The Austin Independent School District (AISD) will hold a public hearing on
their $409 million budget, 7pm Thursday, June 20, at the auditorium in the
Carruth Administration Building, 1111 W. Sixth St. People can sign up to speak
at AISD headquarters at the same address any time before the hearing starts…
— R.A.
RECA Gets Accused
According to the political newsletter In Fact, three angry voters havefiled complaints with the district attorney’s office alleging violations of the
Texas Election Code against the Real Estate Council of Austin’s (RECA’s)
political action committees. The three — Linda Curtis and Tracy Turen of Ross
Perot’s independent Reform Party and graduate student Dennis Hicks (who filed
his complaint separately) — are the first to publicly attempt to bring legal
action against RECA. The trio allege that RECA violated election laws when it
allegedly funneled expensive voter information bought with corporate money from
its “issues” PAC to its “candidates” PAC, (which cannot accept corporate
money), at a fraction of the cost. Curtis is a leader of Priorities First!,
In Fact reports, which is pushing for campaign finance reform. Grad
student Hicks told the newsletter that he got involved after reading about
RECA’s actions in the Chronicle and the States–man: “I hope this
will keep big money out of politics,” he said. “Austin’s not for sale.” —
A.D.
The Stench of Victory
It may be long past June 1, but you can still smell the afterburn —especially down at the state and local Sierra Club headquarters. Calling former
city council candidate Jeff Hart a “sore loser,” Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter
director Dr. Neil Carman says he and two other club members — Scott Royder and
Steve Beers — are fighting subpoenas for depositions issued by Hart on behalf
of his client, Griffin Industries.
The three Sierra Club members, who led the group in endorsing Hart’s
victorious opponent in Place 1, Daryl Slusher, were subpoenaed by Hart after
they released information about his alleged “corporate polluter” client in an
effort to debunk Hart’s enviro-friendly stance the week before the June 1
runoff. According to Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC)
documents disseminated by the Club, Griffin Industries, which operates an
animal renderings plant in Bastrop County, was cited 21 times by the agency for
environmental violations of state laws governing air quality following as many
as 63 complaints since 1988 from neighboring residents about the stench
allegedly emanating from the plant. The company, which has been represented by
Hart since 1992, never resolved the violations issues with the TNRCC, and the
case was finally turned over to the attorney general’s office for legal action.
The TNRCC recommended approximately $20,500 in fines against Griffin
Industries, but the amount still remains in negotiation.
Carman says the attempt to depose Sierra Club members is politically
motivated, and constitutes “harassment,” since the documents were obtained
through the Open Records Act by Scott Henson, a worker from Slusher’s campaign,
and then handed over to the Sierra Club. Henson was also subpoenaed. Hart
shrugs off the accusation that the subpoenas are some kind of political
“payback” for those who didn’t support him, and says the company just wants to
know what TNRCC documents the Sierra Club has in their possession. Those
documents, he claims, “could be relevant to [Griffin’s defense].” Two memos
among the documents obtained by the Sierra Club were marked “confidential” —
one of them contained a TNRCC official’s assessment of Hart’s behavior and use
of profanity during a phone conversation. It seems clear that if Hart wanted to
press some kind of defense that the TNRCC had malice, it could be based on the
agency’s release of those two memos. Possibly to ward off such a legal tactic,
the TNRCC has issued a statement saying the memos were “leaked,” and expressing
their regret that the information was ever released. Hart would not comment on
that theory.
Hart filed the subpoenas in Bastrop County district court and scheduled the
depositions for last week — but the Sierra Club successfully argued in a
hearing on Monday, June 10, that the subpoenas should have been filed in Travis
County, and consequently, no ruling was issued. At this point, says the Sierra
Club’s attorney, Amy Johnson, her client and Griffin are “in discussions, and
we might agree to let them depose some people.”
Hart declined to comment further on the case, or confirm that negotiations
were underway, but did want to emphasize that it “has nothing to do with the
election. I shook Daryl’s hand after the results came in and wished him good
luck. There are no hard feelings.” — L.C.B.
Ax the Politically Sensitive
One of the city’s top attorneys, Michael Cosentino, was forced to resign lastweek, and, in a surprising reaction, went outside the bureaucracy with his
protests. In a June 5 resignation letter sent to the city council, Cosentino
wrote, “I do this involuntarily at the request and under the threat of
immediate termination by [City Attorney] Andrew F. Martin who refused to
provide reasons for this adverse personnel action.”
