Ogg Splurges On $5,500 Gala Table

Bad News: It’s your money.

Bring out the bubbly. 

No one in Houston throws a party like Crime Stoppers CEO and Texas style icon Rania Mankarious. 

That’s why District Attorney Kim Ogg wouldn’t miss Rania’s grandest party of the year, the annual Crime Stoppers Gala. And it is grand. $5,500 grand to be exact. 

Back in August, a person named “Mimi” from Crime Stoppers reached out to the District Attorney’s handlers, inviting Ogg to be “our guest” at the gala. Ogg accepted, and agreed to purchase a $5,500 table with her own personal resources. You do you, Kim. It’s a good time and a good cause; and, hey, someone needs to pay for all of the “Breaking Bond” disinformation that Andy Kahan peddles.  

It’s the other $5,500 table that Ogg purchased out of the District Attorney’s Office budget that’s raising eyebrows. “The DAs Office would also like to buy a table to the event for our staff to attend—separate from the invitation to Kim,” Vivian King, Ogg’s Chief of Staff, wrote to Mimi. “Please email me the information to buy a table.” 

This is the same Vivian King who is a board member for Crime Stoppers. King is using her official government position to steer dollars to a private organization for which she also serves as an officer. This isn’t the first time that King’s use of official resources to benefit Crime Stoppers has drawn scrutiny. King also used her government email to provide cheerleading and guidance to Crime Stoppers as it faced a county audit.

But Ms. King’s conflict of interest isn’t the only problem with using taxpayer dollars to fund a lavish night out. There also doesn’t seem to be any policy that guides the office for when it is okay to spend its resources on celebrations or donations as opposed to, say, prosecuting violent crimes. Houston Watch requested the DA’s written policy that covers gala expenditures, but the office told us that “after a reasonably diligent search,” they couldn’t locate such a policy. 

There’s a notorious backlog of criminal cases in Harris County. It can take years for a murder case to go to trial. While Ogg has endured criticism that it’s her own charging practices that sustain the backlog, she contends that her office is so cash strapped that it can’t hire enough prosecutors to push the cases through more quickly. Maybe so. But not cash strapped enough that the office can’t afford—with your taxpayer dollars—to pay over $500 per plate for a lucky few members of her staff to eat, drink, and be merry.