Constable Says Politics Drove Recall of Warrants

If you have an outstanding speeding ticket in Travis County's Precinct 2, break out the checkbook fast. Justice of the Peace Glenn Bass has recalled 13,500 arrest warrants and accused Constable Adan Ballesteros of possible "inequities and disparities among defendants." Ballesteros has fired back that Bass is creating a fake scandal to protect his political future.

On Aug. 10, Bass issued a press statement saying he had signed an order recalling all outstanding arrest warrants for nonpayment of fines for class C misdemeanors. Bass has given all defendants until Oct. 1 to contact the court to either settle their tickets or file a $200 bond per offense to challenge them. He has also contacted the Travis County Attorney's Office about how Ballesteros has been handling those warrants, and that is where the debate lies.

Here's how Texas law works. Say you have a speeding ticket and the constable comes a-calling. You have to pay the fine. Now say you have 10 speeding tickets and the constable comes calling: Since that would be a lot of cash to come up with in one go, the constable can allow you to pay off one ticket at a time. Ballesteros said, "A 'payment plan' keeps people out of jail thus saving the taxpayer money otherwise used to house inmates," adding that "collections on warrants have been handled in this manner by Precinct 2 and other Precincts in Travis County since the early 1980s and have been handled the same way in other Constable offices throughout Texas."

There's a coda, however. The constable can only create a payment plan for multiple tickets. If Ballesteros has been letting some people pay off single tickets in chunks, then he may have broken the law. While announcing the recall, Bass accused Ballesteros of "possible encroachments" on his powers by setting up these payment plans, adding that "the authority to make that decision is granted to this court and this court alone."

However, Ballesteros, who ran on a platform of a "flexible payment plan" in 2008, claims that Bass knew how his office handled warrants. The real story, he argues, is that Bass is attempting to scupper a redistricting plan approved by the Travis County commissioners on Aug. 16.

Unlike the regularly scheduled redistricting of congressional and state house seats, justice of the peace and constable districts are only redrawn by request. At the Aug. 4 meeting of the Travis County Commissioners Court, Ballesteros asked for a straight swap with Precinct 5, currently held by Constable Bruce Elfant and Justice of the Peace Herb Evans, covering eight ballot boxes. Precinct 5 picks up four boxes, mainly single-family homes west of the Capital of Texas Highway. In exchange, Precinct 2 gets a dense area of multifamily apartments around Braker and right next to the constable's office. This is the only change in Travis County constable and justice of the peace precincts, and it is not opposed by either Elfant or Evans. Balles­ter­os said he had requested that the county commissioners approve the swap "in order to better serve the constituents around our office who have asked for our assistance."

So why would Bass want to get in the way of what seems like sensible policing? Ballesteros claims it is all to do with elections. In a close fight for either office, those eight boxes could be critical. The four boxes Ballesteros wants to send into the safely Democratic Precinct 5 are either majority Republican or swing boxes: In 2010, two of the four broke heavily for Gov. Rick Perry by a better than two-to-one margin. In return, Ballesteros would be getting four smaller boxes that all went to Perry's Democratic challenger Bill White by more than 65%. Less than a week after Ballesteros presented the map, Bass threw the warrant accusation at him. Travis County Republican Party Chair Rosemary Edwards opposed the map before the commissioners, but they voted 3-2 to approve the swap (Commissioners Karen Huber and Sarah Eckhardt voted nay).

This swap could dramatically change the political geography of Precinct 2. Prior to 2008, the constable's office was solidly Republican until then-Deputy Constable Ballesteros defeated his old boss, popular GOP incumbent Bob Vann. As for the justice of the peace, the Democrats thought it would be an easy pickup when GOPer Barbara Bembry retired in 2010. Instead, Bass (a banker and former documentarian with no legal experience) rode the tea party wave and beat Democratic lawyer Karin Crump. Even without a boundary switch, both Bass and Ballesteros could face re-election problems. Bass only beat Crump by 5 percentage points; if the tea party subsides before 2014, he could be left floundering. Similarly, even facing the Obama bump of 2008, Vann lost by less than 2 percentage points. If Ballesteros runs again in 2012, he is expected to draw primary challengers who will run on old allegations dating back to his 1998 firing from the Texas Department of Public Safety. Then a narcotics officer, he was terminated for allegedly allowing several large drug shipments across the border (see "Precinct 2 Constables," Feb. 22, 2008). However, any such issue could be overshadowed if either Ballesteros mishandled these latest warrants or Bass abused his office to strangle redistricting.