Texas Watchdog‘s Steve Miller reports that the City Controller finally has obtained requested documents from the nonprofit spinoff of the Houston Airport System. The nonprofit had previously rebuffed efforts by City Controller, one councilmember, and Texas Watchdog to examine the information.
The press office for Mayor Bill White, which just last week told Texas Watchdog that the mayor’s office had also been unable to obtain the requested information, apparently misled the media:
In a letter accompanying the release of the financial documents to Parker this week, [HASDC attorney Hank] Coleman notes that the records “were provided to the Mayor three weeks ago on June 26.”
But as late as last week the mayor’s spokesman Patrick Trahan told Texas Watchdog, in response to requests for HASDC financial records, that the mayor’s office did not have the documents.
On Wednesday, he explained that the records likely went directly through his office to a third party that is reviewing the HASDC financial records for the city.
This must be the latest example of how transparency works when you’re busy “running the city like a business,” as Senate Candidate Bill White is fond of telling the folks around Texas.
That bolded bit of “oh-by-the-way” news from the mayor’s press office is interesting as well. Here is more:
The mayor initially said in May that the review would be conducted by [Anthony] Hall. A group of business experts is now conducting the review, according to the mayor’s office.
“For Mr. Hall to do this would be a conflict of interest,” Trahan said. “Anthony is not doing the review.”
Texas Watchdog has additional questions into the mayor’s office concerning what the conflict might be and who, specifically, is conducting the internal review.
We first criticized the mayor’s selection of Hall to conduct this audit on June 28, and called for an independent review committee to be appointed on July 9 and again on July 14. We’re pleased that Mayor White has come around to our view on Hall’s role in the audit, especially since it seems to have flown under the radar of the Chronicle editorial board and metro/state columnists Rick Casey and Lisa Falkenberg.
The next step in transparency (as we understand the term) would be answering Texas Watchdog‘s questions about the exact composition of the “group of business experts” now conducting this review and questions about how much money this consulting effort will cost the city (especially important in light of recent controversies over the mayor’s consulting picks).
UPDATE (07/25/09): As noted in the comments, Texas Watchdog filed a story Friday night that updates the information above. The two key bits of information are:
- The City is using the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm to review HASDC financial activities.
- Mayoral press staffer Patrick Trahan now claims he “misspoke” in the earlier Texas Watchdog story, and now says that City Hall insider Anthony Hall is “still over the review” and that there is no conflict of interest.
Huh?
As previous reporting has noted, Anthony Hall was involved in approving some of Vacar’s activities. As we have argued previously, that alone means Anthony Hall should not be a part of any audit of Vacar’s activities (aside from providing any requested information to the auditors). He certainly should not be “over the review” (whatever that means).
Furthermore, Trahan’s change of tune raises another issue. He previously told Texas Watchdog that the mayor’s office hadn’t been able to obtain the requested financial information from HASDC. Documents later showed that the mayor’s office had been in possession of those documents for weeks. When Trahan was asked why he said the mayor’s office couldn’t obtain the documents when clearly HASDC had provided the mayor’s office those documents, Trahan told Texas Watchdog that it was because Anthony Hall was no longer involved and the documents had apparently simply been forwarded on to the firm conducting the audit. But if that story isn’t true (or someone “misspoke”), and Hall is still involved, then we are back to the question of why Mayor White’s press office misled the press about documents in their possession.
Somebody in Mayor White’s press shop, which loves to tout the administration’s transparency, needs to get the story straight!
