 illustration by Doug Potter |
peppered his public statements; he even said `Screw You!’ to fellow
councilmember Max Nofziger. In 1996, he challenged In Fact writer Ken
Martin to fisticuffs, after Martin asked for properly detailed campaign account
reports. And at last week’s council meeting, Mitchell allegedly threatened
Daryl Slusher’s aide, Robin Cravey.
Last Thursday’s playground drama began with Kirk Mitchell, president of the
Save Our Springs Alliance. Kirk is in no way related to Eric, certainly not by
political persuasion, but both are infamous for their aggressive, sometimes
churlish demeanors. Before the vote to add more vehicle lanes to the Lamar
Bridge, Kirk laughed derisively from the audience when Eric suggested expanding
not only the bridge, but other roads as well. Eric didn’t find it very funny.
From the dais he glared at Kirk, who sat on the front row between this reporter
and Cravey, then shot back, “Yeah, you can laugh now, but in 10, 15 years it
won’t be funny.”
A fair retort. But Mitchell’s anger may have been inflamed further when his
bridge expansion proposal, which he had co-sponsored with Mayor Bruce Todd,
failed. (Only Todd and Ronney Reynolds joined him in approval.) After the vote,
Mitchell motioned for Cravey to join him in the back room that lies between the
council chambers and Channel 6. According to a memo which Cravey wrote to City
Attorney Andrew Martin following the incident, this is the exchange that took
place:
Cravey: “Were you waving to me?
Mitchell: “Yes.” (Mitchell closes both doors to the room). “I’m sick of you and
your faggot friends. I’ve been nice…”
Cravey: “You have?”
Mitchell: “Oh, yes.” (Mitchell takes a step closer to Cravey). “For the past
three years I’ve been very nice. You don’t know me. You can ask people out on
the street. You don’t know me. I’m telling you and that faggot friend [Kirk
Mitchell] of yours, when you see me coming, you go the other way!”
Cravey: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mitchell: “I’m telling you and that faggot friend of yours, the next time you
see me, you go the other motherfuckin’ way!”
After the exchange, a shaken and breathless Cravey returned to his seat. “My
thought was to end the confrontation,” Cravey recounted. “I didn’t see any
point in continuing it and possibly him just getting even more violent and
abusive.”
After relating the incident to this reporter, Cravey immediately notified his
boss, Slusher, who then confronted Mitchell. Slusher says Mitchell was
unapologetic. According to Slusher, Mitchell responded: “I’m tired of their
bullshit! I won’t put up with this shit once I get off the council! There won’t
be nothing to hold me back.” (At press time, Eric Mitchell was out of town and
could not be reached for comment).
Things heated up again the next day, when Slusher sent a memo to Mitchell’s
office. “…the threats you made to my aide are unacceptable and totally
unbecoming to a public official,” it reads. “They have no place in our city
government. The same is true for using derogatory terms such as `faggots’ to
describe citizens.” After asking Mitchell to refrain from similar behavior,
Slusher ends, “We have enough work to do without dealing with your threats.”
Cravey, meanwhile, is seeking legal recourse from the City Attorney’s office,
and legal advice from Sylvia Cedillo of the Texas Civil Rights Project.
According to Cravey, Andrew Martin says that other city employees have had
similar encounters with Mitchell. Cravey is demanding that the City Attorney
hand over all other copies of any complaints the city has received against
Mitchell. (At press time, Martin was not available for comment).
So will Cravey heed Mitchell’s warning and watch his step? “I don’t know how
violent Eric really is capable of being,” responds Cravey. “I suspect that he
was just blowing off steam, but that’s a completely inappropriate way to do
that, and I’m not going to go tiptoeing around to stay out of his way.”
Kirk says Eric’s behavior was “inappropriate for a public official.” (By the
way, despite Eric’s alleged slurs, neither Cravey nor Kirk are gay).
Those working for Mitchell’s opponent for the Place 6 seat, Willie Lewis,
aren’t expected to pussyfoot around either. They’ve got plenty of fodder for
campaign attacks on Mitchell: his problems with bankruptcy, alimony payments,
and his penchant for getting city contracts for his company. The challenge will
be raising enough money in the next two months to get the word out, but Lewis
thinks he can pull it off.
