Lina Hidalgo’s office has come out with a “Truth Center” section on her official County webpage in order to combat all the bad press her scandal ridden office has received over the past year. The "Truth Center’s” new feature on the site addresses many of the scandals from vaccine bid rigging to defunding the police by $20 million. Most if not, all of the explanations can be easily proven wrong with concrete evidence . Fortunately today, I will be proving that most, if not all of the Lyin’ Lina’s “truth center” is more of a “untruthful propaganda center” in order to try and salvage her tarnished image.

First off, Lyin’ Lina’s “Truth Center” addresses the vaccine outreach contract:

The “Elevate” Vaccine Outreach Contract

Judge Hidalgo and the County's Public Health and Emergency Response teams have been working to get our communities vaccinated. One of the approaches they designed to combat vaccine hesitancy was for the kind of work that the County doesn’t do enough of — aggressively reaching deep into communities that have been left behind to persuade them to protect themselves, their families, and their co-workers. In response, the County worked on a proposal for community engagement experts to go deep into low income, vaccine hesitant communities to find out through scientific polling exactly what their hesitancy was about, and work to counter it through canvassing, digital advertising, and direct mail.

Claim: County Judge Hidalgo steered an $11 million county vaccine outreach contract to Elevate Strategies LLC, a one-woman firm incapable of conducting a vaccine outreach campaign.

Misleading: It is true that the county contract was awarded to a small, local, woman-owned firm. However, insinuations that the contract would be run by one person without prior experience in running major grassroots campaigns and that Judge Hidalgo steered this contract to Elevate Strategies are false.

Elevate Strategies was chosen by a procurement committee to support the county’s effort based on a rigorous proposal and procurement interview process. Elevate's proposal included their organizational chart, identified its team members, and listed the subcontractors Elevate would employ. In other words, Elevate demonstrated it would deploy a large staffing footprint that included dozens of canvassers, public health experts, and data analytics specialists to execute the county’s requirements.

Experience was also considered. Elevate had significant experience working with other large clients and efforts, including Harris County’s COVID-19 Relief Fund, the county’s Census Outreach campaign, the City of Houston, and Fort Bend County. The bottom line is that Elevate’s methodology of data-based and campaign-style approaches most closely matched the type of grassroots persuasion effort requested by the County.

Truth: Elevate Strategies, is in fact a one-women owned firm. According to the DNB filings, the owner Felicity Pererya lists that Elevate only has two employees.

Truth: The procurement process seems to have been allegedly steered to Elevate Strategies by Lina Hidalgo’s staffers according to the the text message evidence obtained from search warrants by the Texas Rangers. In the text message correspondence between Hidalgo’s Chief-of-Staff Alex Triantaphyllis, Wallis Nadler, Chang Chiu and Aaron Dunn, it is proven from the very beginning Felicity Pererya appears to have been preselected for the vaccine outreach contract. Hidalgo’s staffers and even HIdalgo herself discuss Perereya as if she had already been awarded the contract. These conversations occured months before the contract was even brought to Commissioners Court for a vote.

In June, after the alleged bid rigging was already in, Hidalgo’s office brought the RFP to commissioners court to be voted on.

As for the claims that Elevate had worked with “large clients”, citing Elevate Strategies partnering with Houston in Action for census outreach, Houston in Action, which appears to be another Democrat partisan organization formed by The Greater Houston Community Foundations' Renee Wizig Barrios, who has been under scrutiny for her handling of the $30 million of COVID relief funds she was tasked with donating for Harris County at the beginning of the pandemic. Once again, adding another layer of the political operatives which the Harris County Democrats have awarded millions in county funds to carry out their political agenda along with enriching their cronies. Hidalgo’s office continues to cite more work Elevate Strategies allegedly performed with another Democrat Strategist and possible operative, Shekira Dennis in Fort Bend County for “Covid Outreach”. From my understanding, Shekira Dennis is currently under investigation regarding the COVID outreach contract she was awarded since the procurement process was in violation of the Byrd Anti Lobbying Agreement. According to my sources, Shekira Dennis has been described as one of Commissioner Rodney Ellis’s protégés.

Next round from Hidalgo’s “Truth Center”

Claim: The County’s procurement effort to award the vaccine outreach contract was rigged.

False: The county’s purchasing department has repeatedly testified that the procurement process for the vaccine outreach contract was conducted according to the rules. The County Judge’s Office could have relied on Judge Hidalgo’s emergency authority (as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic) to avoid the bid process entirely, but that did not happen. In fact, in order to add an additional layer of fairness, accountability and transparency, the County Judge’s Office opted to use the slower - but more deliberate - merit-based competition for this award instead.

