UNLESS you've just been elected County Judge for the largest County in Texas and have a laundry list of campaign promises you want to enact lest you become a one-term flash in the pan.
Then, Ignorance is a problem.
For Lina Hidalgo the solution appears to be to throw a bunch of money at the problem in hopes that it goes away....
Lina Hidalgo, Eager to Improve Harris County Government, Defends Consultant Costs. Zach Despart, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
“I’m not going to sit here and come up with the best ideas by myself,” Hidalgo said. “And the folks that have been here 10, 20, 30 years aren’t going to either.”
One can imagine that morale is not at its high-tide in the Harris County offices right now, after being told by Hidalgo that all of their experience counts for naught, one could forgive long-time employees if they're feeling overlooked by Harris County's Neophyte media superstar.
The Chron piece on this, as Chron profiles of politicians with which they share policy goals typically are, is glowing. She's sitting in a spartan office with laser-like focus on the issues plaguing the county, issues, it is left unsaid, she hasn't the foggiest about how to actually fix.
Or if they're actually issues.
She tends to focus on ideology, instead of practicality, ignoring the bread for circuses. She's also against outside hiring of specialists for things she doesn't like (the Harris County Bail Lawsuit) but is just fine doing the same for things she does like. As is always the case, the trough of local politics stays the same, just the faces you find feeding out of it change.
From that perspective Ms. Hidalgo is no different than her predecessors, minus the veil of experience and actual knowledge. She's being painted as a single-minded ideologue with grand designs of "fairness" and "equity" but little in the way of actual "need".
Because she has no place in her reformer's heart for "need", what the county needs, what flood projects are needed, or would best work. She's more concerned with ensuring that crumbs of bread are given to her key constituent groups than she is actually solving the county's problems.
And spending money. Judge Hidalgo seems to be very good, early, at doing that. It's the other things, the things on which she was elected, that there's currently scant evidence to indicate she's up to the job.
Not for nothing, the consultants she hired were the same that worked for Bill de Blasio's transition.
How's that been working out so far?
Even his ideological fellow travelers are admitting it's a disaster.
Hold on to your butts Harris County Residents, four years is a long damn time. And you can blow through a ton of taxpayer cash in far less than that. It appears Judge Hidalgo is dead-set on doing just that. Results be damned.
