State finds county cut police funding
Attorney Menefee to challenge judgment by GOP comptroller, alleging ‘political games’
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar on Friday accused Harris County of defunding law enforcement, rekindling a feud from last fall in which Republican state officials threatened to block the county’s annual budget. At issue is a new state law passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature, Senate Bill 23, that bars large counties from cutting law enforcement spending without getting approval from voters. Hegar, responding to a fresh complaint from Harris County Constable Ted Heap, said county officials had reduced the budget for Heap’s Precinct 5 office by some $2.4 million in their most recent budget.
Hegar said in a statement that the county will be barred from increasing property tax collections — plus revenue from properties added to the tax roll last year — until it resolves the discrepancy. It could also ask voters to approve the “funding reduction” in a referendum, Hegar said.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said the county would challenge Hegar’s finding in court if necessary.
“We’ve seen this show before — Comptroller Hegar misconstruing the law and playing political games to make headlines,” Menefee tweeted. “His math was wrong then and it’s wrong now.”
Republicans passed SB23 in response to the nationwide movement, sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, that is aimed at diverting police funding to social services and other uses. Few large cities in Texas reined in their police budgets amid the outcry, though Austin removed some operations from its police department’s purview.
The debate over law enforcement funding in Harris County
has been complicated by the county’s decision to shift its budgeting schedule to start in October instead of March. That move required a seven-month stopgap budget last year, muddling year-to-year funding comparisons.
As happened last fall, Hegar and County Administrator David Berry have used different methods to project out Heap’s seven-month budget to a full year. Under Hegar’s calculations, Heap’s “annualized” budget would have been about $48.9 million over 12 months — nearly $2.3 million off from the $46.7 million figure calculated by the county.
Adding to the confusion, Hegar and the county are separately at odds over Heap’s current budget, which was adopted by the Democratic-controlled Commissioners Court last fall. According to Hegar, Heap’s office was allotted about $46.6 million for the 2023 fiscal year. Berry’s office said Heap actually received $48.5 million.
Hegar, a Republican, said he hopes Heap and county officials can resolve the situation themselves “long before Harris County begins budget deliberations for fiscal year 2024.” He also predicted that county officials would “once again use a convoluted approach” to argue they had not reduced Heap’s funding.
“The root cause of that debate, however, remains unresolved,” Hegar said in the statement, referring to the defunding spat from last fall. “Judge Lina Hidalgo and the Harris County Commissioners Court are defunding the police.”
Hidalgo’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For his part, Berry noted that the county had already been forced to adopt the property tax revenue freeze for its current budget because Commissioners Court was unable to reach a quorum needed to set a tax rate.
Precinct 3 Commissioner
Tom Ramsey and former Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle, the court’s two Republican members, skipped six court meetings to deny the quorum, citing inflation as a reason to set a lower tax rate, while also calling for budget increases for law enforcement. Cagle was unseated in November by Democrat Lesley Briones.
“Continuing these games will prevent millions of dollars of future investments in public safety, similar to what occurred last year when the County was forced to scrap the proposed budget that contained almost $100 million in additional funding for the Sheriff, Constables, District Attorney, and Criminal Courts,” Berry said in a statement. “The no new revenue rate made it impossible to make these investments.”