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Harris County, TX, September 3, 2025 - Yesterday, Harris County kicked off budget hearings for the FY 2026 budget. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) presented a proposal that would eliminate the county’s $200M+ deficit by making cuts that include county programs and services. 

Representatives from the Office of County Administration, OMB, Community Supervision, District Courts, Juvenile Probation, Institute of Forensic Sciences, the District Attorney’s Office, the Public Defenders Office, County Courts, Justices of the Peace and Human Resources & Talent spoke about how the proposed budget cuts would affect the services and programs they provide to Harris County residents. 

Read below for some direct quotes from the first day of Harris County budget hearings:

“I think, if you look at departments that have the most vacancies, they will feel the hiring freeze the most. So, I think that’s something the court needs to consider. I mean, overall, it will be hard especially for some departments as attrition happens. I think that the other thing we need to keep a close eye on. I talked to the libraries last week, they have a number of locations that aren't heavily staffed and so if they lose two or three staff from a particular branch, we’re going to have to look at making exceptions to the hiring freeze there or they're going to have to reduce hours at that location.” -Jesse Dickerman, Interim County Administrator of the Office of County Administration

“Based on the one-time items typically how much we get in revenue on a year-to-year basis and how much our revenue grows in a normal year, I would say [we’ll have] anywhere from 60 to 100 million dollar deficit next year, conservatively.” -Daniel Ramos, Executive Director of the Office of Management and Budget

“Without additional funding to be able to really match the salary of the overall market, we’re going to continue having a difficult time filling those [mental health] positions and then meeting the mental health needs of our young people in our facilities, which is significant.” -Henry Gonzales, Executive Director of Harris County Juvenile Probation Department

“With this budget, we will not be able to keep up with case load demands in Fiscal Year 26. There will be extended times for testing and report completion leading people to be in jail longer than necessary, court hearings being delayed, as well as a building backlog of cases that could take months or years to overcome.”-Julie Prine, Chief of Staff of the Institute of Forensic Sciences

“It’s just over seven million in proposed cuts from our CLS [current level of service]...so when we start to think about that amount of money… for us the cuts would really mean that we can’t continue to grow the office in a way that we think we need to in order to focus on all of these programs that we’ve spoken of.” -Chandler Raine, First Assistant to District Attorney Sean Teare

There are two more days of budget hearings scheduled. Thursday, September 4 will begin at 10:30 AM and Friday, September 5th at 10:00 AM. Hearings can be viewed in person in the Commissioners Courtroom or online by visiting our Facebook or the link here.

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