County Paying Thousands Annually For Boxes of Law Books That Never Get Opened

Every year Fayette County spends thousands of dollars on books for the Courthouse Law Library, but some of them never get opened.

Last Thursday the Fayette County Commissioners Court discussed ways to possibly save money on this costly program.

At their meeting onAug. 7, the Commissioners Court reviewed funding requests from the various County departments for next year’s budget. The County Attorney’s Office requested a $75,000 increase to the Law Library Fund.

“It’s increasing each year,” said County Auditor Cindy Havelka.

County Clerk and District Clerk fees provide about $10,000 annually to support the law library.

Havelka said the County has been paying about $4,000 a month for new books.

“In talking to other counties, they don’t buy books that often,” Havelka said. “They buy them about every two years. It doesn’t cost them nearly as much. I’ve suggested looking at an online service.”

Texas Local Government Code authorizes counties to establish a public law library and to collect fees from the court clerks to fund it. The law states that the library must be accessible to judges and litigants.

“The law library has to be here for indigent people who cannot afford an attorney,” said Pct. 1 Commissioner Jason McBroom.

The Record visited the Law Library last Friday, Aug. 8. It’s tucked away in a room on the northeast corner of the first floor in the courthouse. The door remains locked unless someone is using it. You have to get the key from the County Attorney’s office, and no materials may leave.

Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls containing hundreds of hardbound legal books, with a wooden ladder to access the highest shelves.

We located a 1936 edition of Vernon’s Texas Statutes. We opened it to a page that was bookmarked, who knows when, and found a compendium of laws related to “pugilistic encounters,” cockfights and roping contests.

We learned that in 1936, it was against the law in Texas to “present to the public an exhibition of prize fights or glove contests, or of any obscene, indecent or immoral picture of any character whatsoever, by means of moving picture films, bioscopes, vitascopes, magic lanterns or other device or devices in moving picture shows, theaters or any other place whatsoever.” The penalty for this crime was a fine no less than $100 or more than $1,000, or a jail term of 10 to 60 days, or both.

A phone and an old computer sat on a desk in the center of the room. We turned it on and a Windows XP boot screen appeared on the monitor. There was no internet access, but the phone worked.

Inside an old vault were a set of old La Grange and Fayetteville High School yearbooks, and a photo album from a child abuse prevention event held on the Courthouse Square back in the early 2000s.

The room contained quite a few interesting tidbits of local history, and of course, a wealth of legal information. But back to the point of this story, surrounding the desk were piles of open and unopened boxes containing even more books. Many of them were still in plastic wrapping, such as “United States Supreme Court Reports Lawyers’ Edition 192 L. Ed. 2d 575 U.S. (part) 576 U.S.”

This particular volume, published by Lexis Nexis, includes decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015. According to the Lexis Nexis online store, it’s part of a collection that currently includes 169 bound volumes and grows by about three volumes each year. The Fayette County Law Library appears to have most if not the entire collection. If you had to buy the collection today, it would cost $20,129, according to the Alexis Nexis online store. And that’s just one of many collections housed in the Fayette County Law Library.

Back at the meeting last Thursday, McBroom asked, “Going to an electronic version, would that be any cheaper?”

“I would doubt it,” said Assistant County Attorney Blake Watson.

Watson said the major online legal research providers such as Bloomberg Law, Westlaw and Lexis Nexis charge subscriptions based on the number of users.

“They separate it out into different types of law,” Watson added. “So you can get a subscription for family law, business law, personal injury, whatever. You pay an incremental amount to each additional portion that you want access to. So for us to maintain a full library, we would need access to all of those portions … I don’t know what it would cost to have a library with all of it for basically anybody.”

Watson said he would get quotes from the providers to see if they could provide public access to law library patrons and what it would cost the County. In the meantime, McBroom proposed funding the law library at $20,000 for next year with $10,000 coming from court clerk fees and another $10,000 from the general fund.

Commissioners took no action as the budget has not yet been finalized.