On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho.

San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we are talking with one of the top elected officials in San Antonio in this whole area, who surprised some people last summer when he announced he is not going to seek reelection.

So there are eight Democrats running for his spot now, as well as a Republican.

And Joe Gonzalez, the district attorney for going on eight years now, joins us.

Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you, Randy, thank you for having me back.

It's been a while, but I always enjoy coming here and talking with you.

Well, before we get to some of the issues that you had to deal with that you're still dealing with that are in the news.

Why did you decide not to run for reelection?

A lot of people thought if you ran, you'd be reelected.

No problem.

Some people thought you'd have challenges.

But what do you say?

Well, as I mentioned earlier this morning, Randy, I am celebrating my 38th year in the practice of law.

I've always done criminal law, either as a prosecutor or a criminal defense lawyer.

And so it's time to slow down.

It's time to to spend time with my family.

And it's time to give somebody else an opportunity to to run this huge office.

As you mentioned, this is my eighth year.

I will have had two terms.

And I will tell you, that this has been the highlight of my career.

I am proud of the work that we've done in the DA's office.

I want to, before I forget, thank the citizens of Bexar County for giving me this opportunity to, to lead this huge office and and to do everything we can.

But it wasn't some of the challenges, some of the headaches you've had, some of the criticism that you've had for both policies, and association with a group, that had nothing to do with this, challenges of fundraising, that kind of thing?

No, I mean, I've said it before.

Those were distractions.

Unfortunately, the narratives that that the, that you heard out in the media were not always accurate.

But I learned pretty quick that that's just part of the job.

You know, the detractors, the the naysayers, the criticisms.

But but definitely not.

That that was just part of the job.

And, that did not, caused me to to decide not to run for, for reelection.

And your style, I guess, compared to some earlier days, wasn't as loud and as aggressive to push back and use the media to say, oh, I'm not like you were called.

Let them go, Joe.

Sight and release earlier on was was criticized by some people.

Did you want to do that?

Did you feel that way?

And what do you say to those critics about let them go, Joe?

You know, I mean, I let I laugh at it now.

I mean, I would cringe at the beginning when I heard that.

And I thought you know, that's not the right approach.

I need to be embracing that, that moniker, because there are times when you do the right thing do is still is to let go of a case.

You know, I came into into the office with a two pronged approach.

The first prong was was to emphasize on prosecuting serious crime, especially violent and repeat offenders.

But but because I'd been in private practice for 22 years, we saw that a lot of the low level nonviolent offenses, resulted in deferred prosecution in pretrial diversion and deferred adjudication.

And so you spent a lot of time focusing on those cases.

You you fill up the jails.

And although that's not a priority for us, you know, to be a good county partner, we have to be concerned with the jail overcrowding.

So we were innovative in, in coming up with programs and releases, one of them.

And that, by the way, where I picked up that, that label of Let Go Joe because, I was a proponent of sign and release.

But people forget that signing release is a law enforcement tool.

The officers on the street make the decision whether to make an arrest or to cite the individual.

So it benefits law enforcement, as well as benefiting the offender.

Who is going to avoid having to bond out of jail, avoid having to have his car towed, and may lose his job.

His or her job may lose their their their funding.

If they're a college kid, and they're going to end up getting, some sort of, disposition that doesn't result in a conviction.

So.

So why not do that?

And focus again on the serious crimes.

The county still had the problem of overcrowding at the jail.

So over time and also, the county had the problem that you had to deal with in terms of money for prosecutors.

You wanted more prosecutors.

I guess you were down 50 at one point last fall.

And and still there's a problem.

How do you see that going forward in terms of the number of prosecutors and pay, which is that that's a big part of the problem.

Well, that is the key issue is, is the lack of pay.

And for about a year and a half, we were down about 30 prosecutors.

And I'll tell you, when we started seeing, huge difference is there's something called Senate Bill 22 that was enacted in the fall of 2023.

Which state bill?

State bill, Senate and state bill, there was enacted by the legislature that that created a grant for smaller DA's offices.

