Bonusgate Docs

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Isiah Carey scores with pictures of two of the documents granting raises to the Fab Four. Check out the signature: “Florence Watkins for Carol Alvarado.” Carol’s initials appear to the right as “Director of Department from which transferred-” (page cuts off)

And approval initials are present for the Director of Personnel. The ones on the right surprised me though: Mayoral initals are required — but those aren’t Mayor White’s initials…. in fact, the initials are clearly the same as those in the Director’s blank. That is also the case on the other form. In fact, after reviwing the org charts for F&A (link is on city intranet, not public, but the divison chiefs are listed here), I can’t figure out who that is. It looks like “LMW” but I can’t tell for sure. LMM? LNM? Maybe the person in question left the city after those forms went through.

But the sixty-four-hundred penny questions is:

Is Ms. Alvarado not alone in delegating signature authority?

Update: it sure doesn’t look like Mayor White’s signature, which can be seen on page 2 at this link. Warning: this is a 341 page .pdf file. Don’t even think about trying to download it without broadband, and give it several minutes, even with it.

(edited for clarity at 12:50 pm 3/21)

Update: I think it’s Lonnie Vara, head of Human Resources.

More Forgeries?

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Well, faked memos are popping up faster than anything short of a Rathergate special. Now Gordan Quan’s been, er, victimized.

The document with Quan’s initials is dated December 2005 and appears to request that his council office be charged the cost of a newsletter to commemorate the end of his six-year council term. The memo refers to Quan as mayor pro tem, a post he left more than two years prior. It also bears a scrawled “GQ” that is different than other memos with Quan’s initials that the Houston Chronicle has obtained since the pro tem bonuses were revealed Feb. 15.

“These initials are definitely not his,” said Lee, who ran the pro tem office, which handles some administrative duties for council members and their staffs, until fall 2004.

Quan was mayor pro tem — one year spending $50,000 less than his budget — until the end of 2003. He remained in his council office until the end of last year.

At the end of his council term, Quan said, he told pro tem employees he wanted to use surplus money from his council budget to pay for the cost of printing a final newsletter. After he had the work done, he said, pro tem employees rejected an invoice in January, saying it was too late for the transaction. So, Quan said he had to pay for the cost from his campaign funds.

But the pro tem office got credited as though it had paid for the $2,500 charge, according to budget documents previously obtained by the Chronicle. That and the disputed initials raise questions about where the money actually went, he said.

Some comments over at BlogHouston seem to indicate a bit of confusion over the time frame, which is partly the fault of the rushed writing; it makes it harder to pick out the important facts. But hey, that’s what the blogsphere is for. We don’t have the resources to do the legwork, but we’re hell on analysis.

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H.E.C Troubles Continued

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This was going to be an update to the prior Houston Emergency Center article, but frankly, it got too long, so I have split it into its own post. KHOU is also looking into the H.E.C.’s problems, and it looks a lot worse than a couple of isolated incidents. “A systematic failure of management philosophy and direction from the various governments responsible for supporting the 9-1-1 system,” would be a better description.

The 11 News Defenders have exposed possible trouble with emergency calls for help, discovering thousands of 911 callers might not be getting an answer.

When you need the help of 911, you need it right now, not later.

But that’s what we found, tens of thousands of cases in which emergency operators didn’t answer when they were supposed to.

What’s more, the city isn’t doing much about it.
(snip)
Since the emergency center opened, the 11 News Defenders discovered more than 81,000 calls took longer than 20 seconds to answer. But again, just how long or for what kind of emergency, the city doesn’t track.

11 News Defenders: “So in other words, year after year goes by, and tens of thousands of calls are over 20 seconds to answer, and nobody knows anything about them?” Cutler: “Correct.”
11 News Defenders: “And life goes on?”
Cutler: “Yes.”

Now, if it gets answered in 21 seconds or even 25 seconds, normally I’d say B.F.D. It goes in the “miss” column but it isn’t that big. Until I start to wonder why the goal is twenty seconds. How many rings is that?

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What the H.E.C.? (Updated)

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Like I said the other day, why does it keep happening?

Houston police have launched an investigation into the 911 center after we began asking questions about one woman’s call for help that went unanswered for hours. The woman and her grandmother tried for an hour to keep a man from breaking through their front door, all the while making 911 calls that seemed to go nowhere.

The weight of the women was used to keep their front door shut.

“It was shaking really hard,” said Britney Keyworth, showing us how she helped hold the door shut. “I thought he was going to get in.”

