I am not a fan of either Lesley Briones or Adrian Garcia. I don’t think much about their politics; they seem to think that by semi-acting like Republicans, come election time, Republicans would flock to their campaigns. Good luck with that. Garcia is safe until he isn’t in that district; Briones not so much. If I had not promised myself that I would not vote for a person with an R in front, Radack would get my vote. Good luck getting Briones to answer a question; Steve Radack would personally call you back.
| Commissioner precinct | 2022 commissioner vote | 2024 Harris | 2024 Trump | 2024 presidential margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garcia — Pct. 2 | D 52.68% | ≈58% | ≈40% | D +18 |
| Briones — Pct. 4 | D 51.67% | ≈49% | ≈49% | ≈ Even |
The ≈ is important on the 2024 figures—they are working estimates, not an official commissioner-district tabulation.
A year ago, Lesley Briones and Adrian Garcia joined Republican Commissioner Tom Ramsey in pushing through roughly $100 million in raises for Harris County law-enforcement personnel. County Judge Lina Hidalgo warned them that the county could not absorb that kind of permanent spending without consequences. They did it anyway.
The consequences are here.
Harris County is now facing a deficit of more than $180 million. On September 8, Commissioners Court approved a property-tax rate of 67 cents per $100 of taxable value, the highest county rate in at least two decades. The increase is expected to cost the average homeowner roughly $198 more a year.
And this is where the story becomes almost impossible to believe.
The three commissioners who helped create the law-enforcement spending package were Briones, Garcia, and Ramsey. But when it came time to raise taxes to help pay the county’s bills, Ramsey voted no.
Briones and Garcia voted yes.
They didn’t just walk into somebody else’s political trap. They helped build the trap themselves.
The warning signs were there from the beginning. In August 2025, I wrote that Hidalgo was right about the consequences of the pay increases. Other county departments were already being asked to make cuts because law-enforcement spending was protected while the rest of county government had to absorb much of the damage.
A week later, I compared Briones and Garcia to the little bird that did not want to fly south for the winter. The point was simple: ignoring an obvious future consequence does not make that consequence disappear.
Now we know how the story ends.
In 2025, Briones, Garcia and Ramsey formed a voting bloc that backed major law-enforcement raises. Briones and Garcia also opposed tax increases at the time. The Houston Chronicle’s analysis of Commissioners Court voting found exactly that pattern: Garcia and Briones generally favored the law-enforcement raises while opposing higher taxes.
That position works only until somebody has to pay the bill.
Ramsey apparently understood the politics when that moment arrived. He could vote for the raises and later vote against the tax increase. Whatever one thinks of that position as public policy, politically it left him in a far easier place.
Briones and Garcia managed to do something much harder: they helped create the increased spending and then cast the votes for the higher tax rate needed as the county struggled with the resulting budget pressure.
Law-enforcement raises are not the only cause of Harris County’s deficit. Healthcare costs, indigent-defense expenses, inflation and the disappearance of federal pandemic money also matter. But the law-enforcement increases are one of the major spending drivers. The county’s general-fund spending is projected to rise by hundreds of millions of dollars.
And the spending has continued. Commissioners recently approved more than $408,000 in retroactive pay for Harris County’s eight constables and fire marshal, even as the county projects a roughly $188 million deficit. Hidalgo was the lone vote against that settlement.
The lesson here is not complicated.
When government approves a permanent expense, someone eventually has to pay for it. You can cut other services, find another permanent source of revenue, or raise taxes. What you cannot do indefinitely is pretend the arithmetic does not exist.
Briones and Garcia had a year to see where that road was leading.
Hidalgo warned them.
The budget numbers warned them.
Their own votes should have warned them.
And when the trap finally snapped shut, Tom Ramsey was standing outside it.
Briones and Garcia were caught in their own trap.
So what do we do? The County Commissioners are elected officials, right? As residents, we’re just stuck with the bill? Aren’t constables are elected as well? How do we stop or least limit law enforcement from basically devouring public funds? This is so disappointing, and now I understand why the campaign to undercut Hidalgo was so…intense.
The problem was not necessarily the elected officials themselves. A large part of the increase came from the huge pay raises given to law-enforcement personnel. Once those raises are built into the payroll, taxpayers keep paying them year after year. Commissioners Court still controls the budget, but reversing those costs is much harder than refusing a new spending request in the first place.