The the purpose of that grant was to provide funding for rural law enforcement and rural prosecutors.

But if you lived in a jurisdiction that had, less than 300,000, which are all the rural jurisdictions in any direction north, south, east and west of us, you got a grant of between 50,000 to 275,000.

Most of them got the 275,000.

So they were able to divide that up and offer their prosecutors huge raises.

And so what happened is our prosecutors were then going to smaller counties and ending up with 20, $30,000 a year, of a race.

So, I mean, I don't blame them for leaving and getting $30,000 more to support their families, to pay their law school loans and their mortgages.

So we saw that.

So what happens then is you have this staffing shortage, and we had to be creative with with filling the gaps.

One of the things we did is we went to commissioners court and asked for funding.

For what, what we call the high risk intake program to try and reduce the backlog.

And so they allowed us to use a funding that was already budgeted for us.

We didn't ask for any more money, but part of the budget, that gave us for, vacancies, we use that for positions that were vacant.

We use that money to pay overtime.

And in that.

And that resulted in a reduction of our backlog.

Well, now people might wonder then, okay, there, you reduce the backlog.

But in the meantime, what didn't you prosecute or what couldn't you, prosecutor, if there were a gap in the number of prosecutors?

Well, that's that's the beauty of it, is that we didn't we didn't stop prosecuting.

We didn't keep doing what we do during the day.

What's happening is these prosecutors are doing double duty.

You know, they're they're handling their their daily dockets.

They're going to court.

They're spending time getting ready for trial.

And then on the weekends and on the evenings, instead of spending time with their families or going on trips, they're they're, working overtime.

So we didn't see a, a lag, or a reduction in, in what we're supposed to be doing during the day.

It's just extra work that they're they're being paid for going forward.

The relationship with the state and district attorney's and Ken Paxton and wanting to get all the information from urban, district attorneys saying you're not prosecuting the right cases, you're not aggressive enough.

And that has been rejected so far by judges.

But what do you think in terms of the future of your successor that they're going to have to deal with?

Right.

I've got to be careful about how I talk about that, because the case is still pending.

And as you mentioned, it's still in the courts.

But but, I've always taken the position that that's a huge waste of time, to submit reports to the attorney general's office.

The citizens of Bexar County have elected me to do a job.

We've been doing a good job, and there's no reason to spend to take our prosecutors from the courtroom to to to, to report to the AG's office.

And so, you know, we're going to continue to do that.

Bail bonds has been an issue.

And, letting people out who shouldn't be let out.

You know, there's been some criticism of that, a lot of criticism.

What do you say to those critics?

And again, going forward, where do you see that?

Well, that was part of the remember we had, a public disagreement between, chief McManus and I. And by the way, I spoke to him a couple of days ago and congratulated him on his retirement.

But, you know, we've had this public disagreement, but we always come together and work together.

But, yes, I had to take it upon myself to educate the public about the bail bond process and to remind people that prosecutors that work at the manager's office, we recommend what we think is an appropriate bond.

But the magistrate judges are the ones that set the bonds.

We don't control what bond a particular defendant obtains.

And then is, is or is not able to get out of jail, depending on whether we've got the money to get out.

And that, again, is there's a credit.

So let him go, Joe.

You know, don't release that individual now.

I'm not the one that controls whether or not somebody gets out of jail.

It's the it's the judge that controls that.

And that brings up dismissed versus rejected from your office.

Magistrate, a judge does one thing, you do another.

And people wonder, well, how do you reject a case that the police present to you?

What do you look for?

And and did that change from your predecessor?

Well, I will tell you that our number one mission is public safety, Randy.

But we go where the evidence takes us.

We have to be able to to if we were accusing somebody of a crime, be able to prove that.

And it's not a double standard that law enforcement may use to make an arrest.

We have to be able to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.

So oftentimes when we dismiss the case, it's because we don't have the evidence.

We don't have, you know, the physical evidence, the DNA.

We don't have the gun that fired, you know, the shot that killed the victim.

