Jenkins is right, Dallas County is ‘a mess.’ Now what?

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins’ sobering comments after his State of the County speech this week were refreshingly candid.

Usually top elected officials use these “state of” occasions as political pep rallies to sugarcoat reality. Accomplishments are played up. Failures are minimized and recast as “opportunities” for improvement.

So when Jenkins on Wednesday called county government “a mess” following his official address in an interview with our newsroom colleague Josephine Peterson and said that residents “deserve better,” his frankness was surprising.

But being honest about the obvious was just the first part of what we hoped to hear. The most important part — what Jenkins and county officials plan to do about a rash of enduring crises — was unfortunately absent.

What’s the strategy for righting the ship? Who’s accountable for the “mess?” Jenkins and his colleagues on the Commissioners Court must answer these questions, not point fingers at others.

It seems there’s been one catastrophe after another in county offices recently.

Two new software rollouts were bungled so badly that they continue to cause widespread problems. One in the criminal justice system has resulted in too many inmates waiting for indictments, attorneys to be assigned or even charges to be filed, leading to a swelling jail population. And another has led to slow, inaccurate or even absent payments to employees and vendors.

The payment debacle has prompted an embarrassing investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor and forced the recent resignation of Dallas County Auditor Darryl Thomas. And in another outside inquiry, the state is investigating at least 11 cases of alleged neglect in the Dallas County Juvenile Department.

Unlike the city of Dallas, which was struck with a ransomware attack, the county’s problems have been largely self-imposed, the result of poor planning and management. Not only do residents deserve better, as Jenkins rightly noted, but also rank and file county workers. Their jobs, often difficult and thankless, prop up important public health and safety services. Surely they’re feeling discouraged these days. That’s a shame.

We know Jenkins doesn’t have direct control over all county operations, nor do the commissioners. Much of county government is run by other elected officials, like the sheriff, the district attorney, the district and county clerks and nearly all of the judges.

Still the county judge and commissioners control the purse strings to most county offices, and there’s significant power in that. It’s budget-setting season. The Commissioners Court should look for ways to leverage its control to motivate change.

This time last year, we recommended that voters re-elect Jenkins, in large part because of the leadership he showed during the COVID-19 crisis. Now Dallas County is facing another dark chapter, only this time the sickness is from within.

Jenkins and his colleagues must show the same kind of leadership.