Hundreds of attorneys for Dallas County have reportedly not been paid for six weeks following a malfunction with the county’s new payroll system.
“Hundreds of lawyers, but not just lawyers,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said, according to NBC DFW. “Expert witnesses, interpreters, everybody that makes the system work that’s not a county employee.”
The Dallas County Commissioners Court was briefed on the situation during a meeting on Tuesday.
Douglas Huff, president of the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said some individuals are owed back pay up to $50,000.
“You have 500 very upset attorneys,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “Is this a lawsuit? Do private attorneys need to stop taking court appointments?”
Dallas County Auditor Darryl Thomas told the Commissioner’s Court that an update to the county’s Oracle Financial Management System at the end of April caused the pay request processing system to crash.
“The computer systems themselves now work together, but there were some hiccups going to a new system,” Jenkins said, per NBC DFW. “By the time that file went to the system, it was so large that it crashed the system.”
Thomas said that while the system is now functioning, the county is still catching up in dispensing payments.
“We are running checks, and we have been running checks since Friday,” he told DMN. “They are checks that are being printed, and they are coming out of the system.”
Huff asserted that these breakdowns lead to “a lack of faith from the people who work there.”
“These technological changes — we understand they have to be there, but the training and education [have] been lacking, and it has caused significant problems,” he said.
Jenkins echoed this sentiment and added that the situation “has my attention” and that he is “working with the team to get it fixed.”
“On behalf of the county, we’re sorry for the inconvenience and the serious problem with people not getting paid on time,” he added.
County Commissioner Dr. Elba Garcia said more transparency is needed, directing the auditor’s office to create a timeline of the situation and inform employees and contractors of when they can expect to receive their payments.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the Commissioner’s Court approved spending $30,000 to attempt to fix this problem.