We don't have witnesses that can come to court and say, yeah, he's the guy that robbed me.

And so because of that, we're forced to resolve cases, sometimes dismiss them if we're pushed to trial.

Dismissal happens after a case is filed and on a felony level after a case is indicted.

Rejection happens at the front end.

When we say we don't have enough case to we don't have enough evidence to even file a case.

So it's a term of art that's different depending on the on whether it happens at the beginning or the end.

So we can reject the case before we file it with court.

We dismiss a case at the back end.

If it turns out we don't have enough evidence to prosecute.

But at the beginning, that's where some of the criticism has come from rejection.

White people say, well, why not go ahead and and pursue it, you know, early on and then see what happens?

Actually, quite the contrary.

The criticism that we have, received, especially from some of the candidates for D.A., is that we we accept everything in the door when it comes to family violence.

I understand why the law enforcement, community work violence.

Yes.

Or domestic violence.

And I understand what the law enforcement community makes the arrest.

Because you don't want to show up at a house and leave and say, look, there's not enough evidence to arrest this man.

And then two hours later, he ends up killing his wife or girlfriend or whatever the situation.

I understand that, and so a lot of times we accept these cases without, having all the evidence, but we have now improved our intake, process where we reach out to the victim as soon as we can, to determine whether or not they're going to be willing to prosecute.

And so, yes, sometimes we take cases that are followed by law enforcement not knowing whether or not we're going to be able to obtain a conviction.

Sometimes it's the right thing to do to, avoid further violence, especially in the domestic situation.

Some of the things that you have, changed or accomplished is creation of a civil rights division.

And you also have increased, the indictments, a number of indictments.

Where did that come from in terms of the civil rights division and what has it led to in the county?

Let me let me take one at a time first.

First to the civil Rights division I mentioned.

I've been a lawyer for 38 years.

I've always subscribed to the notion that no one is above the law.

When I was in the office, when I first came in, I soon realized that we were the only major district attorney's office in the country that did not have a civil rights division.

It happened to be about the time of George Floyd that I made that decision.

So I think a lot of members of law enforcement think that because of that, that I created this division to go after law enforcement.

But but that's not what it's about.

It's about holding everyone accountable.

Even those people that that are in positions of authority, even people that have a gun and a badge.

Even elected officials.

That's what the Civil Rights Division does.

And it's a tough it's a tough job because, as you have seen locally in recently, it's not a very popular position to, to have, but we have to hold everyone accountable, including members of law enforcement.

And, as long as they're doing their job, as long as they're not breaking the law, even members of the law enforcement community have nothing to fear.

From our office.

And the number of indictments.

And the number of indictments is a is a thing that I'm proud of.

Despite all the challenges that you mentioned, despite the the staffing shortages, we have over the years increase the number of indictments to I think this year, we're up to 16,000, in, in the whole year.

So that means we're doing a robust job of, of, gathering the evidence of preparing a case for indictment, of going to the grand jury of, and then getting, true bills from from grand juries.

As you look forward to getting out of, I guess you would say politics and into the next chapter.

We'll get to that in a minute.

And I know people are asking you, who do you want to succeed you and how involved can you get in that campaign?

Well, I will tell you that what's important and what the general public, needs to do is do their homework to find out, who is qualified to be my successor.

Successor?

Because as I, as I've said, I spent, I spent 38 years in this business, but I spent eight years as a young prosecutor back in the day under three different administrations.

That was an experience that served me well when I first came in, because I had young prosecutors come to my office and say, I've got this and or that.

How do I handle that?

How should I go forward?

If you've never done the job as a prosecutor, as some of the candidates have never been a prosecutor, they're going to have a huge learning curve.

They're going to be be drinking from a fire hydrant, as they say.

So I think it's important for the general public to know who has had this experience, who has spent their time as.

Who do you think should be?

Well, I will tell you, it's an awkward position because I've got three people in my office, that, that are running.

But I will tell you this.

