HCAD Board Election
Most folks here in Harris County are gearing up for the political party primaries on Super Tuesday, March 5 with early voting in person beginning on Tuesday, February 20. Heck, Commentary already sent in my ballot, and it has been received, according to the Harrisvotes.com mail ballot tracker.
If you live in State Senate District 15, like me, you get to vote in the Special Election on Saturday, May 4, with early voting in person beginning on Monday, April 22.
This is from the Public Service Announcement (PSA) Department.
I bet most of you didn’t know that all voters in Harris County get to vote on the Harris Central Appraisal District (HCAD) board of director election that will also be held on Saturday, May 4. It is a new election that was created by a bill authored by GOP State Sen. Paul Bettencourt. Check out this statement by HCAD last month:
Harris Central Appraisal District News Release
For more information contact Jack Barnett, Communications Officer, 713-957-5663
January 19, 2024
HCAD Board of Directors Election
Houston —The Harris Central Appraisal District’s board of directors will add three new publicly elected members who will be selected in a May 4, 2024, countywide election. With the Texas Legislature’s recent enactment of Senate Bill 2 and the passage of Proposition 4 in the November 2023 election, the board of directors for appraisal districts in a county with a population of more than 75,000 will expand to include three at-large public members in addition to the county tax assessor/collector and five directors selected by the governing bodies of the county, cities and the school and community college districts.
The newly elected directors will take office on July 1 and serve a term that expires on December 31, 2026.
Service on the appraisal district board of directors is an unpaid position, but directors are entitled to reimbursement for expenses incurred for travel to board meetings and other official functions.
To serve on the board, a member must be a resident of Harris County, must not owe delinquent property taxes, may not have represented property owners in proceedings before the appraisal district during the prior three years, must not have been employed by HCAD at any time during the prior three years, or be related within the second degree to a person who either appraises property or represents property owners for compensation in proceedings before the district. Additionally, board members may not be employed by any taxing units served by HCAD unless the individual is also an elected taxing unit official.
Local residents interested in running should direct applications to the office of the Harris County Judge. The office of the Harris County Judge is at 1001 Preston Street, Suite 911, Houston, TX 77002. They are open Monday – Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Applications for a place on the ballot can be emailed to [email protected] or faxed to 713.755.8379. For a place on the ballot, interested candidates must either pay a filing fee of $400, or provide a petition with 500 signatures of registered Harris County voters in lieu of a filing fee. Both must go to the county judge using the above information.
Below is a link to the application and a link to the Texas Secretary of State’s Election Advisory No. 2023-24.
https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/forms/pol-sub/2-49f.pdf.
https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/advisory2023-24.shtml.
If it is a Sen. Bettencourt legislation, we certainly need to encourage Democrats to run and support their candidacies.
Here is from the second link above:
In order to elect three directors by a majority vote in the same election, candidates for the appraisal district board of directors must be elected at-large by place. Specifically, the board of directors for the appraisal district must be elected to either the at-large by place 1, at-large by place 2, or at-large by place 3 position. Further, candidates must indicate on their candidate application the at-large position for which they are running.
And this:
For the initial director election occurring on May 4, 2024, the filing period will be Wednesday, January 17, 2024 – Friday, February 16, 2024, at 5:00 p.m.
We know that Sen. Bettencourt is going to recruit his cronies to run for the three positions. We also know that if they are Bettencourt cronies, they won’t have much use for the rule of law or election results that don’t go their way.
The filing deadline to run for the three positions is two weeks from tomorrow, 5 pm, Friday, February 16. I sure hope the Harris County Democratic Party and likeminded folks like the Democratic Harris County Commissioners Court members are having discussions and recruiting some good candidates.
Remember. This is Harris County. We can’t sit idly by and let the election deniers win key positions.
For more information, here is an interview of Sen. Bettencourt on the HCAD board election by KPRC TV Channel 2 News consumer/investigative reporter Amy Davis: https://www.click2houston.com/video/news/2024/01/29/how-to-run-for-appraisal-district-board-in-your-county/.
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Jasper Scherer of the Chron called me a few days ago about an article he was working on. It is on how Democrats, particularly, Texas Democrats, deal with the immigration issue. I gave him my two cents. Here are parts of the article:
When Roland Gutierrez got his first chance to directly confront his main rival in Texas’ Democratic Senate primary, he wasted no time bringing up their biggest dividing issue: immigration.
In his opening statement at a Sunday debate, Gutierrez accused U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of “throwing our president under the bus” by backing a recent Republican resolution that charged the Biden administration with spurring an immigration crisis through its “open-border policies.” The vote, Gutierrez said, played into the hands of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who they are each vying to take on in November.
The problem with carrying on Cruz and former President Donald Trump’s “message of chaos is, they don’t want to fix the problem,” said Gutierrez, a San Antonio state senator. “They just want to scare us, each and every day.”
The exchange displayed how divided some Texas Democrats remain on how to confront immigration and border policies as Republicans — including Cruz and Trump, the two expected GOP standard bearers in Texas — prepare to make it a focal point of their campaigns in 2024.
