New Records Reveal Harris County D.A.’s Office Hired Ogg Campaign Donor To Fight Fired Prosecutor’s Unemployment Benefits Claim
Katherine Mize, an otherwise unnoteworthy Houston lawyer, made a contribution to Kim Ogg’s re-election coffers last year, according to campaign finance disclosures released just last week.
You might be saying to yourself: Wait a minute, didn’t Kim Ogg just win re-election as Harris County District Attorney in 2020? (Yes, she did).
Why give Ogg campaign donations the year after she won an election?
That’s a good question.
Unfortunately, we can’t answer it for you. But here’s what we do know.
Katherine Mize has made at least eleven separate donations to Ogg’s campaign stretching back to more than a year before Ogg became District Attorney-elect in 2016.
Why should you care about Katherine Mize, or why Mize chose to waste her money donating to the campaign of a person who is not even facing an election for years?
Two reasons: Hypocrisy and Public corruption (or at least the appearance of it).
When it comes to battling public corruption, Kim Ogg put it best: “it should be fought on every front; evidence should always be followed wherever it leads, and government contracts and spending should be designed in the best interests of the public.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Kim Ogg is an elected official trusted with the judicious, transparent, and impartial use of your taxpayer dollars. So, why did she spend your money to give Katherine Mize, a campaign donor, a lucrative contract with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office?
Here are the facts.
In a move that would make even The Grinch blush, Kim Ogg’s first act after winning election in 2016 was to fire over three dozen prosecutors via email nine days before Christmas in what local legal commentators dubbed “Bloody Friday.”
What happens when you unceremoniously fire people with no notice–and no mercy? Well, if you are a good employer and a decent human being, you don’t interfere when the person you fired tries to get unemployment benefits to help pay the rent, put food on the table, and clothe her children.
But that’s just not the Kim Ogg way.
So, when Tiffany Johnson, who worked for 14 years serving the people of Harris County as a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office, filed for unemployment benefits, Kim Ogg fought her tooth and nail.
Of course, Kim Ogg didn’t handle the matter herself. Instead, she hired a fancy outside lawyer to do her bidding. Who paid for it? You did. It’s taxpayer dollars.
Who did she hire?
You know who she hired.
Katherine Mize, at $400 an hour.
How much of your taxpayer dollars did Kim Ogg give to a campaign donor, Katherine Mize? Did District Attorney Ogg conduct a fair and inclusive search before hiring one of her campaign donors for the job? How was the decision made? Did Ogg recuse herself from the decision to hire Katherine Mize, a major campaign donor, with taxpayer dollars? And how much money in total did Ms. Mize and her firm cost you?
You deserve these answers. But Kim Ogg refused to answer these questions when we posed them to her. We will keep pressing for more transparency from the District Attorney.
In the meantime, we can answer one question: Was $400 per hour for Ms. Mize worth it?
It was not.
Last Friday, more than five years after Ogg signed the contract with Ms. Mize, the Texas Court of Appeals issued its opinion–agreeing with the Texas Workforce Commission–that the fired prosecutor, Tiffany Johnson, was entitled to unemployment benefits.
To give you a sense of just how many times Ogg made a stark choice to keep fighting to block the unemployment benefits, here’s Court of Appeals describing the history of the case:
“After her discharge, Johnson filed an application for unemployment benefits, which the Texas Workforce Commission granted. The DAO then appealed the TWC’s award, arguing that Johnson was disqualified for benefits because she had been discharged for prosecutorial misconduct. But because there had been a 13- month delay between Johnson’s misconduct and discharge, the TWC found the former to be “too remote” in time from the latter to disqualify Johnson for benefits and therefore affirmed the award.
The DAO then filed a petition for judicial review in the trial court, and the parties filed cross-dispositive motions. After a hearing on the motions, the trial court found that the TWC had erroneously failed to consider evidence of the reasonableness of the delay between Johnson’s misconduct and discharge and that substantial evidence exists establishing the reasonableness of the delay. The trial court therefore denied Johnson’s motion, granted the DAO’s motion, and reversed the TWC’s award.
We reverse the judgment of the trial court and render judgment in favor of Johnson.”
It’s worth noting that appellate judges aren’t in the habit of calling elected officials liars, but what the court said about Ogg’s version of events in this case comes as close as it gets:
“First, while the DAO [District Attorney’s Office] contends that Ogg refrained from making her decision until after the resolution of the Yetman appeal, the DAO has failed to present evidence supporting its contention. The evidence presented to the trial court does not show that Ogg waited to make her decision until the Yetman appeal was resolved. In fact, it shows the opposite. Ogg sent her termination email on December 16, 2016. But the court of appeals did not issue its opinion in the Yetman appeal until six days later on December 22, 2016. Yetman, 516 S.W.3d at 33. Thus, Ogg’s decision to terminate Johnson could not have depended on the resolution of the Yetman appeal, since Ogg made the decision before the appeal was resolved.”
TL;DR: Ogg lied.
Whatever these facts say about how Ogg unwisely used public dollars, engaged in petty vindictiveness, or allowed for at least the appearance of corruption, they say even more about her hypocrisy.
Remember Ogg’s quote on public corruption?
“It should be fought on every front; evidence should always be followed wherever it leads, and government contracts and spending should be designed in the best interests of the public.”
She gave that quote to the Texas Monthly in the context of a feature story about Chief Judge Lina Hidalgo, an extended meditation on whether Hidalgo is under investigation and will be prosecuted by District Attorney Ogg for allegedly “steering” contracts to a Democratic political operative (a claim for which no proof seems to exist in the public record, and plenty of facts suggest didn’t happen). Hidalgo is a Democrat and so is the person who received the contract. Out of an abundance of caution, Hidalgo and the Commissioners Court rescinded the contract. Ogg’s quote served as a wink and a nod to anyone with a pulse suggesting that her office is investigating Hidalgo (Ogg separately brought a case against a different commissioner to a grand jury, which declined to issue an indictment, and now she is investigating the Houston mayor).
Perhaps the best person for Ogg to investigate next is … herself?