Tom Ramsey - Harris County Commissioner Joins Houston's Morning News | Reaction to Lina Hidalgo Meltdown

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, that's how it all started. One, two, three, Lena
Hildago in front of a bunch of school children. You know, hey,
we have one, we have one vote in favor of this.
I need two two, I need three anyway before we
bring on Tom Ramsey. Just in case you haven't heard
it yet, just a little bit of Lena Hildago's mental

(00:21):
meltdown yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
So kids, we're trying to see can you guys count
to three? One, two three?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
So I'm one, So.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
We need two and three.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
We need three votes so that we can can we
can we can put.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
This on the ballot.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Okay, So so you guys help me count right now?
We have one one? Okay, say one, one two three
one okay. So well, uh okay, So let's see who's
going to.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Be number two.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Who took the time to come and all the educators kids,
come on down. Let's see if she says yes or no.
Come come on down over here, Come on, come on,
come on, come on, because this is none about politics,
about kids. George, come on down, George. Excuse me. Much
part of education is respect. In Travis County, they spent
two years working with subject matter experts for years excuse me, judge,

(01:12):
please be respectful, at least as you mention.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
He be helling.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Don't give the kids this example of making things up.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
It just went it went south from there. You get
the idea. At the end of the day, she ended
up censored, and for good reason. I mean, I don't
know how to describe Commissioner Ramsey what happened with Lena
Hildago yesterday. The only thing I know for sure is
I'm praying for her husband.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah, I've said it before. This isn't the first time
we've seen this. Fortunately it probably won't be the last
time we've seen this. What she did yesterday in front
of children, where you should be setting an example of
how doult should behave She did everything, But I thought, Commissioners,
we've maintained decorum as she ranted for an hour, bringing

(02:02):
people after people up there that are already working for
the county. She had to get people advocating for her.
But at the end of the day, it's a program
we knew we were going to end after three years.
So this is something that was begun three four years ago.
We knew we were going to stop it, so it

(02:22):
comes time to stop it. And she goes through this
ranting and raving, and it's just really bad that she
feels like that's how you get things done. And she
says that's how you get your three votes. That's really
not how you get you three votes.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
No, maybe that worked for us a child throwing temper taprooms.
Maybe that's how she got her mom to give in,
But that didn't seem to work really well in the
adult world. What this was all about really was free childcare.
And I thought some of the comments from people in
the audience were very interesting trying to point out to
Leading Hildago that's not the function of the Harris County
Commissioner's Court to provide free childcare.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
That's exactly right. I mean, this is a twenty million
dollar a year program, and we're gonna do childcare, We're
gonna do these other summer activities. HISD got a billion
dollars of arp of money. They get two and a
half times the tax revenue we do in the county.

(03:22):
If anybody should be doing anything like this, it should
be done, it should be them. This is not our
core responsibility. And so it's no wonder that we have
a deficit problem at the county when you're doing programs
that you have no business doing. So I think our
budget's gonna be easy this year. We're gonna cut things,

(03:43):
stop things that we shouldn't be doing, and focus on
our core responsibility of public safety, infrastructure and taking care
of our basic facilities.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
What does that say do you think for Lena Hilldogo's future?
That all the Democrats voted against her. We've had enough
of her too, don't you.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well? Even the chronicle posted after the meeting Jimmy that
this was just a sad display lack of leadership and
it may be time for her to go. So I'll
be investigating how we take people out of office. That's
going to be my focus. That's going to be my mission.
We need to remove her from office. There is a

(04:24):
procedure in protocol whether this meets all the requirements of that,
but we need to get better leadership. We don't have
time for this. The four commissioners on court, we don't agree.
I'm the Republican, but we don't all agree. But we
do agree that we have to get some things done.
We can't do it with her involved in her as

(04:46):
a part of it.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Well, and her whole thing was and the main point
of this that this argument was over raising property taxes.
She didn't want to do it with existing dollars. She
wanted to raise everybody's property taxes in order to be
for this.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
That's right. Our our budget, our current revenue level is
two point seven billion dollars. We're spending five hundred million
dollars on things that we don't have to. It's a choice.
We've got plenty of areas that we can cut. And
when they say, well, we hadn't raised taxes and we
our rate is lower than it was five years ago,

(05:23):
I can add and subtract. We are collecting seven hundred
and fifty million more dollars over the last five years
than we did before. That's forty percent increase exacts a
tax increase of seven hundred and fifty million.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
All right, Tom, thanks as always, Thanks and appreciate your time.
The Harris County Commissioner, Tom Ramsey