Another Texas police officer fled the city while the state was affected by the harsh winter weather, he emerged this week.
Republican state deputy Gary Gates is under fire after flying his private jet to Orlando, Florida on Wednesday, while voters in Fort Bend County are battling water and power shortages, the Houston Chronicle reported.
“It really would have been nice to have a state representative helping out there, working at a heating center, packing food, etc., instead of immediately (flying) on a private plane when things got worse,” Brian Walz, one of the constituents of Gates, he told the newspaper. “My neighbors were unable to do that when the pipe burst.”
Gates said the plumbing had burst in his home as well, and 30% of his home was flooded, insisting with the take that the tour was necessary because of his sick wife and daughter with special needs.
“My wife is still recovering from an illness she has been fighting for two weeks, and my adult daughter’s room, which is mentally handicapped and still lives with us, has flooded,” Gates told the newspaper.
But Fort Bend Star reporter Stefan Modrich said on Twitter that Gates’ chief of staff told him that the representative was on a business trip to Florida, meeting with a “big supplier”.
Gates, who owns several apartment buildings in Houston, told the Chronicle that he met a salesman while he was in Florida, but it was only because he was already there.
He insisted he was able to monitor the Lonestar state power outage crisis in Florida.
The criticism follows the revelation that Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancún, Mexico, with his family while much of the state remained without power and water problems were increasing.
He returned the next day after being punished for fleeing the city while the state was in crisis, and later admitted that the trip was a mistake.