Harris County’s eight elected constables will soon make more than U.S. Vice President\u00a0J.D. Vance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Commissioners Court voted Thursday 4-1 to increase the constables’ salaries to $305,000, the fourth in a series of raises that have more than doubled their pay in just three years.<\/p>\n
Now, they’re set to receive some of the highest pay of any elected official countywide, despite half of the constable precincts employing fewer than 200 staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The largest constable office, Precinct 4 in north Harris County, employed roughly 750 staff as of the county’s 2025 fiscal year, records show.\u00a0The sheriff’s office, meanwhile, manages more than 5,000 employees across its law enforcement, civilian and jail operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
None of the eight constables attended Thursday’s meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
County Judge\u00a0Lina Hidalgo voted against the increases, as did Commissioner Rodney Ellis, initially.<\/p>\n
Ellis later changed his vote to support the raises after commissioners agreed to potentially provide identical increases to other elected officials, including the district and county attorneys. The raises do not take effect until they are formally approved as part of the budget process in September.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s an unbelievable number, percentage-wise, that we’re giving to these politically influential elected officials,” Hidalgo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Harless’ letter referenced a bill he authored that the Texas Legislature passed last year mandating that pay increases to any Harris County law enforcement agency — \u00a0such as the sheriff’s office, constables or fire marshal — be distributed equally across all other agencies.<\/p>\n
The bill exempts “the chief of the department,” however, and defines a police officer as an “employee,” which the chapter of state law Harless’ bill modified distinguishes from elected and appointed officials. Harless also withdrew his letter without a ruling from Attorney General Ken\u00a0Paxton.<\/p>\n
But Commissioner Adrian Garcia on Thursday said “part of” the motivation behind the raises stemmed from Harless’ bill.<\/p>\n
County Attorney\u00a0Abbie Kamin later clarified that the raises were not “necessarily required under state law,” but that they were “recommended and agreed to.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harris County’s eight elected constables will soon make more than U.S. Vice President\u00a0J.D. Vance.\u00a0 Commissioners Court voted Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-400233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}