Rumbles
While the Enron trial has captured most of the headlines, a story far more important to the governance of the Bayou City has continued to rumble away just beneath the surface. More about the marathon hearing held Tuesday has come out in the local press. As everyone knows, the Civil Service Commission upheld the firings of all four employees in the Mayor Pro Tem’s office, despite finding that there was no evidence that two of them were invovled in a conspiricy to obtain illegal raises and bonuses.
Commission Chairman Scott Lemond, a labor lawyer, said his group recognized that Mays and Orta were not as culpable as their supervisors, Hernandez and Watkins, who each received about $50,000 in extra pay.
“There was some evidence that (Mays and Orta) may not have understood completely what was going on, that they may have been duped, but nevertheless, they received some benefits that they were not entitled to, and they knew or they should’ve known that they weren’t entitled to those benefits,” Lemond said.
Regardless, Mays and Orta signed government documents they were not authorized to sign, he said, which was cause for termination.
But the questions not answered here are: were they truly not authorized to sign the documents, were the documents in question of any real importance, and would such have normally resulted in their being fired? Remember, it’s Watkins and Hernandez that got the big bucks and signed all the memos necessary to pass out the pay raises, not these two.
Think about it: if your supervisor stuck a piece of paper in front of you and said, “We’ve arranged for you to recieive a raise and some bonus money. Sign here to acknowledge it,” are you going to ask a bunch of questions? Or are you going to run to their bosses and ask a bunch of suspicious questions that you have no evidence to back up?
Mays said during the hearing that he was following orders.
“I regret these events,” he said late Tuesday. “I didn’t know or believe that I was doing anything wrong.”
We like to make fun of the “just following orders” rationale in today’s world, but this isn’t gassing Jews, this is doing your job, getting extra pay, and not pissing off the bosses.
Are they innocent? Honestly, I doubt it. They probably knew it was outside policy and procedure, though they may not have realized it was illegal. I do not believe they had a clue just how much money their bosses were helping themselves to.
However, we may never get to see the evidence and make a judgement for ourselves, because the city is trying to bury it, even though it used the records (public documents, I remind you) in the hearings. Their excuse? A TPIA exemption for materials used as evidence in criminal investigations. It’s a loophole that the law doesn’t specify that documents that would otherwise be public remain so; under Texas law, any agency can refuse to supply public documents by claiming they’re part of a criminal inquiry.
Mayor Bill White said he was not surprised by the commission’s decision.
He and his staff are now reviewing whether the city should, at the request of reporters, release the documents used against the employees during the hearing.
The city has said it would withhold the documents, which contain payroll files, e-mails and other records that could shed further light on the pro tem scandal, in deference to the ongoing investigation by Harris County prosecutors.
But witnesses during Tuesday’s hearing repeatedly referred to the files, and even read from them. Attorneys for the employees, the presumed targets of the criminal probe, were allowed to review the documents for more than 15 hours.
But they weren’t allowed to remove them from the room.
The whole point of the exemption is to keep defense lawyers from doing an end-around of the discovery process or “peeking” at what the prosecution or police have found; the ability of suspects and their lawyers to do so would compromise criminal inquiries. “What? they know about that? Better change things to cover myself better.” Except in this case, the Gang of Four have already gained access to these materials through the civil service procedures, and as “suspects,” they have no ability to alter future operations in order to avoid incrimination — as terminated indefinately suspended employees, they have no way to change anything now.
In other words, the City of Houston is exploiting a loophole to keep this information out of the public’s hands, not the defendants. That’s public, as in you and me. How far will they push their refusal to answer questions from the local media? One hopes they won’t go this far:
Commenter ngharrah wrote:
Well it’s case number 97-22132 and it involves a former co-worker of Rosie Hernandez’s who like Rosie became aware that misappropriation of City funds were being funneled into a City Department Director’s campaign fund by way of an employee’s raise (not Rosie) and the contributions that were making their way into the Department Director’s campaign for a County office were being left unreported on [1996] campaign finance reports.
The employee reported the unreported campaign contributions to the Harris County DA’s office at the time and the Harris County DA’s office in turn contacted the City Director and the Division Manager concerning the unreported contributions.
In fact, if the case file is examined, it will show that unlike Rosie Hernandez, the employee had filed a grievance concerning the misappropriated/unreported monies–and that grievance was NEVER HEARD–instead the City terminated the employee. The City Department Director simply did not take the time nor make the effort to listen to the grievance and fired the employee instead.
During the trial phase of the case (97-22132) trial subpoenas were issued and trial subpoena after trial subpoena were ignored in an effort to conceal the money route.
As anyone following the comments knows, I have questioned ngharrah in order to determine the facts surrounding this case, and the answers have been quite detailed and credible. Further posts will be forthcoming on this matter, but now you know how far the City will go; it will even disobey valid subpeonas to produce evidence in court. What’s a mere TPIA request to that? Will the city hire more lawyers to fight attempts to obtain this information, or just clam up and kick it to the AG’s office like Metro?
As for legal help, I don’t know how Hayes and Orta are going to pay for theirs, but Alvarado is looking for a few good (and loaded) friends to help out:
In related news Wednesday, it was disclosed that Alvarado could benefit from a new legal fund established in her name. Former state representative Al Luna established the fund to help the councilwoman, who testified under oath Tuesday, pay legal expenses that have mounted since she hired prominent lawyer Rusty Hardin.
“It’s a way for me and a lot of her friends — and she’s got a lot of friends — to help and try to keep her focused on representing her constituents,” said Luna, who’s known Alvarado almost 20 years.
Yeah, it’s hard to focus on representing constituents from the inside of a jail cell. Which is where perjury can land someone if they were to commit it….