Yo, Harris County Republicans, if you want to see the future of the Republican Party first hand, you need to head out to Tony’s tomorrow. The Greater Houston Pachyderm Club will be hosting Houston Young Republican President John Baucum. From the GHPC invite:
John Baucum
Join the Greater Houston Pachyderm Club as we welcome John Baucum of the Houston Young Republicans (HYRs). John is a founding member and officer of the Houston Young Republicans. He will tell us about the HYR’s grassroots work to promote the Republican party and outreach to younger voters, and the group’s activities connecting with other groups like ours.
Professionally, John works in Information Technology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). As a GIS Support Analyst, John has an eye for detail and the creativity to solve problems. His work has also included consulting jobs at major energy companies in the Houston area. In his spare time, John enjoys collecting election data and doing spatial analysis on voting trends. Technology is a very powerful tool to build networks and spread information. GIS helps to identify areas for targeting and identifying new individuals that are ready to get involved as grassroots activists to change bad laws.
He has served as the Treasurer of the Houston Young Republicans and was a founding member and former Treasurer of the Houston Republican Liberty Caucus. He is also the current Political Director for Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition (RAMP). John is active with many other clubs in Houston as he continues to build onto the grassroots network in Harris County and beyond. John has a passion for volunteering and works with many organizations and charities in Houston.
That short bio doesn’t begin to tell you the influence that John has had in Republican circles in Harris County. He’s one of the hardest working volunteers in the party and is very effective at communicating with all ages. I gotta warn you though, that picture makes him look a whole lot prettier than he is!
Honestly, if you are like me and very discouraged with the current Republican Party, nationally, in Texas, or in Harris County, come out and meet John. Your spirits will be lifted. The future of our party is in good hands.
It’s amazing to watch candidates morph into different creatures during an election cycle. For years, Bill King has self described himself as a moderate politician, catering to the whims of the business community at taxpayers’ expense. Now, suddenly, as he campaigns for Mayor of Houston, he wants to be known as a political outsider that will be a champion for taxpayers. From an email in my inbox today:
In the upcoming mayoral election, Bill King is the only candidate – the only candidate – who understands what needs to be fixed, and has the political courage to follow through and get the job done.
Bill is NOT a captive of the special interests that control City Hall. He will put an end to the City Hall culture that puts personal agendas and political insiders ahead of average taxpayers. He will focus on “fixing the streets, catching the crooks and balancing the city budget.”
Anytime a candidate says that he is the only one with “political courage”, beware. What he is really saying is that he won’t be afraid to increase taxes to pursue his agenda.
For three years, HISD has been fighting to keep a secret. Namely, e-mails exchanged between Bill King and the Superintendent of HISD Schools Terry Grier.
This week HISD lost the battle. The Texas Attorney General says taxpayers have a right to see them.
HISD first claimed releasing the King e-mails would interfere with a corruption case involving former school trustee Larry Marshall. HISD is no longer part of that lawsuit so they couldn’t use that excuse anymore.
This spring the argument changed. HISD now argued the e-mails would disclose legal advice Bill King gave to the Superintendent. You don’t hear it in the Mayoral commercials, but Bill King was paid $52,800 in tax money in 2012 as a governmental relations lawyer for the school district.
“Taxpayers may not have known it, but they paid Bill King to lobby for that huge 2012 HISD Bond Election, yet HISD has fought to keep secret exactly what he did for the money,” says Wayne Dolcefino, President of Dolcefino Consulting. “I think we should know what he did, who he talked to, and whether King was involved in soliciting campaign contributions from contractors.”
It is no secret the FBI has been investigating HISD contracting practices for years. Two years ago, an HISD contractor provided evidence to Dolcefino Consulting of improper payments to Houston School Board Members. That tape recording was also provided to the FB I. Published news reports have explored links between bond contributions and HISD contracts.
It has never been clear why HISD tried to hide Bill King Communications. At the time HISD was being sued by a contractor who claimed at least one school board member was soliciting bribes.
