Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Higginbotham is the best choice for JP 5-1

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Note: Edited to correct spelling error

 

Justice of the Peace place 5-1 is one of the few areas of the county left that has a reasonable chance of electing a republican in November.  The primary is contested, and the residents of the district have a change to remove a very poor judge.  The Houston Bar Association solicits input from bar members to evaluate judicial performance, and in the category of “Follows the law” the current judge, Ridgway, was rated last insofar as excellent response, tied for last in needs improvement, and last in net excellent minus needs improvement.  The actual percentages are listed below.

Excellent Needs Improvement Net
Bates 38.1 19 19.1
Brown 43.8 18.8 25
Burney 55.8 14 41.8
Carter 57.6 8.7 48.9
Delgado 47.3 5.5 41.8
Ditta 45.6 7 38.6
Goodwin 56.7 6.7 50
Korduba 50 19.6 30.4
Patronella 60.7 3.8 56.9
Ridgway 33 22.6 10.4
Risner 38.1 20.6 17.5
Rodriguez 35.5 22.6 12.9
Stephens 60 11.4 48.6
Vara 44 8 36
Williams 42 14 28
Willamson 43.5 14.5 29

These results are in line with my personal experience in his court.

The dismal evaluation shows that Ridgway is a poor judge and not worthy of reelection; which raises the question of who is a better alternative, Wolfe or Higginbotham?  In the primaries, it’s important to vote keeping two considerations in mind.  First, is the candidate reasonably aligned with your views, and second, does the candidate have a chance to win in November.

Of these two, Hibbinbotham is the better choice.  Wolfe is a vulnerable candidate in November.  Wolfe is presently an elected member of the HCDE.  I don’t share the viewpoint of those who attack the HCDE, and will write about that at a later time.  His presence on the HCDE easily could be turned into an asset in the general election if he was not bearing the burden of the credible harassment allegation and public report associated with the hiring of a secretary for HCDE.  Anyone can make a mistake, but this senseless course of action is so recent as to be possibly insurmountable come November.

Higginbotham makes a better candidate in November.  She is an experienced attorney so is not vulnerable to attacks that she would have to learn the legal system and how to evaluate the law.  She is actively campaigning so already has some degree of campaign structure in place. While these aren’t the check boxes for what makes a good candidate, they are the check boxes needed to be an electable candidate for a justice of the peace position. The residents of this district are best served by having Hibbinbotham victorious in the primary.

 

 

 

Harris County Department of Education chatter

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harris county department of education

Harris County Republicans excel in the fine art known as the “circular firing squad“. For some reason, the entity that seems to bring out their sharpest aim is the small, financially insignificant but efficient Harris County Department of Education (HCDE). The HCDE Board of Trustees has been controlled by Republicans for years and is generally held in high regard by the citizens that it serves. Now that a new crop of self-styled ‘conservative’ Republicans dominate the board, little thought is given to the citizens it serves and much thought is given to how creative the board members can be to serve their own self-interests.

In that vein, Board Trustee Mike Wolfe issues a call to action for tomorrow’s board meeting:

Please Share, Harris County Conservative Friends:

I need your help this coming Tuesday Morning!

At 8:45am on Tuesday February 28th, I need you to come sign up to speak at the HCDE Board Meeting at the Harris County Department of Education at 6300 Irvington, Houston TX 77022.

I have proposed 3 important agenda items that will impact your future and are on HCDE’s agenda.

1.) In order to save you tax dollars, I am proposing that HCDE tell the the Federal Government that we will no longer be operating any Head Start facilities in Harris County and that it’s time for the Feds to contract with one of their other local providers to do this.

2.) I am proposing that the HCDE Board ask the Texas Legislature to pass Sunset Review Legislation pertaining to HCDE so we can finally prove whether or not HCDE should continue to exist and if there are ways to improve HCDE.

3.) Finally, I am proposing that the HCDE Board host and invite U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoss to Harris County for a Harris County Education Summit. If the Board approves this, I know that it will happen; it happened with Obama’s Secretary of Education just a few years ago.

Thank You, Friends!

