AUSTIN — Democratic lawmakers reacted angrily, and their Republican colleagues cautiously, to evidence of another breakdown in Texas Child Protective Services investigations — this time in Harris County.

“This is infuriating,” said Rep. Armando Walle, a Houston Democrat who has filed a flurry of bills over the past five years to try to force the agency to ask for what it needs — higher pay, more bodies — to lower workers’ staggering caseloads. “I’m just angry at this whole situation.”

Through early September, half of children referred to Harris County's CPS investigators weren't being seen on time, The Dallas Morning News reported Thursday, after analyzing an agency database that tracks initial visits with children mentioned in over 7,300 child abuse cases in the Houston area. In 1 of every 5 open cases there, children weren't being seen at all.

On Thursday, several Democratic House members lawmakers expressed outrage:

Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker Joe Straus, all Republicans, reacted to the findings — and accounts of CPS failings last week by The News and other media outlets — by sending agency overseer Henry "Hank" Whitman a letter.

In it, the leaders said not getting out and making timely checks on potentially abused children is “completely unacceptable.” They ordered the protective services department, CPS’ parent, to quickly develop an “innovative plan” to hire and train more child-abuse investigators to address the extreme backlogs. However, with 23 percent annual turnover among all caseworkers — and one-third of all investigators quitting each year — many existing slots are unfilled.

While the state GOP leaders acknowledged “associated financial costs,” they directed Whitman to essentially bolster existing efforts. They were mute about the factor that advocates stress most in improving worker performance and retention: higher wages for caseworkers and child abuse investigators.

Houston child advocate Katherine Barillas said she was saddened to read of her hometown children’s plight.

Tarrant County CPS investigator Kelli Bailey (right) talks to her supervisor, Denee Borchardt, about a new case in June 2016 in Fort Worth. (Nathan Hunsinger/Staff Photographer)

“Workers leave because of low pay, high caseloads and lack of support in their work environment,” she said, citing several studies. “But the response to these long-term problems has always been crisis-driven and shortsighted.”

Last month, Whitman submitted a two-year budget request that had no mention of salary increases, other than a nod at possible tweaks, such as perhaps more merit pay.

The lack of across-the-board raises for CPS workers startled child advocates. Several, such as Barillas, who leads the group One Voice Texas, said they expected that to be part of the proposed agency overhaul.

“I was shocked — really, really taken aback," she said.

Whitman did request some big bucks for adding more caseworker positions. He wants to add about 900 positions across the agency — among others, to investigations operations; “conservatorship” units monitoring foster children; and “family based safety services” units working with families so removing their children won’t be necessary.

Drilling down to the “front end” investigation programs, which have been hemorrhaging workers, especially in Dallas and Houston, Whitman sought about 300 new slots. That would cost about $60 million in general-purpose revenue in the next cycle.

The agency’s own personnel data raise questions, though, about whether more positions — instead of higher-paying ones — are the answer.

As of August, there were 389 unfilled caseworker jobs across Texas. More than half were openings in child-abuse investigation units. In Harris County, now in crisis, 62 positions were unfilled. Of those, 28 were openings for investigators.

Sen. Jane Nelson, a Flower Mound Republican who heads the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee, acknowledged that just authorizing more slots won’t solve the problem.

“Every session we fund additional positions, and it is always difficult to fill them,” she said in a written statement that called for “a multi-pronged approach” for fixing CPS. Nelson didn’t elaborate but said recent business-practice changes at the agency are “starting to take root.”

At a specially called Finance panel meeting about the CPS crisis on Oct. 26, she said, senators “will focus squarely on making sure we invest resources where they will do the most good."

Amarillo GOP Rep. Four Price, the House’s chief budget writer for social services, noted that in the past, department officials always cast low pay as just one of three reasons workers leave — along with workloads and poor supervisors. CPS chiefs would say salaries are not even the top irritant, he recalled.

Price said, though, that he’s aware that low pay was CPS employees’ biggest beef in the department’s latest “employee engagement” survey, released in June. Almost 65 percent of its 11,600 employees participated.

“An across-the-board, just wholesale [pay] increase has not been requested, so it hasn’t been prioritized,” he said. "It should be considered, with all those other issues," such as more caseworker positions and spending on foster care, he said. "We have to consider all options."

Madeline McClure of Dallas, founder of TexProtects, the Texas Association for the Protection of Children, said support for a pay bump is slowly mounting.

Advocates are “making traction on the pay increase, one legislator at a time, but [there’s] no firm commitment in hand,” she said.

“The real crisis here is ... about the salary increase. It’s what Hank [Whitman] was talking about and then suddenly he wasn’t,” McClure said.

In 1983, after lawmakers and Gov. Mark White approved a modest pay raise for all CPS workers, turnover declined, McClure noted. And it never exceeded 20 percent in the 1980s, she said. Since 2000, though, annual caseworker attrition has ranged from 23 percent to 34 percent.

Whitman and Kristene Blackstone, the Abbott administration’s new head of CPS, should immediately plead for retired CPS workers, who could be retrained very rapidly, to come back and bail out the agency on its delinquent cases and unseen kids, McClure said.

Several Democratic lawmakers have said low salaries, as well as chaotic workplaces, are costing the state many millions every year.

CPS spends $54,000 to train each new worker — and last year, 1,543 caseworkers quit. So an agency investment — $83.3 million of training — walked out the door.

So far, though, Whitman has stressed low-cost improvements for CPS investigation programs.

They include forensic training for handling of evidence and conducting interviews, which is filtering down through the ranks; three dozen new information specialists, who check out criminal histories and police dispatch records before child-abuse investigators approach a home under suspicion of child abuse or neglect; and a “SafeSignal” app on workers’ smartphones.

The app would allow them to signal distress to local law enforcement. It’s under development in Houston and Central Texas, Blackstone has said.

Whitman inserted a “placeholder” into his budget request. He said he may seek additional money “to retain a high-performing workforce.”

Whitman cited a $120,000 University of Houston study. But it is not expected to recommend an across-the-board bump sought by many child advocates and the Texas State Employees Union.

The union has asked for a $6,000-per-caseworker increase. Over the next two years, that would cost at least $130 million, of which almost $50 million probably would be federal funds, according to budget analysts.

“The turnover speaks for itself. The studies already have been done,” said union organizer Amy Zachmeyer, a former CPS caseworker. She cited workers’ beef about pay in the employee survey.

“If they know how to solve the problem, it’s time for them to stop feigning outrage and offer real solutions for Texas’ most vulnerable children,” she said of Abbott and key legislative leaders.