Harris County Adopted Budget · FY2024–FY2027 · 83 departments and the General Fund reserve

Where Harris County's Money Goes

Every county department, ranked and drawn to one scale. Each row runs from one year’s adopted budget to the next, so you can read a department’s size and its change from the same mark. It opens on FY2026 adopted → FY2027 proposed, the budget voted on 17 September 2026. Use Compare for earlier years, or to see adopted against actual spending.

Which budget is this?

The budget in the news, $3.1 billion approved 17 September 2026 alongside a 7.6% property tax rate increase, is FY2027 (1 October 2026 – 30 September 2027). The FY2027 Proposed Budget, version 3, is dated 17 September and states: “the proposed budget is $3,095M.” That figure is the General Fund’s 81 departments only. The Working Capital reserve ($256M) comes on top, for $3,351M. The FY2027 figures here are the proposed version put to the Court. Amendments made at the vote may make the adopted numbers differ slightly. The same book says the budget raises $210.7M more in property tax than last year (+8.1%), of which $54.4M comes from new property added to the tax roll.

The ledger

Sorted largest first. The hollow dot is the earlier year, the filled dot the later one, and the connector is the change: orange where the line grew, purple where it shrank. The colors mark direction only, not good or bad. The FY2026 and FY2027 views cover the General Fund only, because that is all those books break out by department. The actual views redraw every row as adopted → actually spent, with a dark tick at the amended budget: the adopted figure after the Court’s changes during the year. Hover any row for the detail behind it.

Department
Change $
Change %

What the FY2027 increase pays for

Every department page in the FY2027 Volume II has a change table listing each adjustment from FY2026 adopted to FY2027 proposed. All 81 General Fund tables were read and grouped by cause. Together they add up to the $326.0M department increase exactly. The grouping is this page’s, done by keyword. The line items are the county’s.

Roughly $185M, over half, is pay and benefits: group health, year 2 of law-enforcement pay parity, pay equity, and law-enforcement staffing, less a pension adjustment. “One-time savings restored” is a single $69.3M General Administration line labeled “One Time Savings and Special Fund Restoration.” It appears to reverse one-time measures used to balance FY2026, but the book doesn’t explain it further. TIRZ payments ($30M) are tax-increment payments to reinvestment zones. Two items are pure transfers between departments and net to zero: $26.2M of contract patrol moves from General Administration to the constables and Sheriff, and $15M of indigent defense moves from court-appointed attorneys to the Public Defender.

What the tax rate raises

The FY2027 budget assumes the county sets the highest rate allowed without an election (the voter-approval rate). Compared with the no-new-revenue rate, the one that would raise the same money from existing property as last year, it adds roughly $130M–$205M to the General Fund. Even at that maximum rate, the county’s own forecast still showed a $181M shortfall. That shortfall, not the rate increase, is the ~$180M in the news.

County rate per $100 of value2025 adopted2026 no-new-revenue2026 recommended
Operations (M&O)—$0.33313$0.36396
Debt service—$0.05354$0.05354
County total$0.38096$0.38667$0.41750

What this data is, and what it can’t settle

  1. FY2027: departments +$326M (+11.8%), and the reserve −$89M. Departments rise from $2,769M adopted in FY2026 to $3,095M proposed. The Working Capital reserve falls from $345M to $256M. Including the reserve, the General Fund grows $237M, or 7.6%. That matching 7.6% is a coincidence: the tax rate increase measures something else.
  2. Constables +$79M (+27%) and Sheriff +$74M in FY2027, nearly all labor. Precinct 4 alone rises $28.1M, from $83.2M to $111.4M. Its change table: $12.2M contract patrol moved in from General Administration, $6.0M year 2 pay parity, $5.6M staffing, $3.7M group health. Contract patrol revenue is projected $8M higher in the same budget.
  3. More than half of the FY2026 General Fund increase is the reserve. The General Fund went from $2,907M adopted in FY2025 to $3,114M in FY2026, up $207M (+7.1%). The department lines together rose $100M (+3.7%). The Working Capital reserve rose $107M, from $238M to $345M. A reserve is money held back, not spent on a program, so how big it should be is a separate question from what the departments need.
  4. Code 202 is two lines, and even the county’s own figures for it disagree. The books list General Administration and the Working Capital reserve under the same code, 202. Working Capital sits outside the department total. The FY2027 Volume II describes General Administration as “expenditures that cannot be allocated to a specific department… and it also includes the County’s capital reserve”: countywide costs like $30M of TIRZ payments and a $30M compensation study. It also holds central pools that are later handed out to departments. The Auditor’s ledger confirms it works as a pool: it starts General Administration at $305.0M in FY2024 and $388.5M in FY2025, because it counts most of Working Capital there, not just the $55.6M and $231.5M in the budget book. The Court then took $92.7M and $130.2M out of it during those years to fund other departments. In FY2027, $26.2M of contract patrol and $57.3M of pay equity move out of 202 and into department lines up front. Its FY2026 adopted figure appears as $193.9M (Volume I), $338.6M and $450.0M (two tables on the same Volume II page). The $450.0M reconciles exactly: $193.9M plus the $345.1M Working Capital reserve, minus the $88.9M carried over to the County Judge and commissioner precincts. The $338.6M doesn’t: that change table adds the same unexplained $144.7M to both its starting and ending figures. FY2027 proposed is $221.3M.
  5. Adopted budgets understate what the county spends. The Court tops departments up during the year, and in FY2025 no department spent beyond its amended budget. The County Auditor’s year-end reports list each department’s original and amended (“adjusted”) budget. FY2025: 30 departments spent $133M above what was adopted, but amendments had added $204M to 70 departments, mostly by taking $130M from General Administration. Against the amended budgets, the only excess anywhere is $2,390 in Community Supervision. FY2024 is the same pattern: $150M added to 50 departments, $93M of it from General Administration. Two lines ended slightly beyond their amended budgets that year: County Courts appointed attorneys ($1.6M) and Constable Precinct 1 ($0.05M). So the gap between adopted and actual is not overspending. The departments were budgeted low at adoption and funded properly mid-year, largely from money parked in General Administration. For the tax debate, that means the adopted department figures understate what the county actually commits to spend.
  6. What these figures can’t show: the individual transfers. The Auditor’s report gives each department’s amended total, not the orders that moved the money. Those would be Commissioners Court agenda items, and state law lets the Court delegate some transfers to the budget officer, so not every move reaches an agenda. The amended budgets and the Auditor’s spending figures are unaudited, on a budgetary basis, and differ from the budget books’ actuals by small amounts.
  7. Court-appointed attorney fees are adopted far below what they cost, then amended up. District courts (701): adopted $63.5M in FY2024, amended to $82.3M, spent $82.3M. FY2025: adopted $53.5M, amended to $98.3M, spent $98.0M. County courts (941): adopted $9.6M and then $5.6M, amended to $19.8M and $24.7M, spent $21.4M and $24.6M. Both FY2025 adopted figures were below the FY2023 actuals already on the books. FY2026 adopts $87.5M and $15.6M, still below FY2025 spending. FY2027 cuts 701 to $72.5M: the book says $15M moves to the Public Defender, which is growing to take 50% of all case assignments, and the Public Defender rises $17.3M. Whether that shift actually lowers appointed-attorney spending is the thing to watch. These are court-ordered costs for defendants who can’t afford a lawyer, and the county does not set the caseload.
  8. Constables spend above adopted and are amended up to match. Precinct 4, the largest: adopted $66.4M, amended to $79.8M, spent $75.6M in FY2024. FY2025: adopted $67.5M, amended to $86.5M, spent $82.4M. Precincts 1, 3 and 5 follow the same pattern. Precincts 6, 7 and 8 stay close to adopted. Part of the explanation shows up in FY2027: $26.2M of contract patrol money, which had been held in General Administration, moves into the constable and Sheriff lines. Contract patrol means neighborhoods paying for extra deputies, and the county records that payment as revenue.
  9. The labor share of FY2024→FY2025 growth depends on which rows you count. Across all 83 departments, $77M of the $403M increase is labor (19%). Two rows carry most of the rest: General Administration (+$176M) and Flood Control (+$113M). Without those two, labor is 57% of the growth. For the General Fund alone it is 27%. Counting the reserve, which fell $100M, total growth is $303M. Labor dollars also include raises, not just hiring: budgeted positions rose from 30,918 to 31,840 (+3%).
  10. Flood Control is a separate taxing entity. The Harris County Flood Control District levies its own property tax, separate from the county rate the 7.6% increase applies to. Its jump from $128.2M to $241.1M adopted, including $101M under “Administration and Support Services,” is a real question, but not one for the county tax-rate debate. Use the Fund filter to set it aside.
  11. Sheriff – Medical drops from $108.6M to $30.1M in FY2026 because it moved to another tax. The FY2027 book says $78M of jail medical costs were “moved to the Harris Health System tax rate” in FY2026. The county’s budget shrinks, but taxpayers still pay those costs through the Hospital District’s rate. That rate’s recommended operations component is itself up, from $0.17250 (no-new-revenue) to $0.18086. It is not a saving.
  12. Adopted is not spent. FY2024, FY2025 and FY2026 here are adopted figures and FY2027 is proposed, meaning what Commissioners Court authorized. FY2023 is an actual. Actuals are from the budget books: budgetary basis and unaudited. The audited annual financial report uses a different accounting basis and won’t tie to these figures.
  13. SFY2022 is a seven-month year and is deliberately absent. Harris County moved its fiscal year from March–February to October–September in 2022, which required a 7-month transition year (1 March – 30 September 2022). Any chart that puts SFY2022 on the same axis as a full year invents a roughly 40% jump that never happened.
  14. Five lines are pass-throughs with no county payroll. District and County Courts Court Appointed Attorney Fees (701, 941), the Appraisal District (091), The Harris Center for Mental Health (296), and Universal Services Utilities & Leases (298) carry zero budgeted positions. They are shown as 100% non-labor. Non-labor is computed as total minus labor for every department, because the source omits the non-labor rows for Toll Road and Flood Control.
  15. Coverage differs by view. The FY2024→FY2025 view covers four funds: General Fund, Toll Road Maintenance, Flood General, and Tunnel & Ferry. Toll Road is paid for by tolls, not property tax. The FY2026, FY2027 and actual views cover the General Fund only (81 departments), because that is what the later books break out. Toll Road and Flood Control drop out of those views.
  16. Where the Working Capital reserve actually sits. The Auditor’s ledger splits FY2025’s $237.6M Working Capital line between General Administration (+$157.0M) and the four commissioner precincts (+$80.7M). That $80.7M is the budget book’s “Commissioners Court Allocation” ($80.6M, “75% of estimated beginning balance”): each precinct’s unspent balance carried forward. It doesn’t double-count the department lines, but it is why the precincts’ amended budgets (about $86M for Precinct 1) sit far above their adopted $44M. For those five lines, the chart hides the amended tick, because it would mislead.
  17. Not in this data at all: debt service, capital projects, the Hospital District, and grant-funded programs run outside these department lines. A “total county budget” quoted anywhere else almost certainly counts differently than this page does.