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January / February 2010
Volume 22, Number 1

Of all the paths and directions a younger Gene Terry thought he would travel in life, leading a local government had never crossed his mind. But as life sometimes goes, he didn’t know where he was going until he got there —or back there.

“There” just happened to be Marion County, the recreation-driven Northeast Texas county bordering Louisiana where Terry was born and raised before leaving the area to earn his liberal arts education at Southwestern University in Georgetown.

“I had a liberal arts undergraduate education which I really enjoyed,” said Terry, who went into finance and banking for four years before obtaining a law degree from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. “I was working at Texas Bank and Trust in Dallas and my boss was a lawyer in the bank in the trust department and he suggested that I give (law school) a try. And as we talked about that over the years, it just started to sound like a good idea. … No matter where I wanted to go from there, it seemed like that would be good basic training or education for making a lot of choices.”

For nine years after law school, he ran his own general practice, taking on whichever clients and cases came through his door: criminal, probate, oil and gas, real estate.

“(County government) was never on my horizon at all, anywhere. Never considered it,” said Terry, now a former county judge and the newly chosen executive director of the Texas Association of Counties.

Instead, another opportunity came: general counsel of the Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, where he stayed for the next 10 years.

By the time that ended, his children were grown and off to college, his parents were older, his wife’s parent’s were older, and the city lights and life weren’t so lively.

The pair packed their bags and moved back to Marion County, to home, where the plan was to go back into private practice and live a simpler, quieter life.

† † †

Back home, local politics were local politics. In November 1994, the good people elected Jerry Taylor county judge in a contested election, and three of the four commissioners had all gone to high school together. The county, population of about 12,000, ran itself well, though the jail had been overcrowded for fifty years and the county’s court dockets were backed up, to put the situation mildly.

An unforeseeable tragedy struck the community just weeks after the November election, when Taylor was killed in a car accident. The remaining commissioners had to fill the vacancy; a decision that can easily become a controversial issue, a wedge driven straight through the middle of important work getting done.

Terry had been back in town for less than a year, but he had friends in high places — he had gone to high school with the three commissioners — and those friends trusted and respected him.

Who better for the job of county judge than a homegrown attorney with a background in banking and time on his hands? The three approached Terry about the job, just filling out the term until the next election. Help out.

But not everyone was on board.

“There was a lot of pressure. There had just been an election and there was another candidate in the general election, who had lost.

And he thought, well, I finished second in this race, so I’m the logical person for them to appoint, don’t go find somebody that hadn’t even gone though the process,” Terry said. “Filling those vacancies is a hard thing for commissioners courts to do.”

Terry’s first experience at a commissioners court meeting was the one in which the four sitting members were to decide who to appoint to the judge’s seat, the last meeting of the year. The room was filled with audience members and attendees, and Terry sat while commissioners discussed its other agenda items, still with no clear idea of what he had agreed to take on.

Finally, Commissioner Charlie Treadwell made the motion to appoint Terry as county judge, and Commissioner Sam Smith seconded. Commissioner Rick Blevins, the third high school friend who was acting as the court’s chair, counted the votes but abstained from voting himself: the first vote was a yes, the second a yes, the third… no. Commissioner Don Kranz voted against the motion, later telling Terry that he just didn’t know him well enough, wasn’t sure if he was the right person for the job and hadn’t had time to make up his mind.

With the nay and the abstention, the vote was 2-1, and Commissioner Blevins believed Terry didn’t have the support necessary to take the position; he was used to needing three votes to do anything.

The motion failed.

“So I said, well, thank you very much, I appreciate your consideration, and I got up and left,” Terry said. “I was just trying to help them out.”

But something didn’t sit right the rest of the day, and Terry kept thinking about the vote. He understood Kranz’s position, but had the motion really failed? Treadwell thought about it, too, and called Terry to say he believed maybe a mistake had been made.

