CM Abbie Kamin
We take a brief diversion from the At Large races today to have a conversation with Council Member Abbie Kamin, the incumbent in District C. A civil rights attorney who served the Associate Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Southwest Regional Office and served on the Mayor’s Commission Against Gun Violence prior to her election, CM Kamin now chairs the Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee and is Vice Chair of the Quality of Life Committee. She proposed an amendment to the current budget that will allow for the creation of the first comprehensive dashboard in the country that integrates all available firearm injury data into one place. You can listen to the interview I did with her for the 2019 runoff here, and you can listen to this election’s interview right here:
PREVIOUSLY:
Kathy Blueford-Daniels
Dani Hernandez
Judith Cruz
Plácido Gómez
Mario Castillo
Cynthia Reyes-Revilla
Joaquin Martinez
Tarsha Jackson
Leah Wolfthal
Melanie Miles
This week is (mostly) At Large Council candidates, starting with At Large #1 but not limited to that. At Large #2 will be next week. The Erik Manning spreadsheet is here. My previous posts about the 2023 HISD election are here and here. My posts about the July campaign finance reports for City Council candidates are here and here.
I find it comedic that people view the past emergencies and it’s response as favorable. They forget the number of emergency vehicles that sat idle, the shortage of fire fighter personal that was, and is, a result of the championed pension reform. The city’s preparedness plan was one of supply and demand, and it is suffering from that plan. Hence the raise the Mayor is breaking his arm patting himself on the back over, but that was a result of supply and demand, and still is. The supply and demand rout of disaster preparedness has proven to be ineffective, but I think people were saying that before the pandemic, before the freeze, and before the last hurricane. How does CM Kamin feel about spending 1.5 million dollars on lawsuits against firefighters? If you champion pension reform, champion being against equitable pay for fire fighters, then it says to many foe fighters you champion balancing the city’s budget on their backs, and that’d why they left, and continue to leave this city. And how the mayor now has to throw a lot of money to try to hire, train, and keep new ones coming in. One’s that don’t have experience with Houston’s disasters, which CM Kamin seems to champion when it applies to herself, but what about retaining experience in emergency services? Houston is a training facility for other fire departments.