in Houston, Texas
Houston mayoral candidates debate city’s finances; check out their campaign finance forms here
Friday, Oct 14, 2011, 08:28AM CST
By Steve Miller
City Hall

Kevin Simms, Dave Wilson, Fernando Herrera, Jack O’Connor. Is it possible there’s a name recognition problem with these four challengers to Houston Mayor Annise Parker?

Perhaps, but the noble aspirants, along with the mayor, gathered this week for a discussion of the issues hosted by the Houston West Chamber of Commerce, Memorial West Republican Women’s Club and the Village Republican Women’s Club.

The mayor invited everyone to take a look at the city’s finances and services, the Memorial Examiner reported.
“Our responsibility is to provide those services in an effective and efficient manner for a fair price,” Parker said. “You give us tax dollars and our responsibility is not to spend tax dollars, but not to waste your tax dollars.”
The mayor’s latest campaign finance filing shows a healthy economy with a fund balance of $2.3 million. The others, well, it’s a start.

Here are the reports for each of the other candidates filed this week: Herrera, O’Connor, Simms, Wilson.

The only other candidate, Socialist Workers Party member Amanda Ulman, has not filed a report.
 
***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Photo of Houston City Hall by flickr user eschipul, used via a Creative Commons license.
Comments
Ann
Saturday, 10/29/2011 - 08:21PM

Parker's televison ad states that Houston has created 125,000 jobs. What a joke. The jobs created are minimum wage jobs. Also, Annise contributed to Houston's slumbering economy by adding more individuals to the unemployment rolls. She furloughed and laid-off city employees and still can't get the budget balanced. No longer is Houston considered to be untouched by the poor economy and slumbering job market. Annise saw to that by laying off the low salaried city employees. If she really want to make a big change in the budget, she should consider scaling back on upper management. Within the City of Houston's organization, you have many many levels of top heavy management. For example, the Human Resources department has a director (Omar Reid) several assistant directors, several managers, and supervisors. Kind of strange for a department that is not doing any hiring. Also the HR department demoted employees positions but the employees where able to keep their high pay salaries (go to The Texas Tribune to see City of Houston employee salaries). What is the whole purpose of a demotion if a person can keep their pay. Just imagine this is only one example of all the corruption that is in the City of Houston organization. Wake-up annise parker city employees are stealing you blind.

Down right mad
Saturday, 10/29/2011 - 08:28PM

Annise Parker is not a good mayor. I am a City of Houston employee and witness so much financial waste. If the city is really suffering finacially maybe the mayor should do an investigation of departments to find out how much money is wasted. I myself supervise a person that makes a lot more money that I do. My pay grade and title is much higher but I make several thousands ($10,000.00) less. Do the math.

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