Harris County has encumbered $45.3 million of a $900 million road bond. It raised the tax rate anyway.

Harris County voters approved $1.2 billion in bonds in 2022. Four years later the county has encumbered $45.3 million of the $900 million road category, about 5 percent, and has not issued a single bond against it. It raised the tax rate anyway.

The figures come from Bob Rehak’s September 27 reading of the county’s FY2027 budget at Reduce Flooding. The $900 million road, bridge and transportation category includes $200 million for drainage improvements. None of that borrowing has happened.

Why it matters

Commissioners adopted a 67.147 cent rate on September 17, and the debt service line in it went up 23.2 percent. Meanwhile the borrowing authority voters already granted for roads and drainage sits unused, and the county does not publish which projects the $45.3 million bought.

By the numbers

$1.2 billion approved in 2022: $900 million roads and transportation, $200 million parks and trails, $100 million public safety
$45.3 million encumbered in the road category, about 5 percent, per the FY2027 budget
$200 million for drainage improvements sitting inside that road category
$100 million of public safety money committed to eight projects, with no published breakdown
74 percent of the 2018 $2.5 billion bond still unspent and unencumbered in June 2022, the month commissioners were weighing this package
23.2 percent increase in the county debt service line in the rate adopted September 17

What the county publishes

This desk read the Office of the County Engineer’s 2022 bond page on September 28. It gives the three proposition totals, a description of what each may pay for, and an embedded dashboard link. No project list, no breakdown by precinct, no spending by project, no locations.

The Office of Management and Budget’s bond issuance history page was read the same morning. It publishes one file, a spreadsheet of bond underwriters. It does not publish issuance amounts by program.

So the answer to what the county has done with $1.2 billion of approved borrowing is three numbers on a web page, and those three numbers are the ballot language.

The other side

The county has a defensible position, and it is worth stating properly. A bond authorization is permission to borrow, not an obligation to borrow today. Issuing debt before projects are designed and bid means paying interest on money parked in an account. Slow issuance can be the fiscally careful choice, and Commissioner Tom Ramsey warned about exactly that kind of pacing when the package was being assembled in 2022.

The answer is that careful and quiet are different things. Nothing about prudent pacing requires the engineering department to publish the ballot summary and stop there, and nothing about it explains a debt service line rising 23.2 percent in the same budget. This is also not a party complaint. The 2022 package was proposed by Commissioner Adrian Garcia, a Democrat; the pacing warning came from Ramsey, a Republican.

What to watch

Whether the county engineer’s bond page adds a project list or a breakdown by precinct.
Whether any 2022 road bond is issued before the FY2027 year closes.
The OMB Open Budget Dashboard, which Rehak reports has not worked for months.
Whether the $200 million drainage allocation inside the road category is spent, against the 200 unfunded drainage project areas the county mapped this year.

Bottom line

Rehak did the work here, and it holds up: the county’s own pages confirm that the detail he went looking for is not published. A county that has encumbered 5 percent of its road bond and issued none of it has an argument to make about why. It has not made it, and it raised the rate first.

Sources

Editorial