An angry unknown man was pounding on Keyworth’s grandmother’s door in the middle of the night.

Do that here, and we’re dialing .45-AUTOMATIC. Then we’ll dial 9-1-1 and ask for the ambulance. But these ladies weren’t so equipped. Instead, they did what all good little statist, anti-gun freaks like to tell us all to do. Dialed for help and hunkered down helplessly. Well mostly. They did lean on the door to try and keep him from breaking in.

Fortunately, the lunatic at the door didn’t get in, but just kept pounding on the door. For three hours.

The women began dialing 911, but response from police wasn’t immediate. For the better part of three hours, the man stayed on the doorstep terrorizing the women.

Houston police say the reason for the officers’ delay could be a simple one. Harris County dispatchers didn’t give the call the highest priority.

According to the broadcast version of the story, the ladies’ call was only given a medium priority. Good thing shots weren’t fired or it would be a low priority.

Update: KHOU is also looking into the problems, and it looks a lot worse than a couple of isolated incidents.

The 11 News Defenders have exposed possible trouble with emergency calls for help, discovering thousands of 911 callers might not be getting an answer.

When you need the help of 911, you need it right now, not later.

But that’s what we found, tens of thousands of cases in which emergency operators didn’t answer when they were supposed to.

What’s more, the city isn’t doing much about it.

(EDIT: this was going to be tacked on as an update, but it got too long. I added this much by accident before I realized that. See the next post for the full entry.)

Bogus Memos and Doublethink

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The Chronicle reports on the peculiar memo requesting authorization for bonuses, and Carol Alvarado’s memory lapse.

A memo dated last April from a city employee who has been fired for receiving unauthorized bonuses asked then-Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado to approve $5,500 in extra pay.

A spokesman said Tuesday that Alvarado doesn’t remember such a memo. She has said she didn’t approve any of the monthly bonuses that totaled $143,000 over about a year for four employees in the Office of Mayor Pro Tem.

(snip)

If Hernandez did send the memo, it could support — at least in this instance — her contention that bonuses were properly documented, though the four employees eventually collected far more than the amount requested in the memo.

Conversely, it could fit with the conclusion of police investigators that pro tem employees enriched themselves through misconduct that included fabricating documents.

I really don’t get why the memo doesn’t match the bonuses, but let’s follow the logic out: If the bonus memo was supposed to be legitimate, then the bonuses granted should have matched. (Caveat: the next bonus granted didn’t match, but it was only two weeks later. –Edit: Uh no, it was six. — Since that’s the length of the pay period, any approval by Alvarado, even if immediate, could have been caught “between cycles” and the bonuses paid four weeks later; add F&A/Payroll processing time, and maybe six weeks would be right.)

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Alvarado Under Investigation (Update: Sanchez, too)

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Isiah Carey got Chuckie to speak up a little more clearly on what was behind the seizures. Alvarado’s odd campaign contributions have caught the DA’s eye:

He says he becamse “suspicious” when he viewed Alvardo’s campaign finance reports. He told the Insite she appears to be getting a lot of contributions for an unopposed city council race. He also says a significant number of Alvarado’s large contributions come from out of state donors.

It’s not like none of Outta-Town-Brown’s other appointees were on the take.

Joe Householder, spokesperson for Alvarado, says she has a $300,000 + political war chest because she did have an opponent last year. He also says like many other politicians Alvarado has a lot of supporters outside the city of Houston…

One wonders why a city politician would have out-of-town supporters to the tune of $300k. And of course, the racism card is being played. Gosh, that didn’t take long, did it?

Sources are now telling the Insite the only reason Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal is going after Carol Alvarado is because she’s Hispanic and a democrat. That source says Rosenthal has historically gone after minorities and democrats in Harris County. That person tells the Insite to just look back at former Houston police chief C.O. Bradford’s case.

Making matters even more confusing, a memo has surfaced, written by Rosita Hernandez to Carol Alvarado, requesting certain bonuses be paid to the employees in the pro tem’s office. However, the requested bonuses don’t match the ones actually recieved.

A memo dated last April from a city employee who has been fired for receiving unauthorized bonuses asked then-Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado to approve $5,500 in extra pay.

A spokesman said Tuesday that Alvarado doesn’t remember such a memo. She has said she didn’t approve any of the monthly bonuses that totaled $143,000 over about a year for four employees in the Office of Mayor Pro Tem.

