the Child Exploitation Unit; (2) the Fugitive Apprehension Unit; (3) the Special Investigations Unit (White Collar, Public Integrity, Election Fraud, and Organized Crime); and (4) the Digital Forensics Unit. 2 Enforce Child Support Laws Overview As the statutorily-designated child support enforcement
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