THIS is a big part of the background/problem, regardless of which party "ran the place".
The "politics of less government" works in the short term, but can carry very large long-term risks like this. Houston has been trying to play 'catch up' on drainage systems for many years, but when zoning hasn't historically allowed any sort of planning, it ALWAYS costs more to fix retroactively, as opposed to proactively.
You can blame the Dems or Reps (whoever was in charge over the years) all day, but the bottom line is that the short-sighted policy of no zoning for proper draining, in a coastal city that can/will flood with any hurricane is a big contributor here.
That said....NO amount of planning was going to avoid flooding of epic proportions (50+" of rain), the likes of which no US city has ever seen.
And, yes, we CAN attribute some of that to climate change (NOT the event itself, but the MAGNITUDE of the event), as scientists have been telling us for many many years that 'extreme weather events become much more likely in a warmer climate'. We saw this in Boulder 2-3 years ago, when we got nearly 20" of rain in a few days (entire year's worth) due to an odd blocking pattern. And that, like Houston, blew prior records completely away. Just like Houston, it was something like 2x the previous record rainfall for a short period.
