Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo spent about $43K on Paris trade mission, per campaign report

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo documented her trade mission to Paris earlier this year on social media.

Photos posted on her office’s social media page show meetings in June in Paris with business leaders and dignitaries. One caption read, the county was “deepening ties” between Harris County and France.

Per Harris County’s travel policy, commissioners have to approve international travel, and they did not approve spending taxpayer money to fund Hidalgo’s trip to Paris for the trade mission.

So, she turned to her own campaign dollars to pay for it, but didn’t let her colleagues forget it.

In early May, Judge Hidalgo asked county commissioners to approve her using taxpayer money in her office’s budget for herself and essential members of her staff to travel with members of the Greater Houston partnership and Rice University on the trade mission to Paris. That request was denied.

Two weeks later, she again asked fellow commissioners to approve her using taxpayer money for the trip, specifically $23,000 for her and four members of her staff.

Commissioners didn’t approve that request, so Judge Hidalgo asked again. She wanted $11,000 instead and said she would bring two members of her staff with her.

Harris County Commissioners Lesley Briones, Adrian Garcia, and Tom Ramsey voted no again, meaning taxpayers would not be funding it.

Judge Hidalgo used donations to her political campaign to fund the trip.

“The rules are very flexible on how the office holders can use their funds, just so long as they’re publicly disclosed,” said Jonathan Neerman, a campaign finance advisor who previously served as the Chairman of the Dallas County Republican.

Hidalgo’s campaign finance report was filed last month and detailed the expenses for the trip. The report shows Judge Hidalgo took five people with her to Paris, from June 8 to June 15, including her chief of staff, director of special projects, chief of external affairs, director of economic development, and director of policy.

The costs in her campaign finance report were $25,079 on lodging, $17,422 on airfare, and $337 to Uber. No meals were listed.

We asked Neerman if her spending was allowed under campaign finance guidelines, and he said yes.

“There are two different things. One is whether the ethics commission will allow it. The other is would the donors be OK with it. That may be the bigger issue for her, is when the donors find out how she’s using these funds, will they be ok with it,” Neerman said.

In total, the trip cost her campaign just under $43,000. According to her finance report… that’s thousands of dollars more than she brought in in contributions during the same period.

“That’s why they’re all publicly disclosed because it gives donors the chance to look and see how you’re spending the money,” Neerman said.

Judge Hidalgo touted the connections made during the trip in subsequent commissioners’ court meetings, including securing visits to Houston from international organizations within the next year.

But, she’s let commissioners know that she has not forgotten about their refusal to let her use her county funds to pay for the trip.

“It’s a lot of really valuable meetings. Obviously, you know, $20,000 is what, like, a little party cost in some of these big precincts. I just want to point out, obviously, the rhetoric was disappointing about the trade mission. I don’t think that we need to be sort of maligning work to pursue international business and opportunities,” Hidalgo said in a June 26 Commissioner’s Court meeting.

Judge Hidalgo has also tried to amend the county’s international travel policy, but it’s gotten voted down.

13 Investigates asked Judge Hidalgo’s county team if we could talk to her on camera about the expenses, but they said she is deep in budget season, so we sent her county office a list of questions.

Her county office sent us a copy of the itinerary for the trade mission. They told us, since it was her campaign that funded it, we needed to reach out to them, so we did, but we were told that since she doesn’t have an active campaign, there’s no one who can comment.

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