Harris County's Precinct 4 spent $223,000 on billboards since 2024. The other three precincts spent less than $1,500 combined.

Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones spent $223,000 of county money on billboards between January 1, 2024 and August 26, 2026, ABC13 reported Thursday. Over the same period the other three precincts spent less than $1,500 between them.

Why it matters

The county adopted a 67.147 cent tax rate last month and is working against a budget gap ABC13 puts at $181 million. The billboards carry hurricane preparedness messaging alongside the commissioner’s photograph and her name in capital letters.

No county document published before Thursday said what any of it cost. A reporter had to ask.

By the numbers

$223,000 in Precinct 4 billboard spending between January 1, 2024 and August 26, 2026, from records ABC13 obtained.
$100,000 of that in the summer of 2026, across 10 billboard locations in Precinct 4. That works out to about $10,000 a location.
About $7,000 a month, averaged across the 32 months the records cover.
$0 from Precinct 3, about $300 from Precinct 1 and under $1,200 from Precinct 2 over the same period. ABC13 reports those last two were newspaper related rather than billboards.
Zero dollar figures in Precinct 4’s own May 30, 2025 release announcing the preparedness campaign, which names billboards as a component alongside workshops and public service announcements.
16 months from that release to the first published price.

What the coverage buried

ABC13 did the work that makes this a story. It requested the same records from all four precincts and printed the comparison, which is the only reason the $223,000 means anything. Two things are missing from it.

The story does not name the billboard company. It says the money moved through a county advertising contract. Without the vendor you cannot pull that contract, check what it charges, or answer the question the comparison raises: whether the other three precincts had the same agreement available and chose not to use it.

And $223,000 arrives without a denominator. The story does not give the Precinct 4 office budget, so a reader cannot tell whether this is a rounding error inside a large operation or a line somebody had to defend.

The other side

The case for the spending is a real one. Harris County flooded in 2017 and lost power for days after Beryl in 2024, and plenty of residents do not read county email or follow a commissioner’s social media. A freeway billboard reaches them, and preparedness messaging in English and Spanish ahead of hurricane season is a core county function rather than self promotion.

Putting the officeholder’s name on a government notice is also ordinary, and it tells a resident which office to call. Former Commissioner Jack Cagle, a Republican, used precinct funds for billboards in 2022, which makes this an office practice under both parties rather than a partisan one.

That answers the outreach question. It does not answer the cost question. Nothing stopped the campaign from publishing its own price, and for sixteen months it did not.

What to watch

Whether Precinct 4 names the billboard vendor and the county advertising contract the money moved through.
The October 15 Commissioners Court meeting, which had no posted agenda as of September 28.
Whether the FY2027 budget breaks out precinct communications and outreach spending by precinct.

Bottom line

Hurricane preparedness outreach is defensible, and the billboards do carry it. Spending $223,000 on it while three other precincts spent less than $1,500 combined is a choice, and a resident who pays the 67.147 cent rate is entitled to see the invoice without a reporter filing for it. Precinct 4 resident Kimber Becker put the question to ABC13 plainly: “It raised my property taxes. Why do I have to pay for that?”

Sources

Editorial