Texas County Storytellers

Several years ago, former Tom Green County Judge Steve Floyd called long-time defense attorney Tip Hargrove and asked him to drop by his office. When Hargrove walked in, the judge was holding a mug with a couple of Butterfingers in it.  

“Here, we have a gift for you,” Floyd said, grinning. 

The gift came with a big ask: Would Hargrove chair the oversight committee for a new regional public defender’s office? 

Hargrove gave Floyd his answer on the spot. “Sure, I’ll do it.” 

It was an idea that had been building for years, to create a regional public defender's office, as it was becoming increasingly clear the old way of providing indigent defense was no longer sustainable. 

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to counsel. In Texas, counties and thus local taxpayers bear the responsibility — and the cost — of providing criminal defense to those who can't afford an attorney. 

When Hargrove began his private practice in San Angelo in 1978 after four years as a military lawyer with the Air Force, representing defendants who couldn't afford counsel was largely a matter of professional obligation. If you had a law license, you could expect a judge to appoint you to a case. 

“We felt like it was our civic duty, even the lawyers who didn’t do criminal defense normally,” Hargrove said. 

The system worked as long as there were enough lawyers willing and available to take appointed cases. Then the lawyers who had carried appointed cases for years began aging out of practice, and fewer younger lawyers were moving to San Angelo and the surrounding communities to replace them. 

The system was becoming more difficult to sustain. It needed to change. 

The numbers 

Tom Green County Auditor Nathan Cradduck had watched county officials explore the idea of a regional public defender’s office several times. 

“There had been a lot of discussion for many years before we created the public defender's office about the need for one,” Cradduck said. “But the numbers and the politics and the right mixture of those elements hadn't come together yet at the right time for it.” 

By 2020, they had. 

Tom Green County was approaching a break-even point between what it was spending on appointed attorneys and what a public defender’s office would cost. Cradduck and Chastity Gauwain, the county’s grant administrator at the time, began working on an application to the Texas Indigent Defense Commission (TIDC) for funding to help establish what is now the Concho Valley Public Defender’s Office. 

TIDC provides funding, oversight and assistance to help Texas counties meet their constitutional obligation to provide legal representation to people who can’t afford an attorney. The agency was established as the Task Force on Indigent Defense with the passage of the Texas Fair Defense Act of 2001 and became TIDC in 2011. 

The need is substantial. In fiscal year 2025, Texas counties spent a combined $534.9M on indigent defense, with the state contributing $39.4M through grants administered by TIDC. 

Before the Concho Valley office was established in 2021, Tom Green County covered about 93% of its indigent defense costs, Cradduck said, while the state paid roughly 7%. 

The regional approach changed that equation. By serving several smaller counties, the office qualified for a TIDC rural sustainability grant that provides ongoing state support. Under the grant, the state covers two-thirds of the cost, while participating counties pay one-third. 

For now, the local share is even lower. A temporary, two-year funding arrangement through TIDC has reduced the counties’ contribution to less than 20%, Cradduck said. 

Selling the idea 

Hargrove had initially been skeptical of a public defender’s office. For years, he and others, including then-District Judge Ben Woodward, argued that the existing system could continue to handle the work. 

Then a series of pressures — fewer lawyers, rising caseloads and the cost of appointed counsel — brought the need into focus. 

“Judge Woodward softened his stance. The defense bar, which I was more or less leading, softened its stance,” Hargrove said. “And at some point, we just said, ‘We’ve got to do it.’” 

Hargrove had gotten to know attorneys across the state through his work with the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. When he became chairman of the Concho Valley oversight committee and it came time to hire a chief public defender, Joe Stephens was one of the lawyers he had in mind. 

Stephens had served in public defender offices in rural South Texas and the Hill Country. He not only was going to run the new office, but he also had to become its chief ambassador and salesman. 

“Joe Stephens personally went and sat down with everyone and said, ‘Here's what we're doing. Here's why we have to do it. Here's why you have to pay for it. Here's how we're going to handle it,’” Hargrove said. “And he sold it to them.” 

“Trust was paramount,” Stephens said. 

For smaller counties, the office offered predictability and a dependable supply of lawyers that had increasingly been difficult to find. 

The Concho Valley office began serving Runnels County in 2022. "It really has made a huge difference for the county, for indigent individuals," Runnels County Judge Julia Miller said. "We've been able to move things along much more efficiently and quickly than we were able to in the past." 

Joining a regional public defender's office made a difference in the county's budget too. 

“It’s so much easier for us to know, ‘Here's what this is going to be,’” Miller said. “It’s been a godsend for us financially and administratively.”

When it became real

Once the Concho Valley Public Defender’s Office was awarded the TIDC grant, attention turned to the more practical tasks. 

There was an oversight board to assemble. Interlocal agreements to negotiate. Office space to find. Felony, misdemeanor and appellate lawyers, investigators and administrators to hire. 

“You're building a law firm from scratch,” Cradduck said. 

Securing the funding and putting the office together were only the beginning. To be fully staffed still always seems a position or two (or three) away. Pressures surrounding caseloads are an enduring issue. 

But the benefits quickly showed. 

In its first year, the office reduced the jail population enough to save Tom Green County more than $1 million, said Elizabeth Berry, who succeeded Stephens as chief public defender in 2024. Lawyers were meeting promptly with clients, tracking deadlines, moving cases and clearing backlogs. Fewer defendants faced long waits without seeing an appointed attorney. Shorter jail stays meant lower costs for counties. 

Then there are benefits impossible to capture in a budget document. 

"I enjoy this job because it's work I like and work I believe in," said Rebecca Yung, Concho Valley's first assistant public defender. 

"We're often representing people who maybe didn't finish high school, sometimes have limited reading and writing skills, might have mental health challenges or an intellectual disability," she added. "And for them to get a fair shot, they really do need a defense attorney." 

A regional problem 

Cradduck, whom Stephens called “the silent hero” of the office’s genesis, said one lesson for counties looking at regional public defense is to first determine what already exists nearby. 

“Can you become a part of a high-functioning public defender office and just sort of slowly add to something that already exists?” he said. 

The Concho Valley’s original mandate in 2021 was seven counties anchored around San Angelo and Tom Green County. The next year, TIDC funded a neighboring five-county office, anchored around Abilene and Taylor County. 

With its infrastructure and leadership already in place, it made sense to expand the Concho Valley office and bring the proposed Big Country office in Taylor under the existing regional public defender’s office. The regional office currently has 11 county members. 

Stephens, now a clinical lecturer at the Texas Tech School of Law and chief public defender of the Caprock Regional Public Defender Office in Lubbock, said there is strength in numbers. A single small county might have difficulty making its case to TIDC when seeking state funding. A group of counties facing the same staffing shortages and pressures has a stronger voice. 

“You can change the way a community actually exists if the right people are doing it for the right reasons,” Stephens said. “The idea of bringing in a new generation, creating a new structure that actually stood for something with a great deal of principle, was wildly compelling to me and worth every single second of absolute hardship to get it off the ground.” 

The Butterfingers Floyd offered Hargrove way back when remain a fitting beginning. A county needed someone to take responsibility for building something that did not yet exist, and that required a group effort with a ton of work. 

Cradduck ran the numbers. He and Gauwain wrote the grant. Hargrove said yes. Stephens talked to the neighbors. The smaller counties joined. 

And a new system began to take root. 

“We had a deep and cooperative bar, and it worked well for a long, long time,” Hargrove said of the past system. 

Until it didn’t. 

Then a group of people in different parts of the system decided to work on the same problem. Together. 

Additional reporting by Mary Huber and Nia Russell.