Rep. Armado Walle
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Monday named state Rep. Armando Walle the county’s COVID-19 recovery czar as local leaders determine how to eventually ease restrictions on public life meant to slow the spread of the disease.
Walle, a Democrat, has represented the Aldine-area House District 140 since 2009. He serves on the appropriations, higher education and redistricting committees and was a state budget conferee in 2019. Hidalgo said Walle understands the needs of the more than 2 million residents of unincorporated Harris County.
“We need someone who will be laser-focused on helping families right now and combating the long-term economic effects and the long-term human impacts of this crisis,” Hidalgo said at a news conference.
[…]
Walle echoed Hidalgo’s pledge to base decisions to remove restrictions on data rather than arbitrary deadlines. He vowed to work with business, nonprofit, philanthropic and faith-based leaders as well as elected officials across Harris County.
“We need to work together on an inclusive recovery that responsibly ensures the economic health and well-being of the people of Harris County,” Walle said. “We need to save lives and also save livelihoods.”
And for the city of Houston:
Going for the tried and true, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner Monday named former Shell president Marvin Odum to the position of Houston COVID-19 Recovery leader.
Odum was also the first Hurricane Harvey recovery leader appointed by Turner in 2017. Saying Odum had performed to “rave reviews” the last time he led the city’s recovery efforts, Turner said Odum will be working with a number of groups including business leaders , non-profit groups, members of the mayor’s exectuive team, as well as just-announced Harris County COVID-19 Recovery Czar Armando Walle.
Critical issues, the mayor said, include how to restart the economy, specifically how to send people back to work and the need for robust testing. Odum is also charged with coming up with a plan if the area starts to see an increase in the number of positive cases and developing some way to implement contact tracing so the city knows where the virus is traveling.
Another area of importance will be making sure at-risk, vulnerable populations are not left behind, the mayor said, as well as: “How do we prepare for the next pandemic?”
In turn, Odum pledged to “act as quickly as possible.” He said collaboration with other governmental units was key because “We don’t want to duplicate work or waste any time.”
Both task forces will work with each other. I would expect there to be more of these, perhaps from other cities within the county, and perhaps they will work with other task forces from other counties. Lord knows, there will be plenty to do, and right now no one knows what a lot of this looks like. Both men are good choices – Odum has the experience with Harvey, and of course is very well-connected in the business world, which will need to buy into whatever the plan is. Walle is a terrific member of the Legislature, so he has that going for him, and he’ll be a voice for working people and their needs. They, and whoever they work with, will have a lot of responsibility, and may very well run into obstacles at both the state and federal levels, especially if their ideas of when and how “reopening” should occur are in conflict. I wish them a lot of luck, and I think they will need it.
UPDATE: Here’s a later version of the Chron story that includes the Odum appointment.
Whatever happened to “supply and demand”? If the economy changes, then it should allowed, there is still an economy working with people at home. There is no ‘restarting’ the economy, it is still working today. The supporters of supply and demand a year ago during Firefighter layoffs should still support supply and demand now, you cannot pick and choose. But, if it doesn’t matter now, then it shouldn’t have mattered then, it is o.k. with me whichever way one chooses, but make it consistent.
David,
It’s a little morbid of you to demand pandemic deaths at this time. The supply is there if your comments are supporting that the governments of our region shouldn’t save lives by using data driven, science based, pragmatic decision making efforts.
“Walle is a terrific member of the Legislature, so he has that going for him, and he’ll be a voice for working people and their needs.”
The people of Aldine are a fairly good representative sample of working folks whose primary needs are to get back to work to earn a living, and to stop hemorrhaging whatever savings they might have had after government at the local and state level prevented them from working.
I hope Walle will do the right thing, and actually represent his people and respond to their needs. Time to reopen, with reasonable precautions. If that means people wearing masks at workplaces, or the installation of more hand washing stations, OK, but the bottom line is, any business that still can, and hasn’t already gone broke, needs to be allowed to reopen, rehire, and get going.
Even if we do that tomorrow, this whole thing is still going to deal a huge blow to Houston’s oil and gas workforce and economy, so that intense pain hasn’t yet materialized.
I’m with Bill. F** this whole pandemic, community spread thing and get those auto pick-a-part businesses open in Aldine !
Just keep in mind the last ” czar” mayor Sylvester Turner crowned was Stephen costello as the ” Flood czar”….
Ya know, “Czar” is a Russian term, like there is Russian colluding in Houston.
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