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The Harris County Commissioners Court has voted to appoint a new County Administrator. This appointment follows the resignation of Diana Ramirez, who has held the position since 2023. The new administrator will be Jesse Dickerman, who is currently the director of energy transition.
The appointment follows a 4-1 vote, in which the lone Republican on the County Court, Precinct Three’s Tom Ramsey, voted against filling the position.
The position of County Administrator was originally created back in 2021, and Ramsey says that it’s been nothing but problems since. He told KTRH, "I can’t point to one single thing this position has done to make Harris County a more effective county government."
Ramsey went on to advocate for abolishing the position entirely in order to save the county money. In 2023, Diana Ramirez was paid over $418,000 for her service as administrator, which is more than the President of the United States is paid, but that’s not all.
Ramsey says, in total, the entire office costs tens of millions of dollars a year. According to him, "The budget for the County Administrator’s office is twenty-five million dollars. We don’t have twenty-five million to waste."
And waste is exactly what Ramsey says is happening at the County Administrator’s Office. He pointed out, "We didn’t have a county administrator for the last hundred years prior to [2021]. I think by many measures, Harris County was considered the most successful county in the United States of America."
He went on to say that this position has simply become a scapegoat for the failures of other county officials. Notably, much of the blame for the various issues during the 2022 midterm elections resulted in the legislature taking action on the issue.