The Briones Bonus
There’s a pile of your cash that one Harris County Commissioner gave out to her own selected employees – all while raising your taxes! We call it THE BRIONES BONUS! And this crap has gotta stop!
The Briones Bonus
“The people of Precinct Four have given me a chance to serve, and I want to run my precinct the way I think best delivers to the people,” Lesley Briones said.
“Nice speech. But Harris County taxpayers, we are just getting tired of all the nonsense we have heard coming out of Harris County government,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
“I don’t know what the fuck she has threaten you with” Lina Hidalgo said.
“Excuse me Judge, please be respectful,” Briones said.
It’s bad enough that we have a county judge who is literally falling apart in front of our eyes.
“Come on come on, because this is not about politics this is about kids. Come on down,” Hidalgo said.
“Excuse me Judge Hidalgo, part of education is respect,” Briones said.
“But it’s the spending we have to stop. We are told we are 306 million dollars in the hole even after raising taxes last year,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones was so excited in January.
“I feel so passionately about this,” Briones said.
Passionate about spending another 1.5 million dollars of your hard-earned tax money.
“It’s so important to me,” Briones said.
Ok.
“And I feel strongly about this,” Briones said.
We get it. Apparently Briones has money to burn.
“So as an elected official, this is within my budget already. I could have bought more office paper, but instead, I want to keep the best talent,” Briones said.
With 1.5 million dollars, we could raise the salaries of 47 Harris County deputies.
They make 32 thousand less, in a single year, than Houston cops do.
But that’s not what Lesley Briones wanted to do.
“We need to make sure we have the right talent, in the right places. And that we keep the best of the best, and we recruit and retain them,” Briones said.
She was talking about paying bonuses to her own employees. And wait till you find out how big the bonuses were.
“It’s illegal to give bonuses to government employees in Texas, isn’t it?” Dolcefino told the camera.
Let’s get out our Constitution: Article 3, Section 53.
‘It’s illegal to reward government employees for work they have already done.’
Enter Christian Menefee, the Harris County Attorney.
“I have gotten my wonderful lawyer, my brilliant lawyers’ blessing, and so,” Briones said.
“So here’s what they did. They decided to call the bonuses something else so that they can get away with it,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“This is a retention incentive, a one-time retention incentive,” Briones said.
On a 4–1 vote, commissioners approved what Briones wanted: 1.5 million bucks for her employees for what she called ‘retention incentive pay.’
That’s never happened in the history of Harris County.
“A one-time retention incentive,” Briones said.
That same month, Briones handed out 1.2 million dollars to 250 employees based on an evaluation of their performance from 2024.
“If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and it looks like a duck, it’s a duck. It’s a bonus! Mr. Attorney General, are you watching?” Dolcefino told the camera.
And for some folks in Precinct Four got some payday. Her chief of staff, Alice Lee, got a 20,000 dollar bonus – I mean retention incentive.
Jamaal Smith, the deputy chief of staff, got 18.5 thousand dollars. Twenty-two employees got 10,000 or more.
Look at this.
The top 7 wage earners in Precinct 4 already make 200 to 272 thousand dollars a year. About 20,000 more than the top seven people in the other commissioners’ offices.
“Have you seen how much we are paying the chiefs of staff of these Harris County commissioner precincts? I remember the old days, when government employees were paid so low that we had to give them these great pensions. Boy, have times changed!” Dolcefino told the camera.
Commissioner Ramsey pays his chief of staff the least; $212,000.
Garcia pays $273,000.
Briones’s $293,000.
And there is Rodney Ellis. Well, he pays his chief of staff…
Are you ready?
$405,000! I ain’t kidding.
Compare those salaries to the highest paid employee in the office of President Donald Trump.
His chief of staff is Susan Wiles. She makes 195 thousand dollars a year.
“A whole lot of my team members left for Commissioner Briones’s office,” Hidalgo said.
“We can’t afford salary wars in Harris County government. Why don’t we set a standard range of pay for these jobs?” Dolcefino told the camera.
But get ready.
These bonuses may spread through Harris County government even though we are supposedly broke.
“I do support the initiative, and I understand that we are setting a precedent,” Tom Ramsey.
“When I started investigating Harris County government back in the ’80s—a long damn time ago—commissioners had to return the money they didn’t use in the budget year. Now, they get to roll over 75 percent of what they didn’t spend to their offices for next year,” Dolcefino told the camera
Judge Hidalgo may be out of control, but at least her office doesn’t do that.
“I cannot afford this one-time incentive for my team because I follow the rule and don’t keep my budget. Members of court have also decided not to follow that rule,” Hidalgo said.
In recent weeks, Mattress Mack has helped lead the campaign to get the deputies more money.
“The purpose of government, as far as I am concerned, is to keep the people safe. What else is there? That’s why I asked Dolcefino Consulting to help expose some of this waste,” Mattress Mack said.
Commissioners have gotten the message. Voting to raise salaries in the proposed new budget.
“We are losing our officers because they can get paid in another agency. Not on our watch, because it is affecting all our safety,” Briones said.
The county judge warns of financial trouble.
“Our hands are tied because colleagues decided not to go to voters on this $108 million increase for law enforcement that we couldn’t afford. I fully support this pay increase, but if we can’t afford it, we can’t afford it, ok,” Hidalgo said.
“We’re having to cut services by about 10% because of the budget cuts,” Hidalgo said at a press conference.
If she got her way, Lina Hidalgo would be raising your taxes yet again.
“I was elected to serve twice,” Hidalgo said in an interview.
Commissioner Tom Ramsey says Hidalgo should be removed from office.
“You know, election season is ramping up. I invite them to run against me,” Hidalgo said in an interview.
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