The Good Ship Parker continues to take on water
We've been waiting -- nay, practically begging -- for some local journalist really to dig into the dysfunction within the Parker Administration roughly one year since winning office.
We didn't expect this sort of treatment from Village Voice Houston, even though an alt-weekly would be a perfect outlet in many (world-classier?) cities. And we have to admit that we didn't see it coming from the Chron's senior metro/state columnist/plagiarist.
Yet Rick Casey's column in the Sunday Chronicle print edition (and e-edition -- sorry Kindle subscribers!) delivered today, both in terms of analysis and in terms of actual reporting involving phone calls and such (yes, we were shocked too!).
Since we are not one of Dwight Silverman's Anointed, we dare not reproduce half the column from our Chronicle e-edition (the sort of copyright abuse regularly practiced by Houston's sexiest blockquoter*), but here are some of the highlights (in précis form) of Casey's column:
- Much of the discord and dysfunction in Mayor-Council relations -- growing readily apparent over the last few weeks -- is being blamed on the mayor's chief of staff by various councilmembers interviewed by Casey.
- Waynette Chan, said chief of staff, previously served Lee Brown in that same capacity when he was police chief, was a staffer for Kathy Whitmire, and has long served in the public works department.
- Four councilmembers (supporters and non-supporters of the mayor) to whom Casey spoke described Chan as key in creating an "us-versus-them" relationship between the mayor's office and Council.
- Casey describes a recent council exchange (which we hadn't seen reported until this point--do news organizations still send reporters to these meetings?) at which Councilmember Clutterbuck described former Mayor White's practice of frequent calls to councilmembers, and Parker's reply that she never got such calls (as controller), and that she didn't get such calls from Lee Brown (as a councilmember). Council was "taken aback" as Casey put it. And, as he continues, Mayor Parker's subsequent behavior was even more astounding:
Mayor Parker subsequently contended that the remark wasn't intended to offend. And we take her at her word, which is perhaps even more damning.“Write this down Waynette,” Parker said.
“We’ll give them more mom time.”
We'll post a link to the full Casey column when it is finally posted to chron.com. We have to admit it's one of the more entertaining short pieces we've read about City Hall since Tim Fleck fled the local alt-weekly (back when there were still professional journalists there -- perhaps he saw where things were headed) to the anonymity and irrelevancy of the Chron editorial board.
UPDATE: Casey's column is now posted here.
* Hat tip to Slampo.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/12/10 08:25 PM | Print |
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