I think you're, you're sneaking, trying to get an endorsement from me.

It's it's hard, but I will tell you who I'm supporting right now that that I believe would do a good job.

Or there are two administrators right now that are running.

One is Millie Powers, who has been administrator or chief of the Family Division.

Family Violence Division.

She's done an incredible job, as has Jane Davis.

She's the chief of the juvenile division.

She's done an incredible job.

I think either one of those ladies would do a fantastic job, running this office, because they've been doing the job that.

Doesn't qualify as endorsements.

Well, again, it's, It's not quite.

You can throw it, full throated endorsement, but I will say that I would be very happy if either one of those ladies ended up, on, doing my job.

If you had to ask me, I would say right now.

And I'm endorsing both of them, if that's possible.

Now.

I'm sorry.

We're moving ahead here to nationally, the Department of Justice.

You know, there are polls that say there's less faith in the Justice Department, maybe politically, aligned more.

Do you see that in local?

In the local area?

Absolutely.

You know, we pick juries every day, all day long.

And what we're saying is, is juries are distrustful of the justice system.

They're distrustful of law enforcement.

And by the way, they don't see us any different from the from the police.

We're just part of law enforcement.

And sometimes we hear from the public, because of what's happening in the media.

You know, you see what's happening with Ice agents, you see what's happening with with other agencies across the country that has caused that, ripple effect.

And so we have sometimes, tough job, picking a jury to be able to prosecute an individual, but, but I will tell you, let me just say this.

By and large, the majority of law enforcement are good people.

The they are ethical people.

They do a great job.

You're going to have bad apples in law enforcement, just like you have in, in, in any other industry, in medicine and in politics.

And one last great question.

As you, you know, I guess you wouldn't say lame duck.

You've got until January or December 31st.

What do you look forward to doing next?

Are you going to retire or are you going to practice law?

Well, after I leave, I'm going to continue to practice law.

I've got to figure out, you know, what I'm going to do.

What?

What, maybe I'll, expand my brand and do a little bit more than just criminal defense.

But I'm going to take some time to spend.

In criminal defense.

More than criminal defense, you know.

So who knows?

But not prosecuting.

No, no, no, I'm done, I'm done.

Being the D.A.

of this huge office, it's been the honor of my career.

It's been the the the just an opportunity of a lifetime to to lead a huge office of over 500 people.

That's what I'm going to miss the most, Randy, is the camaraderie is, the commitment from 550 or so public servants that love coming to work now because you're making a lot of money, but because they believe in what they're doing.

Well, it's not a farewell yet.

And you've got, I'm sure, a lot of issues coming up.

So we may be talking with you again.

So I appreciate your time and look forward to the rest of your term.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

On reporters roundtable this week, Bexar County is once again facing a backlog of voter registration applications.

Not as bad as it was last fall, but again, an issue.

County commissioners have been taking up the issue of what to do about that.

Joining us to tell us all about it is Stephanie Cauthen, who works for the San Antonio Current.

Thank you very much for coming.

Thank you.

Now, you've been looking into this for a while, and I guess the backlog really stems from when a company went out of business that the county was dealing with last year, and then the headache of trying to integrate with the state system.

And now they're looking at getting a new system in Bexar County, but, that's fallen through.

So where are we in all of this?

Yes.

So in August, Vote Tech, the the third party vendor, we used to use, went out of business and it caused not just our county, but a number of counties to scramble to find a replacement.

And so, we fell back on the statewide voter registration system called team which is provided by the secretary of state.

However, historically, it has a lot of problems.

It's been around since 2004.

And since the very beginning, people have complained that it just has a lot of issues with, data processing.

And so we've been contending with that while we wait for the county to, finalize a contract for a new third party vendor called VR systems.

We already have the money allocated in the budget because we are already using a third party vendor.

But, certain officials just can't seem to agree on, the the language of the contract.

It's been held up at the DA's office for months.

And before we get more into that, it was tens of thousands of backlog that made headlines last fall.

Yes, before the election.