“She has no memory of seeing such a memo. There is no copy of such a memo in her files or any of her staff files,” said Joe Householder of Public Strategies Inc., Alvarado’s recently hired spokesman. “There’s no knowledge that this memo was ever sent or received.”

The memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Chronicle, came to light Tuesday, the same day prosecutors investigating the City Hall payroll-padding allegations took documents from the pro tem office.

In the memo, pro tem office manager Rosita Hernandez, who received more than $50,000 in bonuses that city officials say were improper, asks Alvarado to approve payments to her and three other fired employees.

Gotta love the Reagan defense. “She has no memory…” Sheesh.

How wide will this investigation go? No one knows, maybe not even Chuckie.

Investigators even returned a second time for more documents Tuesday afternoon, leading to what could be an investigation that lasts for months with no indication how many people will ultimately be affected

“We’re not leaving anyone out of the mix right now,” Rosenthal assured us.

Update: While everyone is effectively under investigation at this point, a specific name has surfaced: Orlando Sanchez.

Multiple sources told 11 News another subject of the investigation is former city council member and mayoral candidate Orlando Sanchez

Documents from his term were among those seized by the DA.

Berry, the acting mayor pro tem, is at least talking the talk:

Acting Mayor Pro Tem Michael Berry agrees. “There is either a perception of or a reality of corruption in government. And you can’t allow either one to fester. It creates a loss of confidence in your system and then you can’t govern properly. So if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about,” Berry said.

One curious question: Who is the Deep Throat of this investigation?

The investigation’s speed picked up Monday evening after a phone call to the DA from a person he said he trusts.

“It was his contention that there may be documents in the file cabinets in the mayor pro tem’s office that would disappear,” Rosenthal said.

Commenter Don_Mynack makes a very good point over at Blog Houston:

However, it is telling that the original 4 actually thought they could get away with this . . . . I mean, what kind of culture in that office must have been existed for those people to take that risk? A culture that routinely involved a lot of financial shenanigans is the only logical answer.

Update 2: Gordan Quan, former pro tem, comments.

“Anything like that would have been highly suspect,” said Quan Tuesday. “I would have questioned who is this person turning in this request.”

Four months after he left office, the one time mayor pro tem has been contacted by the Office of Inspector General about the goings-on while he was in office.

“As far as special expenses to an office that favors that over another office, we really didn’t see that,” said Quan.

(snip)

“We would immediately call the councilmembers and ask ‘We just want to verify. Did you authorize that? And if you did, we nee [sic] your signature on this’.”

Quan admits some expenses from council offices were reimbursed by the pro tem’s office. They were items like coffee and supplies. Nothing, he says, that would merit improper expenses. Nonetheless, he welcomes the investigation.

Ok, two points: First, parse those statements very carefully. Every single word of that could be true, and the whole thing still corrupt as hell.

Second, “items like coffee”? Huh??????? Council members and staffers get their coffee paid for? I don’t know about other city offices, but in this one, employees pay for their own coffee. We bought the coffeepots. We bought the mini-fridge to keep our lunches in. We buy the coffee. And that is not cheap! How can council offices be drinking so much coffee the pro tem’s office has to reimburse them?

Seized!

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The Bonusgate scandal has just taken a huge left turn, as Chuck Rosenthal grows a set. KHOU and KTRK have articles on the matter. (Update: and KPRC, with a lengthy tape also). From KTRK’s comes this gem:

On Tuesday morning, a truck full of boxes containing documents were removed from the mayor pro tem’s office. Rosenthal apparently got a tip on Monday night that if he didn’t remove the boxes by Tuesday, they would disappear.

“There have been allegations made over the years that that office has also been used by some city officials to use their budget to do some things that officials didn’t want to do on their own budget,” said Rosenthal.

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Debt Outlook Downgraded: An Explanation

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I don’t follow investor newsrags very closely, having no money to invest, but BlogHouston has the scoop on one of the two major bond rating agencies revising the City of Houston’s credit outlook downwards. Unsurprisingly, Mayor White took advantage of this to announce that he never met a tax hike he didn’t like. Oops, I mean criticise Proposition 2.

I’m of two minds on the whole mess. In general, though I’ve opposed it in the past, I think the revenue cap is probably not a bad idea, since it protects the average citizen from the effects of the pension mess. (I’m still leery of joining in to the contributory plan, but I’m fairly sure if I don’t, I’ll get totally screwed as a “free rider.” As if.) However, the mayor’s got a point–Proposition 2 is far too restrictive because we can’t adjust for things like Katrina/Rita. We’re not getting all that money back from the feds, people. And if there’s one thing that should be evident from recent history, it’s that simplistic referrendums tend to backfire. Goverment is a hugely complicated beast; that’s why we elect people to handle it for us.

