ReduceFlooding, the drainage watchdog site run by Bob Rehak, reported Sunday that Harris County has committed about $242 million of the $1.2 billion bond package voters approved in November 2022, and that the county does not publish a project-level breakdown showing where that money has gone. The site put the roads and bridges share, the largest of the three propositions at $900 million, at roughly $45.3 million encumbered, or about 5 percent.
The roads proposition is the one that matters most for drainage in this area. Rehak writes that it carries six spending subcategories, one of them a roughly $200 million drainage allotment, and that the county has not said how the encumbered road money divides among them. He reports that the Harris County Engineering Department website carries no project lists or spending breakdowns by precinct or category, and that county budget dashboards are either out of date or not working. Rehak says he is not alleging fraud, and frames the piece as an argument for better public reporting.
Harris County commissioners adopted the county’s 2026-27 tax rate on September 17, an increase the county has described as necessary to close a roughly $180 million shortfall. Lake Houston Today covered the commissioners who defended the rate increase, County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s objection that the adopted budget is unsustainable, and what homeowners can do about their tax bill at the time. The bond program described in Sunday’s post is separate from the annual tax rate, and the figures in it have not been independently confirmed by Lake Houston Today.
