Justice and safety take certain stage during public comment of Harris County’s 1st budget meeting

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — During the first annual budget meeting for Harris County Commissioners on Tuesday, criminal justice and public safety took center stage during public comment.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez spoke to county commissioners, asking for a 7% increase in funding. He said deputies are being stretched thin and working long hours, as they’re seeing an increase in fatal car crashes. So far this year, there’s been 128 people who have been killed on the roads, which is a 14% increase from 2022.

“At the end of the day, they’re putting their lives on the line every single day to protect all of us. We saw the situation with Deputy (Joseph) Anderson where he sustained gunfire doing a traffic stop,” Gonzalez said. “That’s a high price to put our personnel on the front lines and to expect the very best out of them. We should make sure that we’re paying them the very best we possibly can.”

At the county jail, Gonzalez said they have 178 vacancies with a starting pay of about $20 an hour. His agency is seeing staff leave for higher-paying jobs at other police departments.

However, advocates from community organizations believe the county should not increase funding for law enforcement. Instead, they’d like to see more of the budget going toward mental health services, affordable housing, and violence prevention programs.

“The only way we can create real safe communities and be proactive against certain people doing things outside of the law is to put funding into economic opportunities and resources. Law enforcement will never be it because they’re always reactionary. That is not the way to create a safe space,” RoShawn Evans, organizing director of Pure Justice, said.

Last year, Republican Commissioners Jack Cagle and Tom Ramsey boycotted budget meetings for six weeks, partly due to allegations that their Democratic colleagues were cutting funding for law enforcement. This caused the required quorum to be unmet, leading to a new tax rate to not be adopted.

This year, justice and safety accounts for about two-thirds of the proposed budget for fiscal year 2024. Some of the items commissioners will consider include:

• A $7.4 million increase to the public defender’s office for the first year of its expansion to represent half of all cases in the next two years
• A $2.9 million increase to extend the Holistic Assistance Response Team’s (HART) operating hours to 24/7 and send mental health and social work professionals to non-violent 911 calls instead of police
• $37.3 million to continue outsourcing inmates to other facilities, because of the overcrowding at the Harris County Jail

One of Cagle’s concerns last year was taking more money from taxpayers. On Tuesday, the county’s budget director Daniel Ramos said the tax rate proposed for FY2024 is the lowest since 1990.

Ramos explained to ABC13 that the budget plan recommends $7 million less in spending for several departments, but they expect it to have very little operational impact. He said funding is being reduced in areas where there is extra money or opportunities to reallocate money elsewhere.

Tuesday’s meeting was a presentation to county commissioners and a chance for them to ask the budget director questions. No action was taken. The FY2024 budget proposal consists of a $2.4 billion general fund plan and covers the period of Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024.

If you would like to look at everything that’s included in the proposed budget, you can visit Harris County’s budget website.