Lina Hidalgo, County Judge, Harris County

In an interview with Invest:, Lina Hidalgo, county judge of Harris County, discussed Harris County’s economic momentum, infrastructure priorities, major industry drivers, and workforce investments. “Companies need different kinds of workers and certain training, including technical skills and skills acquired through apprenticeships. That is something we are investing in,” Hidalgo said.

How would you describe Harris County’s economy today?

Like a lot of counties and regions around the world, we are growing. We have a young population, many opportunities for economic development, and we are getting more beautiful by the day.

Those of us who have been here at least 10 years can see all the beautiful parks, amenities, murals, infrastructure, and how much better Harris County is becoming as a place to attract employees and, through that, businesses as well.

Which industries and economic drivers are giving Harris County momentum, and where do you see more opportunity moving forward?

Obviously, the petrochemical industry is a big one for us. The energy industry as a whole is important. We have many investments in clean energy, and we continue to be known as a place where those kinds of investments and innovations happen.

It is great that even the oil and gas industry recognizes the need to diversify and get ahead of the curve. To me, that secures a future for our workers in those industries.

There is also a lot of international investment in that area. We just returned from a trade mission in Europe with the three countries that are going to be playing World Cup games here in our county stadium at NRG Park: Portugal, Germany, and the Netherlands. A lot of the conversations were around energy, the future of energy, and the connections they would like to make.

Medtech is another big one. With the innovation and development around the medical center and the research taking place here, we continue to be a destination for care and research.

With the Orion mission and Artemis, NASA has been brought back onto everybody’s radar. The push to the moon is reviving things in a way that perhaps had not stalled, but had slowed down over the past few years. That is exciting, and the spaceport we have is a great opportunity for continued growth.

Another area is AI. Everybody is excited about what this will turn into and how communities can get into this revenue source. For many communities and many of my counterparts around the country, the concern is AI servers and how they impact the environment. There have been offsets and negotiations with companies, but it can be a little bit fraught.

What we have been able to do here in Harris County is become the hub for the development of the servers themselves. We then sell them and build the hubs elsewhere. At the end of last year, Apple announced an investment in Foxconn, specifically here in Harris County.

Apple does not tend to talk about its subsidiaries or contractors. People who are in the know understand Foxconn, but Apple put out a press release about that just as we had left Taiwan. We are in conversations with Foxconn and Inventec, both working on AI servers, about their commitments to continue growing in Harris County, particularly in the northwest part of the county.

The bigger concern for everybody is workforce. Companies need different kinds of workers and certain training, including technical skills and skills acquired through apprenticeships. That is something we are investing in.

Transportation is also an issue. The lack of public transit becomes a challenge. I have tried to advocate as much as possible for bus rapid transit, something where we would not need to build a whole lot of anything. Unfortunately, it is one of the areas where I have not been able to get much traction from the state. But it is certainly something employers mention because they need their employees to be able to get where they need to go, and they need young people who do not want a car to want to come here. We have a lot of opportunities for growth.

What progress has been made on key flooding infrastructure projects, and how are you managing federal funding to keep those efforts on track?

One of our big wins last year was that voters approved funding to better maintain our flood control projects. People who live here know we have channels and bayous that convey the water out of populated areas. Those channels need to be maintained, and they were on a cycle that was not viable, but we did not have the funding for that maintenance. That vote was a big deal.

Voters also approved a $2.5 billion bond for flood control projects right before I came into office. After I came into office, I made an effort to have an outside expert group determine how we could get projects done more quickly. The projects that we could speed up, we have sped up. We have finished about half of them, and others are in progress.

Something else I am proud of is federal funding. Congress had allocated just over $4 billion in federal funding for flood control. Right after Hurricane Harvey, the understanding was that $1 billion would come to Harris County, $1 billion would go to the city of Houston, and the rest would go to other impacted areas.

We found out in 2020 and 2021 that the state agency that was to manage those funds had decided not to send the billion dollars to Harris County and the billion dollars to Houston. My colleague Rodney Ellis and I spent quite a bit of time in Washington, D.C., and advocated with then-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge. We were able to get a direct allocation of the funding.

Normally, they send funding to the states to then send to counties. We were able to obtain an exception so that Harris County received $750 million directly. The city of Houston was not able to secure its billion dollars. Obviously, we received $750 million rather than $1 billion, but starting at zero, that is a lot.

Right now, I am focused on making sure the projects that use that federal funding are finished on time so that we do not have any funds clawed back.

With the FIFA World Cup coming, what role do you see Harris County playing in that event, and how are you preparing to capture the economic benefits?

FIFA is enormous for us. It is hard for people to imagine that it is like seven Super Bowls in one. We have so many fans, and the majority of the world is going to tune into this.

FIFA has its way of doing things, and they are successful in their processes. One of their requirements is that they do not do co-branding. It is FIFA, and it is FIFA. But they made an exception for us to co-brand an area that is FIFA and NASA. It is an activity that is going to be in our Fan Fest area.

We have worked hard to make sure everybody inside and outside the stadium has a great experience. We are also going to have a Fan Fest in the East End, and it is going to run every single day for every game. We are going to have misting areas all around the stadium because it is going to be hot, and we are going to have a lot of entertainment. We will be able to watch the matches together.

What else would you like to highlight about Harris County’s priorities?

One of the things I am proud of is changing the operating model in Harris County when it comes to workforce and human resources. We have made some really big investments in apprenticeship training. We have already trained over a thousand apprentices specifically in the kinds of trades that businesses are looking for.

We also made a $150 million investment in early childhood education, which allows people to work. Within the county, we are equalizing things so that a clerk in one department is the same as a clerk in another department, and we have a clear division of responsibilities.

We have parental leave and proper systems that did not exist before I arrived. It was quite antiquated. We did not have a county administrator, the equivalent of a CEO. It was just a board overseeing dozens of departments.

I am proud of that because we have 20,000 employees in Harris County. That ups the level of professionalism and also the people we are able to recruit and retain.

There is also support for the community when it comes to early childhood, better flood control, and public safety. On the business side, we have worked on tax abatement policies and industrial revenue bonds. We are trying to be a one-stop shop for investments coming into Harris County, much of it international investment.