Mayor Annise Parker
As you may have heard, we are electing a new Mayor this year. There’s already a large field of candidates in the race, and it is likely to grow before all is said and done. Each will have his own ideas about what Houston’s top priorities are and how he would address them (I’m using male pronouns here deliberately, since the list of Mayoral wannabes so far is entirely dudeful) and though you never know how a campaign will unfold I’d say it’s fair to assume we’ll hear quite a bit about these priorities and solutions. I think we all have a pretty good idea of what these things will be, but regardless we’ll know them soon enough.
Maybe these things will address all of the issues and concerns you have about our fair city at this time, and maybe they won’t. I’ve been thinking about my list of things I want the Mayoral candidates to address, and while I’m sure there will be some overlap between my items and what we wind up actually talking about, I’ve decided to lay out my main priorities here, while they’re still fresh in my mind and before we’ve all been distracted by a million shiny objects. What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t pound out the occasional manifesto, right? And who knows, maybe one or more of these candidates will read what I’ve got to say and think to himself “Huh, that’s a pretty good idea.” Stranger things have happened, after all.
So I’ll present my ideas over the next few days. There are three main items, each with multiple pieces to them, so all together it would be way too much for a single post.
Today, however, we are going to discuss the preliminaries. The items that I’ll be presenting over the next few days are a combination of ideas, wish list bullet points, goals, and general directions. I don’t expect anyone to agree with all of it. Some of these things I doubt are feasible, and some others I don’t have a specific plan for how I’d go about it. As I’ve said, these are things I’d like us to be talking about. Some of it is just a starting point, and I myself don’t know what the destination is.
There are two things that I consider to be non-negotiable, however, and those are the things to discuss today. They are: Full support for HERO, and repeal of the revenue cap.
I trust that neither of these are a surprise, if you’ve been reading this site. It’s my sincere hope that the HERO repeal lawsuit will be favorably resolved for the city, in which case “full support” means a commitment to making the enforcement process work. If, however, the city loses in court, then “full support” means making support for the law and a vote in favor of it a visible part of any Mayoral campaign that would want my vote. As for the revenue cap, when a law like that is used as justification for handing out venal corporate tax breaks, then something is horribly wrong with that law. This law has never had a good policy rationale, and it is costing the city funds at a time when we have some big expenses coming due. It needs to go, and I expect any Mayoral candidate worth my support to advocate for its repeal.
So with those items out of the way, we will get to the rest of my agenda beginning tomorrow. Let me know what you think.
OK, here is what I think. No one will support a repeal of the revenue cap and the HERO ordinance will be a non-issue for all the candidates because it will be tied up in the courts for years.
Complete audit of the 380’s is my major concern for the Mayoral candidates as well as the Controller candidates.
I haven’t gotten a straight answer yet, but I have asked if the Ainbinder (Walmart) 380 has been paid back from the tax increment generated by the development like they said it would be or just from regular old tax dollars. Yes, it’s been paid in full.
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