In November 2022 there will be an election for Harris County Judge. The title is a little misleading since this isn't actually a judge that adjudicates cases it is more symbolic of an individual that can yield expansive power and takes part in a multi-billion-dollar budget and allocating resources for the city of Houston. The Harris County Judge also sits on a Commissioner's Court that creates the agenda items and budget for the city. Currently the Commissioner's Court has Adrian Garcia, Rodney Ellis, Tom Ramsey, Jack Cagle, and Lina Hidalgo). Hidalgo, Garcia, and Ellis are Democrats and Ramsey and Cagle are Republicans. Lina Hidalgo is currently the county judge and is running for a reelection in November 2022. Hidalgo was elected in 2018 in a close race with Ed Emmett. It is important to point out that the election was close with Hidalgo only beating Emmett by a little over 1.6% of the vote. Part of the reason for this was at the time it was possible for voters to perform a straight ballot vote (all Democratic/all Republican). Many people even within the Democratic party were unaware of Hidalgo since she didn't have any experience and at the time she was running was only in her late 20's when she ran. The following is an outline of what she has done since coming into office.
COVID Alert System
To be perfectly honest I had no favorable or unfavorable opinion of Hidalgo considering not much was known about her and she seemed fine with someone aspiring for higher political aspirations. However, this all changed with COVID. In June 2020 Harris county implemented a COVID alert system that was supposed to provide guidance on the danger of COVID. The multi colored system initially started out on Red (severe and stay home) with the exception of going out to get groceries. Before the color system was implemented in April 2020 Hidalgo signed an order (that would be in effect for 30 days) that would fine anyone who didn't wear a mask $1,000. Within a week Hidalgo had changed her mind on this and suspended the fine. In June 2020 Hidalgo signed an order that would require businesses to require their employees/customers to wear masks (unless eating or drinking because you know COVID takes breaks for that) and stay 6 feet apart with a potential $1,000 fine for the business owner (but not the customer). It is important to remember that during this time the number of COVID cases was actually declining! Hidalgo responded to the fine that it's purpose was to "educate" people and businesses. After almost a year on being on red on May 18, 2021 Hidalgo finally lowered the COVID alert to orange. As I write this in September 2022 the current Harris County alert system shows the county at a Yellow (Medium) alert even though the Texas Medical Center in May 2022 decided to stop reporting the number of COVID cases (since they are so low). Hidalgo herself didn't even follow her own rules. As Bill King accurately pointed out in this article Hidalgo on January 11, 2022 Hidalgo held a press conference to announce that Harris County was in a red alert status however by February 9, 2022 (while still on a red alert status) Hidalgo held a rally were people weren't wearing marks or required that individuals be vaccinated. Apparently when you are fundraising you are in the Green alert status.
COVID Medical Tent
In April 2020 Harris County Commissioner's Court approved spending up to $60 million on a medical shelter structure at NRG Park. The site would have 250 beds and only be in operation for 60 days. Let's do that math on this. $60 million for 250 beds for 60 days would say that the cost would be $4,000 per day per bed! The last time I checked you could probably rent out the Four Seasons hotel cheaper (and hire multiple nurses to take care of you too). Ultimately Harris County had to pay $17 million for the medical facilities and there were 0 patients! The contract for the hospital paid a finance chief a day rate of $2,875/day. Judge Ed Emmett in an interview questioned if there would be a bank at the temporary hospital with that kind of rate. Also at this same time Houston Mayor Sylvester turned had stated that Houston city hospitals had the capacity to capacity to take additional COVID patients.
COVID Rig Bidding Scandal
However, all these issues during COVID were pedestrian compared to the bid rigging scandal Lina Hidalgo got involved with. Harris County placed a request for proposal (RFP) to bid on COVID outreach to the community. Generally, the way an RFP should work is you talk to various potential bidders to see what services they can provide, the history of their experience with the project, and what the potential cost might be. In a released document showing the potential winning bids shows Elevate Strategies as the "most qualified" even though staff members for Hidalgo had rated University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center higher by their own metrics. Additionally, Evaluate Strategies had a bid for $19,343,500 and UT Health Science Center had a bid for $7,508,040. So why would a bid be given to a firm that was more expensive and lower quality? Elevate Strategies was run by a woman who had previously worked on some Democratic campaigns for outreach. Elevate Strategies itself was a one person company. However, in large projects like this usually the company will subcontract out the work to other people. The actual proposal from Elevate doesn't mention any relevant experience within the healthcare area (which would be key in specifically a COVID outreach). Also if you look on page 33 of the proposal there are many blank names associated with the team that would make you wonder how could a bid be accepted without understanding the full details. It was discovered that three of Hidalgo's staffers communicated with Felicity Pereyra (founder of Elevate Strategies) in January 2021 and allowed Felicity to review and revise the scope of work before the proposals were made on February 19, 2021. One of the staffers (Mr. Alex Triantaphyllis) was quoted as saying "Take it away and don't let UT in". In addition to this one of Hidalgo's staffers mentioned "This vaccine thing is getting ridiculous". Alex himself is a Rice University graduate and also graduated from Harvard Law School. Also it was reported that that Harris County Purchasing Office received instructions from Hidalgo's office to disqualify the bid since UT has been previously late on other bids. Although, there is no evidence of this this doesn't even make sense. Anyone that has been involved in a RFP knows you start with potential candidates that can accomplish the request. No rational person starts with a list of vendors that don't provide work in a timely manner.