HISD has yet to turn over the e-mails. Stay tuned.
As for the “political courage” that the reinvented Bill King suddenly found, here is what Ben Hall has to say:
Ben Hall stood firm with Houston’s voters from the beginning.
As former Houston City Attorney, Ben knew Houston Mayor Annise Parker broke the law when she denied over 54,000 Houstonians the right to vote on HERO.
Ben didn’t make a political calculation. He followed the law and his faith.
Then there is Bill King, who sat on his hands and said nothing.
He did not voice opposition to the HERO ordinance nor the blatant suppression of voter rights. He did not protest when pastors’ sermons were subpoenaed as part of a campaign to silence critics.
He said nothing while Houstonians had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just for their day in court.
But now that the Texas Supreme Court has spoken, Bill King has suddenly found his courage. King now says the HERO ordinance was never needed and that voters should have the right to vote.
Last month the Texas Supreme Court limited the public’s right to know how private groups operating as chambers of commerce and economic development councils spend your tax dollars. Today, a most bizarre email from the campaign of Bill King came into my inbox.
On June 26 in a 6-3 decision with the majority opinion written by Justice Eva Guzman, the Texas Supreme Court decided the Greater Houston Partnership is not a “governmental body” for the purposes of the Texas Public Information Act and ruled the Partnership does not have to release the check registers sought by the requestor under the Act.
Under its 2007 and 2008 contracts with the City of Houston, the Greater Houston Partnership received quarterly payments of $196,250.00 contingent upon delivering reports to the City detailing the services rendered during the prior quarter.
Thanks to Justice Guzman though, the Greater Houston Partnership gets to keep THEIR books closed and keep secret how they spend your hard-earned taxpayer money.
So what’s with this bait and switch?
From the Bill King “Back to Basics” campaign:
The Greater Houston Partnership, Houston’s preeminent business group, issued a white paper on the City of Houston finances last Friday. It is a sobering, must-read work for anyone concerned about the future of our City. [Click here to read the report.]
This authoritative report raises many of the same concerns that I have been sharing with you since I first became alarmed about the City’s financial trajectory in 2007. It outlines the serious challenges facing the City financially, at a time when City Hall is collecting record tax revenues. In fact, the City will collect over $1 billion more in taxes and fees from Houstonians than it did just six years ago, while going an additional $3.3 billion more in debt during the same time.
These challenges will only become more acute with the recent downturn in oil prices.
While there are a number of reasons for the financial straits in which the City currently finds itself, the GHP report accurately shows that the principal driver is unsustainable pension promises previous mayors have made to City employees — something I have written about many times both in these missives and my column in the Houston Chronicle.
The report’s conclusion most succinctly states the challenge before us:
“What we cannot do is wait. The nature of these problems is such that the financial issues become much more difficult, and perhaps impossible, to resolve if the attempt at resolution is deferred (as the experience of other cities has shown).”
All I can say is “amen.”
So the GHP sought a way to keep THEIR books closed and THEIR finances hidden from public scrutiny but they expose Houston’s finances?
Will Bill King express “alarm” over how the GHP spends your hard-earned tax dollars?
All I can say is hypocrisy thy name is the Greater Houston Partnership.
Holy Buckets, Batman! You have a tear in your leotards! That was my first thought when Downtown Houston Pachyderm President Sophia Mafrige introduced the second guest speaker of the day, Gilbert Herrera representing Rebuild Houston. That’s what I get for not paying attention to the weekly email and not coming to the meeting prepared. If I had been prepared, this would have been really, really fun!
So for that, I apologize to you guys. I mean, seriously, having this guy speak at this club is analogous, in terms of current issues in Texas, to having me speak at a club meeting where the members are all parts of the mob that shut down the Texas Senate over the abortion bills and extolling the virtues of the bill. My goodness, what were Sophia and VP Alvin Walker thinking? Heck, I thought I was the only person that liked to rile up the troops once in a while! Awesome – that’s why I like this club so much! Well, that and the cheap lunches. If I’d only been prepared.