The answer, of course, laid right there in the local government code: any action by the commissioners court must be approved by a majority of those present — in which case 2-1-1 would not have cut it — and voting. Abstentions are not votes.

“Well, he had just announced that the motion failed, and I am sitting here reading the local government code,” Terry said. “I called Charlie back and said, ‘you know, I think you’re right. I think that motion actually passed.’ And he said, ‘I think so too.’”

The problem remained what to do about the mistake. But then Treadwell told Terry something else: Call Sam Seale at the Texas Association of Counties.

Sam will help, he said. TAC will help.

† † †

The New Year’s holiday came and went. The following Monday, Terry woke up and looked at the number he had written down for the man who would help him become Marion County judge.

“I had never met him before in my life, had no idea what TAC was, had never heard of TAC. There was no reason why I should have,” Terry said. He dialed the number anyway, and asked to speak with Executive Director Sam Seale, expecting to get the bureaucratic run-around that many Austin organizations are so known for.

“He didn’t know me from Adam, and I’m not an elected official at that point, I’m just somebody from up in this little rinky-dink town in Northeast Texas,” Terry said. “And I instantly got in. It wasn’t, ‘can I have him call you back,’ ‘let me put you on hold.’ I mean, I said, ‘I’d like to talk to Sam Seale,’ and then bang, I got him on the phone.”

The call didn’t take long, just an explanation of what had happened and then Seale, a former county judge himself, gave his congratulations to the new Marion County judge.

“And I said, well, what do I need to do now?” Terry recalled. “And he recommended I go to the county attorney and get an opinion about whether the motion passed or failed.”

Though he was off to a shaky start, Terry suddenly had county business to attend to.

† † †

Terry’s second contact with the Texas Association of Counties came via a followup conversation shortly after, and it was then that Seale began telling him about everything he had signed up to do. Within weeks, Terry was off to newly elected judges classes, where he learned about the administrative responsibilities of the office.

“It’s a much bigger job than it appears to be from the outside,” Terry said, adding that he was impressed by the group of people in those classes with him: men and women who had been teachers, highway patrol officers, firefighters, agricultural extension workers, ranchers, business owners — but not lawyers, and here they were, about to be county judges. “I saw in these county judges who were not lawyers this dedication and this commitment that I’ve never seen in a group of people before. It was like me running for county brain surgeon. … They came from everywhere, and all of a sudden they are supposed to go hear criminal cases with a jury. It would have scared me absolutely to death.”

Problem number one in Marion County at the time was the $400,000 the county spent each year housing inmates in other jails, because its own small jail had been overcrowded for decades. “People really hate to spend their tax dollars on criminals,” Terry said, “but the total budget was around $2.2 million, so $400,000 out of that was a chunk.”

He saw an affordable solution: spending a million dollars on to add space for 36 beds more to the existing jail. But, having never been elected, he worried about a lack of support and public trust. So he tackled the problem like his law school training had taught him: research, research, research and talk, talk, talk.

“One of the big problems elected officials have is that, because of their position and because of the literature that comes across their desk from the various associations and state agencies, they know a lot more about the specific problems that the county faces than the general public does, simply because they have an opportunity to see more data,” Terry said. “There is not enough time in the day to bring everybody up to speed.”

“This one issue, I really just went back to grass roots. I went to civic clubs, every meeting that I could go to. I took my copy of the budget and I said, ‘I’m the new guy here, but it just doesn’t make sense to me. … It was just arithmetic,” he said, almost making the 40-year problem sound like a fifth-grade exam question. “The lesson I learned at that point was to be honest with people, tell them the truth, lay all the facts on the table and then listen to what kind of response you get.”

In fact, around the courthouse, Terry didn’t have many problems getting others on board with him. Perhaps it’s the combination of sophisticated intellect that got him through law school and his years as general counsel at the children’s hospital combined with his rural roots. Perhaps it’s his relentless drive to work and to know combined with his calm demeanor and non-threatening stature. Maybe it’s in his folksy way of talking or telling a story; when he’s drawling out the we-eeelll that gets him started, his eyes take the time to flicker up toward his brain. Or maybe it’s his ability to problem-solve over coffee: he’s not a man who knows everything, but he’s the guy who can get something done.

