Mudslinging in Harris County Judge debate | What's Your Point?

I'm Greg Grugan, and welcome to Watch Your Point, where our panelists call it like they see it. Let's greet them. Starting us off, Bob Price, associate editor of Breitbart, Texas. Next up, former Houston City Council member, Sue Lovell. In the three-spot, writer and public policy advisor, Charles Blaine. Batting cleanup this morning, Dr. Sergio Lira, president of LULAC, Greater Houston. And closing us out, Bill King, businessman, columnist, and fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute. let's begin i would absolutely have not supported a tax increase we are talking about affordability people cannot put gas in their cars or groceries in their in their refrigerator i have made a pledge to reverse the property tax increase to no more than population growth and inflation growth which has been minimal in harris county in the fight to lead harris county as its next Chief Executive Judge, dueling opposition to the highest property tax hike in history may well be the only issue the candidates agree on. Although Republican Orlando Sanchez severely questions Letitia Plummer's sincerity. It's interesting to me that my opponent's three largest contributors are the county commissioners that passed the largest tax increase in the history of Harris County. I believe that my opponent supporting the HIC takeover and being an immigrant and supporting ICE is a character flaw. Panel Democrat Plummer claims she wants to cut spending and staff while at the same time doubling down on her support for a county-funded guaranteed basic income and vastly expanding the local taxpayer's current multi-million dollar tab for legal representation of immigrants living here illegally and facing deportation. Charles, does that sound inconsistent to you? It does. I mean, it's inconsistent with her record as well because, I mean, she's saying she wouldn't increase taxes, but she proposed a 6% tax increase in 2024 when she was at the city. And that was an amendment that her and a couple of colleagues did that they ended up pulling back. So clearly she could do it then. We were talking about affordability then, and she was willing to propose it then. And then all these programs that she wants to add, but yet how are you going to pay for that? How are you going to pay for that when we're clawing back a lot of the COVID-era relief aid and the funds that funded programs for them? So I just don't see how she's going to remain consistent with what she says here. and maintain affordability. And last thing is, she had an opportunity to speak out against this tax increase when it was actually proposed and when commissioners were voting on it, I didn't see anything from her then. So I wouldn't really believe the election season rhetoric now. Sue, you've known Letitia Plummer a long time. Is this inconsistent? No, I don't think so. And look, here's the reality of being the county judge, you have very little power. You can't even put anything on the agenda. So would either of them say, okay, they're saying that now, but there's the other votes on commissioner's court, just what's happening now, that really are the drivers of the agenda. It's not the county judge. What I haven't heard them talking about and what their one responsibility is about when we have disasters and what are they going to do and who's going to be in that position and how are they going to talk about that? I think that's the more important subject they should be talking about. Sergio, I know LULAC doesn't officially endorse, but we do have a Latino candidate at the top of the ticket for the Republicans. And we do have a powerful issue, that is, Latino households across the city that are under pressure because of higher costs, and now they have a higher tax bill. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, Sanchez almost won the mayoral race and won with, I believe it was Chief Lee Brown at the time. Very close race by one or two percentage points. He's well known. Sanchez' name is very common in the Latino community. I think Plummer did extremely well. She did touch on the issue of not increasing the tax. I was at a, we had a breakfast and the other commissioner was there and she said, this one said I increased it. And she said, I did, I will not increase it. I saw the debate. I think Plummer did a great job. I think Sanchez went on the defensive mode quickly. But he was attacking Plummer as if she was on the commissioner's court already. However, I think Letitia Plummer is really looking out for the working class, doesn't want to increase taxes, and really wants to help the constituents in a whole, what do you call it, the whole person model, not just on the core subjects. Letitia Plummer, by law, cannot turn Harris County into a sanctuary county. But she has said on the record that she will do the barest minimum in terms of cooperation with ICE. Well, it's not up to her anyway. The cooperation agreement is between the sheriff's office and ICE. I guess she could control some items on the budget maybe for that. But the fact is, ICE is out there doing a good job in Houston. And they are removing thousands of criminal aliens from our streets every single month. Since the last 15 months, they're taking sex offenders off the street, rapists, people that are repeat DWI offenders, a lot of violent crimes, assaults, drug trafficking, all these. They're not just removing them from the streets. They're removing them from the country and getting them out of here. And so for her to indicate that she wants to go against that would make this county less safe. and and that's the problem is if harris county would cooperate with ICE officers uh like they do in some of the other counties in Texas you would see safer streets in Texas in Harris County Bill Sanchez is down single digits is there time for him to make up that gap i don't know