Did Texas Rangers miss something?
New evidence suggests the accusations against Hidalgo’s office aren’t that clear-cut.
Could the whole allegation about County Judge Lina Hidalgo's staff awarding a sweetheart deal to a Democratic ally stem from a big misunderstanding?
That seems far-fetched, especially after a recent Texas Rangers search warrant affidavit revealed what appeared to be damning evidence against Hidalgo's staff. But perhaps the explanation being offered at long last by Hidalgo's lawyers is no more far-fetched than the original accusation: that Hidalgo, who has portrayed herself as the sunny antidote to decades of Harris County cronyism and backroom-dealing, had some part in steering an $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract to a tiny, inexperienced business run out of a Montrose apartment by one woman who just happens to have worked as a Democratic operative and whose bid for the project initially scored lower than a reputable, much larger competitor: UT Health.
Far-fetched or not, the evidence initially available seemed to support this narrative and Hidalgo's clipped responses blaming politics didn't help, either. Given the severity of the accusations of public corruption, they were anything but reassuring.
To Republicans hungering to regain control of county government, the alleged scandal is their best hope for unseating the popular Hidalgo, who won the recent Democratic primary with 75 percent of the vote. While the breathless conviction with which they've espoused Hidalgo's guilt over the past year was certainly politically motivated, they appeared to have the facts on their side.
Until now.
In interviews with media outlets including this editorial board, Hidalgo's lawyers have unveiled some key facts that weren't acknowledged in the recently released Texas Rangers affidavit detailing evidence for search warrants. The newly emerged facts cast doubt on the bidrigging allegations against the county judge, but, for reasons we'll explain, they don't clear her.
What made the 18-page search warrant affidavit by Texas Ranger Daron Parker seem so damaging for Hidalgo is that it detailed internal communications that seemed to show her staff conferring with Elevate Strategies founder Felicity Pereyra about the $11 million vaccine outreach project weeks before it went out for bid, giving her an unfair advantage.
What's worse, messages from Hidalgo's staff angling to exclude Pereyra's closest competitor, UT Health, seemed to confirm that the fix was in: “We need to slam the door shut on UT and move on,” Hidalgo's chief of staff Alex Triantaphyllis texted policy director Wallis Nader on April 20. In May, Triantaphyllis said he couldn't attend the selection meeting, but added, “don't let UT get it.”
In his affidavit, Parker sought the search warrant for evidence he believes will show three Hidalgo staffers committed misuse of official information, a thirddegree felony, by “providing an advantage to a competitor” in a formal bid process. He also argued the trio gave false statements on a government document attesting to following county ethical policies in awarding of the contract. To date, no criminal charges have been filed and the matter remains under grand jury investigation.
Now come Hidalgo's lawyers with a simple explanation that the Rangers didn't mention: There were two COVID-related jobs, not one, being discussed in those messages.
One job was the multimillion-dollar outreach project, the kind of contract that, due to its size and expense, is typically bid out. The other job, which Hidalgo's staff pitched to Pereyra before the outreach project even existed, was a part-time contractor position analyzing COVID data, a job later posted at a salary of $38,000 a year.
So, Hidalgo's lawyers argue, in most instances where it looks like Hidalgo's staff is improperly consulting Pereyra about the scope and nature of the outreach project, they're really talking about the smaller job that didn't have to be competitively bid.
Hidalgo had been impressed with Pereyra's work on 2020 census drives which had helped Harris and Fort Bend counties raise their response rates, according to correspondence. Staff thought Pereyra would be a good fit for the data job but after weeks of back-and-forth, Pereyra eventually informed them on Feb. 24 she didn't have time for the data position, saying her “availability has changed since we started the conversation” and she'd like to “keep a line open in case there are opportunities to assist in the future.”
That future came quickly — the next day, in fact, when county officials sent an invitation to bid on the outreach project to a handful of potential vendors, including Pereyra. Hidalgo's lawyers say the county judge's staff didn't know Pereyra might be interested in running the $11 million project until she submitted her bid in March. They say she got the invitation email because staff hoped she'd share it with other vendors, a contention that's backed up by a previous staff message.
“The search warrant allegations aren't an accurate reflection of the documents they cite, let alone the facts as they occurred,” Hidalgo lawyer Eric Gerard told us. “It gives us grave concern that prosecutors are pursuing this case based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the evidence.”
Our review of correspondence seems to line up with this explanation, except for two things.
First: Early on in January 2021, during discussions about the small data job, Pereyra was indeed sent a document indicating the scope of her data duties would include vaccine outreach. Hidalgo's attorneys say this was an error and messages show it was corrected and clarified subsequently that her duties would not include outreach. Still, a short time later, Pereyra was sent an outline of an “initial equity strategy for vaccines” that described the outreach project. Attorneys say it was sent with the idea that Pereyra's data work might include reporting on the progress of the separate outreach effort. Even so, seeing the information would have given her an idea of what was being planned.
Second: On Feb. 25, the very same day that the county sent out the request for proposals for the $11 million outreach project, Pereyra emailed someone saying she had “really solid relationships inhouse and I feel really good about my chances in landing the project (they asked me to design the program beforehand but then were told to go to RFP, so I'm just starting to build out a team).”
Attempts to hear from Pereyra last week were unsuccessful. Hidalgo's attorneys can't speak for her but Gerard speculated that confusion created when she was sent the wrong document may have left her believing she had been asked to design the project. Gerard points out that there isn't any documentation showing that she actually did help develop the outreach plan.
That answer doesn't relieve our concerns. If Pereyra had any significant role in designing the outreach project, she never should have been allowed to bid on it.
Hidalgo's lawyers did satisfy our curiosity on another question about why UT Health, which declined comment, hadn't gotten the contract after initially scoring highest. Its size and reputation apparently led to the early lead but after deeper review, it lost support when the county committee reviewing bids learned that failure to deliver on another COVID-related program, Harris Saves, had led to its cancellation, Hidalgo's lawyers say. That fact is what prompted Hidalgo's staff to criticize UT in messages, her lawyers claim, and not any desire to tip the scales for a partisan acquaintance.
In the end, the RFP selection committee unanimously recommended Pereyra's Elevate Strategies for the outreach contract, a vote that was attended by two people from public health and only one of the three members from Hidalgo's office, which made us think: if you were so desperate to tip the scales for a vendor, wouldn't you have as many of your people as possible weigh in?
As for the notion that Pereyra's firm was an inferior outfit run by one woman, our own review of her bid left us impressed, in terms of its detail and the 26-person organizational chart she had proposed to complete the outreach project, along with more than 50 canvassers.
The outreach, of course, never happened. In September, Hidalgo canceled the contract awarded to Elevate Strategies, saying the controversy was distracting from the vaccination goal.
The evidence from Hidalgo's attorneys casts serious doubt on allegations of bidrigging, although significant questions remain. We understand there's still much we don't know.
Ultimately, whether Hidalgo's staffers committed a crime is for grand jurors and law enforcement to decide, and we hope they are guided in that decision only by the facts — All the facts. Every. Single. One. — and not by partisan politics, or even petty intraparty disagreements among Democrats.
However it ends up, Harris County residents have already lost. People who needed education on COVID vaccination safety and effectiveness never got it through this project. We'll never know how many lives could have been saved.
Soon, though, we hope to find out what exactly scuttled the good intentions of this pandemic project — corruption and patronage, a political smear campaign, or just maybe, just maybe, one big misunderstanding.