Harris County approves budgets with modest increases in law enforcement spending - Houston Chronicle
The Democratic majority on Harris County Commissioners Court passed new budgets Tuesday that included modest increases for county departments, not the drastic cuts Republicans sought to shift spending toward law enforcement.
County Judge Lina Hidalgo framed the approved spending plans as a responsible use of limited funds caused in part by Republicans forcing tax rate cuts the past three years.
“When we had 600 murders last year, our top priorities are crime, crime and crime,” Ramsey said. “If we lose focus on that … we’re not going to do better.”
Houston police logged 469 homicides in 2021, while the unincorporated county recorded 125. Overall violent crime in Houston was down slightly from the year before.
The county passed two budgets, for $1.3 billion and $2.2 billion, because it is switching to a new fiscal year calendar beginning in October instead of March. They include a 2 percent raise for all 17,000 county employees; an amendment Tuesday added an additional 3 percent raise for rank-and-file constable and sheriff’s office deputies, aimed at improving retention.
The approved budget for the next full fiscal year represents an increase of 2.5 percent over current spending.
The Cagle and Ramsey proposals would have eliminated roughly 1,000 county jobs in non-law enforcement positions to fund an equal number of police, prosecutors, investigators and their support staff, according to a budget office analysis. A revised plan from Ramsey would have cost about 400 jobs, the budget office said.
Like the precinct maps the pair pitched last year, the budget proposals from Cagle and Ramsey hark back to a time when Republicans ran the county, were published at the list minute and stood no chance of passing.
The outcome of Tuesday’s budget hearing was preordained, since the Republicans lacked the votes to approve their proposals, so the five court members spent nearly two hours defending their philosophies on spending, a likely campaign issue in this year’s elections. The county judge and Precincts 2 and 4 commissioners seats will be on the upcoming party primary and November ballots.
The Democrats dismissed the Republicans’ ideas as unserious — noting, for example, that Cagle’s plan would cut the health department budget by 47 percent during a pandemic and the public defender’s 68 percent as the criminal justice system grapples with a historic backlog of cases.
Hidalgo read from a health department memo warning that it no longer would be able do tuberculosis screening with such a small budget.
“If that’s not dystopian, I don’t know what is,” she said.
County Administrator David Berry in a memo said even if the county approved about 1,000 new law enforcement positions immediately, filling those jobs, which require specialized training, could take “a long period.”
At its core, the budget dispute illustrates how the two factions view the role of county government. The Republicans want to stick with the court’s historic focus on parks, infrastructure and public safety, while the Democrats want to expand that mission to include such social services as indigent defense and early childhood education.
“When I was thinking about leaving the state (Senate),” said Rodney Ellis, who left the Legislature in 2016 to become commissioner, “I was more interested in getting people a road to a better future, as opposed to just a road to get from here to there.”
The tax rate cuts forced by the Republicans beginning in 2019 change the funding picture even for the traditional functions of county government. For the preceding two decades, Commissioners Court had left the tax rate the same.
Property tax revenue increased every year because of new buildings and higher appraisals on existing ones, which helped the county budget keep pace with population growth.
The tax rate cuts mean that although revenue still grows, it does so at a lower rate, to the point where the court’s Democrats say they worry the county could have trouble providing essential services as the population continues to grow in future years.
Berry, the county’s budget chief, estimated that had Commissioners Court left the rate unchanged, it would have an additional $200 million this budget cycle. In theory, that could have been used for the law enforcement boosts the Republicans had championed.
Cagle, who told the Chronicle on Monday he had no regrets about forcing the tax rate cuts, said taxpayers deserve relief after enduring Hurricane Harvey and the COVID-19 pandemic. He said his constituents tell him they want lower taxes and increased spending on police and prosecutors that could help combat crime.
“They want to tighten our belt and they expect us, who are the tax-spenders, to do the same,” Cagle said.
Cagle’s budget proposal took the base spending plan from 2018, the last year Republicans were in control, and added this year’s requests from law enforcement agencies.
That calculation does not account for increases in salaries and benefits, inflation or 3 percent population growth in that time.
The court will next set tax rates in the fall.
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source: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Harris-County-approves-budgets-with-modest-16842783.php
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