That means the city is still on the hook for a bunch more money to be allocated to drainage projects. Which the just-adopted budget didn’t account for.
A state appellate court on Tuesday rejected the city of Houston’s request to reverse a ruling mandating that the city spend hundreds of millions more on street and drainage projects.
Affirming the late April decision, the 14th Court of Appeals denied the Whitmire administration’s motion to rehear the case. The court’s rejection came just six days after City Council approved a $7.3 billion budget, which set aside roughly $100 million less in drainage funding than was ordered by the court.
Only a day after the appeal was rejected, City Council unanimously approved a landmark $1.5 billion settlement that provided raises and backpay for Houston’s 4,000 firefighters. Critics have raised concerns that the deal will further strain the city budget, with Controller Chris Hollins warning Houston’s budget deficit could balloon to as much as $280 million in the coming fiscal year.
That projection does not account for the additional funds the city may have to allocate in the wake of Tuesday’s decision. City Attorney Arturo Michel told the Chronicle that the ruling will likely have no immediate impact on the current budget. He said his office plans to petition the Texas Supreme Court to hear the case again. Even if the court rejects the city’s motion, Michel said the additional drainage dollars would be allocated as part of next year’s budget process.
One of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, Bob Jones, predicted the city would take their case to the Supreme Court.
“But seeing as the Supreme Court sided with us once before,” Jones said on Wednesday, “I don’t see that working out for them.”
See here for the background, and here for more on the budget. I have no idea what happens if SCOTx takes the same action and the city is then under the judgment that required more money paid out to drainage mitigation. Budget re-do? Emergency appropriation? Negotiated settlement with the plaintiffs? The latter seems most likely to me, but I’m just guessing. We’ll learn soon enough if we need to figure that out.