What's even worse then the actual no bid contract is the contract. As Bill King describes in this article when Lina Hidalgo asked for the Elevate Strategies contract to be cancelled a payment $885,000 was sent to Elevate Strategies quickly (even though the invoices had been pending for two weeks). What is even more suspicious is some of the payment amounts exceeded the actual invoices to Elevate Strategies. For example the invoice on August 28, 2021 was for $590,193.94 however the actual amount paid on September 16, 2021 was $885,874 (which would say the amount paid is a 50% increase over what was billed!). When I actually add up all the amounts paid by Harris County I get roughly $2.3 million paid to Elevate Strategies. The contract specifically shows that the vendor can only be paid when services are performed which as Bill King points out would say the amount paid per employee was $100,000 for just one month of work. Hidalgo multiple times in Commissioner's Meetings claimed there was nothing improper over the Elevate Strategies contract and often went after any critics or anyone who would ask questions about the contract during meetings. In this Harris County Commissioner's Court Hidalgo in this video denies it and then says "bring it on". This reminds me of something elementary children say on the playground. Hidalgo also argued with Jack Cagle regarding Elevate Strategies being a one person operation and during the meeting quotes the Elevate Strategy has being a one person shop. As a side note I have watched multiple commissioner's meetings and Lina Hidalgo has a tendency when Jack Cagle or Tom Ramsey speak Lina is either checking her cell phone or looking at her computer (which to me is disrespectful).
It is fairly obvious the Elevate Strategies contract was a rigged bid and then the staffers of Hidalgo tried to covered up what happened. As a result of this a grand jury indicted 3 staffers that worked Hidalgo in April 2022. It is also worth pointing out that two of Hidalgo's staffers are still on the job (even after being indicted). During this same time the Houston Chronicle (which has defended Hidalgo) wrote a puff piece of Hidalgo being a vegan. There is talk of Hidalgo of being indicted herself. Hidalgo's team claims that this is all just a misunderstanding the texts and e-mails that were leaked were all part of a another project Elevate Strategies was working on. If this were the case why isn't there an RFP (request for proposal) and second why would a staffer say to "slam the door on UT?". Generally the ways these work (since I have been involved in the process) is you first define what you are looking for in terms of the service/product, gather the data from various vendors, and then analyze the data to see what is the best fit. Also in any leadership position you are accountable for the actions of your employees.
No Bid Security for Hidalgo
Speaking of no bid contracts in April 2022 the Harris County Commissioner's Court decided to approve a no bid contract to XMiProtection for $121,524 to provide security to Hidalgo for 12 hours a day until July 25, 2022. This was only for a 12 week period. If the cost of the security was annualized it would be almost $500,000. Keep in mind that Lina Hidalgo makes a salary $190,861. Even though I am not a fan of Hidalgo I feel as if she should have security protection but with competitive bidding.
Crime In Harris County
Crime currently is a big issue not only in Harris County but around the country. Having lived in Houston since the early 1990's and remember the crime rate being high with specials on local news stations with names like City Under Siege. In more recent times 2019 to 2020 in Harris County violent crime increased 43%. Lina Hidalgo took office in 2018 so if you look at the crime rate since she took office crime has increased around 70%. Houston is one of the most dangerous cities in the country. The current criminal justice system in Harris County is more of a catch and release program. Hidalgo has direct influence over crime since the Harris County Commissioner's Court. Hidalgo repeatedly claims that 2/3's of the budget is spent on crime. The claim has been pointed out to be not accurate for multiple reasons. The first the excludes what Harris County spends on flood control, the toll road system, and public health. If you do the math even conservatively it comes out to less than 1/3 of the budget is spent on law enforcement. However, even this number is highly dubious as if you study this Safe Harris website and look at the bottom portions for "Community" and "Youth Safety and Justice". For instance $31 million is planned to be spent on workforce development programs when the Harris County unemployment rate is 4.8% (on the lower end of a historical low). Also teenage unemployment rates were 8.5% in the summer of 2022. Moreover to the point African American teenage unemployment was around 16%. Although this number sounds high from a historical African American teenage unemployment is near an all time low (since the data was tracked since the early 1970's). $27.1 million would be spent for health initiates, $50 million spent for community infrastructure, $8.4 million for new trails, and many other what late economist Walter Williams would refer to as midnight basketball programs. When I add up all the spending of these "programs" I get roughly about $155 million (this is about half of all the spending on the Safe Harris flyer) that could be directly spent on either hiring more police officers, more prosecutors, and more funding for the court systems to speed up the backlog of cases (recently is was reported there was a backlog 40,000 misdemeanor cases in Harris County). One estimate said it could take just up to 2 years to just make a dent in the criminal case backlog. The average percent of felony cases where a defendant posted bond from 2011 to 2018 (before Hidalgo) took office was about 46%. If you look at the average between 2019 and 2021 the percentage increases to 69% or about a 50% increase. In late 2021 it was reported over 27,000 defendants are currently out on a felony bond. From 2016-2021 over 900 accused felons had committed four or more serious crimes while out on a bond. For example a young man named Clayton Bryant was on bond for 8 felony charges and his criminal history had 36 felony charges. Some Judges in Harris County are worse than others. The average number of defendants was 61%. However Judge Natalia Cornelio was a superstar in this area with 72% of defendants posting bond. On her website for criminal justice she claims "we must acknowledge and work to address these disparities to restore the community's confidence that the system is fair, equitable, and just". Of course these are woke ideal principles and I wonder how far the closest defendant she has lives to her or Lina Hidalgo?
