First off, I admit, I'm a bad blogger. I neglected to wish all of you a Merry Christmas. I would suggest that this was due to real life getting in the way, as it does, but you may also choose to accept that I don't give two figs whether or not your Christmas was merry, happy or a giant Humbug. We're all for happiness here at YDOP so take your pick.
We would be horribly remiss however if we failed to take a gaze into the hazy, blue future of Houston and Harris County to determine what the year ahead holds. So, without further ado, here are a few things that might, or might not happen locally in 2019.
Lina Hidalgo will do fair.
Look, she's not going to come in and change the County overnight. I would predict that she doesn't even come in and change a whole lot that matters. Most of what makes up County politics is pretty mundane stuff. She's going to have to focus on flood control, and making things work or she's going to find herself out of a job the first time she's up for reelection. She has to understand this. If she doesn't then she is indeed the bone idiot that many are claiming she is.
I don't think she's a dumb lady, so I think she'll pretty much settle in and be more noise than actual fury.
Bonus: I can all but guarantee you that one local, erratic political columnist will pen a column comparing her to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. For no other reason that she is also young, Hipanic, female, and a member of the Democratic Socialists. Oddly enough, neither of these two women have accomplished anything of note in their careers as of yet, other than getting elected of public office of course. The column in question will be gushing, and will paint the columnist as the smartest person in the room, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
Some newly elected judge is going to do something stupid.
It's bound to happen. When you have mostly new judges, many of which have no judicial experience, there will be a judge who does something that's so beyond the pale that even Democrats look at each other and cringe. There are many candidates for this honor, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Franklin Bynum wins the booby prize.
Adrian Garcia will mis-manage his office.
This is less a prediction than a lead-pipe cinch. If you don't know why that is you haven't paid attention to the career of this man.
Houston Metro will still be unable to give full detail of the expenditures for their gigantic bond when it heads to election.
Nor will there be much push for them to do so. Any politician who might have asked Spieler and company to operate with any accountability and transparency at all has either retired, or been voted out of office. What remains is a political rubber stamp for the most-ill ran quasi-governmental agency in the region.
Bonus: Despite the Danger Train continuing to maim and kill people, there will be calls for more and more at-grade rail.
Sylvester Turner will get his tax-cap roll back.
It will be on the 2019 ballot, and it will pass with something like 68% of the vote. Because of this he will immediately push through a tax increase that's brutally punitive toward the poor and middle class. He will do this with a straight face, and will only partially pretend that the windfall the city receives from the tax isn't going to his political patrons.
Bonus: Stephen Costello will soon become the Czar of pretty much every issue that has plagued Houston EVER. Nothing of substance will be done to fix any of them.
The Harris County GOP will continue to shout at clouds.
The reason the city and county are slagged with such terrible leadership is because what passes for the opposition party in Harris County is pretty much an outrage engine focusing on National, rather than local, issues. This will not change, even if the party comes to its senses and votes Paul Simpson out of a leadership position. This is because the GOP does not, and has not, done local issues well for a while now.
Bonus: Orlando Sanchez will mount a futile challenge to Simpson for the Harris County GOP Chair. He will lose and blame his name.
HISD is toast.
The HISD board will continue to be both a source of low-comedy and high-shame to the area as the elected know-nothings on the board continue to run the district down the path of dissolution. The TEA won't think about coming in until 2020, so that's not a prediction here, but what I can say is that the board is going to continue to be a dumpster fire for the remainder of the year. They will, eventually, hire a superintendent, but they've so damaged the reputation of the district that whoever they end up with will be nothing more than a cypher.
We are eventually going to find the villages that are missing all of these idiots.
You cannot elect a group of low-functioning idiots to positions of power without depriving villages of their entertainment. I predict in 2019 we are going to discover where these people are coming from. Once we identify the source, we can begin to plug the leak and eventually return some sanity to Houston and Harris County leadership.
This fire-fighter thing is going to get even uglier.
Speaking of the HALV, it's going to continue to suck-up any semblance of leadership, fire men and women are going to be laid off and we just hope that some innocent citizen doesn't die because of Mayor Turner's vindictive streak.
Art Acevedo is FINALLY going to find a political office to run for.
We predict that 2019 is officially the year that Acevedo finds some favorable political slot, probably in the San Antonio area, to run for office and drop the pretense of being a first responder.
Houston will flood in 2019.
Of course it will. And while it may not be as bad as Harvey it could be a lot worse in terms of lives lost because logistics and leadership will be lacking. I was not the biggest fan of Ed Emmett and his Astrodome dreams but he was good in a disaster and that steady leadership will be missed.
And Finally.....
The inaugural "worst political blog in Harris County" award will finally be issued and will FINALLY be given to YDOP.
I will not stop hoping for this until it happens.
On a final note: 2019 is going to suck, as 2018 sucked, as 2017 sucked as 2016 sucked before it.
Happy New Year Everyone.