As for the downgrade, BlogHouston has a long quote at the link above, but simplified, it comes down to this: the city doesn’t actually pay for capital improvements from tax revenue. (Few governments do.) Instead, it sells bonds (borrows money) to pay for the improvements, then pays off the debt over a term, usualy 10-20 years. The rate of interest paid on these bonds depends partly on the market, and partly on their rating. And the rating is determined by two (Edit: 3) major agencies; it is essentially their estimation whether anyone who buys a bond (i.e.: loans money to the city) will get their investment back.

Now this paragraph is strictly from memory, not research, so don’t take it as the 100% accurate gospel. IIRC, Fitch is the more conservative of the two, Moody’s is better known, and slightly more lenient towards stressed finances. They each have rating systems based on the alphabet, roughly (worst to best) D, C, B, A, AA, AAA, AAAA. They’re not exactly the same; I think Moody’s runs C-AAAA, and Fitch is D-AAA (really shaky on that, maybe a reader knows and can contribute?) and there’s + and – modifiers. But it’s not as simple as saying “the city has a rating of ‘x’. The city is given a rating for each category of bond that it issues. Then there is the rating outlook, which is a general prediction on whether things are expected to get better or worse.

I seem to recall that the City was downgraded from AAA to AA sometime around 2002-4 by Fitch’s, but again, that’s just plucked from memory. (See Update, below). Now I see we are at AA-. But the nature of the recent change is that the Rating Outlook, which was formerly Stable has now been revised to Negative. In short, Fitch thinks things are going to get worse. Which means that it will cost more for the city to borrow money, since the only way to get people to take the risk of lending it is to offer higher returns. Why did Fitch take this action?

Primarily (and exactly as predicted) it was due to the passage of Proposition 2.

The change in Rating Outlook to Negative reflects increased uncertainty in general fund operations in light of a summary judgment by a district court judge who upheld the enforceability of one of two revenue limitations measure recently approved by voters. Fitch typically views revenue limitations negatively given that they restrict financial maneuverability. The all-encompassing nature of one of the two propositions (Proposition 2) is cause for additional concern, and Fitch considers its possible implementation as a potential challenge to the city’s credit quality, given ongoing and future spending pressures.

In short, folks, we did it to ourselves, and we were warned it would happen.

There is more to worry about though. In Houston’s case, not only are we paying for the future pension obligations through borrowed money, but we are paying the current dues by borrowing money. This is akin to contributing to your 401(k) by charging it to your credit card. Needless to say, Fitch’s is not impressed with this funding technique, especially considering that it recognizes that the changes made in 2004 only bought the city some time, but did not solve the problem.

In addition, Fitch views the city’s debt financing of a portion of the city’s annual contribution to both the municipal and police pension systems as an indication of financial stress.

That’s putting it mildly. However, not all the news is bad:

General fund operations have reported sizeable surpluses in two of the past three fiscal years, and reserves have increased as a result. Fiscal 2005 ended with net income of $34.4 million, and the unreserved fund balance of $142.7 million, or 9.3% of spending and transfers out, was up sharply from the prior year. Finance department projections for fiscal 2006 year-end anticipate an increase in operating reserves of at least $4 million. Liquidity levels also have improved markedly over the past three fiscal years; the fiscal 2005 general fund cash and investments total was $111.7 million, compared to $27.7 million in fiscal 2002.

To sum up the entire article: the economy is improving and the city’s current bank balance with it, but even that isn’t enough to outweigh the long term implications of the city’s pension headaches and revenue limits.

Update: Three agencies, not two. Forgot Standard and Poor’s. The city’s ratings by each agency as reported in the CAFR for the year ending June 30, 2003 was:

BOND TYPE Std & P Moody Fitch
Gen. Obligation AA- Aa3 AA
Water& Sewer
Junior Lien		 A+ A3 A
Combined Utility
1st Lien		 A A1 A+
Houston Airports A- A1 A+
Convention & Entertainment A- A3 N/R

Source: FY2003 CAFR

Next year, the ratings changed to:

BOND TYPE Std & P Moody Fitch
Gen. Obligation AA- Aa3 AA
Water& Sewer
Junior Lien		 A+ A1 A+
Combined Utility
1st Lien		 A+ A2 A
Houston Airports A A1 A+
Convention & Entertainment A- A3 N/R

Source: FY2004 CAFR

You’re In Good Hands

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Even if it does take 33 minutes for a policeman to arrive at a shooting because the 911 emergency center doesn’t know what it’s doing.