Claim: The procurement selection committee excluded other offices from participating in the process.

Misleading: The County departments comprising the procurement committee represented the two departments leading the effort to respond to COVID-19: Harris County Public Health and the County Judge’s Office, which by statute serves as the emergency manager for declared emergencies like COVID-19. In addition, a representative of the Purchasing Department managed and oversaw the entire evaluation, interview, and selection process.

Truth: The County’s procurement effort to award the vaccine outreach contract was rigged. Again, from the correspondence Hidalgo’s staffers had with Pererya regarding the contract right from the start seems to have proved that this contract was indeed “rigged”. Another aspect was that Alex Triantaphyllis directed Hidalgo’s staffers “to slam the door on UT Health’s bid” showing favor to Elevate Strategies. Bare in mind, UT Health was well equipped with a staff of over a hundred and would have been more suitable to take on the county’s COVID outreach. As for the procurement selection committee, it only included Lina Hidalgo and Commissioner Rodney Ellis’s staffers.

Claim: Judge Hidalgo awarded the vaccine outreach contract to her “political allies”

False: There remains no personal, political, or financial benefit for Judge Hidalgo in having awarded this contract to Elevate. Additionally, Judge Hidalgo has a policy of not accepting any campaign contributions from vendors who do, or intend to do, business with Harris County. You can read Judge Hidalgo’s financial disclosure report here.

Truth: Felicity Pererya is indeed a political ally to Hidalgo and the Democrat Commissioners. Pererya served as a campaign manager for Judge Hidalgo's ally Commissioner Adrian Garcia

NEXT SUBJECT: CRIME

Overview

All across America, violent crime has increased-- and sadlyHarris County has not been immune to this national trend. It’s no secret what is driving crime both here and across the nation -- the economic consequences of the pandemic and the widespread availability and use of guns on our streets. COVID-19 has left more than just a body count in its wake. A secondary consequence has been victims of crime and a criminal court backlog that continues to delay justice for too many.

Since 2019, the County has made historic anti-crime and neighborhood safety investments. Each year, we’ve increased the budgets for every law enforcement agency in the county, including the District Attorney. The County has freed up law enforcement to focus on the most violent criminals by reinforcing them with public health experts who can cover them for non-violent, routine calls. We’ve launched crime interruption programs designed to break the cycle of gun violence through community policing and outreach. And millions have been allocated to tackle the unacceptable backlog in criminal court cases in our county, hiring more judges, expanding jury operations, and allocating more than $17 million for overtime and equipment to speed court cases along. Additionally, $50 million has also been allocated for a “Clean Streets, Safe Neighborhoods” program that reduces crime by going after blight, improving street lighting and other infrastructure improvements shown to enhance public safety.

At the same time, the County has led initiatives to make the criminal justice system smarter, including support for evidence-based criminal justice reforms that improve public safety and rebuilds confidence between our government and the people we serve.

Claim: Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo defunded the police by $20 million.

False: Since 2019, Harris County has actually increased the budgets for every law enforcement agency in the County, including the District Attorney’s office, by 13%. This brings the total funding for law enforcement in FY 20222 alone to $966 million - almost a billion dollars.

Moreover, recognizing the urgency of addressing recent increases in violent crime, Commissioners Court reinvested about $20 million dollars that remained unused d by law enforcement agencies and deployed them for urgent anti-crime initiatives.

Crime began to skyrocket almost instantaneously in 2019 when the Democrats passed through Bail Reform down a party-line vote in Commissioners Court. Another proponent of the uptick in crime has been caused by the activist criminal court judges by how often they release repeat offenders on low to no-bond. Then add COVID into the equation alongside with the draconian lockdowns Lina enforced on the county, resulting to higher rates of unemployment, plunging more into poverty. The results from these policies only contributed to why people ended up committing crimes. Every single reason why crime has blown up is directly caused by Judge Hidalgo’s votes and policies.

Lina Hidalgo and the Democrat majority did in fact defund the police by $20 million. In July 2021, Hidalgo, Elllis and Adrian Garcia voted to strip the county’s constables of the $20 million rollover funds that the Harris Police Department desperately needed. Hidalgo claimed in the Commissioners Court meeting, “We cannot afford to have these savings accounts. We can't. We have to spend the money tackling the rise in violent crime,” yet, the Democrats never used the money to actually “tackle crime” It appears as though the reallocation of funds were used for another poorly thought out progressive experiment unleashed on Harris County constituents. It’s quite odd that Lying Lina would use the excuse of defunding our police in order to tackle crime… Though, not much of what she does makes sense.

Illiberal Logic.