She loves to beat her own drum about how great she is and how great she was. Never a scandal, she means one that got the attention it deserved.
Remember the Houston Drainage Fee (RainTax)? Where’s the Money?
TexasGOPVote was strongly against the passage of the City of Houston Charter Change (Stop Prop 1) that was pushed by Mayor Annise Parker and certain special interest-fed city council members like Stephen Costello, Oliver Pennington and then council member Brenda Stardig (who is now attempting to get back on city council). However, the voters of Houston passed the measure and then the lies began to become apparent.
Remember, we were told there would be no exemptions from the drainage fee? Remember, the money would go into a lock box and not be used for anything other than drainage projects? Remember, the fee was only going to be $5 per home? Remember, there was going to be complete accountability for these funds? Well, it turns out none of these things were true.
In fact just this week they are still going into that “Locked Box” to take money for projects outside what we were promised by Annise Parker.
Rain Tax and Bike Lanes
During the campaign for the rain tax, also known as ReBuild Houston, the mayor and its proponents touted that the funds collected were going into a “lockbox,” exclusively earmarked for the purpose of street and drainage infrastructure. Shortly after the passage, nearly $1 million of those dollars were diverted to building hike and bike trails. Now, in Parker’s new budget, she wants to allocate an additional $3.6 million to pothole repairs, which was supposed to have already been covered by her own ReBuild Houston initiative.
Parker was so upset over the failure of HERO Ordinance;
They may only want to sugarcoat the ordinance as being for equality, but it went way beyond that. It would have allowed men claiming to be women to use the same public showers in Houston. According to the following article, that language was removed:
In September, city attorneys filed a subpoena to five Houston pastors. A video of David Welch, of the Houston Area Pastors Council, appeared that gave the attorneys reason to believe some Houston pastors were electioneering from the pulpit, which violates the section of the tax code that grants churches their tax-exempt status.
The wording in the subpoena was broad: It requested “all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you [the pastors] or in your possession.” Opponents declared that the city was practicing chilling government overreach, and Parker eventually withdrew the subpoena:
The bathroom and shower were removed after the City was forced to allow Houstonians to vote on the Ordinance.
A Timeline of the History of the Houston HERO Ordinance
- May 2014: The Houston City Council votes to add sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) to its non-discrimination ordinance, known as the “Houston Equal Rights Ordinance” (HERO), over objections from local citizens and pastors. The threat to religious freedom and personal privacy from these types of laws is well-documented. In response, citizen groups led by local pastors begin collecting signatures on petitions for a referendum that would put the issue to the voters to either accept or reject.
- July―August 2014: Citizen groups present petitions to the City containing 50,000 signatures. By law, approximately 17,000 signatures need to be valid, i.e., signed by qualified voters residing in the city. The City secretary is assigned by the city charter to evaluate whether enough valid signatures have been received, and on Aug. 1 she does so. However, the City Attorney steps in and declares most of the signatures invalid, and the City announces that the petition effort has failed.
- Aug. 2, 2014: The day after the City announces that the petition effort failed, the citizen groups behind the petition effort file a lawsuit against the city to force the City to follow its charter and the city secretary’s certification of petition signatures, allowing the referendum to proceed. It is during the course of those legal proceedings that the City served subpoenas on the various pastors involved, demanding copies of all sermons in which homosexuality was discussed. After a public outcry, the Mayor and City Council back away from their demand for the sermons.
- July 2015: The Texas Supreme Court in a unanimous 9-0 vote declares the City Attorney’s attempt to invalidate the petition signatures unlawful, and orders the City to suspend enforcement of the HERO ordinance, and either repeal it, or schedule it for a referendum vote for November 2015. The City chooses to place the issue on the November ballot.
- November 2015: Houston voters reject the HERO ordinance by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin.
- May 2017: Texas passes a law to protect pastors from subpoenas. The law, known as SB 24, is a response to the action of Houston in issuing subpoenas to the churches and pastors involved in the public opposition to the HERO ordinance. The law provides that no unit of state or local government may “compel the production or disclosure of a written copy or audio or video recording of a sermon delivered by a religious leader during religious worship … or compel the religious leader to testify regarding the sermon.”
More on the less-than-perfect Annise Parker, as presented by herself or her admirers, will be posted later in the election cycle.