Harris County Treasurer Carla Wyatt asked the county’s Salary Grievance Committee on Thursday to raise her annual pay to $305,000, more than double her current salary of $139,547.
Wyatt initially filed a grievance seeking $250,000 but increased her request during the meeting, telling the committee she should be paid the same as other countywide elected officials. The committee did not grant the full request, instead recommending a 30 percent raise that would bring her salary to roughly $181,400.
Wyatt’s request was not decided by Harris County commissioners.
County leaders opted to select nine Harris County residents from the grand juror pool to serve as the Salary Grievance Committee that heard her case, rather than a panel made up of elected officials, which is the other option allowed under Texas law. Under that law, if all nine committee members had voted unanimously in favor of Wyatt’s request, commissioners would have been legally required to grant it in full.
The committee did not reach a unanimous vote for the full $305,000, which is why the recommendation came back at 30 percent instead.
Wyatt’s request comes weeks after Harris County commissioners approved raises for several other countywide officials to $305,000 for the upcoming fiscal year, including elected constables, the county clerk, district clerk, and tax assessor-collector, whose pay had been $179,421. The county attorney’s and district attorney’s salaries are also set to increase from $217,485 to $305,000. Wyatt was left out of that round of increases.
The salary fight is unfolding while Harris County leaders pursue a separate effort to eliminate the treasurer’s office entirely.
Commissioners voted earlier this year to strip the office of its Positive Pay fraud detection system after Wyatt’s office failed to catch roughly $53,000 in fraudulent checks, transferring that function to the county’s Office of Management and Budget. Commissioners have said they intend to ask the state legislature in 2027 to place a constitutional amendment abolishing the office before Texas voters, a process that would also require approval from Harris County voters.
Wyatt has faced repeated legal trouble since taking office in 2022.
She was arrested on a DWI charge in December 2023 after testing showed a blood alcohol level of roughly .15 percent, nearly twice the legal limit, though that case was dismissed after she completed a pretrial diversion program. In December 2025, she was charged with misdemeanor burglary of a motor vehicle after police said she entered a parking lot minivan that did not belong to her. A Harris County grand jury no-billed that charge in April 2026. Weeks later, in May, she was arrested a third time and charged with a second DWI, this time in Galveston County.
Despite the push to eliminate the office and the removal of its fraud alert duties, the treasurer’s office would see its funding increase under the county’s proposed FY2027 budget, rising from about $1.84 million to roughly $2.07 million, an increase of about 13 percent.
The salary dispute also comes as Harris County weighs a proposed FY2027 budget that could raise property tax bills.
The budget assumes a tax rate generating approximately $2.42 billion for the General Fund, which county officials say would raise the tax bill on an average homestead from about $1,202 to $1,350, an increase of $148, or roughly 12.3 percent. That figure does not include separate taxes for Harris Health, the Flood Control District or the Port of Houston. County budget officials identified a shortfall during the budget process that at one point reached approximately $181 million, part of what officials have described as the county’s fifth consecutive year facing a budget gap.
