One of the big reasons why Harris County continues to have budget issues and deficits? It’s all the taxpayer money that is being spent on healthcare for county employees.
To bring it closer to home, you may have a bad health insurance plan with a high deductible, but that is not the case if you work for the county.
“They don’t pay anything” said Bill King, Houston based fellow at the Baker Institute, “And so you have employees that work for the county that have much, much better health insurance than almost any of the taxpayers that pay for their health insurance.”
It’s a nice perk, with a nice price tag of $1.2 million – per day.
“Health costs have been going up for everybody, and the county has kept absorbing those costs over the last several years, instead of passing any of them on to the employees” King told KTRH.
Those costs are one of the main reasons why Harris County is facing a massive $181 million budget deficit. It’s not a revenue problem, it’s a spending problem.
“So, the Budget Officer proposed a relatively modest charge to the employees to pay for some of their health insurance, and the Commissioner’s voted it down” noted King, “And the only place the county really can go to is the taxpayers. So there’s just zero discipline being exercised right now.”
Including the upcoming Harris County property tax increase which will be officially approved on September 17th.