Mayor White clears way for Alvarado to regain Mayor Pro Tem title
Last week on the Chron's City Hall blog, Matt Stiles noted a change that's coming to the Mayor Pro Tem office; specifically, administrative duties will now be handled by the city's finance department, as opposed to Mayor Pro Tem staffers. This change comes about as a result of (still temporarily not Mayor Pro Tem) Carol Alvarado's lax oversight of the office while she was in charge:
The idea is to improve oversight by having career finance officials, rather than political appointees, handle the paperwork, payroll and other duties handled by the office. Here's White's take from an interview today:
There is a strong argument and sentiment by council members that there ought to be both responsibility and accountability in a regular city department for the administrative functions in the office.... I don't think any council member welcomes or wants that responsibility.
The plan has the backing of "temporary" Mayor Pro Tem and At-Large 5 Councilman Michael Berry, who outlined the proposed changes in a memo to White [PDF]. He has been running the operation, with the help of an experienced aide from his office, since March.
That's when former Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado, who supervised the four accused employees, stepped down "temporarily" amid an investigation. Prosecutors have cleared her of wrongdoing on the bonuses, but a broader probe into other city officials and procedures continues.
The council sets annual budget totals for each of the 14 offices, and the Office of Mayor Pro Tem has allowed council members some freedom in spending that money under Houston's strong-mayor system.
Not everyone thinks the change is a good idea, however:
Former at-large Councilwoman Gracie Saenz, a lawyer who served as pro tem during the Bob Lanier administration, said:
It is a very strong mayoral form of government. Heaven forbid that anybody gets crossways with the mayor, and that this could be used against a council member. I'm sure that would never happen, but it needs to be discussed.
And former Councilman Gordon Quan, who served as pro tem during the Lee Brown administration, said the change might not be disruptive. But he said it would strip the council members' autonomy in monitoring their offices:
I don't know whether one bad episode means we have to change the whole system.
Well, yes, one bad episode DOES mean drastic changes must occur. That's how Mayor White operates, and managerially-challenged Councilwoman Carol Alvarado agrees:
Alvarado, who knows firsthand the difficulties of maintaining a council office while also overseeing her colleagues' operations, said the mayor's change is "the right thing to do."
Which means she could soon be Mayor Pro Tem again, without having any of that pesky management oversight nonsense to bog her down.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 04/22/07 09:47 AM | Print |
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
ADVERTISING
DISCLAIMER
All content © 2004-09, blogHOUSTON and the respective authors.
blogHOUSTON.net is powered by Nucleus.
Site design and Nucleus customization are by Kevin Whited.