Harris County Commissioners Court on Thursday agreed to pay nearly $900,000 to County Judge Lina Hidalgo and two of her former staffers to cover legal fees they racked up during a lengthy criminal investigation of a controversial COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract.
Court members discussed the payment during a short closed-door executive session and then returned to approve it without comment. The reimbursement was approved on a 3-1 vote, with Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey the lone dissenter. Hidalgo was absent for the vote.
From the outset, Hidalgo has blamed former Harris County district attorney for the investigation, claiming the ex-prosecutor had a vendetta against her. She reiterated that during a morning news conference Thursday.
“Kim Ogg was trying to bleed my campaign dry so I couldn’t compete in the election and any unscrupulous prosecutor could do that,” Hidalgo said. “That’s also why we reimburse our public servants. We’ve reimbursed several of them in terms of this issue, because an unscrupulous prosecutor could drive somebody out of government service.”
Ogg could not immediately be reached for comment in response to Hidalgo’s statements.
The payments were approved under a policy adopted by Commissioners Court in 2022 to reimburse employees who need legal representation for a criminal investigation that “relates to matters within the scope of their employment.” To qualify for reimbursement, the investigation must be concluded and the targeted individual must have faced no charges, received a not guilty verdict or had the case dismissed.
After an investigation is concluded, the individual must provide copies of legal bills and other documentation to ensure they are qualified for reimbursement. That proposed payment then goes before Commissioners Court for approval.
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To date, the county has reimbursed nearly $2.5 million in legal fees for 20 employees and elected officials.
Among them:
- former elections administrator Cliff Tatum, who was investigated for problems that occurred during the 2022 midterm elections; the court approved a reimbursement of $493,092 in legal fees on Jan. 10.
- Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis was approved for reimbursement of $426,849 on March 14, 2023, related to an investigation into his office’s storage of hundreds of pieces of African art in a county building, as well as a subpoena related to the probe of the COVID-19 outreach contract.
- Hidalgo is slated to receive $672,402 in reimbursements, approved Thursday, for the criminal investigation into the COVID outreach contract.
Emilio Longoria, Assistant Professor at South Texas College of Law, said the county’s policy for reimbursing legal fees is not unusual and in many ways, is a good thing to have, but added there is room to fine-tune it to cut down on costs.
“Local governments get a ton of discretion with how to manage their internal policies. So, from a statutory perspective, there’s nothing wrong with them deciding that they want to help defend employees with respect to investigations and the official course and scope of their employment,” Longoria said. “But that aside, it’s obviously not divorced from politics because the people voting on this program are the ones that are most likely to participate in it.”
Harris County’s reimbursement policy does not include a limit on how much an employee can spend on legal fees for reimbursement nor are there restrictions on who they choose to represent them..
Longoria said the county could look at having an hourly cap on lawyer fees — similar to what the state of Texas has — or create a preapproved list of various lawyers.
The bulk of the reimbursements have been to recover employees costs related to investigations launched by Ogg, ranging from the COVID-19 outreach contract to a probe of the 2022 midterm elections and Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis’ unauthorized storage of more than 1,100 pieces of African art in a government warehouse.
Of the $878,000 approved by the court Thursday, more than $672,000 of it was for Hidalgo’s legal representation from three different law firms — Gerger Hennessy Martin & Peterson, LLP, Khalil Law PLLC and The Akers Firm.
The county did not provide the Houston Landing with records for the other two reimbursements so it is unclear who those payments are for — $4,790 and nearly $201,000 respectively. Hidalgo said at a news conference that they were for staffers, but did not specify who.
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The controversy around the COVID-19 contracts began in June 2021, when Harris County Commissioners Court approved an $11 million contract for Houston-based Elevate Strategies to conduct COVID-19 vaccine outreach efforts. The court’s two Republican commissioners at the time later alleged the company was awarded the bid because its leader and sole employee, Felicity Pereyra, previously had worked for Democratic campaigns.
Hidalgo canceled the contract amid a public backlash a short time later, arguing that politicization of the contract had distracted from the county’s goals to combat COVID-19.
A grand jury in April 2022 indicted Hidalgo Chief of Staff Alex Triantaphyllis, former policy aide Aaron Dunn and former policy director Wallis Nader on felony charges of misusing official information and tampering with a government document.
Hidalgo has maintained the charges were politically motivated while Ogg argued that she followed the evidence and has no vendetta against Hidalgo.
When Sean Teare took over as district attorney at the beginning of this year, he recused himself from the investigations, which was a promise he made on the campaign trail. The case was then left up to the Texas Attorney General’s office, which ultimately dropped charges against Dunn and Nader.
Triantaphyllis accepted a pre-trial intervention deal on February 6 which requires him to carry out 10 hours community service before his case can be dismissed.
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