Gun Buy Backs
Harris County decided that it would be a great idea to buy back guns in an effort to reduce crime. In July 2022 Harris County offered up to $200 per gun. The funding for this was provided the American Rescue Plan (COVID stimulus). The total cost was around $1.1 million for the gun buyback program. It is important to point out that there was no ID required, nor would Harris County run any type of scan to see if the individual was a criminal. So let's think about this. Probably most law abiding citizens who were in need of cash would turn in there guns when criminals would still have the same amount of guns. Furthermore the ratio of criminals with guns to law abiding citizens increased as a result of this (again funded by Americans in other states).
Toll Road Financing
In September 2020 the Commissioner's Court voted to use money from the Harris County Toll Road System and divert that money to other uses (besides transportation). The deal created a new limited government entity and Harris County Toll Road System would provide the Commissioner's Court with an upfront $300 million and then an additional $90 million per year. It should be noted that the whole budget to the Harris County Toll Road System is roughly $900 million/year. Lina Hidalgo was quoted as saying this was a good idea because it will "maximize every dollar". Politicians can never outspend their needs or wants.
Flood Bond
After Hurricane Harvey Harris County Commissioner's Court agreed to pass a $2.5 billion flood bond. However, the intended use would be based on the "social vulnerability index" which was actually created by the CDC. Some of the factors included in this index are poverty, educational attainment, car ownership and housing quality. This doesn't make any sense as it would assume clouds and rain literally only pours down on poor people. This is just redistributing money from wealthier individuals in Harris County to poorer people and also to gain political brownie points.
Newly Elected Harris County Elections Administrator
Also under Hidalgo's watch was the creation of a newly elected official of "Harris County Elections Administrator". The position was created in 2020 even though this function was already handled at the local level by the tax assessor and the county clerk (historically there were no issues with this either from either political side). The newly created position for Isabel Longoria. In her new position Isabel earned almost $200,000 of income (remember this position was created out of thin air). During her tenure during a primary runoff election 10,000 mail in ballots were left out. In addition to this Harris County was the last county in the state of Texas to count all their ballots (this was out of 254 counties). This disaster could have been avoided by not even creating this position in the first place since the tax assessor and county clerk have run elections for hundreds of years without major issues.
Personality
On the personal side Lina has demonstrated she can be disrespectful. During the funeral of Corporal Charles Galloway who was killed in an ambush in February 2022 when she was asked to move to her seat she responded "do you know who I am". To me regardless of what political you are in this behavior is disrespectful and childish. Moreover, especially trying to seek the limelight during the funeral of a killed officer is disgraceful. Over past few years and I have seen Lina Hidalgo give interviews. She rarely does an interview that doesn't put her in a positive light and recently whenever she is asked a question she gets highly defensive and goes after them as well.
Summary and Conclusion
To recap Lina Hidalgo has only been in office since 2019 and since then has been involved in a COVID rig bidding scandal with three of her staffers indicted and tried to cover it up. She kept Harris County on a red alert system for COVID for over a year and she signed an order that would fine anyone that didn't wear a mask $1,000. She also had a no bid contract for her own private security detail. In addition to this she led Harris County to waste $17 million on boondoggle for a COVID medical tent that wasn't even needed or ever took care of any patients. Crime since she has taken office has increased 70% and she is making the problem even worse as she has voted for over $150 million to fight crime however this money is not being used for anything crime related as it goes for bike trails, health initiatives, infrastructure, and other pet projects. She has voted to redirect hundreds of millions of dollars from Harris County Toll Road to other non transportation projects. She voted for a $2.5 billion flood bond that will be based on a "socially vulnerable index" and not based on where the most amount of flooding is. She voted to create a newly position for an election's administrator that was late in reporting the ballots (to be accurate last out of all 254 counties in Texas) and in addition to that left out 10,000 mail in ballots. On top of all this Lina Hidalgo doesn't have a redeeming personality to save her and is not charismatic whatsoever.
And that's just what she owns directly.
ReplyDeleteThe Hidalgo/Ellis/Garcia cabal continues to steamroll anyone who gets in their way with zero compromise. If their redistricting gets Cagle out and gives them supermajority, it's game over for any remaining checks and balances. Very dangerous scenario.