Now, if you’re an outsider to HCRP activities like I am, you really don’t know what happens in the minds of the “leaders” that we have. So, when this email blast hit my inbox on March 8th, I was like every other outsider, left scratching my head wondering, WTH?
HCRP Takes Stand on Public Defender System
By: Jared Woodfill
Chairman, Harris County Republican Party
Please find below a link to a resolution passed by our Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee at our October 2009 meeting. You will find that this resolution speaks to the issue of the public defender system in a way that is clear, direct and without the slightest hint of ambiguity. In this resolution, the Harris County Republican Executive Committee takes a stand in favor of a privatized, outsourced indigent defense system and opposes conversion to a public defender bureaucracy.
As this is the official Harris County Republican Party position on this issue, we have urged our elected officials to honor the will of the Party and its activists by rejecting any attempts to subvert, weaken or eliminate the privatized, outsourced indigent defense system that has served the cause of justice so efficiently and effectively in Harris County. It is also important to note that a fully independent public defender system will cost taxpayers an estimated $30 million more per year than is currently being spent, which will almost certainly require a tax increase.
We look forward to continuing to work with our elected officials to strengthen Harris County, our great state of Texas and of course, these great United States of America.
Literally, people around the county were clueless. WTH was Jared blasting out a two and a half year old resolution? Mark Bennett, over at his “Defending People” blog, wrote about it:
The current metafight for the Harris County Public Defender’s Office is in the outwardly corrupt-seeming juvenile courts. The PD’s Office wants to do the job in those courts that the Harris County Commissioners’ Court has given it, but some of the juvenile-court judges don’t want to release their profitable control over the appointment of counsel (they can’t expect campaign contributions from the PD). Polland, as a beneficiary of the ad hoc system, is aligned on the judges’ side of that fight. His livelihood is threatened by the PD’s Office.
Randy Kubosh, of the Red Light Camera Campaign and the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club, sent an email to Jared and all of the Precinct Chairs of the HCRP on March 29th (and copied a few other folks like me) asking:
Jared,
Is it true? that you sent out the eblast on the Public Defender on March 8th to get Gary Polland’s Texas Conservative Review’s endorsement?
Randy Kubosh
Which is a plausible scenario because Jared’s firm has had some problems and it is highly unlikely that he had enough funds to buy an endorsement at the time. Remember that Jared borrowed $3.5 MILLION on speculation that he could win a lawsuit or two or three out of Summerville. Sucks to borrow that much when it doesn’t go your way. Guido is on his way.
But, maybe Randy wasn’t correct – although, maybe he was and there are two birds in the bush here. Remember, this belated eblast was sent out on March 8th – turns out that Jared was, ahem, billing the county at that point for his “work” at the Harris County Courthouse. Huh.
Now, I might be a hayseed from Pasa-git-down-dena but this sure does seem like an odd coincidence. Sending out an urgent email to 30 or 40 thousand Harris County Republicans about a 2 and a half year old resolution that no one paid attention to seems…well, like an odd coincidence.
Course, that’s probably just me.
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