Please arrive between 8:30-8:45am to sign in to speak at our 9:00am HCDE Board Meeting.

There is a lot more on the agenda and you can view it here. But since Wolfe wants opinions on those three items, I’ll give it a shot.

Tell the Feds to take a hike!

The idea that anyone is going to save tax dollars by shutting down the HCDE’s participation in Head Start is fantasy. It isn’t going to happen. In fact, there is a high probability that more taxpayer dollars would be spent. The Head Start program isn’t going anywhere. The HCDE administers it very efficiently with federal grants. Sending that grant money to a less efficient operator isn’t the brightest idea in the world. But hey, tell those Feds to shove it!

Sunset the HCDE!

For this one, it is important to keep in mind why Wolfe is proposing this. Remember, 5 of the 7 members of the board are Republicans. And 4 of the 5 Republicans ran specifically on a platform to eliminate the HCDE (Wolfe, Sumners, Dick, Moore). But after they got elected, it appears that some have had a change of heart. Information will do that to you if you have the best interests of your constituents at heart.

What should an elected official do when he can’t convince his fellow elected officials that his way is the right way? Run to Austin and get the state legislature to do it for him. We see more and more that Republicans give lip service to local control but when they can’t convince people that their ideas are right, they run to Austin for help, seeking a centralized government. All the while complaining about Washington, D.C. and forced programs. Since Wolfe can’t make the case to his fellow trustees to shut down the HCDE, he wants to spend thousands of dollars of state taxpayer dollars to do his job for him. I don’t think that is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars.

Time after time, audit after audit, trustee after trustee, the results have shown that the HCDE is more efficient and more effective than any alternative proposal. Why not focus on continuing and improving the efficiency of the HCDE? Click here to learn more about the Sunset process.

Fly Betsy DeVos in and have a summit!

Obama did it! It must be awesome!

Wait a minute. Didn’t we just spend 8 years fighting everything Obama did? Now we must emulate what he did? Hmm. And don’t conservatives like Wolfe want to eliminate the U.S. Dept. of Education, not promote it? Something sounds fishy. Photo op perhaps?

The question I would ask is this: how would a summit by Sec. DeVos benefit Harris County taxpayers?

So there you have it. Maybe I’ll drive over there in the morning and speak to the board about these and other things, especially that item on the agenda by Wolfe wanting to limit meetings to four hours. Hey, you signed up for the job, git-r-done or get out of the way and let someone else do it. I’d bet if certain members of the board stopped some of their shenanigans and self-promotion, they could get the business of the people done a whole lot quicker. Yeah, maybe I’ll drive on over and talk about that. Just don’t expect me to listen to their droning on and on for 8 hours like the last board meeting.

What’s *Really* Happening at HCDE?

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Karen Mullinax
Karen Mullinax

It has not taken long for the “new” Harris County Department of Education (HCDE) to get interesting.

This past November, voters in Harris County elected new members to this governing agency. As Big Jolly Politics has pointed out before, there always seems to be something amiss at the HCDE board meetings, and it appears that at last months’s meeting, the Harris County Department of Education Trustees took a big swing and a miss, yet again.

Political blogger, and someone with a very intimate relationship of HCDE’s goings-on, Colleen Vera, wrote in her Texas Trash Talk Blog following the meeting about the lack of transparency at HCDE and even more troubling, the blatant violation of Texas Open Meetings Act.  In that article, there is video of the agenda item that seemed to scare the Democrats, the current board attorney, the superintendent, and apparently newly elected Trustee George Moore, as there was a rush to get to a closed session even if it violated the Open Meetings Act.

It was quite strange to see Trustee Moore so eager to side with the Democrats on this issue, especially since based on his performance at the last meeting, taxpayers thought they had found a great conservative advocate.  Boy, were we wrong.  If you watch the entire board meeting from that day, one thing that was consistent was that Moore and Democrat Trustees Diane Trautman and Erica Lee Carter seemed to be on the same page and overly complimentary to each other.

