In the fallout over Toby Futrell‘s 2002 staffing of a specially-created Austin Energy position with her brother-in-law, one name familiar to longtime Council hounds has been brought up for comparison: former Austin Chronicle politics editor and City Council member Daryl Slusher. In the article disclosing the quasi-nepotistic hire, and the subsequent editorial admonishing Futrell, the Statesman noted Slusher’s 2007 hire by Futrell as illustrative of the City Manager’s ability to both create a new position and fill it with a hand-picked candidate – in this case, Slusher, then working on Austin Energy’s Plug-In Partners hybrid vehicle campaign, went on to become assistant director of environmental affairs and conservation at the water utility. An unmentioned but implicit subtext was Slusher’s employ under Futrell was a role reversal from the days when Futrell was under Slusher’s Council direction – raising questions whether Slusher was benefiting from a revolving-door arrangement of sorts. So we asked him.
“I knew the Statesman would bring it up, but it’s a legitimate question (they) ask; it was in the first article they did when I got the job. It’s still a legit question. I expected that kind of thing to happen – that’s fine,” Slusher says. “I thought about all that stuff before I took the job. I talked to Toby about it, pointed it out (to her), thought all that through. I came to the decision that I was very well suited to the job; it’s a continuation of what I’ve been doing most of my adult life, (which is) working to protect the environment,” he continues. “It allows me to keep working (where I’m most effective) – I balanced all that out and decided to keep the job. It’s a good salary but the salary’s commiserate with the responsibility.”
While saying he feels the Statesman treated him fairly in his time on the council, he wonders if the attention from the daily is overdue payback from his Chronicle days when he would mercilessly needle then-Statesman publisher Roger Kintzel’s for his conflict of interest. “I would repeat that over and over again in my columns: ‘Did I mention that Roger Kinsel is chairman of both the Austin Chamber of Commerce, and publisher of the Statesman?’ That’s a pretty serious conflict of interest.”
This article appears in July 13 • 2007.