Secretary Treasurer Robert Barber 

Well we all knew it was true, but I figured I’d get confirmation of it by comparing Tommy Thomas’ last years budget (2008-2009) to Adrian Garcia’s budget (2010-2011). Once you figure out the difference in reporting it’s kind of interesting.

When Sheriff Garcia first came into office he had his “team” go around and have every bureau justify every position as well as every piece of equipment assigned to it. If justification (in his team’s opinion) couldn’t be made the position or equipment was reassigned. Normally this would be the right thing to do except when the moves were made via the “good ole boy” system, which by the way is still in play, or because the persons in charge couldn’t understand the need for certain pieces of equipment especially extra patrol cars. But that is for another article at another time.

In May of 2011 HCDO requested through the TPIA (the Texas version of freedom of information act) the budgets for the Sheriff’s office for Tommy Thomas’ last year in office and Sheriff Garcia’s for the current year. We received the one for former Sheriff Thomas and received Sheriff Garcia’s budget for 2010-2011. We resubmitted for the 2011-2012 budget and at the time this article was written had not received it. Once we do it will be looked at as well and if anything major has changed for good or bad I will report on that as well.

The first difference that was easily noticed was the number of pages for each budget. Former Sheriff Thomas’ budget was 71 pages in total. Sheriff Garcia’s was 237 pages.  Considering that Sheriff Garcia has espoused the great job he’s been doing in consolidating bureaus you would think the number of pages would less or at the very least the same, but whatever.

I started going through the budgets and overall there wasn’t much change in the majority of the bureaus, especially when you take inflation into consideration, except for two.

One of the two was Human Resources (HR). Under Thomas’ budget, HR was a bureau unto itself and had a budget of $6,862,092.22 submitted and $6,719,941.89 actually spent. Under Garcia’s budget, HR is included in the Executive Bureau budget with the following amounts $1,838,416.51 requested and $1,099,781.57 actually spent.

My first thought was great he was able to save over $5 million dollars that could be used in other areas who were in dire need (i.e. detention, patrol, investigations).

I then looked at the Executive Bureau budgets. Under Thomas its budget was $3,108,980.66 submitted and $2,374,051.51 actually spent. Under Garcia its budget was $22,773,010.70 requested and $12,335,709.45 actually spent. Since Garcia’s budget included HR in the Executive Bureau I had to subtract those amounts from the overall totals he submitted. Doing this Garcia’s Executive Bureau budget was then $20,934,594.19 requested and $11,235,709.45 actually spent.

No wonder the budgets for Detentions, Patrol, and Investigations (adjusted for inflation) had very little difference between the two overall budgets. Instead of using the savings he made in the HR budget to augment these three bureaus he felt the need to use it in his Executive Bureau budget and even had to add several million along with it.

This raises a question that the Sheriff needs to answer to the citizens of Harris County. “WHY IS HAVING A TOP HEAVY EXECUTIVE BUREAU MORE IMPORTANT THAN HAVING INCREASES IN DETENTIONS, PATROL, AND INVESTIGATIONS WHEN THESE BUREAUS HAVE MORE OF AN EFFECT ON THEIR DAY TO DAY LIVES THAN THE EXECUTIVE BUREAU WOULD OR COULD EVER HAVE?”

Before the Sheriff or his “budget” people ask, suggest, or demand any other bureau in this agency to hold the costs down, he needs to lead by example and hold down as well as reduce his costs in the Executive Bureau. These budgets just confirm what we all knew all along, the Sheriff’s Office has too many “chiefs” and “chiefs’ assistants” and not enough “braves”. Keep your promise of “Boots on the ground”!