You could say Capital Metro gave up Don Cheatham for Lent, but that wouldn’t be accurate. The transit authority is severing its contractual ties with Cheatham and his Longhorn Railway Co. for good, effective March 22. Cheatham was officially notified of the breakup shortly after attending Ash Wednesday church services. “I’ve had better days,” Cheatham groused yesterday morning. He had just gotten a faxed copy of his walking papers, and that was after getting a “nasty letter from them” the day before, which Cheatham apparently chose to ignore. In a press statement, Capital Metro laid out a number of reasons for ending its tortuous relationship with the freight rail service provider. At the top of the list was failure to maintain the railroad facilities and surrounding property, which Cheatham has long argued is the responsibility of the transit agency. Cap Met also cited Cheatham for failure to make records accessible to the agency, and failure to submit his monthly, quarterly, and annual reports in a timely fashion. The agency has lined up Trans Global Services to take over its freight rail operations until a new contract is awarded. But Cheatham said the agency’s actions require the Surface Transportation Board to step in and “relieve us and certify the new company, and that should take at least 40 days.” By then it’ll be Easter, and Lent will have officially ended. More on this subject next week…
Two of the American–Statesman‘s more visible editorial staffers — feature writer Patrick Beach and tech writer/columnist Gregory Kallenberg — are leaving the daily. Beach, 35, takes off in May for a feature-writing job with the Baltimore Sun, and Kallenberg, 32, joins Austin-based notHarvard.com at the end of this month to handle content development. The big news is that these two fellas are actually leaving the paper “with utterly no complaints.” Those are Beach’s words and Kallenberg more or less echoes them. Which reminds us of last year, when Don McLeese left on an alleged high note. Word is just now starting to leak out about his acrimonious parting. But we digress. Beach and Kallenberg each had a pretty cushy thing going at the Statesman, so their cheerfulness may well be warranted. In other upcoming Statesman departures, Beach’s wife, Allison Hall-Beach, a copy editor, has a line on a job at the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, two longtime Statesman gals, Susan Smith and Michele Kay, have moved into the spotlight with their own columns. Smith’s wordsmithing now appears on the Metro/State section front, while former, and now returning, writer Kay debuted her “Capital Business” column in the Business section last Sunday. Kay was last in the public eye as John Cornyn‘s flack during his 1998 campaign for attorney general…
Just when we thought everyone in government circles knew the dangers of removing lead-based paint in pre1978 constructed buildings, some folks down at City Hall decided it was time to redecorate. So they ordered the Building Services guys to start scraping the paint off the railing in the front stairwell. Midway through the project, one of the workers raised concerns about health and safety. The paint scrapings were tested, found to be of the toxic lead variety, and a few folks caught holy hell. Now, everyone (we hope) is under strict orders to contact project manager Wade Mullen, the city’s lead and asbestos expert, before beginning any kind of office makeover. “It was a mistake,” acknowledges Michele Middlebrook Gonzalez, the city’s public info officer. “It was human error.” Rest assured now that when a city honcho orders an employee to, for example, get the lead out, he’ll think twice before following through.
This article appears in March 10 • 2000.
