Williamson County attorney candidates

Dee Hobbs

A Hutto resident, Dee Hobbs is is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Baylor University School of Law. Hobbs has been an assistant county attorney with the county attorney’s office since 2001.

Q. What made you decide to run for county attorney?

A. I love this office. I love what I do. I’ve told some other folks I was visiting with, think of that project that you’ve had, whether it’s a profession if you are a private business owner, a charity, or anything like that that you’ve invested a lot of time into and you’ve seen it grow and develop, and you believe in it and you want to continue to be involved in it. And that’s how I see the county attorney’s office.

Q. What in your background makes you a strong candidate for the county attorney position?

A. A little over 10 years’ experience with the exact office that I’m running for. I can tell you every nook and cranny of that office. I can tell you the budget, I can tell you the names of every one of the 44 employees, 45 including the elected official, the challenges we’ve faced with the growth over the last 10 years, where we still need to improve, where we can excel. The knowledge that I’ve gained over the last decade is what I want to apply to the future.

Q. What is the biggest issue for the county attorney’s office?

A. Managing the growth. We have to continue a high level of customer service to all that we serve—that’s the law enforcement community, that’s the victims of crime, that’s the children of the county that we protect and the citizens we try to keep safe through the prosecution of the criminal side of it.

Q. How do you plan to improve the office?

A. Continue on the path that we have been following in the last 10 years, which is the use of technology and an eye on being the best that we absolutely can for those that we serve. There are so many programs that I want to get off the ground. There are so many aspects of the office that we can continue to improve. We just got an award for the use of technology for going paperless with the criminal division. They’re going to roll it out so that we can make the Child Protective Services division paperless starting in 2013. ...

I’d like to see working with mental health issues, because a lot of our caseload is dedicated to dealing with mental health cases.

Rick Kennon

A graduate of Baylor University and Texas Tech University School of Law, Rick Kennon was the prosecutor at the Travis County Attorney’s Office before joining the Texas Attorney General’s office in the highway division. He has now been in private legal practice for about 20 years and lives in Round Rock.

Q. What made you decide to run for county attorney?

A. I decided to run primarily because of the conflict that was ongoing over the last several years with the Commissioners Court and the county attorney’s office, as well as I guess there was some conflict between the county court of law judges and the county attorney’s office as well. When I announced, Jana Duty was still running for county attorney, then she decided to run for [district attorney], and the other people jumped in the race. That was really my initial thought on why, because we just need to make a change and correct that problem so we can get back to business. That was my main reason for running at the time.

Q. What in your background makes you a strong candidate for the county attorney position?

A. I’m the only candidate in the race that has experience doing everything that office does. I’ve been a prosecutor, and in the last 10 or 12 years or so, I’ve been doing primarily family law cases. I do a lot of [Child Protective Services] cases, and I’m on the court-appointed list for CPS. In addition to the criminal prosecution, I’ve also dealt a lot with CPS and those type of cases. And I’m the only one in the race who has actually done civil litigation, in particular litigation where a governmental entity is a party. When I was with the AG’s office, that’s what we did and tried cases all around the state. The problem that we’ve got now with that office now is not the criminal prosecution and not the CPS cases, the problem we’ve got is the civil side. Commissioners Court, who determines who represents the county, is sending those cases out to private law firms. With my experience in that area, we can get the confidence back from the Commissioners Court in that area.

Q. What is the biggest issue for the county attorney’s office?

A. The real issue is resolving this conflict and trying to save taxpayer money and get these civil cases back into that office. I think the criminal division does a good job, and I think the family division does a good job. There may or may not be changes that need to be made there, but as a general rule, those different divisions are in good shape and do a good job. So the big focus has to be on this confidence issue and conflict that has been ongoing with the Commissioners Court. I think we need to get that resolved. As a result of that, I think we can get the civil cases, not all of them, obviously, but the majority of those cases back in that office and save a lot of money and let the lawyers do what they are supposed to do.

Q. How do you plan to improve the office?

A. That’s kind of a hard question for me from the standpoint of because I’m not there to see what goes on. I’m assuming that if I’m elected, I’ll have a better idea of what needs to be done with the regard to either the criminal or the family law side of that. I know one thing that’s coming up is that there needs to be greater communication between the office and law enforcement. I have found that some of the law enforcement agencies have had little or no contact with the county attorney’s office regarding handling of cases. I understand that there’s been an effort recently to try to improve communication, which needs to be done. But again, I think the majority of the issue is the civil lawsuits and getting those back in-house and gain that confidence with the Commissioners Court.

Jeff Maurice

Jeff Maurice has lived in Central Texas for more than 30 years and now resides in the Jonah area. He has a master of business administration and a law degree from The University of Texas at Austin. Maurice was an associate attorney with the Winstead P.C. law firm before working for Dell Inc. for 10 years, where he a was a senior corporate counsel. Since 2002, he has operated a private legal practice.

Q. What made you decide to run for county attorney?

A. I’m running for county attorney because the county government has become big business with sophisticated contracts and debt arrangements. As many people know, the county’s annual budget now approaches $215 million a year, and the county tax-supported debt with interest is $1.24 billion. Regardless of how you look at that, whether you think it’s appropriate given our growth or you think it’s too high, my point is—that’s big business. The county attorney’s office needs an attorney and a leader that can manage not just the prosecution of criminal cases, but can also add value to the growing contractual and business complexities that face the county, and that ultimately affect us all as county taxpayers.

Q. What in your background makes you a strong candidate for the county attorney position?

A. In my experience both at Dell and at Winstead, I gained an extensive amount of knowledge in a variety of legal areas, including contracts, debt instruments, regulatory law, administrative law, construction, real estate development, facilities management, government contracting, bidding, competitive contracting. While at Dell, I was the lead attorney on the team that acquired, developed and expanded Dell’s Round Rock campus, obviously one of the most significant development projects in the history of the county. I also did the same thing for Dell’s Austin and Nashville campuses. While working on those projects, I managed teams of attorneys and others on a vast array of contracts totaling over a billion dollars. So I feel that all of that vast amount of experience in that wide array of legal areas, my experience with Dell as a senior corporate counsel and working on the Round Rock campus gives me a particular perspective on these issues.

Q. What is the biggest issue for the county attorney’s office?

A. The biggest issue that the county attorney’s office faces today is the need to restore the county attorney’s important role in the checks and balances system that is set forth in our Texas Constitution. Because of animosity that has occurred over the last couple of years between the county attorney’s office and the Commissioners Court, the county attorney is currently shut out of any aspect of county business. Because county business is so big and important now, and important to us as taxpayers, I very much believe that we need to restore that county attorney’s role in working with the Commissioners Court on these very important business issues that face the county.

Q. How do you plan to improve the office?

A. I will be passionate about pursing the restoration of the county attorney’s role in the checks and balances system in our local government so that voters, the public, [and] taxpayers have an elected official that they can look to with respect to protecting the legal aspects of the big business of the county in addition to someone who can manage and oversee the important criminal prosecution functions, victims services functions, hot check division, domestic violence division and other important offices in the county attorney’s office. I will work very, very strongly and passionately to try and restore not only that important role for the county attorney but also to bring that more balanced approached to the overall function of the office.

Editor’s note: The total Williamson County fiscal year 2011–12 budget is $210.9 million. The total debt with interest is $1.2 billion, which includes funds from the states’ Pass-Through Financing Program.