Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Gov. Rick Perry hasn’t yet decided who should take his place, aides said.

Mr. Nedelkoff said today that the juvenile prison system has experienced a remarkable overhaul in the last several months and that the conditions that led to the abuse scandal are “no longer present.” In a report released last month, Mr. Nedelkoff said he was nearly finished implementing the changes needed to right the listing ship and said he would recommend ending the agency’s conservatorship as soon as he was done.

“You can disagree with a philosophical view on juvenile corrections, but not on the fact that we’ve made progress getting things done,” Mr. Nedelkoff said today. “I set overly ambitious goals and worked as fast as I could under a very difficult political and emotional environment.”

Some lawmakers, though, have been dissatisfied, arguing that the agency hasn’t moved fast enough to kick off a new rehabilitation program and a youth classification system. And they note that certain legislative requirements — including better guard training, new security cameras, and the return of youths charged with misdemeanors to their communities — have been started but not finished.

An 82-page report from the TYC’s ombudsman this week indicates many inmates still receive poor schooling — the result of overwhelmed and frightened teachers and bad curriculum.

One leader on juvenile-justice issues has even proposed abolishing the TYC in favor of small lock-ups closer to youths’ homes, saying the agency is too expensive and bureaucratic to repair.

“I really don’t have any personal problems with Richard,” said Rep. Jerry Madden, co-chairman of a joint legislative committee on the TYC.

But Mr. Madden doesn’t believe TYC is ready to leave conservatorship, either.

“The agency is still not going as we’d like to see it go,” he said. “We would like to have seen a lot more progress by now.”

Conservatorship is a specific legal status that gives a single official concentrated powers over an agency for an emergency. The governor has sole discretion when to end it.

Mr. Nedelkoff said many of the reforms lawmakers seek are literally “days or hours” away from being completed. He said the number of misdemeanants remaining in state custody has dropped from 400 to just over 100 in the last 30 days. Of the 11,000 cameras slated to be installed in youth prisons, just 200 are not yet operational.

He has rolled out the first phases of a new statewide treatment program, developed a plan to keep youth offenders into facilities closer to home, and ensured all new guards get 300 hours of training.

The purpose of the conservator is to oversee “an agency in a crisis,” Mr. Nedelkoff said, and the TYC no longer fits that definition.

“Keep in mind, reform takes years,” he said, noting that in many ways, the TYC has made faster progress than the other states undergoing juvenile justice overhauls. “The agency needs a leader who will be present for multiple legislative sessions to come, and it shouldn’t be the conservator.”

Gov. Rick Perry is expected to name a new agency chief — either an executive commissioner, as Mr. Nedelkoff recommends, or a new conservator — this month. A spokesman in Mr. Perry’s office said the governor had not yet decided which position it should be or who should fill it. Mr. Nedelkoff said he’s not setting a timeline for leaving, but acknowledged it could be the end of August.

The irony of Mr. Nedelkoff’s impending departure is that he’s the first agency executive since the scandal broke to draw broad praise from both juvenile justice advocates and employees of the TYC.

“He’s definitely been seen as a step in the right direction,” said Isela Gutierrez, juvenile justice initiative director at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

“If we have to hit the reset button again,” one top TYC official said, “I don’t know if the staff is going to make it.”

Previous agency leaders, who were lauded by lawmakers for their quick judgments and decisive actions, drew the ire of staffers, who loathed their “steamroller” approach.

Mr. Nedelkoff’s more philosophical approach to juvenile justice, however, has frustrated some high ranking state officials, who felt they could never get a direct answer from him.

He ran into trouble with some lawmakers almost from the start, over his decision to oust acting executive director Dimitria Pope. Ms. Pope had strong allies in the Legislature, and her forced resignation — Mr. Nedelkoff told her she wasn’t in the running for the permanent executive director job — irritated them. Mr. Nedelkoff never filled that post.

In a February interview, Sen. John Whitmire, the Houston Democrat who leads the TYC committee with Mr. Madden and is a friend of Ms. Pope’s, said: “I don’t know who’s on first base, and I’m not sure Nedelkoff knows what inning we’re in. I don’t have confidence that he knows what’s going on.” In a later interview, he also referred to Mr. Nedelkoff as “a shy violet.”

Their relationship seems to have leveled off — though Mr. Whitmire has since revealed his proposal to abolish the TYC. He has said that the agency is overloaded with expensive bureaucracy and that no amount of reforms will fix it. The senator was out of state today and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Mr. Nedelkoff has brushed off policy disagreements with key lawmakers as “good, healthy debate.” He said his relationships with state officials have generally been smooth, though he acknowledged sitting through several “volatile” hearings.

“My relationship with key members of the Legislature is what any agency figurehead would have, and that’s one of give and take, debate and discussion,” he said. “I would’ve made any effort to address serious issues.”