Oh well, you do what you can with what you’ve got. What I’ve got is a picture of Mr. Herrera being accosted by members of the club afterward:
Gosh I wish I would have recorded this. Here’s a dude trying to tell a very conservative club that the rain tax was a good thing because “infrastructure” in Houston has been underfunded since former Mayor Bob Lanier’s days to the tune of about $500 million a year. Then he causally mentions that the reason they had to trick voters into voting for the rain tax is because the city has no more borrowing power because it is already $13 BILLION in debt. Which, of course, we still have to pay off, but hey, he’s not on the board that has to figure that one out, he’s one of nine members on the rain tax board. And in case we weren’t aware, those nine members are restricted from involvement in any financial transactions with the rain tax money. Cough. Cough.
So I throw him a softball question: do you think the voters would have approved the “drainage” tax if they knew that the money would be used for bike trails and park employees? And who knows what else? Incredulously, Mr. Herrera claimed not to know about the bike trails and then claimed that they were probably funded from federal funds. I told him to Google “Rebuild Houston bike trails” and get on with the meeting.
I found an old comment from an old partner in blogging, Matt Bramanti that is apropos:
Dedicated funds (and dedicated revenue streams) like this carry double risks — first, they have unique potential abuses. Money is fungible, so the city can reduce its general-fund contributions into the special fund, so that the new revenue stream effectively becomes general-fund money.
Second, such systems get less public oversight and attention than they should, because the idea of a dedicated revenue stream and dedicated fund is an intuitively good idea. It seems more likely to work, so the public can say “hey, it’s a drainage fee, and it all goes to drainage, problem solved.”
Do it in a strong-mayor town with historically weak financial controls, and the problems are just exacerbated.
Municipal functions are pretty screwed up in this town, and I don’t think it’s a left/right, Dem/GOP thing. It’s an inevitable consequence of the public’s failure to supervise its servants.
I doubt that even Matt could have known just how true his statement was. Because when Mr. Herrera was asked “hey, what about Councilman Steven Costello getting $40 million in contracts after pushing this boondoggle through”, he said, and I’m not kidding or exaggerating:
We as a community have tolerated these kinds of conflicts of interest for years. Nobody cares.
Houston’s charter requires it to have a balanced budget, and no one jumped up to halt the proceedings last month when City Council unanimously approved a $4.5 billion spending plan for the fiscal year that started Monday.
But is the budget really balanced if the city is putting off bills it ought to pay today? Whether the numbers add up, Mayor Annise Parker acknowledged, is a different question than whether a budget meets all the city’s needs.
“We are dealing with years of underfunding in critical infrastructure,” she said, citing streets and drainage, the water and sewer system, information technology, facilities and vehicles as long-neglected areas.
Councilman Stephen Costello, who chairs the council’s budget committee, has said facilities, fleet and IT get only about a third of the money they need each year.
And despite budgeting a record $289 million for its three employee pensions this fiscal year, the city still is $80 million short of the level that would, over time, fully fund two of the three retirement plans. Under current projections, Finance Department Director Kelly Dowe said, the city’s negotiated annual payment to the police pension likely will not meet the level required to return it to full funding in the foreseeable future.
Parker said pensions are the one “outlier” in the general fund budget, saying she has done what she could to address the problem by giving the police equity in real estate instead of a cash payment and twice trying — and failing — in Austin to force firefighters’ pension leaders to the bargaining table.
The City of Houston is dead broke boys and girls. And yet they send a minion to the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club to proclaim how great they are. Unfreaking believable.
Are you tired of this tomfoolery and blatant lying about your money? Do you really want a change? Then get up off your ass and do something about it.