it's a tough race for any Republican i mean Trump is so far underwater in Harris County it's going to be tough. Orlando is well known. I think he's running a good campaign given his resources. You know, the math for Plummer doesn't add up. You can't fund all this stuff and cut taxes because property taxes are the only thing that you really have at the county to fund projects with. So, you know, she ought to be challenged on that and ask what's her plan. If you're going to fund these things, something else is going to have to be cut. By the way, we're going to talk about later with the city of Houston, their problems with property taxes going down. Harris county has exactly the same problem coming up yeah we need to talk about that in the show and in overtime still to come down to the wire in the brutal race to succeed John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate can James Talarico do what no Democrat has done since 1988 but up next more on the battle to be the next Harris County judge with both contestants launching hard shots at their opponent's integrity. With just days left before the casting of ballots, the gloves came fully off in the bare knuckle bout to be the next Harris County judge. Do you want someone that supports Beau French and all of his hateful messaging that's happened in these conversations? Now, one of her answers has been to decarcerate whatever that means in Harris County, the jail. I suppose it means swing the gates open like they do at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and let violent criminals out into the streets. My opponent wants to build more jails, close schools, and make sure that all the black and brown folks are put in jails and don't have the support that they need. I am absolutely shocked that she's created seven businesses, all with tax forfeiture liens. She's lost her right to operate. She created a charity and lost her nonprofit status by the IRS. I don't know how you can manage Harris County when you can't manage your businesses panel the latest Hobby School poll has Plummer up by seven we have breaking news in terms of what's going on uh regarding fiscal management at Harris County bill you know so thank god for Bob Rehak up in Kingwood has reduced flooding citizen citizen journalists so what Bob discovered is that we've lost 113 million dollars of flood money coming from the federal and state governments in Harris County and we lost it because we didn't propose projects that qualified for the funding by the way this all happened before Stuckett took over so this is not his problem he inherited this but the commissioner way back in the spring had asked us to come up for a list and June just before Stuckett was appointed Rodney Ellis said why haven't we gotten this list up there and so Stuckett wrote a letter earlier this month that said we can't get projects but we would like to transfer that money to projects that we already have funded under other programs and we'll get you a list someplace in the future and Buckingham says i'm not giving you any more time because there's other counties that are ready to go on moving the money over there so we lost 113 million dollars two things about this number one this is absolutely the responsibility commissioner's court who fired Russ Poppy and Zeb and all those guys who were doing a great job over there for purely political reasons when they first took over in 2018 this is on Garcia this is on Ellis this is on our county judge the second thing that i'll say is that it appears that they tried to cover this up because Stuckett was going to report this at the last commissioner's court meeting and mysteriously that item got pulled from the agenda and now we're taking up guess when after the election here are the documents anybody wants them send me an email the person the commissioner who pulled it off of the agenda was Adrian Garcia I understand. Does he have to answer for that? Absolutely. Flood mitigation is a big problem for me. I've been dealing with this for over 20 years. My neighborhood floods all the time. My home was flooded, for the record, twice. So this is a very, very important issue. There is maintenance difference, streamlined something to where they don't even clean up the ditches in front of Barnett Stadium. Overgrown grass ditches aren't even cleaned up. So this is a very serious issue, and it's one of the core functions of being on the Commissioner's Court, besides crime, flood mitigation, emergency response, isn't it? Charles, your reaction here? Yeah, I mean, I thought it was interesting. I saw Bob's article, and he also mentioned that he TPIA, Texas Public Information Act, requested the flood control district for the presentation that Suckett was supposed to present. And then they responded saying there is nothing, there's no documents to be found to give you. And so I thought that was interesting. I also got some records from the flood control district couple months ago that show that they have been using AI for a bunch of various things like from project assessments and also using it to get people's wives jobs from flood control district to other vendors and things. So it's, I mean, previously, I don't know about now, but previously flood control district was definitely managed poorly. So, you know, all the players here, including Don Buckingham, would she do this if it wasn't necessary? No, I mean, since day one with this, which was a big deal and a big problem, they've been very honest, the land commissioner, office, very honest, very forthcoming about what's going to happen and this is it and this is what we're going to do. And I guess they thought they'd get a do-over again, but she's been clear it's not going to happen. All right, that's why Bob lives in Polk County. All right, up next, Harris County Commissioner Leslie Briones deciding privacy is more important than enhanced public safety.