When it came time to clean up the court’s criminal and probate dockets, he called a meeting with the lawyers in the area. There were 900 cases on the criminal docket, and he needed to know what the problem was.

“Caddo Lake is in the East end of the county and the Lake of the Pines is in the west end of the county. Both of those are big recreational lakes, so in the summer, you have this strange population explosion. Your weekend population will go up to 60,000 or 70,000, and they are all riding around on those jet skis, drinking beer and having a good time,” Terry said. “That creates a tremendous drain on your criminal court.”

When the attorneys told him the county only had three criminal docket calls a year, Terry suggested they have one every two weeks. And when Terry went on to say the probate court was too informal, the attorneys admitted they had gotten lazy, just because they could, and asked for more formal procedures.

By election time, Terry had decided he’d found his next love. He studied the county’s budget backwards and forwards, up and down, and spoke to his constituents like a lawyer does to a jury. “Yes, taxes are too high, I agree. I don’t like paying taxes either,” he’d say. “But I can tell you why.” And then people understood why.

Terry’s initial positive connections with TAC lead to his involvement with the Association early on in his political career. “I got such a good response from (Seale) that I knew from day one, this is a good organization that will help me when I need it,” Terry said. “TAC was a go-to place for me, and I really relied on the legal department here, the legislative department, everybody. … We bought all our insurance coverages from the TAC pools, because it was the best deal we got, financially, and (we) had an understanding that the relationship between TAC and the pools allowed TAC to provide services that other insurance premiums didn’t pay for. State Farm didn’t come to the county and do safety training for us.”

For its part, TAC made sure to use his legal and health care background and expertise at every given opportunity. When an opening came up on TAC’s members-lead judicial education committee, Terry was asked to serve. And when a spot opened on TAC’s health and employee benefits pool board (then called the Health Insurance Trust Board), he did that too, eventually becoming the health pool’s chair in 2001.

“I felt like I owed TAC my allegiance and my loyalty,” he said. “They had helped me out a lot through the years, and they were always there when I needed them.”

It was a significant period of time in the history of TAC’s health care pool, which was moving from being an indemnified health program collecting money from counties to buy Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage to becoming a fully functional, self-insured provider specializing in county employee health needs.

“We met here in Austin eight times in one year to look at all the pieces of going self-insured, all the third party administration contracts, the pharmacy contract, the network, whose network are we going to buy, who is going to provide reinsurance. We had to look at all these pieces,” said Terry, who worked closely with Roberts County Judge Vernon Cook, then the health pool’s vice chair. “We were stepping out on a limb. There was risk involved.”

Both realized the importance of TAC’s health pool, not only to TAC’s overall mission and financial security, but to TAC members and county employees across the state.

“The thing that he and I recognized fairly early on that distinguishes that health insurance pool from all other pools, with the exception of workers’ comp, is that all of the other pools really ensure the county. With HEBP, our beneficiaries are the people,” Terry said. “We felt a significant responsibility because of that. We knew that particularly in the smaller rural counties, the difference between the county keeping good employees and not being able to keep good employees was probably their health insurance, because not a whole lot of small employers in itty-bitty towns can afford to give their employees health insurance. But the county could, if we could make it affordable for them.”

Since then, the HEBP pool has grown into one of the largest, most financially secure public entity health pools in the country. Terry and Cook each praise the other for making it happen. “Judge Cook became chairman of that board when I left, and it happened under his watch,” Terry said. “He shepherded that thing and nurtured it for the next five years, and that’s when it really took off. He had the foresight to let it grow, not pull back and not get too conservative.”

