Members of the Harris County Commissioners Court continue to work on putting together the county’s fiscal year budget. The hard part is cutting down the projected $270 million deficit while still spending on critical needs like pay raises for law enforcement.
This has resulted in a number of confrontations between Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey and County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Hidalgo has insisted that for county deputies to receive a raise, taxes in the county will once again have to be raised.
Ramsey has consistently made the case that rather than burdening county residents with more taxes, commissioners should simply roll back some of its discretionary spending. He pointed out that, "We’ve got $500 million worth of issues we can look at. We can choose not to spend money there."
He pointed specifically to things like a $23,000 trip to Paris that Judge Hidalgo had requested the county pay for. Commissioners voted down that request last Thursday. He also suggested looking into cutting the County Administrator’s office, which was created in 2021 and has a budget of around $25 million.
He believes we could find enough savings in discretionary spending to more than cover a pay raise for sheriff’s and other county law enforcement officers without bumping taxes up again. He said, "We have a spending problem. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have raised taxes every year I’ve been on Commissioners Court."