“In response to any kind of emergency, the city of Houston is in very good hands,” (Houston Emergency Center spokesman Joe) Laud said.
(Parenthetical inserted.)

What happened? According to KPRC Channel 2 Troubleshooters:

Amandre Wilson, 40 and her fiancé, Joseph Liebetreu, 43, were fatally shot during a robbery at Wilson’s town home, located in the 3900 block of Floyd Street near Leverkuhn Street, at about 12:15 a.m. on Dec. 22. Larry Joseph Tillman, 27, was charged with capital murder.

Nearly three months after the murders, Houston Emergency Center supervisors agree there was a problem.

“In our guidelines, it should have been a shooting emergency,” said Joe Laud, an H.E.C. spokesman.

And yet it wasn’t dispatched as such until the third 911 call!

December 22 at 12:15 a.m. was a Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Therefore this was not an overburdened weekend night, nor a holiday (yet). It should have been a routine, run-of-the-mill weeknight. Yet two dispatchers in a row screwed up:

Documents obtained by KPRC Local 2 showed that the first caller told a 911 operator he heard gunshots and saw a man running from the scene. The employee coded the call a low priority.

Gunshots. Plural. A suspect fleeing. Low priority?

Ten minutes later, another caller told a 911 operator that after he heard gunshots, he saw his neighbor laying in the doorway of her home. That operator only sent an ambulance.

Gunshots. Plural. A body. Ambulance, no police.

Fourteen minutes later, a dispatcher sent an officer to the scene after a third 911 call.

What did this one report? Graffitti? A Chief Hurtt acronym? After all, if gunshots, a fleeing suspect, and a body don’t warrant a police officer being sent immediately, clearly, the citizen is going to have to come up with something that will get the dispatcher’s attention! How can such a stupid screw-up happen? And why does it keep happening?

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Employee Numbers

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Back on March 6th, I had some questions about the number of employees that the city has on the payroll:

Update 2: Veddy interestink. This figure shows up further into the release:

But please remember that no organization with over 20,000 employees can eliminate all risk of violations of existing laws against self-dealing. Swift and severe actions such as those described by me today constitute the most significant deterrent to future misconduct.

Over 20,000? How does this fit with 12,588? Do we have 8,000 police and fire department employees?

Matt Stiles of the Chronicle follows up with the comment:

My payroll database shows there are 20,113 employees, including police and fire. This figure excludes the names of about aviation employees, who weren’t included in the database because of post-9/11 security concerns. There are about 1,500 employees in that department, though.

Now, the figure of 12,588 comes from this article about the fight between the two unions that want to represent the non-police, non-fire employees (see the Legal Department’s response pictured).

I should have realized the figures would be available in the budget. A cautious little birdie passed along these figures:

According to Police’s CAFR, there were 5,225 policemen on 7-1-04. According to Fire’s CAFR, there were 3,375 firemen on 7-1-02.

The CAFR is the Consolidated Annual Financial Report, a high-level overview of the budget. The 2005 version is available online. What this means is the rough number of 20,000 city employees total is accurate.

5,225 police (7-1-04)
3,375 fire (7-1-02)
12,588 other (1-4-06; non-police, non-fire)
21,188 Total

22,613 (Matt’s figure of 21,113+1,500)

20,000+ (Mayor’s total)

Things that make you go, “Hmmmmm.”

Did the Legal Department give the unions the correct figure? Is the difference due to changes in the police and fire department numbers? Was the mayor just being loose when he said “over 20,000” or is it over 20k but less than 21k now? Does anyone besides me think it’s strange that we can find out how many policemen or firemen the city has, but not Aviation Department employees? Does anyone think it’s strange that it’s so difficult to find out how many employees the city has, period?

Maybe we need to ask the city how many people it hired, how many it fired (er, indefinately suspended), and how many retired in the last few years? Preferably on a month by month basis. . .

Humor and Farce

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The humor comes from the Enron trial today. Over at Isiah’s blog, he reports that Fastow has a very deadpan sense of humor. Or else it’s entirely unintentional.

At one point Petrocelli called fastow a greedy man on Thursday in the cross examination and without cracking a smile Fastow responded, “Mr. Petrocelli, we’ve aleady established I was greedy on Wednesday.”

