CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Nueces County is gearing up to make sure it's interests are protected in Austin by rehiring two legislative consultants.
Those consultants will start working in May and each will be paid $5000 a month to monitor the legislature and visit with lawmakers to advance policies that would help the County.
They'll also work to defeat legislation that would hurt Nueces County.
"The majority of the court wanted to wait and not spend the money unnecessarily," said Nueces County Commissioner Brent Chesney. "And we didn't feel like there was enough to do for the legislative team to work around, so we saved a lot of money that was budgeted for that."
3News asked Chesney what issues were at the top of his list. He said limiting the emergency powers of the County Judge was at the top.
"The state needs to look really hard at these emergency powers, it needs to be restructured," Chesney said. "They were not designed for someone to be in an emergency state for a year or two. They were designed for hurricanes and tornadoes which are 30 days."
Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales said she, like the Governor, has been wielding emergency powers during COVID-19 that were granted under State law.
"I hope he's ready to curtail his governor because the local emergency powers come from the Disaster Act of 1975 section 418 of the code," Canales said. "But that's how the governor gets his powers, so I hope he's ready to fight the governor as much as he is ready to fight County judges."
Another big issue for Chesney is the 1914 courthouse. He is hoping to get some kind of legislation passed so that the County can finally get moving on bringing the structure back to life. Some of the judge's top priorities are windstorm insurance reform and getting the State to fund the major drainage projects that need to be completed to alleviate flooding throughout the County.
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