I don’t see this resolving any time soon.
Nearly seven months after Houston missed a deadline to increase its role in regional planning, negotiations with the Houston-Galveston Area Council have stalled indefinitely, despite a mandate by Houston voters in last November’s elections to renegotiate the body’s structure or withdraw from the organization entirely.
Spanning 13 counties and representing over 100 local governments, H-GAC is responsible for distributing federal funds for infrastructure, climate mitigation and workforce development projects, among other things. Houston voters approved a ballot measure last year that required the city’s membership in H-GAC to hinge on a “population proportional” voting structure based on the population of members’ jurisdictions.
Proposition B, as the ballot measure was known, was meant to rectify what advocates said was Houston and Harris County’s underrepresentation on the board and the organization’s Transportation Policy Council, which oversees regional transportation projects. If negotiations failed after 60 days, the measure dictated that the city must withdraw from H-GAC and the TPC altogether.
Since an H-GAC committee’s proposal for a new, two-layered voting structure was shot down in January, however, discussions on a compromise have been non-existent. The city has also not moved to leave either group, opening itself up to legal challenges.
“There has not been progress,” said Houston City Councilmember Sallie Alcorn, who serves as chair of the H-GAC board and supported the proposal. “It was very clear from the majority of both boards that they would not entertain more discussion on board composition.”
[…]
Organizers with Fair for Houston, the grassroots advocacy group that developed Proposition B and gathered over 20,000 signatures to get it on the ballot, said city officials had worked hard to find a compromise with skeptical board members and were disappointed that a solution was never reached.
“It’s disappointing that it died because we still believe that this is the right thing to do for all parties,” said Fair for Houston organizer Michael Moritz. “We were excited about the negotiations that occurred and thankful to most of the people on the board … who were playing ball until the very end, when they rejected it.”
Chuck Wemple, executive director of H-GAC, said that the board members did “a lot of good faith work” negotiating the rejected proposal. He said that the organization prioritizes regional cooperation, and that the nature of the board’s composition — spanning urban, suburban and rural jurisdictions — meant that there would always be instances in which some members may be dissatisfied with a decision, especially on major funding.
“Each time we’ve done this, it’s always a challenge, it’s always difficult, and there will always be entities who feel they didn’t get what they deserve,” Wemple said. “The path this stuff takes, we just do our best to be transparent about it and go forward, learn from the past and move into a better space next time.”
Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough, who sits on both the H-GAC board and transportation council, said he voted against the proposal because it would have given Houston and Harris County representatives outsized influence by giving their votes added weight, rather than holding all votes equal and adding more seats to the boards based on population.
Keough noted that while Houston and Harris County are the densest population centers in the region, growth in the suburbs far outpaces that of the city. Montgomery County’s population grew by about 14% between 2020 and 2023, according to U.S. Census population estimates, compared to 2% growth in Harris County and growth of less than 1% in Houston.
The Montgomery County judge said Proposition B was “unfair” and that he believed it to be driven by “special interests.” When asked to elaborate, he named the transportation equity nonprofit LINK Houston.
“You’d have 7 million people in the region who now have to capitulate to a very small group of people in Houston who would be determining funding for roads and bridges when there is an ideological difference between many of the outer counties and the city of Houston,” Keough said.
Gabe Cazares, executive director of LINK Houston, said Houstonians “have a vested – not special – interest in decisions made at H-GAC that affect their daily lives” and called Keough’s remarks a “distraction.”
“We encourage everyone to come back to the table, negotiate in good faith, and deliver a solution to the voters who demanded one,” Cazares said.
Moritz said the idea that Houston was trying to stifle suburban and rural input was a misconception, and noted that Fort Bend and Montgomery counties would have also received at least one additional vote each under the proposal.
“Some people had an expectation that Houston would seek to strong-arm the region if it had passed, and that was not the intent. The intent was to modernize the voting structure in a way that accounted for population,” Moritz said.
See here for the previous update. The way this has played out is exactly why so many of us felt that this reform was needed. HGAC is not representative of the people it serves, and it doesn’t care about that. Those who have the power like having that power. The likes of Mark Keough and the rural counties claim to fear being steamrolled by Houston and Harris County, when they have been doing exactly that to us.
As I said, I think we’re stuck with this for the foreseeable future. I do not expect Mayor Whitmire to rock the boat, and while litigation by the Fair for Houston backers is an option, it would be time-consuming, expensive, and not guaranteed to win. I’m not sure there’s a better way forward than continuing to point out the inequities, pledge to be a better and fairer steward of the funds than the current majority, and look for other ways to get out from under this if no progress continues to be made. It sucks, but it’s where we are.
This is so infuriating! Keough’s concept of fairness is laughable.