Harris County officials are working to restructure how more than $800 million in federal Hurricane Harvey flood recovery funds are spent. Officials say a “phased approach” could preserve $322 million in disaster recovery grants that are at risk of missing a February 2027 spending deadline.
The Harris County Flood Control District unveiled the plan in a Friday news release, outlining a strategy that would shift eligible disaster recovery projects facing the looming deadline into a mitigation funding program with a later April 2028 cutoff.
In exchange, subdivision drainage improvements and a flood warning system upgrade originally slated under the mitigation program but expected to finish before February would absorb the freed-up disaster recovery dollars.
According to an internal presentation, six of the 11 disaster recovery projects are expected to miss the February deadline, and those projects account for roughly $90 million that the district is now seeking to move into the later program.
The rework expands the district’s project list from 28 to 36, though a spokeswoman said no projects will see any reduction in scope. The district also disclosed that it overestimated the cost of its disaster recovery projects by about $100 million, a more-than-30 percent underrun attributed in part to falling construction costs driven by project cancellations at the state level.
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said she considers the plan workable.
In a Monday letter to County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Buckingham wrote that the General Land Office (GLO) had worked with the flood control district “to determine a new path forward to expedite expenditures in order to meet the required disaster recovery grant deadlines.”
Buckingham did not stop there. She used the letter to criticize Hidalgo directly, writing that “Harris County needs shovels, not scapegoats,” and alleging that the commissioners court’s own procedures had contributed to delays. The letter also outlined several failures the GLO identified in working with the flood control district, including high staff turnover and problems with grant documentation and compliance.
Tension at the commissioners court over the district’s handling of these projects has been building for months.
Republican Commissioner Tom Ramsey, a licensed engineer, called out Flood Control District Executive Director Tina Petersen at the court’s May 14 meeting, saying it should not have required a formal court intervention to compel Petersen to share project timelines with the GLO.
“I shouldn’t have to come to Commissioners Court to get support from this court to ask you to provide information to the GLO,” Ramsey told Petersen. “That should have been something that would be fairly obvious.” Petersen’s job performance is now scheduled for a second review at the court’s Thursday meeting.
The federal funds in question flow from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) through the GLO to the county. Harris County received approximately $322 million under HUD’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program following Harvey. The GLO has already extended the disaster recovery deadline twice and secured a federal extension in 2024, but Buckingham said a fourth extension will not happen.
HUD has signaled its opposition to further federal extensions, and the GLO must complete its grant close-out process before HUD’s final deadline. If any Texas entity misses that deadline, HUD could demand repayment of the funds it provided to the GLO, triggering a potentially lengthy process to recoup money from local subrecipients.
The GLO’s firm deadline for the disaster recovery program is February 28, 2027. The mitigation program’s state deadline is March 2028, while HUD’s own close-out date for those funds is January 2033, leaving a window for local officials to pursue extensions on the mitigation side if needed.
