Developers, engineers back bond election

Real estate developers and engineers gave almost $1.2 million in support of package

A campaign to generate support for Saturday’s flood-protection bond election raised $1.2 million in less than three months, most of it from engineering or real estate interests, finance reports show.

A campaign to generate support for Saturday’s flood-protection bond election raised $1.2 million in less than three months, most of it from engineering or real estate interests, campaign finance reports show.

The Fight Flooding Political Action Committee, organized at the end of May, had spent about $714,000 and had about $512,000 on hand as of Aug. 15, according to reports filed with the Harris County Clerk’s Office. The organization has used television, radio, social media, direct mail and other tools to inform voters about the $2.5 billion bond package and urge support, said Auggie Campbell, the PAC’s treasurer.

A Houston Chronicle review of campaign finance reports showed the Fight Flooding PAC raised at least $450,000 from people, organizations or companies connected to the real estate industry, including developers, home builders, agents and construction contractors. In addition, at least $250,000 came from engineering companies, their executives or groups representing them.

The biggest single donor was the American Council of Engineering Companies, which made three gifts totaling $140,300. The second-largest gift was $100,000 from Nancy Kinder, a prominent Houston philanthropist.

Rice University political science professor Mark Jones said $1.2 million was an impressive total for a bond election, particularly since the flood bond proposal enjoys widespread support and has not drawn any organized opposition. In a recent survey by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, 55 percent of respondents said they intended to vote for the bonds and just 10 percent said they would vote no, with the rest undecided.

“I think that if the politicians had evidence that it was a tighter election, they could have raised more money,” Jones said.

Almost half the respondents in the survey said they were “extremely concerned” or “very concerned” that much of the money from the bond issue would go to politically connected developers or construction firms rather than directly to flood-risk reduction projects.

Campbell said voters are right to be concerned about the use of the bond proceeds: “We need to watch where these dollars are spent and make sure they’re spent wisely,” he said.

Donors representing the engineering or real estate industries, Campbell said, were motivated by a desire to ensure that as many voters as possible understood

what was at stake in the bond election.

Jones, however, said many of those donors likely had other motivations.

Engineers may have been “licking their chops” at potential design contracts for flood mitigation projects funded by the bond proceeds, Jones said. And donations from developers and other real estate interests, he said, likely reflect the expectation that more parcels of land could be developed profitably if flood risks were reduced.

“They’re giving because they believe this bond proposal will improve the bottom lines of their business,” Jones said.

Harris County held a series of public meetings to get ideas about use of the funds, and those meetings led to some changes in the planned projects. Jim Blackburn, a Houston lawyer who often critical of local government on flood-related issues, has praised the transparency of the process.

County Judge Ed Emmett, the chairman of the Fight Flooding organization, said the broader Houston business community — not just the engineering and real estate sectors — has a keen interest in flood mitigation. He noted that the Greater Houston Partnership, the region’s primary business group, donated $25,000 to the Fight Flooding PAC.

“If you’re going to raise money on the basis of keeping the economy strong and the community resilient, you go to the people who have the money and have an interest in the topic,” Emmett said. The business community, he said, “wants to make sure that Houston and Harris County continue to be seen as a place that you want to locate your business.”

Developers, builders and the local real estate industry want to dispel the perception that investment in Houston may be unwise because of flood risks, said Scott Davis, senior vice president of Meyers Research, a Houston real estate consultancy. Mitigation projects funded by the bonds will help ease these concerns, he said.

“The industry has really stepped forward to support this, and wanted to exhibit some leadership on addressing this infrastructure problem,” Davis said.

Moreover, he added, “there are a lot of people in our industry who really do care about our city.”

Emmett said the public outreach funded by the PAC was necessary despite the evidence of strong support for the bond proposal. He recalled a 2013 bond election to fund a new criminal justice facility known as a joint processing center.

“Nobody opposed it, not a single word was uttered against it, and it passed countywide by 400 votes,” Emmett said. “That really got my attention.”

Even after months of news coverage and public meetings, Emmett said, he still gets emails from voters who say they intend to vote against the bonds because they do not know how the money will be used.

“You have to make a case,” Emmett said. “You have to be on paid media.”