Holly Hansen - Reporter, The Texan Joins Houston Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, six twenty two. Now, as promised, last week's firing
of Barbie Robinson, the top health official in Harris County,
is heading toward a criminal investigation. Let's find out more
from Holly Hansen with the text and Holly, good morning, Good.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Morning, thanks for having me on the show this morning.
We learned yesterday new information about Barbie Robinson, who, as
you mentioned, was fired last Friday. Apparently her firing was
also due to the fact that she accepted another position.
It's a consulting position with a county in California, but

(00:34):
apparently the rises above the level of a usual consulting
position in that it requires a lot of time and energy,
and she was good to be compensated about two hundred
thousand dollars for this job. She did not inform the
county and so there were a lot of questions about that.
Of course, everyone is wondering how this company dema that

(00:55):
she worked with in California when she was with a
different county out there, I got this contract because it
does appear that they just barely feed out a more
experienced group, the Hairris Center for Mental Health, that had
experience in going on these nine to one one calls
that may require mental health counseling services in this kind

(01:17):
of thing. So still a lot of questions going on
out there, But apparently Barbie Robinson had a number of
other things going on, and shesedly told County Administrator Diana
Ramiroz that she had gotten permission from the previous administrator
to take on this these consulting positions that require so

(01:40):
much time and effort, but that did not bear out
when the current county administrator looked into it.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Thank goodness that you're breaking this type of information, Holly,
because it's not something that's ever going to be offered
up by the administrators and the county government that has
been really at fault in all of this, bringing her
in from California, surpassing usurping basically a local group that
had experience, and then suddenly all these side dealings. I mean,

(02:11):
can we even use the word kickback? Does it look
like there's some sort of kickback collusion corruption going on here?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I think that's the question. And we did also learn
yesterday that the Harris County District Attorney's office launched an
investigation earlier this summer. As of June, they were looking
for information regarding the contracts regarding communications between Barbie Robinson
and this company, DIMA and some of the other staff

(02:40):
there at the Harris Public Health Center. And still I
think we're going to be hearing more about this. I
would like to point out that Commissioner Tom Ramsay had
been voting against paying the invoices for this, but was
out voted every time until this last Commissioner's court meeting
where he finally got Adrian Garcinas to join him in

(03:02):
voting down the payment to this company of about three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah, it just sounds like machine politics going on down
at our county. And unless you can get somebody to
cross over somebody who's at risk of reelection, they've primaried
out our DA for people who don't realize that. So
technically this whole investigation may be dropped after the election.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
That could be because we've seen some hints from the
Democratic nominee for District Attorney to replace Kim Ogg that
he sees some of these investigations is merely political. But
it does seem like there's a lot of smoke around
this one.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Kudos to you, and kudos to the Republican Tom Ramsey
for calling this out and at least getting a public
outcry so that some of this can be corrected.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
You bet well, Holly. Thank you for the great update
and for breaking this and covering this. We certainly appreciate
you bringing it to all of our listeners' attention. Holly
Hansen reporter with the text and great work. Thank you, Holly.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
You're welcome.