The Brown Administration legacy grows

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With the trip out of town and the Katrina blogging last week, I neglected to mention that the legacy of the Lee Brown Administration managed to grow just a bit more.

The Chronicle‘s Dan Feldstein, who has provided good reporting on this story, wrote:

Former city of Houston official Monique McGilbra was sentenced to three years in federal prison Friday for accepting bribes from a Cleveland businessman, while former mayoral chief of staff Oliver Spellman got probation for a similar crime.

McGilbra apparently earned the disdain of U.S. District Judge James Gwin in his Cleveland courtroom, insisting that she thought the gifts she accepted from businessmen seeking city work were purely part of dating.

In a trial against the businessman this summer, she testified that she took gifts from five people or companies seeking business with the city building services department she supervised.

McGilbra told Gwin at her sentencing that she was “a woman, a mother and a lover” and that it shouldn’t be a crime to have expensive tastes, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

“My involvement with the men in this case was primarily personal that became business. There were personal advances. I never had my position or City Hall for sale,” she told the judge.

Judge Gwin apparently was not swayed by that argument.

Later, the Chronicle‘s Harvey Rice checked in with Houston sentencing:

A former Houston city official was sentenced to two years and six months in federal prison today for accepting cash and gifts from businesses seeking her influence in gaining lucrative city contracts.

[snip]

[Monique] McGilbra, 41, is the second Houston city official to plead guilty in a continuing investigation that began in Cleveland and expanded to include Houston and New Orleans.

Oliver Spellman, 51, chief of staff to former Mayor Lee Brown, received probation and a $10,000 fine Friday in Cleveland federal court for taking a $2,000 bribe from a Cleveland consultant.

U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore said McGilbra’s Houston sentence will run at the same time as the Cleveland sentence, meaning she will spend no more than three years in prison.

McGilbra was more repentant in her statement to Gilmore than in her statement to U.S. District Judge James Gwin in Cleveland, who was unmoved when she told him that having expensive tastes shouldn’t be a crime.

“I’d like to say how regretful and sorrowful I am,” McGilbra told Gilmore. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make amends for that.”

[snip]

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Gallagher and Mary Butler, a prosecutor with the Department of Justice’s public integrity unit, told Gilmore McGilbra was cooperating in an ongoing investigation.

“We are striving to discover the extent of corruption and we are not going to leave any stone unturned,” Gallagher said outside the courtroom.

The legacy could grow even more.


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