Fayette County Caught in a Tyler

Technologies
Tangle

Every year, Fayette County pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to Tyler Technologies, a company that provides court management and financial software to the County. And the cost keeps rising every year.

In 2012, the quarterly hosting fee for Tyler’s court management software, called Odyssey, was $32,670. Now it’s $54,135.98, a nearly 66 percent increase in 12 years. That’s almost double the rate of inflation in the general economy since then, according to the consumer price index (CPI) calculated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Even more striking, the CPI for information technology commodities has actually fallen since then – by a staggering 53.28 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Instead of paying less for this software, as one would expect from the trends in the nation’s economy, Fayette County pays more and more every year.

And that’s just the court software hosting fee. Tyler charges the County all sorts of other fees throughout the year for services like hardware support, software support, maintenance, jury services, training, computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and others.

According to 2023 check registers, Fayette County paid $359,281.75 in fees to Tyler Technologies for using the company’s products last year. But that included a nearly $119,000 five-year maintenance fee for the CAD system.

So far this year, the County has spent $269,975.42 on services from Tyler Technologies.

At the Fayette County Commissioners Court meeting last Thursday, Nov. 15, County Auditor Cindy Havelka said Tyler plans to increase the Odyssey hosting fee again.

“It covers all of the court system,” Havelka said. “All the way from the Sheriff to the JPs, they all use it. The district court uses it. County attorneys – you’re talking about a lot of users. I do know its going back up again. It seems to go up every year.”

Pct. 3 Commissioners Harvey Berckenhoff asked whether the County could seek bids from competing software vendors.

“I can do some checking to see if anyone uses other court systems,” Havelka said. “I know (the courts) have used this one for a very long time. I think they’re happy with it.”

“The initial investment, if I remember correctly, was rather large,” said Pct. 1 Commissioner Jason McBroom.

Sheriff Keith Korenek said he would welcome a change.

“I think the courts like it, but it’s not law enforcementfriendly at all,” Korenek said. “We put in all these reports – they’re so redundant. There are other systems out there. But like Jason (McBroom) said, to put in another system, the costs are going to be astronomical.”

“It could be something to look at,” McBroom said.

Fayette County EMS Director Josh Vandever encouraged the court to consider competing vendors.

“I agree with the Sheriff,” Vandever said. “I don’t want to be convicted of heresey, but I will tell you – we use their CAD product – if you look at the footprint that Tyler Technologies has on our County, we are very invested in one system. I think it would be very prudent to at least look at what’s out there to see if we’re getting the best value.”

“Sheriff, if you can give me (other vendors) that you know of, we can start checking into them,” Havelka said.

The Record reached out to Tyler Technologies for a comment about the concerns discussed at the Commissioners Court meeting.

“Our software and services are provided for each client, based on their specific use and need,” said Jennifer Kepler, a spokesperson for the company. “We only discuss the investment for the selected software and services with our clients, so are unable to speak to any speculative pricing comparisons.”

An article that appeared in Bloomberg’s Businessweek back in September profiled several of the Tyler’s recent travails – from a man who was jailed and strip searched when the company’s software incorrectly said he had a warrant, to a county in Missouri that discovered Tyler’s property tax software had assessed more than 500 properties at exactly $356,270, “sending some homeowner tax bills soaring and discounting others.”

“(I)t’s very unlikely that Tyler’s sky-high 98% client retention rate is purely because of product satisfaction,” the Bloomberg article went on to say. “There’s clearly a measure of vendor lock-in, too. A common refrain among customers is that they feel they’re in too deep to back out.After investing years and millions of dollars in a fraught implementation, can they afford to do it again with a lesser-known alternative?”