Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

A recent report that an undisclosed number of Texas state troopers had been hired after failing a polygraph test during their background checks was only the latest indication of the deep-seated troubles at the Department of Public Safety.

Members of the Public Safety Commission that oversees the department expressed shock and outrage that troopers were hired after failing a polygraph or admitting to past criminal behavior. Admittedly, a lie detector is a flawed piece of machinery, and past criminal behavior could be shoplifting once as a kid. Neither demands automatic dismissal. But the information shared at a commission meeting last month is an indication of how difficult it is for the department to find good recruits.

DPS is struggling with numerous problems that came into harsh light after the Governor's Mansion was set on fire by an arsonist last year while being guarded by DPS troopers. A review of that disaster found an understaffed department with calcified leadership and severe management failings. As a result, the 152-year-old mansion was nearly destroyed and faces rebuilding costs estimated at $27 million.

The report on the mansion fire found DPS failing in every aspect of security — training, personnel, equipment, procedure and supervision. And every report since then has been critical of DPS from top to bottom.

Problems with the department, one of Texas' most important and vital agencies, begin with pay. Troopers are underpaid compared with officers in urban police departments. A trooper's base pay of $38,000 a year compares with $45,500 in the Travis County Sheriff's Office and $49,000 for an Austin police officer.

The lower pay also makes recruiting and retention more difficult. The best and brightest are plucked by departments in the larger cities and counties.

Morale is low because promotion within the department is based on an outdated model. If a trooper has passed the sergeant's exam, he or she must go where a sergeant vacancy exists. That can mean a choice of uprooting the family or turning down a promotion.

Commissioners recently relaxed a rule that says troopers must live within 20 miles of their duty station by extending that to 30 miles to improve morale.

Commission Chairman Allan Polunsky said last fall that he is determined to update an agency hampered by a management model from the 1950s with its confused lines of authority, lagging technology and bureaucratic confusion. There is plenty of work to be done.

DPS needs to be reinvented. Various studies have said the department should shed its non-police functions, including driver's license bureaus and car inspections. It needs streamlined management, clear lines of authority and a sweeping reorganization.

Reinvention begins with raising standards — and pay — for troopers. Texas cannot have a premier state police agency on the cheap. As long as DPS pay remains so far below a metropolitan police department's, morale will remain low and recruitment a problem.

Beyond pay, the highest hurdle in reforming the department has been changing a culture that resists change. DPS needs new blood, new leadership and a new perspective if it is going to rise rather than continue to fall.

That's a challenge for the Public Safety Commission and the Legislature.