Last week Matt Stiles reported on emails that pointed to city staffers helping arrange meetings between Councilwoman Carol Alvarado and a San Antonio businessman. Here is what Alvarado’s spokesman Joe Householder said of the councilwoman’s outside work:
Householder said the councilwoman made about $73,000 since 2002 as a consultant for a few businesses on non-city work. Much of that money came from Rodriguez, but she did little consulting work in 2005, he said.
Householder said he did not know the circumstances of Alvarado’s request to her chief of staff to give Rodriguez a ride.
Householder said Alvarado never got paid to help Rodriguez or his clients with city-related business.
Now KTRK-13 has obtained more emails and they paint a less certain picture:
Besides her work at city hall, Alvarado is a consultant for a San Antonio businessman named Rudy Rodriguez. Her staff confirmed that in the past three years, Rodriguez paid Alvarado approximately $72,000 for what it calls ‘outside consulting.’ But from the emails we found, it’s clear that Rodriguez had an interest in Houston’s city hall and potential contracts. One appears to be a duty-free airport concessions agreement.
And KTRK’s Miya Shay has the emails to back up those assertions:
In an email to Alvarado in 2004, Rodriguez writes about Simon Falic, the CEO of a company called Duty Free Americas.
“We need to be prepared to discuss the current status of duty free vender at Bush.”
Later, a follow-up email from Alvarado’s scheduler asks…
“Do you want to meet with Rodriguez and Falic in your office?”
Here is the email referenced above (there are more emails in the story) :
—–Original Message—–
From: rudy( ***)
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 9:04 AM
Cc: Carol Alvarado
Subject:Simon falic – duty free – tomorrow 3.30 – we need to be prepared to discuss current status of df vendor at bush
i need your direction as to making contact with m moore – ellis told him he was not in favor of extending the current df contract for any reason but would like to discuss how falic might propose something that got the cit new vendor as well as its past due money from current vendor
ellis also suggested meeting with nini foxhall at continental – please advise.
i will spend night wed night
M Moore refers to Mayor White’s chief of staff, Michael Moore.
Mayor White’s response:
We showed Mayor Bill White what we found.
“I think the red flag is if Councilmember Alvarado was paid to specifically arrange a meeting with somebody at city hall. That would not be proper,” he said. “But I have no evidence that that was done.”
[snip]
Mayor White maintains he doesn’t know if Alvarado did anything improper, but admits…
“It doesn’t look good,” he told us. “I’ll say that.”
And Alvarado says:
“…that work was not related to the city of Houston and I am confident that I have always upheld the highest ethical standards.”
The councilwoman’s actions don’t look good and the emails KTRK obtained certainly cloud the issue even further. And the Chronicle editorial board’s hopes for this whole untidy mess to go away are dashed again.
(Thanks to bH reader Joe for the heads up on the story.)
