What Is Kim Ogg Hiding From The Public?

Transparency is one of the single most important features of a functional government. With transparency, there is accountability. And with accountability, there can be trust.

Nowhere is that transparency, and the trust that grows out of it, more important than between law enforcement and the community it serves. 

So, it was no surprise when Kimbra Ogg, the Harris County District Attorney, Houston’s chief law enforcement officer, wrote that “transparency” is one of her “guiding principles.” “While mindful of our duty to see that justice is done, as representatives of the people, we will be transparent in our actions,” Ogg wrote.

With such full-throated public commitments to transparency, you’d expect that D.A. Ogg would be willing–happy even–to share details about expensive government contracts that she’s giving to private law firms to do work on behalf of the city. After all, with all of the corruption and self-dealing that permeates local government today, government officials doling out private contracts with taxpayer dollars screams out for more transparency.

It turns out, though, the Ogg’s commitment to another age-old commitment of politicians–hypocrisy–turned out to be more important to her than her pledge to be transparent with your money. 

Houston Watch recently asked Kim Ogg’s office for records related to a government contract she gave to Rachel Palmer Hooper and her fancy, private law firm, Baker Hostetler. 

Instead of transparency, D.A. Ogg tried to block us–and therefore, you–from seeing this important information. In fact, she sent over our request to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to ask him if she is absolutely required under law to turn this information over or if she can choose to hide it instead. 

Ogg did relent and send over a sliver of what Houston Watch asked her to disclose, but much of the details of what the law firm is doing looked like this:

Why do we care about a contract that Kim Ogg has given to a fancy lawyer? Well, Kim Ogg is spending your tax dollars on that contract – a lot of your tax dollars. And Kim Ogg is in the habit of spending a lot of your tax dollars unwisely on fancy, private lawyers. She recently paid Katherine Mize, another high-priced lawyer, $400 per hour to fight an unemployment claim by a prosecutor that Ogg fired when she took office. Perhaps coincidentally, Ms. Mize has made eleven separate campaign donations to Ogg. Mize lost the case, but Houston taxpayers still footed the bill.

And Kim Ogg is again paying a lot of money to a fancy, private lawyer. 

According to the parts of the contract that weren’t blacked out, Kim Ogg agreed to pay the lawyers at Baker Hostetler, $450 per hour, as much as $36,000 per month, up to a total of $216,000. 

Why does Kim Ogg need to hire these outside lawyers at all? And why did she hire Baker Hostetler of all firms, especially when the husband of Rachel Palmer Hooper, the lead partner working for Ogg on the matter, is also an Ogg campaign donor? What is this law firm even doing? And why is it worth a quarter of a million tax dollars? 

We don’t know the answers to any of these questions, because Ogg won’t tell us, so we can’t tell you.

You deserve to know how your elected officials are spending your hard-earned tax dollars. So, we again reached out to Kim Ogg. We asked her to make this information public, not because she is forced to do so by the Attorney General of Texas, but because it’s the right thing to do. 

But Kim Ogg just dodged our request again. 

We’ll keep seeking these records. The people of Houston deserve to know what Ogg is hiding.