Three recent events revealed the desperate & ugly tactics of elected officials in Fort Bend, Montgomery & Harris County. For those with an under-appreciation of the Alinsky tactics used by the Political Left & The Republicans Who Love Them, allow me to share with you how Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals are being implemented by the Political Left and The Incumbent Republicans Who Love Them in the Texas counties of Montgomery, Harris and Fort Bend.
Saul Alinsky, as written in this 1969 thesis titled “There Is Only The Fight…” An Analysis of the Alinsky Modelby Hillary D. Rodham, is the first individual she gives special appreciation to in her acknowledgments. On page 12, Ms. Rodham writes “Alinsky argues that those who wish to change circumstances must develop a mass-based organization and be prepared for conflict.” For thosechallenging an incumbent in 2013 and 2014, this article is written for you.
In 2011 Houston Mayor Parker and her ilk on the Political Left recognized the importance of suppressing the speech of mass-based organization and prepared for the conflict by ensuring sign violation tickets from the City of Houston were given to City Council candidates Clyde Bryan & Eric Dick. As noted in this morning’s press conference outside City Hall, City Council member C.O. Bradford received the same sign violations in 2011 as Clyde & Eric. However, two years later the City of Houston continues its attempts to prosecute Clyde Bryan and Eric Dick for these sign violations while C.O. Bradford’s tickets were dismissed without the necessity of him making court appearances. Alinsky Rule #9 is at play here: make the challenger expend time, money & energy in an attempt to demoralize.
In Fort Bend County, the Missouri City Council approved rezoning a parcel of land at the foot of the Fort Bend Toll Road & Highway 6 from retail to multi-family during the July 1 city council meeting. Widespread email and Facebook communications among different Missouri City communities opposed to the rezoning, citing a “missed opportunity” for a Town Center, now fuel what is believed to be the politically-motivated compilation of an enemies list including residents names & their places of employment, in advance of the 2014 municipal elections and bond program. Alinsky Rule #4 “make theenemy live up to its own book of rules” can be extremely effective, because no one can live up to all their rules.
In Montgomery County, RUD (road utility district) defendants in a voter residency case prepared for conflict and relied on a Texas Secretary of State election law advisory opinion when they claimed to have lawfully established residence prior to voting in a Woodlands Road Utility District election in Republican Senator Tommy Williams State Senate District.* Senator Williams has decided NOT to run for Comptroller next year, one of the defendants was recently convicted, & the remaining defendants continue to face what they believe to be politically- motivated prosecutions. Rule #9 surfaces a second time: make the challenger (s) expend time, money & energy in an attempt to demoralize.
Two of Saul Alinsky’s many rules, as cited in Ms. Rodham’s thesis, are being utilized as new coalitions wishing to change circumstances develop their mass-based organizations. In choosing to challenge The Political Left and The Republicans Who Love Them, be prepared for conflict.
*Ironically, Paul Kubosh explained both Clyde Bryan & Eric Dick relied on a letter that David Feldman, Houston City Attorney, issued them in the 2011 municipal election cycle.
Regular readers of BJP know we focus our writings on the Texas counties of Harris & Fort Bend. It’s a logical assumption then to, well…assume…the 4th largest city I’ve referenced is the City of Houston, currently the 4th largest city in the United States. You’d be incorrect in that assumption because the city I am referencing is Rockford…the 4th largest city in Illinois.
“An independent Illinois mayor is leaving New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun coalition because he said the group strayed from its original mission and became too focused on pushing for an assault weapons ban”
“The focus should not be against law-abiding citizens. We should be focusing our enforcement on folks who have no right to carry a gun, concealed or otherwise.”
Houston Mayor Annise Parker is a firearms owner and a law-abiding one, I’m guessing. Her motivation for joining Gloomberg’s MAIG always seemed to me to be more linked to the opportunity to win a $1 million dollar Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors’ Challenge prize than a sincere drive to strip law-abiding Houstonians of their firearms.
How much longer will Annise Parker remain a member of Michael Bloomberg’s group?