“I think I’ll be elected because I have some integrity and maturity,” says
Lewis, who is positioning himself as a conciliator rather than a divider. “You
can be a gangster off the street when you do what he’s allegedly done. When you
start doing things like that, the word spreads fast among people who vote and
are in the political arena.”
Mitchell left the meeting shortly after his outburst. Ironically, because of
his absence, his pal Reynolds lost a vote on two of Mitchell’s main causes:
East Austin and Freeport-McMoRan. Reynolds wanted to subsidize the East Austin
Golf Classic with $11,000 from the city’s general contingency fund. But with
the mayor having quit early for the day, and Mitchell absent, only Goodman
voted for it.
With humble countenance, Reynolds said he just wanted to help the little
children of East Austin. The rest of the council didn’t buy it. The classic is
an annual golf tournament sponsored by FM Properties, a subsidiary of Freeport,
and they think it’s more likely to help the public image of Freeport’s
notorious CEO, Jim Bob Moffett, than East Austin youth. Remember, Moffett once
threatened to bankrupt the city, and sought state legislation allowing the
Barton Creek PUD to skirt city development rules.
“I don’t think Jim Bob is a friend of the city,” Gus Garcia said after the
vote. “How many times will he screw us? And, the fee waiver is a raiding of the
contingency fund, which the Mayor and others have said we won’t do.”
“Have a bake sale, J.B.,” Griffith added.
And Daryl Slusher, once threatened by Freeport with a lawsuit for chronicling
its shenanigans in this paper, replied, “I don’t think we need to give a fee
waiver to the company that owns the largest gold mine in world.”
Just after the vote, Reynolds publicly requested that the City Clerk put the
item on the next council meeting agenda, March 21. By then, Mitchell should be
cooled off, at least enough to stick around for the vote. Todd may break his
promise not to raid the contingency fund, to in some way pay back the thousands
of dollars he has received from PUD interests.
Meanwhile, Goodman will again turn her back on the progressive coalition to
play the moderate, as she did last week when she awarded a $29.4 million
subsidy to Austin’s six largest corporate electric utility customers — Seton
Hospital, Applied Materials, Advanced Micro Devices, Texas Instruments,
Motorola, and IBM. The latter four are members of FAIR, the Federation of
Austin’s Industrial Ratepayers, whose members say they each deserve to pay $4.2
million a year less in electricity fees, because the Public Utility Commission
ruled years ago that the EUD was ripping them off.
They threatened to buy electricity from other electric companies if they
didn’t win a reduction. However, they can’t do that yet, because state law
doesn’t allow competition. That would seem to dictate that the council, which
is the board of the EUD, wait until the state legislature deregulates the
industry before worrying about unfaithful customers. After all, the legislature
is not expected to deregulate the industry for at least two more years. The
council has spent the past two years biting thumb and nail over every EUD
penny, so why give away almost $30 million now?
Well, more than a few councilmembers have marveled at Goodman’s gullibility in
the past. She believes, as FAIR lobbyists say, that they will leave the system
first chance they get. She also seems to think that if she’s nice to the
companies, they’ll be good and faithful customers — but they’re certainly
ornery right now.
In fact, while Goodman promised them the $4.2 million a year if they stay with
the EUD for seven years, they wouldn’t budge from their request for a six-year
contract — even after she had backed off one year from her original eight-year
demand. In fact, the companies still don’t know if they’ll take the city’s
offer, even though the city has spent half a year studying it, wrangling over
it, and finally passing it last week with Goodman joining the three businessmen
— Mitchell, Todd, and Garcia — for the affirmative vote. “I’ve heard rumors
that [the FAIR corporation] helped me win the last campaign, but I guess the
checks are still in the mail,” Goodman says, adding that keeping the utility
competitive “is my motivation and goal, and no other.”
This article appears in March 14 • 1997 and March 14 • 1997 (Cover).