Witness Mayor White's business expertise
You know how Mayor White loves to talk about how he runs the city like a business?
He's fond of using his management experience as a selling point in his senate campaign. Today's Chronicle story of how the feds raided a Southeast Houston waste facility contains a nice little example of that expertise:
The city sued the company in January, initially seeking to temporarily shut down the Griggs plant.
The two sides settled the next month, with CES agreeing to pay the city more than $100,000 to move some operations away from the facility and to put an end to the odors.[snip]
Last week, Mayor Bill White defended the city's oft-questioned decision to settle with CES.
“We took action which was pretty aggressive, at least by historical city standards,” he said. As a result of the settlement, CES agreed to move “a significant portion” of its operations to another location.
“I know that various attorneys and inspectors have been on it,” White said. “The aggressive action we've taken has been vindicated.”
He wielded the power of his office to get a little revenue for the city, and then he walked away.* A few months later, after the feds swept in to shut things down, Mayor White became defensive (as he tends to do) when questioned about his administration's handling of the settlement, and used his standard "we were aggressive/tough" line -- a usual indicator that he's been neither.
But hey, he garnered $100,000 for the city. And by "historical" standards, he was aggressive. What more can Texans ask for?
*Perhaps the neighboring residents are not what the Chronicle's editorial board would call "well-heeled, civically-active voters," therefore not as deserving of Mayor White's attention as, say, Ashby high-rise opponents.
Photo of Houston Mayor Bill White by flickr user STANANDLOU, used via a Creative Commons license.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 08/09/09 04:59 PM | Print | Comments (2)
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