A local advocacy group you probably haven’t heard of is confronting a governmental entity the general public has little knowledge about, but which has an oversized impact on the federal dollars Houston/Harris County receives—or doesn’t receive—for flood relief, transportation projects, workforce development and publicly funded childcare programs.
Fair for Houston is the grassroots advocacy group, and they’re fighting to change the current voting structure of the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) that doles out the cash after, for example, The Labor Day Flood—a council where Houston/Harris County residents comprise almost 63% of the population, but Houston/Harris County only have 17.9% of the votes on the H-GAC Transportation Policy Council.
H-GAC is a regional council of local governments consisting of 13 counties in and around Greater Houston. H-GAC distributes billions of dollars to the region, and the way H-GAC is structured, federal law states that without Houston/Harris County, H-GAC can’t exist. Yet, the suburban, predominantly white outer rim counties regularly make decisions about where those billions of federal dollars go, and they more often than not give Houston/Harris County the short end of the stick.
“We have less than 20% of the voting power on the board because of historical context like white flight and the present context that we’re in,” said Molly Cook, Fair for Houston organizer. “This is not only just an unfair governance issue, it’s also an issue of racial justice. Unfortunately, the elected leaders in mostly white counties surrounding Houston are making the decisions about what happens to people living in Houston.”
Case in point: in Feb. 2022, Mayor Sylvester Turner expressed his outrage over the fact that H-GAC was set to give Houston just 2% of H-GAC’s $488 million in federal flood mitigation funds.
Turner, whose tenure in office saw Houston/Harris County have to deal with multiple floods brought on by record-breaking torrential rains and hurricanes so several they made international news, attended an H-GAC meeting after Hurricane Harvey, seeking more dollars. Turner told them, “The fact is, Texas received this money for damages that occurred in Houston and Harris County. Houston and Harris County suffered 50% of the damages during Harvey, which is not up for debate. What am I missing? If circumstances were different, I would advocate for the other jurisdictions. This decision hurts the city of Houston and hurts our regional alliance.”
During early 2022, the Texas General Land Office (GLO) made a similar decision to give Houston/Harris County $0 of the $2 billion in federal funds despite the region being one of the hardest hit by Hurricane Harvey. In March, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development investigation found the GLO “discriminated on the basis of race and national origin.”
During a 2022 Houston City Council meeting, Turner said “We got zeroed out by the GLO, and it seems as though we are getting almost zeroed out by the H-GAC… If they’re going to operate at the exclusion of the city of Houston, then the city of Houston needs to reevaluate its relationship with H-GAC going forward.”
Fair for Houston contends the H-GAC voting structure is one of those huge issues with enormous ramifications on the quality of life for Houston/Harris County residents that few people know about.
Fair for Houston seeks to change that.
“H-GAC is in charge of distributing federal funding for flood relief, workforce development, childcare vouchers, and large-scale infrastructure decisions around transportation. Right now we don’t have the power to decide what happens to us in Houston, and it becomes an issue of racial justice with things like the I-45 expansion. I-45 is gonna displace almost entirely Black and Brown Houstonians, and yet our elected leaders aren’t even able to make decisions about what happens to us,” said Cook.
“So, we are going to amend the City of Houston Charter to compel negotiations among all of the members of H-GAC so that we’ll have a fair voting structure that’s based on population size. We successfully submitted over 23,665 verified signatures, and all we needed was 20,000. Now we’re gonna wait for our proposition number, get on the ballot and pass it in November,” she added.
A local activist with deep Third Ward roots, Dolores Rodgers, is glad Fair for Houston has come forward “to correct something that can benefit all residents of Houston/Harris County.”
“All communities deserve to have federal dollars spent fairly to allow communities to improve,” said Rodgers. “It’s unfortunate that the track record over the years of the current makeup of the H-GAC board is not fair to the citizens of Harris County, particularly Houston. Supporting this change is certainly the right thing to do.”
Cook encourages Houston/Harris County residents to visit www.fairforhouston.com to learn more about the issue or invite a representative to speak to their organization.
“This issue touches every single life in the region and matters to every single person. We want to speak to every single group that we can to make sure that everybody knows to vote for the fair for Houston Charter Amendment in November,” said Cook.
