The Chron’s Carolyn Feibel put up a great blog post on the Houston Politics blog today. It’s not a long post — six paragraphs — but since the subject of the post is Carol Alvarado, it’s just chock full of good stuff:
Carol Alvarado really did look kind of relieved today, after two of her former employees at City Hall reached a plea deal today in an embezzlement case.
“The plea agreements validate what I said two years ago, that I neither authorized or condoned this illegal activity,” Alvarado said. “I’m glad to see there will be a repayment of sorts to the taxpayers. This has been going on for two years, and I’m glad we’re able to finally move on.”
The judge ordered the two employees to pay back the city and to apologize to Alvarado.
“I will gladly accept that apology,” she said. “I feel like individuals broke my trust and took advantage of the system we had in place for the pro tem office and betrayed me and the taxpayers of Houston.”
Alvarado, who is working as METRO consultant now, also took some questions on the just announced news that the planned East Side light rail line will stop six blocks short of the Magnolia Transit Center. Now the city and the agency are scrambling for federal money to try to build a bridge for the light rail over the train tracks that block it.
“I think everybody’s going to have to pitch in, the city certainly, but talking to Congressman Gene Green, he’s going to be working on securing some federal funding and we also have support from the Greater Rail Task Force,” Alvardo said.
Egads.
Regarding the illegal activity of her staffers, the complaint was that her managerial ineptitude contributed to an atmosphere that allowed the illegal activity to occur. As Kevin Whited noted at the height of the scandal:
Alvarado’s lack of oversight and inattention to detail seem to have allowed $130,000 of the people’s money to be stolen. That’s not the same as Alvarado stealing the money herself, and nobody is making that accusation against her. However, it does call into question her personnel-judgment and fiscal-management skills.
If she feels vindicated, then she doesn’t grasp what the real problem was. That’s not encouraging, but it is predictable.
As for the revelation that she’s working for METRO, what kind of a consultant is she? Is it anything like this? Will she stay on as a consultant after she’s elected to Rick Noriega’s old seat?
And she really was serious when she said term limits have deprived Houston of her greatness. She’s still telling Mayor White what to do, as evidenced by her matter-of-fact statement that the city will “certainly” have to pitch in to get that bridge built.
BLOGVERSATION: TBIFOC.
