Harris County election costs have risen significantly since the Democrats have taken control over our County’s Commissioners Court. In 2016, the Presidential election cost us $4 million. In 2020, the presidential election cost ballpark of $39-42 million. Upon diving into the County’s budget, I found that the elections department blew through nearly $35 million in one year. The only elections which were held were general elections.
The County has given Isabel Longoria, the disgraced soon-to-be resigned Election Administrator, a whopping budget of $28 million dollars. Surprisingly, Longoria blew through the entire budget by October of 2021. I also discovered she had accepted and requested nearly $6.4 million in grants and extra cash from the County’s PIC and general funds budget.
+$3.3 million the election admin Isabel Longoria took from our PIC funds.
+$2.4 million Longoria accepted from CTCL (Zuckerbucks)
+$1 million from general funds, since she blew through the entire budget before October.
In March of 2022, the County took another $2 million from our general funds to "fund election workers for the upcoming primaries"
Interestingly, the elections budget seems to be increasing instead of decreasing. In the past year, there had been a lot of concerns coming from the Republican Commissioners about the exorbitant amount of money being used by the Elections Department, which were explained away by the “department being new, and the costs would go down in the next year” yet, that doesn’t seem to be the case here at all.
You can take a look at the countys budget here: Link (page 48 for Elections Department)
Another disturbing layer to all of this, is the newly Democrat installed bureaucrat County Administrator, David Berry recently dived into the PIC funds to pull out another $796k for the Elections Department
(I would suggest thinking of David Berry as a Fauci-like character, but he oversees our County’s budget.)
What is even more infuriating, the county pulled another $2 million to hold elections inside the County’s prisons- because I’m sure there wouldn’t be any type of fraud which could occur in a prison, right???
There also was another contract which was awarded in Commissioners Court for $16.6 million which was requested by the Human Resources department of the Sheriff in late 2021- I am still trying figure out what of was used towards, "election technology". Was it a COVID expense? Was it a election technology expense? Or was it an emergency, since those funds also came from the County’s PIC funds?
So I have to ask, does this seem to be an appropriate use of Harris County’s funds? It appears that the lack of oversight has allowed possible bad actors to take severe advantage of our budget.
This is an outrage and it is tax payer money! These crooks need to pay for their crimes and do jail time!