Well, Bonusgate continues to bubble away not so quietly, so I’ve got some random musings on the matter today. This morning’s Chronicle online has some interesting information — and the usual goofs. All those layers of checks and editing, you know.

Alvarado inherited three of the four employees from her predecessor as mayor pro tem, former Councilman Gordon Quan. She hired the office supervisor, a longtime city employee who worked with her in former Mayor Lee Brown’s office.

Ah yes, the administration of Outta Town Brown. Now there’s a gift that keeps on taking. As I’ve said before, we’re going to be paying for Brown for about the next 20 years, and I’m not just talking about all the shiny sports arenas and railroads that got built during his term. (Oh, but those aren’t city projects! Right, and how far do you think they’d have gotten if he opposed them? Remember, the City of Houston appoints a majority of the Metro board, and had lots of legal and infratstructure work for the arenas.) Don’t forget, as Royko over at BlogHouston just reminded me this morning, Alvarado herself is a product of the Brown administration.

Apparently, she learned about delegation from her former boss. From Housnitch:

Ms. Alvarado oversees the following departments on behalf of Mayor Brown: Library, Parks and Recreation, Solid Waste and the Citizen’s Assistance Office.

Errrrrr, maybe I’m off base here, but I thought that’s what the directors of those departments were for?

In the Chronicle article, she says:

“My responsibility, once something is brought to my attention, is to correct it, to make sure procedures are put in place, to make sure that something like this never happens again.”

While I eagerly await her action plan to foil further attempts to steal city funds and embarrass rank-and-file employees such as myself, I’d also like to know, what about the repsonsibility of seeing to it that it didn’t happen in the first place?

And of course, no Chronicle article would be complete without a totally misleading piece of information:

Ellis’ office takes over
Meanwhile, the office was up and running. Longtime council staffer Carolyn Layce, who last ran former Councilman Mark Ellis’ office, will oversee the operation for now, according to a memo from Alvarado.

Uh, if Ellis is a former councilman, how is his office taking over? As the 2nd setence states, a former Ellis staffer has been placed in charge. Not Ellis, and as should be obvious from the fact that Alvarado sent the memo, she is still in charge of the office; in fact Mark Ellis has not one damn thing to do with it, at least directly. I’m certainly in no position to know if he’s giving advice behind the scenes, something several principals could evidently use.

The memo also asked Johnson and City Attorney Arturo Michel “for guidance in implementing control measures to prevent any further payroll irregularities and wrongdoing.”

Read. The. Budget. Reports.

And, having “waved the hand” towards the Gang of Four, the administration has decided to sit on both hands and zip the lips.

Top city officials, including Mayor Bill White, Controller Annise Parker, Finance and Administration Director Judy Gray Johnson and her deputy over payroll, Barbara Glick, also refused to discuss the matter.

Patrick Trahan, a spokesman for the mayor, said the administration would have no response to a list of e-mailed questions about payroll procedures in the pro tem office.

So, Annise Parker is also keeping mum. I have an unusual way of looking at things; I get worried when the Mayor and the Controller aren’t fighting. Our odd form of government, with the two offices being seperate, is designed to keep these two in conflict; the Controller is essentially a watchdog on the Mayor. This led to the famous quote by Mayor Brown: “Mayor, Management. Controller, Finances.” when his, ah, budgetarily-challenged practices caused run-ins with Annise’s predecessor.

A final note: I was thinking Quan was still a current council member; he’s not. Generally, I have avoided commenting on high-profile cases and political affairs at that level, due to the obvious dangers to myself. So, I rarely pay close attention to the exact composition of the council. If it hadn’t been for all the paper we threw out every two years, I wouldn’t even notice.

Ok, that’s not really true, but I just wanted to work that last bit in about throwing out paper.

The official city letterhead has all the council members’ names at the bottom. So every time there was a change, we had to throw out all the old stationary and order boxes of the new. That meant every two years, or in the case of Sekula-Gibbs marriage, three years running. (Her wedding occured in an off-year between elections). Hideously wasteful. I’m happy to say that Mayor White put a stop to that nonsense by having the electronic files that make up the letterhead and footer distributed to all departments in Word.doc format.

Update: Rick Casey weighs in, suggesting Carol Alvarado should hope this game is played by basketball rules, not baseball.

Update 2: Meanwhile, our alternative press thinks its very important that we understand why Houston bands always self-destruct on the verge of success. Not that I expected them to have anything relevant to say, but I felt they needed a swift poke. (Because I didn’t expect them to have anything relevant to say.) But I was interested in finding out what their columnist thought of women who record the sounds of men defecating.

Not.