Land Commissioner wants feds to reject claim that Harvey funds were misused

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has penned a letter to federal law enforcement officials encouraging them to reject “unsubstantiated findings” submitted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that accuse the Texas General Land Office of mishandling Houston’s Harvey flood mitigation dollars. HUD escalated a complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice last week, claiming state officials had violated the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against the city’s Black and Hispanic residents by creating an unfair competition for disaster relief funds. The federal agency found that the land office had “intentionally discriminated based on race” by creating a competition to allocate funds “that steered money away from Black and Hispanic communities that had the highest storm and flood risk into whiter, more rural areas with less risk.” That competition resulted in no funds set aside for Houston or Harris County.

HUD had originally upheld its discrimination ruling in 2022, but the Justice Department said it would hold off on considering the matter until HUD completed its investigation. Since making that initial finding, HUD said it obtained more information that showed state officials had intentionally allocated mitigation funds in a way the agency knew would disadvantage minority communities. Buckingham, in a Thursday news release, said that the Biden administration had lost its “bully pulpit it used for political stunts like this” as President Donald Trump took office Monday, and she called on the Justice Department to refer to the claim as “fake news.” Trump’s new Justice Department leadership has said the agency would not take on any new civil rights cases until further notice, the Associated Press revealed yesterday. Buckingham also said HUD failed to meet a burden of proof surrounding the claims. She said the federal agency worked with the land office to formulate a plan for distributing funds and that HUD had said funds couldn’t be awarded based on damage from the storm alone.