Baker Botts takes on White's "Boot the Mentally Retarded" revenue stream
The Chronicle's Melanie Markley reports that Mayor White's efforts to extricate the city from the legal commitment made by previous administrations to a local nonprofit organization that houses mentally retarded people so that he can sell the land to developers has drawn the fire of some big legal guns:
A major Houston law firm has agreed to represent the Center Serving Persons with Mental Retardation pro bono in its fight to remain on prime city property near River Oaks.
Baker Botts lawyer Irv Terrell confirmed Tuesday that his firm volunteered to represent the center after reading that city officials had declared the facility's 99-year lease invalid and were considering selling the land.
"We think the center should stay exactly where it is and continue to provide the services it is providing, and we hope the city agrees with that," Terrell said.
Also, a former city attorney who negotiated long-term agreements with other nonprofits in the early 1960s said the city contracts at the time were viewed more as service agreements rather than landlord-tenant leases, which the city charter limits to no more than 30 years.
John Wildenthal, who was city attorney for former Mayor Louie Welch from 1964-66, said he wasn't involved in the 1963 agreement with the center but negotiated others that allowed nonprofits to lease land for $1 a year in exchange for providing much-needed social services.
Wildenthal said the city agreed to long-term contracts to allow the charitable organizations time to invest in facilities.
"My opinion is that these services were much more valuable to the citizens than the rent would produce on a landlord-tenant basis or a one-shot sale where you spend the money and it's gone," Wildenthal said.
The reasoning behind these sorts of agreements was/is sound -- the city gives a break to nonprofit organizations that provide a social good to the community. The nonprofit delivers some services more efficiently than the city ever could, and the city doesn't have to take on directly either the expense or the liability. It's a win-win situation.
It may well be that some technical language in this agreement (and others) is not as legally precise as some bureaucrats would like, but the fact is that this has never been a problem until now -- and the proposed solution (evicting mentally retarded people to boost developers and the city's coffers) seems way out of line with the "problem" that city officials have allegedly identified (legal technicalities).
If legal technicalities were the only concern, we suspect the city's legal staff and the legal eagles at Baker Botts could hammer out a substitute agreement in no time at all. Instead, we think KPRC-2 described the Mayor's gambit fairly accurately:
City attorneys argue the center's lease is invalid under the city charter, which limits leases to no more than 30 years. City officials want the lucrative property developed to generate more revenue.
And, of course, to boost developers who have recently come to covet this land.
It's Houston, after all, and public officials tend to treat developers very well.
But evicting mentally retarded people to benefit local developers really is going too far.
It's not fair, it's not right, and it's not necessary.
Mayor White needs to back off.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/11/07 11:23 PM | Houston Miscellany | Print | Comments (12)
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