From the agenda, it appeared the Republican Trustee Don Sumners had made some requests to try and rein in the out of control spending by the Superintendent and also make changes so that the superintendent couldn’t continue to take positions on behalf of HCDE that he wasn’t authorized to take.  As you can see over and over throughout the meeting, Moore seems to oppose putting these type of taxpayer savings measures in place, and goes as far as to chide Trustee Sumners as being a micro-manager and going too far.  Maybe Mr. Moore didn’t get the memo that Don Sumners is one of the most fiscally conservative office holders in the county and has a history of championing against wasteful taxpayer spending.

Evidently, Dave Jennings was right in the past when he said this is twiddlywinks versus graduate level politics, and the two Democrats are having their way with Trustee Moore.  Another take away from this last meeting was that newly elected Trustee, Eric Dick seems to have taken to heart the criticism he received after the last meetings, because unlike Moore, he voted consistently for the conservative agenda items, and based on his own recount, fought against the lack of transparency of the board when it came to the agenda item dealing with selecting a new board attorney.  According to Trustee Dick, he “fought like hell and wasn’t backing down until Moore turned (weak) and turned on the conservatives and sided with the democrats.”  If this is true, then taxpayers need to know, what happened to get Moore to turn on his conservative board mates and build an alliance with the two democrats and the super liberal board attorney and superintendent?

Well, now that Ms. Vera has demanded the that the DA’s office investigate the criminal conduct of Moore and company, we may get our answers sooner rather than later.  This is just another reminder that transparency seems to be an empty campaign promise from a lot of those on the right, because when it is time to shine the light, some of our conservatives are quick to take out the light bulbs.

We are witnessing right now in Washington D.C. what keeping campaign promises looks like. If only we were witnessing that from all of the new members of the Harris County Department of Education.

 

Karen Mullinax is a Harris County Republican precinct chair in precinct 323.

Harris County Department of Education special meeting

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harris county department of education

The new Board of Trustees for the Harris County Department of Education has called a special meeting to be held Monday, January 9, 2017 at 1:00 pm. They are going to elect officers and do a couple other things, some good, some not.

1. Consider election of President and VicePresident of the Board of Trustees

The easy money is on Don Sumners being elected President and Mike Wolfe Vice-President. I’m not so sure about that. Wolfe has his own ambitions and would love to be President. With the new board being 5 R’s to 2 D’s, it is going to be one or the other. Wolfe was instrumental in getting George Moore and Eric Dick to run, perhaps they swing their allegiance to him. If that is the case, he only needs to persuade Louis Evans to support him. On the other hand, Dick is very independent minded. Will the two D’s decide that Sumners is the lesser of two evils and back him, with Dick being the wild card?

2. Consider appointment of Board delegates to the Public Facilities Corporation

Who cares?

3. Consider terminating the contracts of current political consultants Pat M. Strong and Hill Co.

Good. This should have been done years ago. The idea of elected officials spending taxpayer funds to lobby other elected officials is repulsive. Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

4. Consider rescinding prior authorization for expenditure of funds for the recovery high school previously approved by the Board and consider action directing that no HCDE funds be spent on the recovery high school project, employment or improvements, without subsequent Board approval, until a comprehensive feasibility and development plan is completed and approved by the Board

What a waste of time and money. These studies have already been done, this is the direct result of the changing composition of the board. The HCDE has been in Republican hands for years and is one of the few examples of Republicans actually governing well. Now the new board is determined to screw it up so that they can claim the ‘conservative’ mantel which these days means the inability to govern. Lord have mercy.

5. Consider action directing that no additional HCDE funds be spent on the new ABS West campus without Board approval until a comprehensive feasibility and development plan is completed and approved by the Board

Ditto #4.

6. Consider changing the regular January 2017 Board Meeting from January 19,2017 to January 25, 2017

Most likely so that Mike Wolfe can attend the inauguration in Washington, D.C.

7. Consider changing the regular Board meeting dates to the third Wednesday of the month, including possible revision to Policy BE (Local)

I liked it when the meetings were on Tuesday afternoons. Oh well.