Martin replies that he did provide a reason: “I told him I was not confident
in his ability.” Cosentino, who served as the Acting City Attorney before
Martin was hired, says Martin would not clarify his lack of confidence.
However, the 35 pages of supporting documents and job performance evaluations
that Cosentino included with his resignation letter reveal that Cosentino’s
political differences with the city manager’s office may have led to his
ouster. According to an evaluation dated last summer, Cosentino met or exceeded
job expectations in all cases except his “ability to listen.” An acknowledged
progressive, Cosentino’s other weaknesses, stated the evaluation, were his
“political sensitivities.” Cosentino maintains he never made decisions based on
politics, and says, “I’m on the spectrum of giving good legal advice,
regardless of political consequences.”
There’s little question that Cosentino performed well as chief of the city’s
litigation division, which provides in-house legal counsel at a cost of $42 an
hour, compared to $201 an hour for outside legal counsel. According to a
laudatory letter from Martin to City Manager Jesus Garza and councilmembers
dated just last month, in the last five years, the division disposed of over 55
lawsuits against the city with plaintiffs recovering nothing in more than 80%
of the cases. Despite the department’s success, Cosentino received an
unfavorable evaluation four days after that report to Garza. In the evaluation,
another city attorney, Chuck Griffith, wrote that Cosentino is not respected by
the City Manager’s Office. Griffith would not comment to this paper.
Cosentino seems less concerned about his ousting than for the security of the
division, and claims he is making his forced resignation letter public to
protect the division from possible future budget cuts. Praising his division
members for achieving “excellent results at a fraction of the cost of outside
legal counsel,” Cosentino wrote: “I sincerely hope that this good work will be
recognized and continued because the taxpayers of the City of Austin are
getting a good bargain.” Martin would not say whether the team would see cuts.
— A.M.
Let Them Eat Elsewhere
The relationship between the merchants on the Drag and the homeless kids whospend their idle time on the strip’s sidewalks has just gotten rockier. Several
merchants are pushing to remove a program administered in their neighborhood
called Project PHASE, which for the past three years has provided meals and
services, through Youth Options and the People’s Community Clinic, for homeless
kids under the age of 23. The problem with PHASE, they say, is that the meals
the program provides are being handed out from the basement of the
Congregational Church in Austin, located in an alley behind the Renaissance
Market at 23rd Street and Guadalupe. At a meeting held May 24 at the church to
allow merchants to air their views, several criticized PHASE’s Tuesday and
Thursday “feeds” for attracting increasing numbers of “gutterpunks,” or
homeless kids. The youths are becoming violent and disrupting business, they
claimed.
Terry Nathan, vice president of a coalition of Drag businesses called
University Area Partners and ex-owner of Floppy Joe’s on 29th Street, said
“What these kids are going through is worse than anything we’ve had to
experience in the adult world… but as a businessman I have to point out that
[this] has been a tremendous drag on the business of the Drag.” Others
complained of everything from the kids “garbaging up the market” to actual
harassment, including one market vendor who said she was told “I needed to go
home and get laid” when she asked some kids to move.
Workers at PHASE charge that the attempt to push out their organization is
part of an overall plan to relocate the homeless population in preparation for
the more than $3 million in Drag beautification efforts Capital Metro and UT
have planned for the area. The improvements, scheduled to begin in December,
include broader sidewalks, increased landscaping, an elevated brick crosswalk,
and improved bus stops. Capital Metro will contribute $1.5 million to the
project over the next three years, while the University Area Partners are
expected to raise between $30,000-50,000. UT has incorporated the improvements
into its Master Plan and will fork over $1.5 million to get them done.
Steve Ortman, manager of planning for Capital Metro, denies there is a
concerted effort to move the homeless population, but did mention increased
efforts to discourage “undesirable activities” such as panhandling and drug
use, and said “it’s an attempt by the area to reclaim its neighborhood.”
Oscar Lopez, coordinator of PHASE, admits that the gutterpunks “being there
hurts business,” but he points out that the homeless kids were there first,
not PHASE. An Austin Police Department representative at the May 24 meeting,
while confirming that “on Tuesdays and Thursdays we’re getting about 10-15%
more crime [in the area] than on other days,” echoed Lopez’s contention that
PHASE was not responsible for bringing the homeless to the Drag. “I think the
Drag is the attraction — that’s my opinion and I’ve been patrolling this area
since 1968.”
The Congregational Church’s members will vote June 23 on whether to renew
PHASE’s lease. Church representatives declined to comment until after the vote. — D.C.
This article appears in June 14 • 1996 and June 14 • 1996 (Cover).