Tom Ramsey - Harris County Pct. 3 Commissioner Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Seven two or time here in Houston's War News. It's
tempting to send Lena Hildago to Paris, it really is.
If it were a one way ticket, I think I
would be willing to buy it myself. But no, she
wanted to just take a Juncket. That guy voted down
three to two last week at the Harris County Commissioner's Court,
joining his Priestinct three commissioner Tom Ramsey on the right

(00:21):
side of that three to vote against against Lean. I
guess Rodney Ells was the only one that thought she
should go on the trip. Huh.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, I didn't have a problem with Paris, Texas, but
she wanted to go to Paris, France, and I had
a real problem with that.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, unless it's a one way ticket, in which case
maybe that'd be a different story.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
The other three to two vote that she lost was
on the losing side of his pay raises for Harris
County Deputy's pay parody, And of course everybody's going to
wonder how much is that going to cost the county
and how do you come up with the money.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, you know, we were real plays to get that.
This is something that's been way overdue, and we spend
money on nearly everything you can imagine. But last week
on Thursday, we passed the pay parody, which we will
now pay our officers the same as Houston Police officers

(01:18):
and Jimmy. That's one hundred and forty two million dollars
a year impact, But we're just glad to pay it.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Okay, So let's talk about where the money's going to
come from, because right now we're looking at a two
hundred and seventy million dollar deficit. Of course, I'm sure
the first thing that Lena is going to suggest, Well,
first of all, she blamed you and Jack Cagele for
us having a two hundred and seventy million dollar deficit
because you wouldn't allow them to vote in favor of

(01:45):
a tax like last time around.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I think her every time she says that, because she's
telling the taxpayers that we saved the taxpayers forever five
hundred million dollars a year. So I am that's what
y'all put me in there to do, is when we
don't need a tax increase, we shouldn't do it. In
this case, when Kaglin and I did it three years ago.
She keeps saying, well, we would have used that money

(02:10):
for police officers, where our pass actions would not indicate
that that's what she would she would do. By the way,
the two hundred and seventy million comes from doing the math.
We're currently one hundred and thirty million over budget through
half the year. With this pay raise that we're going
to give the police officers, that's one hundred and forty two.

(02:33):
So that's the two seventy that she comes up with.
But as I've said before, our discretionary spending is five
hundred million dollars a year. This will not be a
problem Jimmy finding the money on and just take it
out of discretionary spending on things like the County Administrator's

(02:54):
office twenty five million, the Department of Economic Effuity and
Opportunity nine million, Access hair is forty seven million, consultants
from PFM to Boston consultant groups. These are tens of
millions of dollars. So there's not a problem. We've got
a spending problem in Harris County, not a revenue problem.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Completely understood. So here's the question. I guess the big
question is can you get three to two when on
eliminating some of this waste in Harris County. Can you
get enough commissioners to go along with you on this
so that the idea of a tax hike doesn't see
the light of day.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
I think so. I think that certainly you're either going
to be on the side of Judge Oldago, who absolutely
does not understand finance. She doesn't understand tax rates. We
have gone up on our tax revenues every year I've
been on court, and she keeps acting like we're cutting taxes.

(03:57):
We're not cutting taxes. Your tax bill goes up every year.
There's money there. I think that that when we go
through the budget in detail with UH, they'll be at
least three commissioners that look at that and say, you
know what, we can cut that spending. And if there
was ever a time not to do a tax increase,
it would be this year, particularly since last year we

(04:20):
did a fifteen percent tax increase that she doesn't really
want to talk about what you did last year because
of the disaster loophole that the legislatures closed. Now they
raised the taxes next year. So this would be a
good year not to raise taxes.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, well, any year it would be good. You're not
to raise taxes at all yeah, hope, hope you're right
on it. I hope you're right on that support though, Commissioner,
I do appreciate your time as always, Thank you very much.
Harris County Precinct three Commissioner Tom Ramsey