Mayor John Whitmire
A proposal to cut Houston in on revenue generated through the county’s toll roads is threatening the city’s relationship with county officials and neighboring jurisdictions.
The legislation making its way through both the Texas House as House Bill 5177 and Senate as Senate Bill 2722 would allocate millions of dollars generated through the Harris County Toll Road Authority to the City of Houston. The funds have traditionally gone to the county, which has used them for various mobility projects and improvements throughout the 34 cities and hundreds of miles of unincorporated land that make up its four precincts.
Harris County commissioners and local officials in cities such as Friendswood and Pearland see the legislation as a “cash bailout” for Houston’s projected budget deficit.
“Let’s be clear, this is a bailout bill, not a transportation bill,” Commissioner Lesley Briones said at a House Committee hearing Thursday evening. “It sets bad precedent. It’s based on bad policy, and it jeopardizes regional partnerships.”
But Mayor John Whitmire said 60% of the county’s toll roads are within city limits and its responsible for providing emergency services for those roads. He argued that, since Houston is responsible for providing emergency services for the toll roads that run through the city, it should be entitled to its slice of the pie.
“Houston spends millions of dollars a year supporting the toll road operation. Have for 50 years. This should have been a discussion when the toll road was created back in the early ’70s,” Whitmire said. “The toll road authority is running a $300 million surplus, and I’m sitting here with a lean budget. I need more police and fire.”
Critics, such as Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen, who testified during Thursday’s hearing, pointed to the many fire departments that serve cities other than Houston as well as the Emergency Service Districts, volunteer departments and constables that assist in responding to calls outside Houston.
Although Whitmire said he supports the legislation, he said he was not involved in drafting it. Republican state Sen. Paul Bettencourt authored the first version of the bill.
“I was asked if I could use a reasonable amount — to be determined by the legislature — for public safety inside Houston,” Whitmire said. “It would be irresponsible not to accept an offer to improve Houston public safety.”
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It’s a bold step, [political analyst Nancy] Sims said, and one that could ultimately harm the city in the long term. County officials have previously worked with the city on various infrastructure projects, which they may not be as inclined to do should their funding be cut.
“I think in the long term, he’s putting additional funding at risk by taking on people he’s cooperated well with over the last year,” Sims said. “If they’re genuinely upset over this, then they may say, ‘Well, look, you got our road money. We don’t need to help you build any more roads.'”
Whitmire said he isn’t concerned by potential retaliation from county officials, who he insisted he was “the best of friends” with. He said that, since each of the four commissioners also represent a portion of Houston, it’s in their best interest to continue cooperating with him.
Commissioners, on the other hand, are unified in their opposition to the legislation. Although Briones said during Thursday’s hearing that she has enormous respect for Whitmire, she suggested the county would be unable to continue funding some of the projects it partnered with Houston to complete.
See here for some background. I do not understand this strategy. I do not understand why Whitmire feels the need to lie about how much Houston actually does spend on emergency response on the toll roads. I do not understand why he wouldn’t just take those concerns to his “best friends” on Commissioners Court rather than let an enemy like Paul Bettencourt shove this down their throats. Is that how he treated his “best friends” in the Senate back in the day? I do not understand why you would piss off people with whom you do want to do constructive work, or why you would hamper their financial ability to work with you in the future. I do not understand why we’re not talking about trying to get assistance from the state on fixing our massive and expensive water infrastructure issues, which would greatly benefit all of us and might even make selling our excess water to the state to help them with their water problems more feasible. If there’s some grand eleven-dimension chess strategy to this, I just do not see it.
I mean look, it’s not that long ago that I was loudly and frequently complaining about how Harris County directed a disproportionate amount of its resources towards lightly populated areas outside Houston, and never seemed to care all that much about the state of the city even as it was more than half the county’s population. It’s not that long ago that we had a Commissioner that was more obsessed with a soapbox derby track in Hockley than anything in Houston. That was then, this is now. Harris County has had a better relationship with Houston for several years, starting with Judge Ed Emmett and his willingness to work with Mayor Parker, and accelerating after Democrats became the majority on the Court. The city is in a much better place with the county, at least when we’re not wantonly tearing out infrastructure that had been built by the county. Why would we want to jeopardize that? Why would someone who claims his ability to work with other politicians is an unparalleled strength for the city because of his fifty-year stint in the Legislature act that way? Make it make sense.
Whitmire is like Trump; if one can make sense of Trump, one could make sense of Whitmire.
Whitmire lies because it comes naturally to him, just like the guy in the White House.
The City spends much more on emergency responses on the highways, which are the state’s responsibility. Why isn’t Whitmire whining about that? Why isn’t MAGA Bettencourt pushing bills to get the state to reimburse the city?
Parker took the hard road to fix the budget. This mayor whines and whines.
White came up with creative ways to control the budget. Whimire whines and whines.
Of course, Whitmire worked with the MAGAs to make this happen. Only one Democrat signed her name to the House bill, Jolanda Jones, and she had shown that she was willing to work with MAGAs to hurt the community, HISD.