With more than nine months to go until Houston’s municipal elections, Mayor Sylvester Turner’s first two opponents turned their attention this week to limiting political donors’ influence at City Hall.
Both challengers, millionaire lawyer and Texas A&M University System Regent Tony Buzbee and Bill King, the businessman and former Kemah mayor who lost to Turner in a close December 2015 runoff, announced they would spearhead separate petition drives to amend the city charter by temporarily blocking political donors from doing business with the city.
The issue of “pay to play” appears likely to become a focal point in the race for Houston mayor, and could feature prominently in city Council campaigns too, all of which will take place as national Democrats vie for their party’s presidential nomination amid growing calls for politicians to reject money that allegedly comes with strings attached.
Buzbee, in a full-page ad in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle, said he intends to lead a petition drive to bar anyone who donates to a city official from doing business with the city for a year.
King on Monday morning announced a similar idea at a press conference, proposing a two-year moratorium for people who give more than $250 to a city official. His idea would extend the ban to prospective lobbyists and appointees to boards or commissions, and cover candidates for mayor, controller and city council. Buzbee has not yet specified if his proposal would cover non-incumbent candidates.
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“The city has long-established rules that govern potential conflicts of interest regarding campaign contributions, including a black-out period and prohibitions on the members of certain boards and commissions,” Turner said. “As with all city policies, we continually evaluate these rules to ensure they are meeting the city’s needs. The city will always entertain ideas and proposals from anyone, especially if they’re not trying to score political points.“
Houston’s charter bars officials from taking or asking for contributions once the city publicly seeks proposals or bids for a contract. They cannot start accepting bids again until 30 days after City Council awards the contract, or decides not to award it at all.
The same section of the charter also prohibits officials from accepting or soliciting vendors’ contributions at any point they know the vendor has interest in a contract. A separate provision also restricts when candidates who are not in office can accept contributions from vendors.
King’s proposal would prevent people who contribute more than $250 to an official from entering into a contract with the city, registering as a city lobbyist or receiving appointments to city boards of commissions.
I mean, I support the idea, it’s just my experience that this particular issue is not one that gets a whole lot of traction among voters. County Judge Lina Hidalgo is being rightly held up as the model, but you may note that this wasn’t what she campaigned on. She campaigned primarily on bread-and-butter issues like flooding, criminal justice reform, quality of life, and making county government more accessible to more people. I’m not saying this can’t be an effective campaign issue. It’s definitely a meritorious issue. I am saying it’s not the sexiest thing to lead with.
One other thing. At the risk of lapsing into whataboutism, as someone whose mailbox is regularly inflicted with King’s grumpy-old-man emails, his interest in this particular aspect of good government is a tad bit limited. I mean, we just re-elected the heavyweight champion of pay for play politics in this state, but good luck finding any mention of Greg Abbott and his penchant for appointing moneybag donors to statewide positions in King’s missives. Yes, I know, King is running for Mayor and not Governor, but he also regularly complains about the national debt, and last I checked he wasn’t running for Congress or (God help us) President. I know, he’s got his own thing to worry about now, but he was emitting those emails back in 2017 when he wasn’t running for Mayor and Abbott was actively blocking a bipartisan anti-pay for play bill in the Lege. The track record is thin, is what I’m saying.
What both King and Buzbee are proposing is similar to what HISD adopted. There are so many ways around it that all it does is make it harder to catch corruption. If they swearing of all PAC money then have to look at the details to see what it will prevent.
The best way to funnel bribe money to an office holder or candidate is to donate to that candidate’s ‘charitable foundation’ and to pay for ‘speeches’ by the office holder or office holder’s immediate family members. Then there’s providing high paying jobs to the office holder’s relatives, like paying hundreds of thousands a year for once a month brief appearances on TV. I suppose buying products and services from the office holder’s company could be considered paying for influence, but that case is much harder to make.
Lots of ways to pay for influence.
Bill you would be surprised how many get checks made out to them or just cash, that money never gets deposited in a campaign fund.
Who is going to report it the guy doing the bribe or the one getting the bribe?
There were several 10,000 dollar checks that never got deposited in campaigns at HCC, back when I was writing about that organization, I kept pointing it out.
One supposedly received money via the collection plate at church in sealed envelopes.
Some elected officials are so brazen that they ask for a bribe, who is going to get them? The FBI works very slowly and they don’t have the resources, in fact no one puts money in catching dirty politicians.
Is this some sort of jab at Mayor Turner? I mean Norton Rose Fullbright did donate to his Protect Houston PAC, and then were awarded a contract for $500,000. What a great ROI for them.
Jason if you want to jab at anyone poke at the Trumps, or just any Republican would do.
What makes you thing that if Buzbee would win that he would not take contributions? Others have done that before, they also were very rich.
You, like most Republicans have a one track mind that is almost always wrong.
Manny, I am not a Republican. Not being critical just factual. A federal agency, (HUD) determined that Mayor Turner’s policies promoted segregation and threatened to cut off funding. He gave contracts to his former partners, and to a law firm that donated to his PAC. These are facts, and have nothing to do with “rabbits” or Republicans. Make of them what you will.