On the Chron’s Houston Politics blog, Liz Peterson relays a Harris County Democratic Party press release complaining about the timing of Judge Emmett’s trip to India:
The Harris County Democratic Party is criticizing Republican County Judge Ed Emmett for jetting to India and missing this week’s hurricane preparedness drill.
The annual statewide exercise is coordinated by the governor’s emergency management division. Representatives from more than 50 Harris County departments participated, along with transportation officials, first responders and community groups.
“Protecting Harris County residents from another disaster like Hurricane Rita should be a top priority of the county judge,” party spokeswoman Amber Moon said in a statement. “The fact that Ed Emmett would choose traveling to India over emergency preparedness speaks volumes about his priorities.”
Through a spokesman, Emmett called Moon’s comments a “sickening attempt to play politics with public safety.” He said his 10-day trade mission was planned last year before dates for the drill were firmed up.
That seems like a fairly lame criticism for the Dems to make, but it is election season. Do people really think a governmental body cannot function if the leader is not present? Do people really think that if a hurricane was forecast for a potential Gulf Coast landfall, Judge Emmett wouldn’t have cancelled his trip?
The comments to the post are also fairly lame, with the first commenter being especially ill-informed:
Great, why are we paying him to jet around on a 10 day tour of India? How much is this costing us in his monthly wage and our tax dollars.
Junkets need to be outlawed.
Posted by: CB at May 1, 2008 08:16 AM
As we noted here previously, Judge Emmett did not use any taxpayer dollars to pay his way to India. If Houston Politics commenters want to go that route, maybe they could inquire if Mayor Bill White was paid to jet around the Middle East on an eight-day trade mission? Did Mayor White pay his own way? I don’t know; maybe someone can inquire.
