Don’t we have enough drama already?
Harris County commissioners voted 3-1 Thursday to censure Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo following a heated disagreement over a proposed tax increase for early childcare programs.
Commissioners Lesley Briones, Tom Ramsey and Adrian Garcia voted in favor of admonishing Hidalgo. Commissioner Rodney Ellis cast the lone dissenting vote. Although the censure carries no immediate penalty, it will be formally entered into the record, a county official told the Houston Chronicle.
It came after a chaotic scene erupted as Hidalgo goaded dozens of children, who attended the meeting to support the continued funding of a slate of early childcare programs, to call on commissioners to vote in favor of the proposed tax increase. Multiple calls for decorum were ignored by Hidalgo, who repeatedly interrupted commissioners during discussion on the matter.
Garcia took to X shortly after the argument and criticized what he labeled as Hidalgo’s “disruptive behavior.”
“We must hold ourselves to the highest standards,” Garcia said. “It was particularly offensive to witness her trying to use children as props for her political agenda. The people of Harris County deserve better.”
The move also came after Hidalgo criticized her colleagues in a social media post, which she also read portions of aloud in court prior to departing for a scheduled appointment.
“They have ridiculously massive contractor-funded war chests. We redrew districts that benefit them,” Hidalgo said of her fellow commissioners. “Democrats in Commissioners Court have until the end of the day today to avoid unnecessary cuts to basic services. Which side are we on?”
Although commissioners did not formally vote on the proposed increase, they failed to meet a key deadline, effectively making the motion moot.
There’s a longer version of the story, which was in the Saturday print edition, here. The links in the excerpt above also have more details. I’ve got a headache and would like to relax a little this weekend, so I’m going to cut to the chase and say that while I thought Judge Hidalgo’s proposal had merit, the timing of it was not great given the county’s current budget situation, and to the extent that it was possible to convince at least two of her Democratic colleagues to support this proposal that she obviously feels strongly about, she failed to accomplish that. And so here we are.
This is a mess, and it was avoidable. I like all of the people involved here so I’m going to stop before I say something that will get me into (more) trouble. Campos has more.
One should wonder why Briones and Garcia have been so quick to follow the lead of the MAGA Commissioners, Tom Ramsey.
Briones and Garcia went along with Ramsey on a pay increase for the police officers that would put the county in a $270 million hole. They did so without planning how they were going to come up with the money for the pay increase.
Yet, they vote against asking taxpayers for an increase for early childhood education. Maybe it was the color of the children at that meeting, Black, that turned them off?
I guess they are listening to their master, the orange man, who says they are all low-IQ people, so why educate them?
Or, we love Democrats that fight as long as they are fighting the things we hate, not the right things.