Cook, who is now beginning a term as president of TAC’s Board of Directors, remembers his first impression of the “dapper, distinguished-looking gentleman” new to the board.

It’s an impression that lasted; as TAC’s then-president-elect, Cook was integral to Terry’s selection.

“Judge Terry (has) a very unique perspective in the operation and management of an organization such as the Texas Association of Counties,” Cook said, referencing Terry’s legal work specializing in non-profit law at Scottish Rite. “I feel that we are very fortunate to have someone of his background, capabilities and experience at the helm of our organization.”

† † †

Terry left politics in 2003, when TAC’s then-executive director Seale came to him with the opportunity to strengthen the Association’s judicial education program as a full-time staff member. The plan was cloudy with a ray of sunshine: Seale didn’t have a crystal clear idea or goal, but knew he wanted a county judge on board, someone who could tackle members’ judicial education needs from the experience of having had those needs themselves. Terry fit the bill, and he and his wife decided the time was right to relocate to Austin.

“(TAC Education Director) Jay Johnson and I had this conversation one time and we decided we wanted to make TAC the first responder for judicial questions that came up,” he said about the vision for the new position, now filled by former Lee County Judge Evan Gonzales. “When a judge is sitting there and he is looking at a case on his docket and something comes up, we want them to pick up that phone and call TAC.”

But Terry knew he wouldn’t have all the answers to those questions himself, nor would his knowledge alone serve as the be-all-end-all of what he needed to build the judicial education program. So he started holding small, regional trainings across the state, where he took the opportunity to talk to judges about whatever problems they were having in their home counties.

“If you’re in the service business —and that’s what government is and that’s what TAC is — you better go ask people what they need. We can’t sit here and presume that we know,” he said. “One thing I knew that we needed to do was really go out and talk to the judges and find out what problems they were having so that we could then give them courses that were designed to address the trouble areas.”

Since then, his various jobs at TAC have mostly happened outside of the TAC headquarters building in Austin. As the Association’s operations director and then assistant executive director, Terry traveled the state to have coffee with elected officials and discuss with them the ways in which TAC could build new services designed to meet the needs of “transitional” counties — counties moving from rural problems to suburban problems to urban problems.

“I’ve got a pad and a pen, tell me what your problems are,” he’d say to the elected officials he met with. And then he’d give them a perfect-world scenario, in which money and politics were no obstacle. “Here’s a red button, you can push it and get anything you want. What do you want for your county?”

Continuing those conversations will be one of his priorities for the Association moving forward. “This is a changing environment, and we are going to have to be constantly monitoring this change so that we can give them what they need,” he said.

† † †

It’s the afternoon of Dec. 3, and Terry has had just four hours to collect his thoughts after earning the Board of Director’s approval to move into TAC’s top slot. The phone rings three or four different times.

Each time, Terry answers the phone with a nod to Sam Seale and his own very first days as the Marion County judge.

“Sam taught me, or he didn’t teach me, he demonstrated it, was to just be available, be there when they need you, when they call,” he said between calls. “I do have a deep and abiding appreciation and understanding for what TAC means to our constituent members. I would commit everything I have to sustaining that image. … This is a long-term commitment for me.”

On this day, news travels fast. All the calls are someone wanting to congratulate him on his new job. Each time, Terry graciously thanks the caller, then asks about grabbing coffee the next time he’s in town, or invites them out for coffee the next time they come into town. Off the phone, he gives a rueful smile as he talks about walking his dog Oscar, having supper and falling asleep watching the football game — a nice night at home that he enjoys after so many days on the road.

“My wife will not ride in the car with me in Texas because I can’t just pass a courthouse without stopping and saying hello. She doesn’t want to stop in nine courthouses along the way,” he said. “But that’s the best thing about it. The courthouse coffee.”

It’s obviously a joke, though he does love his coffee. “Pretty much all the time I have, it’s been devoted to my work,” he said. “I like what I’m doing and it’s very satisfying. I enjoy the people.”