In case you have forgotten what the Harris County Department of Education does, here are a couple of videos.

https://youtu.be/XZ8cAgnOjW0

Harris County Department of Education holds line on taxes

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The Harris County Department of Education Board of Trustees voted to hold the line on taxes at their monthly board meeting yesterday. The tax rate adopted is $0.005999, 5.6{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} lower than last year’s rate of $0.006358. The adopted rate is the calculated Effective Tax Rate. Click here to view the ETR worksheet.

Don Sumners addresses the HCDE board
Don Sumners addresses the HCDE board

Candidate for the HCDE Board Don Sumners spoke to the board during the Open Forum. Mr. Sumners was not happy with the results of the yearly budget, claiming that the department was operating in the red to the tune of $7 million. Jesus Amezcua, CPA, Assistant Superintendent for Business Services of the HCDE disputed Mr. Sumners claims and told the board that the organization was not operating in the red and that what Mr. Sumners was referring to was a timing difference between posting expenditures and revenues. Mr. Amezcua stated that the audited financials to be released in January will correct this.

Mr. Sumners also asked the board not to hire a superintendent until a consulting firm has been hired to evaluate the department from top to bottom and determine which departments are not returning a positive ROI. I talked to him briefly about his thoughts on hiring a consulting firm and he thinks that the department doesn’t have the skills necessary to do this type of evaluation internally. He also complained that when he attends meetings and department directors are asked questions by the board, a typical response is “I don’t know and will have to get back with you.” Sumners says this was prevalent in the budget meetings he attended and he doesn’t think that the directors have the training necessary to complete their own budgets, theorizing that in the past the budgets were pushed down from the previous superintendent.

I was glad to see Mr. Sumners engaged. The election is coming up fast and I don’t see the other candidates engaged at all.

It seems as though every time I write about the Harris County Department of Education, a commenter or three will chime in and say that the department is worthless, a waste of taxpayer money, and simply duplicates services found elsewhere. This is simply not the truth. I would urge you to go to one of these meetings and become familiar with the department and what it does. It certainly changed my view of the department over the past two years. Click here for an infographic which will teach you more about the department. The HCDE board is the opposite of what my friend George Scott writes about in this post on the Katy ISD board. The HCDE board is active, engaged, and informed and they do not allow the staff to walk over them. The staff is professional, taxpayer friendly, and always willing to listen to different ideas. Every governmental entity should be like the HCDE.

Good job by the board in holding the line on taxes.

 

Harris County Department of Education wants your input

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From the InBox:

hcde-header

The Harris County Department of Education (HCDE) Board of Trustees with assistance from the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Executive Search Services has begun work to select a new superintendent for HCDE. As a part of that process, the TASB search consultant would like to meet with various groups to begin developing the qualifications and characteristics of the ideal superintendent for Harris County Department of Education.

To provide residents and employees an opportunity to offer their input, a number of meetings are being scheduled. We would appreciate you joining other members of the community at the place and time shown below in order to record the group’s response to a number of questions regarding the ideal superintendent:

Date:  August 7, 2014                

Time: 4:15-5:00 p.m.       

Place: Harris County Department of Education

6300 Irvington

Houston, Texas  77022 (click here for map)

Room 503 (Located on the 5th floor of the Parking Garage)

Visit our website to learn more about HCDE. To see an estimated cost of HCDE services to Harris County School Districts and charter schools for the 2012-2013 school year, then please visit the following link:

http://www.hcde-texas.org/users/0221/docs/HCDE{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}20Cost{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}20Analysis.pdf

In the event you are unable to attend this session, please visit the following link to offer your input: https:\texas.executivesearchservices.comapplicantpublicSearchSurvey.aspx?searchid=283

Your attendance and comments are greatly appreciated. The meeting is expected to last approximately one hour. If you have questions, please feel free to contact Celes Harris at 713-696-8280.

Sincerely,

Angie Chesnut,
HCDE Board President

Recall that in the June board meeting, the board accepted Superintendent John Sawyer’s resignation. This meeting is yet another indication of the HCDE Board’s willingness to be completely transparent in their activities. Kudos to each of the board members for this opportunity.