And they had to work round the clock, bring in extra people to deal with that.

Right now it's it was 4000 earlier this week.

Now it's up.

Yes.

So, I wrote the cover story of this issue of the San Antonio Current, and that was only a few days ago that we went to print with that.

And since then it has increased.

And now we're at 6600, which is way more manageable than the over 70,000 that we were dealing with before the fall election.

And we had to hire on dozens of temporary workers and have them working in shifts to process.

But they do think they're going to be able to deal with this backlog.

Yes.

So, you know, obviously almost 7000 is way more manageable than 70,000.

They're going to hire on at least 12 additional temp workers.

They said it could take, 1 to 2 weeks to process.

I spoke to, elections Administrator Michelle Carew.

And she seems confident that it will get done in 1 or 2 weeks, but that doesn't leave us too much time.

Before the start of early voting, which is February 17th for the March 3rd primary.

County commissioners thought in December that they had a deal or they were going to get a deal with VR systems, a different company.

Yeah.

And there was a contract that was presented this week.

What happened there?

Yeah, really fell through.

The contract that presented that was presented was wildly different than the standard contract originally offered up by the vendor VR systems.

It's just been delayed by months, which is very unusual.

I spoke to someone from VR systems.

He said it is.

It is highly unusual for it to take this.

Long delayed by Bexar County, getting them or forwarding any kind of contract for them to consider and for the county to consider.

Yeah, there was a contract shown this week, but VR systems, I understand a representative showed up and said we wouldn't approve it.

Yes.

He actually flew here from Florida again, kind of unusual.

And and said that it, it makes VR systems, assume too much liability for how we interact with the system.

Which is why precinct four Commissioner Tommy Calvert called these these, provisions poison pills, basically to ensure that they wouldn't be able to adhere to the contract and thus.

So VR systems wouldn't be able to because they would be stuck with liability even if it was the county's fault or the state state's fault if something didn't work together.

Right.

It's like it's like holding, someone like Microsoft accountable for user error.

You know, it's just, obviously something they're not going to agree to.

Who was responsible or what was responsible for this contract.

And now that it's delayed, what's going to happen?

So, it's been with the DA's office for months, ever since that September 2nd meeting of the Commissioners Court, when they already approved, that we were going to go into business with VR systems.

So already it's kind of a done deal.

But the DA's office has been dragging its feet.

People in the DA's office, like I said, they did not negotiate directly with VR or haven't been communicating, or.

County officials had been communicating with with VR.

I don't know about DA's office.

They they were working on the contract, but VR systems hadn't seen anything until this past Friday.

So what's the timeline now?

So no action was taken at this week's commissioners court because it's just not something that the vendor is going to adopt.

So now it's kind of back to the drawing board.

You know, the the contract has language in it that needs to be removed in order for the vendor to approve it.

And so it's going to come back to the most likely it's going to reappear at the February 2nd, Commissioners Court meeting.

And, I mean, those I've talked to are not very optimistic that it's going to get past even then.

It's there.

You wonder a real urgency right now because we're into the spring.

We're going to be apparently dealing with this backlog.

It's only in the fall elections that the voter registration application could again, conceivably be in the tens of thousands.

Yeah.

So I mean.

We're we're done by even the late summer that would work.

Or mid-summer.

When I spoke to VR systems, they said it would take maybe 2 to 4 months to get it fully online.

So we need to act fast if we want it to be up and running by the fall election.

And, you know, it's set to be a huge voter turnout.

If it's anything like 2018, a referendum on the Trump administration.

Right.

The first time.

This is going to.

Be huge.

You know, his his approval rating is even lower.

And so there's going to be an appetite for voter turnout.

Which will at least be comparable to 2018.

So we're talking over 500,000 people.

So you know, what we dealt with in the fall was child's play compared to what's coming.

Then I know you're going to be all over that and more.

Stephanie Knudson San Antonio Curved.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming in.

And we'd like to thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again.

You can download them as podcasts, watch any preview shows.

Just go to KLRN.org.

I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho.