Harris County $11 Million Vaccine Outreach Contract to One-Woman Firm Draws Scrutiny.

Last month tempers flared at Harris County Commissioners Court after County Judge Lina Hidalgo (D) accused Commissioner Jack Cagle (R-Pct. 4) of telling a “bold-faced lie” when he referred to a vendor as a “one-woman company.”
Although the expenditure had been approved months earlier in a 4 to 1 vote, little information had been provided to commissioners about Elevate Strategies, LLC, the winner of a $10.9 million contract to conduct vaccine outreach.

It was not until August that commissioners learned that the company was only founded in 2019, listed a Montrose apartment as its business address, and only consisted of one person: Felicity Pereyra, a former deputy campaign manager for Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2) and former employee of both the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Now documents from the county indicate that prior to evaluations, members of the contract committee from Hidalgo’s office requested changes to the experience and qualifications required to bid on the project.

For example, a requirement that firms have “a minimum of five years of demonstrated experience conducting quantitative and qualitative evaluations of large as well as small scale public health…media engagement,” was changed to a “minimum of three years preferred.”

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