Save counties money by reducing low-level pot offenses?

At tomorrow's House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee meeting, (see their agenda), one bill jumps out at me that would provide tremendous relief to local county jails and an influx of revenue to municipal and county coffers from increased fine revenue:  HB548 (Dutton) Reducing penalties for less than an ounce of marijuana. Grits pontificated on the immense benefits to county government from such legislation last fall in a post titled, "On the benefits to county budgets, local police coverage from reducing pot penalties." Since as of 2009, 57.9% of all drug arrest in Texas were for pot, most for low-level amounts, making many of those cases Class C misdemeanors would a) significantly reduce intake volume at local jails and b) generate fine revenue instead of cost counties money for jail, court-appointed counsel., etc.. Most Class B pot cases end up on probation, anyway, and with misdemeanor probation funds eliminated in the House and Senate budgets, arguably it's pointless to bother supervising pot smokers when it diverts scarce CSCD resources from supervising misdemeanor DWI offenders, family violence defendants, etc..

From a fiscal perspective, Dutton's bill makes loads of sense. In 2005 under leadership of then-Chairman Terry Keel, this same committee approved a similar bill unanimously, with several Republicans including Keel and Rep. Debbie Riddle voting for the measure, but then Speaker Craddick didn't want the bill to go to a floor vote, ostensibly to "protect" the members from voters like this guy. (This year, the budget crisis is so severe that, if the bill gets that far, the new Speaker IMO should blow past such concerns and let members vote. There will be so many unfunded mandates, particularly for county jails, that the Lege should at least do something that provides counties explicit relief. But that's getting ahead of ourselves.) There's no telling how this committee - most of whom are new to the issues and many of whom are new to the Lege - will vote on Dutton's bill, but it'd be something they could easily tout back home as reducing the burden on county budgets.

IMO fears of voter backlash at such a vote are overblown. It didn't harm Debbie Riddle or others who voted for Dutton's bill in 2005. And notably, a larger proportion of Texas voters supported outright legalization of marijuana than support any single budget cut presented to them in a recent UT/Texas Tribune poll. Objections to the bill over the years have become increasingly rare (in 2005 when it passed out of committee, no one registered against it). Maybe with the budget crisis being what it is, this will be the year the legislation will find its legs. Stranger things have happened.