Ideally journalists should always be objective when it comes to reporting, or even analyzing news and issues, but when I read Bob Lanier’s letter (“No defending budget”), in Houston’s only daily’s July 2, 2002 edition’s Viewpoints section, I had no choice but to take the former mayor’s attack on Mayor Lee Brown’s budget, personal. Since I’m still learning good journalism, I apparently haven’t developed the kind of objectivity one needs to separate personal feelings from malicious intent; therefore I can be forgiven if I still tend to take being disrespected personally.

Conversely, every politically-astute citizen of good conscience in the City of Houston shouldn’t only take Lanier’s disrespectable letter personally, but consider it a blatant insult to his or her intelligence. In case you failed to read Viewpoints in the Houston Chronicle’s July 2, 2002 edition, here it is: “No defending budget: Very predictably, Mayor Lee Brown took strong exception to the Chronicle’s on-the-mark June 22 editorial pointing out that the city’s fiscal 2003 budget provides fewer services for more money.

“Something is terribly amiss when the mayor lays off those actually interfacing with serving the public, such as those in the health and library departments, while growing a bloated upper and middle level management staff. If Brown would take the time to understand his own budget, he would realize, for example, that the number of bureaucrats in the top 11 of the city’s 39 pay grades has exploded by about 40 percent under his watch. ‘I take pride in having protected our city employees from layoffs, indeed.’–Bob Lanier, chairman, Citizens For Public Responsibility.”
It would be interesting to compare data from Lanier’s administration with Brown’s, but African-American News&Issues has a long-standing policy of not requesting public information from tax-supported public agencies. There is no way, we’re going to pay public information directors and their staffs to provide public information to the public and go through open record changes (to get public information that tax payers pay public information departments to provide the public), every time we need public information for an article to inform the public. If that’s a little confusing to you, don’t worry about it. We don’t understand why it’s so difficult to get public information either. If anybody wants to view records and data to rebut Lanier’s assertion that he (“protected our city employees from layoffs”), they’re welcome to comply with the open record act. We don’t need statistics, or multifarious documentation, to tell us how messed up Lanier left the city, in spite of breaking Metro, because we’ve been watching Brown clean up behind him for almost five years.

Considering the love affair that Lanier had with the mainstream media, we can only conclude that he ran the city like there was no tomorrow. Term limits notwithstanding, a friendly media makes it very difficult to understand how city departments could actually commit criminal acts without the chief executive’s knowledge. Even so, we know for sure that privatizating city services reached an all time high during Lanier’s administration. When a city service is contracted to private industry, it is not the directors, or even middle managers that lose their jobs. It’s always the workers.

Do you think the administrators lost their jobs when Solid Waste was privatized? The guys who ran behind the trucks and bumped those garbage cans lost their jobs. It’s also interesting that Lanier used the health department and library as examples of how Brown laid off those “actually interfacing with serving the public,” insofar as the health clinics and libraries in minority communities are impacted most. Brown will be remembered most for how he upgraded the libraries and saved the neighborhood clinics from everything but Tropical Storm Allison.
Neighborhood clinics have been considered unnecessary evils since Kathy Whitmire was mayor. And most elitists are convinced it’s a waste of money to put libraries in minority neighborhoods. Brown fought like hell for minority neighborhoods. What do you want to bet that the mayoralty candidate supported by Lanier’s cronies won’t use neighborhood health clinics and libraries in minority neighborhoods as issues? A glimpse at the list of candidates vying for Brown’s term limited office at city hall quickly tells you the 2003 election is going to be one of the most divisive in Houston’s history.

Other than the fact it’s “Turner Time,” nobody is surprised that former Mayor Pro Tem Rev. Jew Don Boney, Jr.’s name has materialized. Ed Wulfe, Judge Eric Ardell and Rob Mosbacher are also familiar names. And Paul Bettencourt, our over zealous County Tax Assessor-Collector, has been campaigning for a more prestigious position since his first day in a public office. Politically-astute Black voters had better get their act together, and get ready for an “anything goes” dogfight, that will cross party lines and expose those who will sell their people out for 30 pieces of silver.

Although African-American front-runners no longer will be surprised by an Orlando Sanchez splitting the Hispanic vote, more than a few eyebrows were raised when Michael Berry (a neophyte Republican many believe wouldn’t have become a City Councilman without Turner’s African-American connection), threw his hat in the ring. Et tu Brutae?