1. Be Present
The District Clerk is Tarrant County’s elected officer responsible for recording the proceedings at the very first hearing someone who is arrested has before a magistrate judge. This hearing, called a magistration hearing, is where bail is set, the right to an attorney begins, and mental health and suicide risk are supposed to be screened. It is the hearing that determines whether someone goes home or sits in jail, sometimes for months, while their case moves through the courts.
Texas law is clear: the District Clerk is responsible for recording and overseeing these hearings.
Tarrant County centralized magistration hearings in 2018. Tom Wilder has not assigned a single staff member to them in all that time. Seven years later, magistration hearings are the only court proceeding in Tarrant County that takes place without a clerk present.
Nathan will assign District Clerk staff to Central Magistration from day one. They will be present 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. More than 70 people have died in the Tarrant County Jail since 2017. Showing up to do this part of the job is a matter of life and death.
2. Be Respectful
When you are summoned for jury duty, you make arrangements. You notify your employer. You arrange childcare. You show up. But if the trial you were called for has been canceled and you were not notified in time, it’s not just an inconvenience. It’s a sign of disrespect for the value of your time.
Texas law places the District Clerk in charge of the jury summons process. In most large Texas counties, that responsibility rests with the District Clerk’s office. In Tarrant County, however, it has shifted to an unelected county employee rather than to an elected official accountable to voters. This means that there is no clear line of responsibility when working people are let down by the process.
Nathan will work to return this function to its place under Texas law and will make prompt notification of trial cancellations a priority. Your time matters. This office should act like it does.
3. Be Understanding
The records of Tarrant County’s courts belong to the public. The District Clerk is their custodian. That means more than just storing documents in a warehouse or harddrive. It means ensuring people can actually access them.
Texas law is clear about which documents the public is entitled to receive and at what cost. Tarrant County’s current fee structure charges more than it should, creating unnecessary barriers for people who can least afford them. There have even been instances in which fees were sought that Texas law does not allow, forcing people in already difficult circumstances to fight for records they were legally entitled to receive for free.
Nathan believes that access to justice begins with access to records. He will audit the fee schedule, bring it into full compliance with state law, and treat expanding public access to court documents as an obligation of the office rather than an afterthought.
4. Be Accountable
When Dallas County spent $35 million on a court software project and concluded it was not working, they stopped. When Travis County spent $3.3 million on the same project and reached the same conclusion, they stopped. Tom Wilder kept going.
By the time Tarrant County finally launched the system in 2023, twelve years after the project began, the price tag had exceeded $26 million. Two months after launch, a county commissioner called it a failure, and officials discussed whether it needed an audit. Wilder himself has publicly warned that a system crash would be devastating to the operation of the District Courts.
Nathan will commission an independent assessment of the technology situation and present the findings openly to commissioners and the public. Tarrant County taxpayers deserve an honest accounting of what happened and a credible plan for what comes next.
5. Be Open
Most large Texas counties now publish real-time data on court performance, including how long cases take, how the docket is moving, and how the office is doing its job. This matters since it provides transparency into how long people are waiting for their trials, often stuck in the county jail. Tarrant County provides no such visibility to the public. Nathan will ensure it does.
The District Clerk manages more than 121,000 court proceedings each year and holds $23 million in trust for children and families. Voters deserve to know how that work is being done. Nathan will publish regular, plain-language performance data so the public, not just lawyers and insiders, can see how their courts are functioning.