Harris County constables will make $305,000 next year, a 129% increase since 2024 45%
By Sarah Grunau33%
8/7/2026, 12:43:21 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Availability Heuristic, and Framing Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 29.2% saturation with 162 hits. Analysis detected 886 faulty-reasoning hits from 554 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 39.6% and a BS Rank of 45% (16,898 of 30,209 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 55.90% of the article peer group.
Each of the eight Harris County constables will be paid $305,000 next year — bringing their salaries to higher than that of the U.S. vice president.
Harris County commissioners approved the pay boost for constables and several other elected officials in the county's fiscal year 2027 budget Thursday.
County Judge Lina Hidalgo voted against the effort.
It comes a year after some commissioners — previously titled the ‘GOP 3’ by Hidalgo — championed a law enforcement pay parity initiative that raised constable salaries by 62% from the previous year and exacerbated a multi-million dollar budget deficit.
RELATED: Harris County commissioners signal support for boosted constable pay despite budget crunch
“The proposal on the table is for each of them to be making $305,000,” Hidalgo said before the vote Thursday.
“It's more than the vice president of the United States makes.
It's more than a lot of big positions … it's more than astronauts make."
Commissioner Rodney Ellis initially abstained from voting on the raises Thursday, but later approved the item.
The proposed 2027 county budget, which could top $3 billion for the first time in the county's history, also includes pay raises for the district clerk, county attorney and district attorney.
The county is also facing a $130 million budget deficit next year, stemming from ballooning inflationary costs.
The pay raises for the eight elected constables are a 17% increase from their salaries last year.
They have received steady raises since 2024, when their pay was just over $133,000 at the time.
Proponents have over the years argued that raises for county law enforcement are necessary to attract and retain skilled officers.
Last year, the county allotted about $130 million to finance substantial raises for officers, and trimmed other department budgets to reduce costs.
About half of the budget reductions came from shifting jail medical expenditures to Harris Health.
Forty-six percent of the county's 2026 general fund expenditures went towards law enforcement — about $1.2 billion of last year's total budget, according to a recent study from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
"The tax rate that we will be considering in just a few short weeks is probably the greatest tax-rate increase in the history of Harris County," Ramsey said.
On Thursday, Hidalgo proposed a separate motion directing the county's human resources department to review all appointed department head salaries to be in line with recommendations.
That item was approved unanimously.
Ellis said commissioners need to be cautious in salary discussions because there’s a structural deficit.
“We ought to be cognizant of what we are spending before we spend it,” Ellis said.
Commissioners also denied Hidalgo's second attempt at a proposed tax-rate hike to fund early childcare programs.
RELATED: Lina Hidalgo's proposed tax-rate hike for Harris County education programs fails for the second year in a row
The rejection came almost one year after county commissioners voted against Hidalgo's first penny-tax proposal and said the county judge's efforts to pass the measure to support a slate of education programs disrupted decorum when she brought a group of children to the meeting.
The upcoming year's tax rate could exceed 62 cents, and may go up to 68 cents if the county hospital district accepts the voter-approved tax rate, Ramsey said.
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