It is a question that has long confounded the state’s minority party, whose leading candidates often struggle to present a cohesive vision for immigration reform while allowing Republicans to shape the issue on their terms — often portraying the border as a hotbed of drugs and violence that Democrats have failed to stop.
“There’s no consensus position in their party,” Joshua Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said of Democrats. “And that’s given Republicans a great advantage when it comes to any sort of campaign that centers around the border.”
The challenge is especially urgent for Texas Democrats this year, as record numbers of migrants arrive at the southern border and Texas steps up its effort to circumvent federal immigration authority. Those factors could thwart whatever chance Democrats have to reframe the issue around their preferred policies, such as reforming asylum rules and visa programs, as clashes over razor wire and whether President Biden has the authority to “shut down” the border take center stage.
“I think here in Texas, Democrats are just kind of exhausted on the issue, because we haven’t been able to make any headway in terms of debating what [Gov. Greg] Abbott and [Lt. Gov. Dan] Patrick have been shoving down our throats,” said Marc Campos, a longtime Democratic political strategist in Houston. “We’re helpless when they haul in a bunch of razor wire or the orange gizmos they put out there in the [Rio Grande].”
And this:
The polling shows that Republican voters favor their party’s main immigration policies far more strongly than Democrats oppose them. That lack of consensus is “a real problem” for Democratic candidates as the focus intensifies on the border both statewide and nationally, Blank said.
“You saw this in the debate. Allred and Gutierrez are striking slightly different paths when it comes to their orientation towards the border,” he said. “I think Allred’s signing-on to GOP criticisms of Biden was in many ways a way for Allred as, I’d say, the presumptive favorite in that race, to provide himself with some cover on an issue that Democrats don’t really have a response on.”
Campos, who’s specialized in Houston Latino politics for several decades, said he’s never seen it work in Texas for Democrats to “go Republican-lite” on immigration messaging. As Republicans depict the migrant surge as an “invasion,” he said, Democratic candidates should remind voters that many migrants “want to come to places like Houston and Dallas, and those are the ones that are keeping our economy vibrant.”
O’Rourke said Texas Democrats can both acknowledge the country’s immigration system is broken while also focusing on policies with broad support, like expanding legal ways for “more people to come here to work.”
“If Democrats campaign aggressively on humane treatment of asylum seekers, more legal pathways, on confronting Republican chaos and extremism, and could back that up with steps that President Biden takes over the next 10 months, I strongly believe that it will fire up a lot of young voters and other parts of the Democratic coalition that brought Biden to power in the first place,” O’Rourke said.
Here is the entire Chron read: Texas Democrats divided over messaging on immigration, the border (houstonchronicle.com).
I mentioned yesterday that my neighbors across the street have been renovating their home for a couple of months now. It is a major renovation that they say will be completed in September. Guess what? Most of the workers on the renovation are of the Latino persuasion. I wonder where they came from.
If we keep letting the GOP act like bullies on immigration, one day there won’t be enough workers for renovations.
Same for the folks who maintain our lawns. On some days I will have two or three different crews on my block at the same time. Guess what. You get the picture.
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More from the Taylor Swift conspiracy nuts. This from The Hill:
Fox News host Sean Hannity cautioned pop star Taylor Swift on Tuesday against endorsing President Biden as he runs for reelection in 2024.
“Does Taylor realize the guy that they want her to endorse is a kind of stumbling, bumbling mess, doesn’t have the energy to even give a 30-minute speech, let alone perform a three-hour concert like she does?” Hannity said of Swift and Biden on his nightly show. “He also is kind of very creepy. She may want to check out those creepy videos, they’re online.”
And this:
Swift has yet to state her support for any candidate in the 2024 cycle. In 2018, she backed Democrat Phil Bredesen against Republican Marsha Blackburn in a Tennessee Senate race, and she endorsed Biden for president about a month before the 2020 election.
Hannity accused Swift of hating on Republicans.
“Or maybe she just bought into all the lies about conservatives and Republicans, that they are racist and sexist and homophobic and xenophobic and transphobic and Islamophobic. And Republicans and conservatives want dirty air and water, and a total ban on all abortion with no exceptions,” he said. “If she believes all that, she is believing a lie. Because those talking points are simply untrue.”
Hey, Seanie. Those aren’t lies. Most from the previous paragraph is recently passed legislation from the GOP controlled Texas legislature. It’s the law here in Texas.
Maybe Taylor ought to do a revised cover of the Cole Porter tune “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by changing the lyrics a tad to “I’m certainly under your skin” and send it or dedicate it to Hannity. She is certainly under the skins of Hannity and the Fox News talking heads.
Way too funny.
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Today is my regular green bin day. It has been four weeks since my last green bin pickup. Today marks a month that my good friend Mayor John Whitmire has been in office. The featured photo is right after he was sworn in right after midnight on New Year’s Day. He has a lot on his plate. He will get to fixing green bin pickup soon enough. Maybe they ought to go every three weeks on green bin pickups until they get more trucks and drivers. That’s a lot better than having the green bins sit out there for a couple of weeks. I always worry that the renovations crew from across the street will accidentally knock the bin into the ditch. You get the picture.
Have a nice February.