Jeeze, what was he the other six days of the week? Merely avaricious?

As for the farce, well, of course that’s supplied by Bonusgate. There’s a big fooraw over one of the file cabinets for the pro tem’s office turning up with a dent, like someone might have tried to break into it. Outside of the fact that file cabinets are nortoriously insecure even when locked, I think the real question is why wasn’t the cabinet actually in the pro tem’s office. Instead, it and others were in the break room, where any employee (and theoretically, anyone in the building) could get to them.

More Employee Theft

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Unfortunately, it turns out that the City of Houston is not the only government district plagued with dishonest employees.

A former employee of the Galena Park Independent School District Education Foundation was indicted Tuesday by a Harris County Grand Jury on theft charges.

The indictment charges that Renea Jones Taylor, the foundation’s senior project coordinator, wrote 67 checks to herself during a two-year period. The amount of the checks totaled more than $195,000.

She sure made the Bonusgate Four looke like pikers; they got $143,000 between them; this lady singlehandedly grabbed herself near $200k. The disturbing factor is that she resigned when the investigation began… in May. If the DA’s office took that long for a simple case of theft, the more complicated schemes of the Bonusgate four, and the wider investigation required, mean it should take even longer. While Bonusgate will be higher priority and be able to call on greater resources, if it is handled too quickly, we’ll know it wasn’t particularly thorough….

Bonusgate Four: NOT Fired

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Various media sources have been reporting that the four employees from the Mayor pro tem’s office were fired. The official word came down today, and that is not the case. As I expected and predicted, they have only been suspended indefinately, without pay.

Excerpted:

The four city hall workers accused in the city hall scandal are now indefinitely suspended. Each met with the city’s chief administrative officer at city hall Tuesday and learned their fate this morning.

The mayor himself signed the letters recommending the indefinite suspension early Wednesday morning.

The employees have ten days to appeal their indefinite suspension. After that, they have 30 days to schedule a civil service hearing, which is standard procedure for city employees. They will be paid for today, but beginning tomorrow, it’s an unpaid suspension.

Again, as I have pointed out before, this is the city’s way of telling employees to get lost in such a way that they have no legal recourse to sue.

Indefinate suspensions are the “fired, but not quite fired� level. An employee on this status has no duties and receives no paycheck. There is no hope of being moved off such a status (technically rules exist to do so, but as a practical matter, it’s not going to happen. )

It’s really a crappy status, given that the person is still considered an employee in several key ways, including the right to work elsewhere (FYI: city employees must obtain permission to take a second job. The paperwork takes so long to process that most jobs beyond retail or minimum wage will be filled before all the signatures are obtained.) In short, if the employee wants to work for a living elsewhere and get a paycheck while stuck in limbo, permission is needed from a high pay grade manager, about Assistant Director level.

Needless to say, employees on indefinate suspension aren’t going to get that.

Of course, the employee in question could always voluntarily resign in order to take another job. Which is the point: to save the city the trouble of/challenge from a firing. You can’t sue for wrongful termination if you resign . . .

It’s not going to work to prevent a civil service appeal in this case because the stakes are too high. But that venue is still partly controlled by the city; anything the city’s lawyers challenge as “irrelevant” is likely to be thrown out. A court challenge is not so controllable, but the city will do its best to delay any such suit from coming to trial for years, until the employees are forced to drop it due to legal costs.

Can I Get One of Those?

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Proving that laywers are adaptable, Paris Hilton, some nobody that introduced her to one of her prior f–k buddies, and a California court commissioner, all agreed to a unique restraining order that prohibits her from being within 100 yards of said nobody. Except when at the same party, in which case they can be within 25 feet.

I’d like to get my own unique restraining order against her. She should not be allowed to have sex with me unless I am really, really drunk. Too drunk to run away.

Ok, I must be needing some today; I thought of me, Paris Hilton and sex in the same sentence. I mean, it’s risking God knows what disease to be in the same chapter with those two subjects. Well, definately Cystic Paparazzius or Porno Vidius, but other diseases too.

It’s Not a Conflict…

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…of interest, if you’re not allowed to have any interest. I caught this report during breakfast, but since Kevin’s already on the job over at BlogHouston, you might as well head over there for the news and commentary!

Update:Isiah Carey has the official one-page summary report from the OIG. The summary report, mind you. The full report hasn’t been publicly released.

Edit: I want to clarify that the title is sarcasm. Apparently that didn’t survive the narrow bandwidth of text communication.