Precinct 4 Commissioner Lesley Briones outlines savings and investments.
HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — Harris County is facing a projected budget deficit that could be as high as $275 million for fiscal year 2026.
Precinct 4 Commissioner Lesley Briones says her new budget plan is balanced and has zero deficit.
“We have protected all core services. There will be minimal impact to any forward facing services the county offers the people. And we did it without having to go to the voters to ask them to raise their taxes further,” she told us on Inside Texas Politics.
There is one small catch: property taxes are expected to go up ever so slightly to 62 cents per $100 in taxable value to fund the Harris County hospital district. For a $500,000 home, that two cent increase amounts to roughly $100 in additional property taxes per year.
Commissioner Briones says that’s not as bad as it could have been, because her proposed budget uses the Voter-Approved tax rate, which is the maximum a county can raise property taxes without going to the voters.
“The bottom line is that some colleagues wanted to go to the voters to further raise their taxes to pay for these things,” the Democrat said. “Instead, my approach was no, we’re going to go scour each line of the budget of these 70+ departments and we’re going to find ways to streamline.”
And her budget does protect a $101 million pay raise package for Harris County law enforcement.
Briones claims she and her team found the savings to close the deficit while also protecting the key priorities for Harris County residents: public safety, infrastructure, public health, and disaster response and readiness.
Here are some of the examples she provided of the proposed savings:
- $18 million by selling unused county property
- $32 million in added efficiencies as departments streamline operations
- $25 million in a targeted hiring freeze
- $11 million in vacancy savings
“If you look at all of Harris County, there’s over 2,000 vacancies. Some of these vacancies have been open for months. Some over six months. And the work has continued. We’re not targeting the thousands of vacancies, instead just 110 approximately and that will give us $11 million in vacancy savings,” Briones said.
Harris County Commissioners are expected to approve the new tax rate and the county budget during a meeting on Sept. 24.