Official overseeing Texas DPS promises to modernize agency

Jun. 25, 2008


By JOHN MORITZ

AUSTIN — The head of the commission that oversees the Texas Department of Public Safety promised lawmakers Tuesday that he’s taking aggressive steps to modernize the elite law enforcement agency and challenged them to hold him accountable if he fails.

"My opinion is that the buck is going to stop with me," Public Safety Commission Chairman Allan Polunsky told the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, an arm of the Legislature that periodically evaluates the performances of state agencies.

His remarks came in response to a blistering review of DPS that identified faults with the agency’s recruitment efforts and promotion policies and with the way it manages driver’s license issuance and motor vehicle inspections. Polunsky did not delve too deeply into specifics but was receptive to recommendations in the Sunset report that DPS adopt customer-friendly business models for the driver’s license and vehicle inspection programs.

Outside expert

Polunsky said the DPS is hiring a consultant to recommend policy updates and to examine a top-to-bottom agency overhaul.

He also suggested that the agency’s day-to-day top executive, DPS Col. Tommy Davis, would be well advised to embrace rather than resist efforts to streamline the department.

"There’s no discussion at this point about replacing Col. Davis," Polunsky told reporters after the hearing. "If he is unsuccessful or unwilling to [implement new programs], and I’m speaking in the hypothetical, then we’ll find someone else."

Davis, a longtime DPS administrator who has run the agency for the past eight years, testified alongside Polunsky, assuring the panel that he recognizes the need for modernizing the agency. But he also said the DPS is in better shape than ever. He declined to talk with reporters after testifying.

Lawmakers’ concerns

Several commission members raised concerns about a range of DPS problems, from excessively long lines to renew driver’s licenses to the growing shortage of state troopers aggravated by competition from local and federal law enforcement agencies.

"We spend a lot of money training those guys," said state Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, referring to the six months recruit troopers spend in the agency’s academy. "We’re training them for somebody else."

Polunsky said that even though the Legislature boosted troopers’ pay in 2005 and in 2007, cities like Fort Worth and Houston pay their police officers more.

State Reps. Linda Harper Brown, R-Irving, and Dan Flynn, R-Van, said they have heard that troopers are dissuaded from arresting people who enter the country illegally or traffic in human smuggling.

"Is it a practice of the department not to enforce these laws?" Harper Brown asked.

Davis replied that immigration is a federal matter and that when troopers encounter illegal immigrants in the course of investigating state crimes or during a traffic stop, they notify federal officials.

No update on mansion fire

The commission’s report was drafted before the June 8 arson fire at the Governor’s Mansion, and although DPS has been criticized for having only one trooper on duty when the arsonist struck, lawmakers on the panel largely steered clear of the topic. Polunsky did say the investigation is continuing and that he looks forward to making the findings public.

www.txdps.state.tx.us John Moritz reports from the Star-Telegram’s Austin bureau, 512-476-4294.