. . . .Carol Alvarado proves me wrong. (Tip of the hat to BlogHouston.)

Several Houston City Hall employees are upset after receiving fundraising e-mails for City Council member Carol Alvarado, KPRC Local 2 reported Wednesday.

The employees said they got the fundraiser invitations in their work e-mail asking them to donate money to help Alvarado pay her legal expenses.

Supposedly this isn’t illegal because the emails weren’t sent from a city computer e-mail address or on city time. (Really?) But frankly, this has got to be in the poorest taste and is the single hugest lapse of ethics on Alvarado’s part since the beginning of this sordid affair. “Advising” clients on “how to get city contracts” is garden variety corruption. I’m not pulling any punches here: This borders on being a shakedown of city employees. The very appearance of it should be enough for Alvarado to resign. I’ve shied away from making such an outright call before, due to my position, but this takes the cake: Avarado has to go, if for no othe reason than to maintain the appearance (note I do not say the reality) of honest government in Houston.

Especially given the already shaky history of city hall politics in this regard.

Alvarado denied any wrongdoing and said she did not mean for the fundraising e-mails to upset anyone.

If she’s really that damned clueless, she has no business in politics. Look, we have enough corruption already. Is it too much to ask that we not import even more? What is this, Chicago? Looks like some folks want it to be Tammany Hall. . . .

Update: Notice the hair-splitting on the computer it was sent from — I didn’t catch that at first. It could be sent from a city computer, but not a city e-mail by the simple expedient of accessing webmail. Also, city employees have definate job shifts, with starting and stopping times. What’s the shift of a city council member? How are we to say it wasn’t on “city time”

(To my knowledge, no news media has posted the e-mail itself, yet. Any city employee who received the email and reads this, please forward it to [ubu at houblog dot com] {–(spam guard, don’t forget to change it to “@” and “.” I’d like to put it on the site. That email cannot be accessed from a city computer [barring IT efforts], so it will appear no earlier than this evening. Your name will be withheld, of course.)