Aiyer pleads guilty to campaign-finance-related charge

The Chronicle's Kristen Mack reports that HCC Trustee Jay Aiyer has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor related to campaign finance:

Houston Community College Trustee Jay Aiyer pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of tampering with a governmental record Thursday and received a year of probation.

Aiyer, one-time candidate for Houston City Council, also must fulfill 160 hours of community service and pay a $750 fine. He also is prohibited from working on any political campaigns during his probation.

Aiyer, 38, a lawyer and former chief of staff for former Mayor Lee Brown, has served as an HCC trustee since 2001.

[snip]

Aiyer originally was charged with a state jail felony, but pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor to avoid a trial.

"It made sense to make peace," Aiyer's lawyer, Dennis Cain, said. "It could have had a massive impact on his future had he pleaded to a felony. It doesn't make sense to risk that kind of exposure. He wanted to put it behind him."

That is some kind of spin from Mr. Cain.

It is difficult to believe that a politician thought to have a bright future would cop a guilty plea to tampering with government documents simply because of the risk of exposure -- unless, of course, "risk of exposure" is translated as "high risk of guilty verdict."

At best, it appears that Aiyer made a mistake -- a really dumb, costly mistake. Indeed, that's the impression given by a part of the legal record reproduced on Miya Shay's KTRK-13 blog (although this is from the prosecutor's perspective):

On April 18th, 2005, Jay Aiyer was notified that a complaint had been filed against him regarding this with the Texas Ethics Commission. Mr. Aiyer was interviewed by HCDA Public Integrity on 11/15/06 and confronted with this information. Mr. Aiyer has told three different stories about when and how he came to file his original schedule F campaign finance report. When confronted with these inconsistencies, Mr. Aiyer came just short of admitting he had stolen the original Schedule F and substituted a more properly filled out one. When asked to tell the truth about what he did, and pointing out what evidences pointed to his tampering with the records, he stated that if he did admit to doing this, it could mean his losing too much.

Kristen Mack reported additional details in an earlier story on the legal charges.

It's an unfortunate and ironic turn of events for Aiyer. It's unfortunate, in that he seemed to have a future in Houston politics (indeed, we praised his willingness to talk about HPD's manpower shortage, back when the Mayor and his Council preferred to ignore the problem). It's ironic that his one-time opponent Sue Lovell's charges against him ultimately led to this outcome, since the appearance of organized labor seemingly purchasing her victory over Aiyer in their Council race also raised legal and ethical questions.

DEEP BACKGROUND: Questions over council candidate's campaign finance (Doug Miller, KHOU-11 News, 04/15/05), HCCS account at root of candidate scrutiny (Kristen Mack, Houston Chronicle, 08/05/05)

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/30/07 03:32 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (10)

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