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Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo recently testified before the U.S. House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations regarding the Texas General Land Office's (GLO) refusal to apportion funding to the county.
Last spring, the GLO excluded Harris County and the City of Houston from a list of jurisdictions in line to receive funding for flood mitigation, as previously reported by the Houston Daily. The denial united Houston-area state and federal leaders from both sides of the aisle in anger, prompting them to express their disgust to the GLO in writing.
The GLO eventually caved under the pressure and awarded Harris County $750 million, but local leaders felt it was insufficient, according to Houston Public Media.
“In no universe should the people of Houston and Harris County be denied a fair amount of funding for the harm suffered during the catastrophic flooding that occurred not only during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, but also (during) other floods in 2015 and 2016 as well,” Greens said, Houston Public Media reported.
In 2018, Harris County residents approved a $2.5 billion bond measure, funded by an increase in property taxes, with the hope that their contributions would be matched by federal dollars for flood-mitigation funding.
"For the state to not contribute to the local flood-control infrastructure amounts to a disappointing rebuff to the residents of Harris County who have proven willing to invest their own money to do so by the overwhelming passage of the $2.5 billion flood bond in 2018," Texas lawmakers wrote in their letter to the GLO.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey caused approximately $195 billion worth of damage in its wake, the most expensive storm in U.S. history. Roughly half of the damage caused in Texas was inflicted on Houston and Harris County.
The storm flooded Houston and Harris County with roughly 60 inches of rain and Houston residences accounted for more than 30% of the properties that took in floodwater.
"The people of Harris County don’t care about action plans, or appropriations, or competition rules, or which agency is the source of funds. They care about results," Hidalgo wrote in a July 15 Twitter post. "That’s why we’ll continue to fight for every dollar we can receive, regardless of where it comes from."
According to Courthouse News, critics have said that GLO used a scoring system to determine funding recipients that puts counties with large populations at a disadvantage. Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S. and Harris County is the third-most populous county in the U.S. with more than 4.5 million residents.