Is the administration of Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner the most corrupt in the city’s history? You decide.
MAYOR TURNER LOSES FIGHT TO HIDE RECYCLING RECORDS
October 30, 2018
Mayor Turner has tried to hide records of his controversial recycling contracts for nearly two years. The First Court of Appeals has now dealt his secrecy a major blow.
Turner had chosen to ignore a ruling by State District Judge Kristen Hawkins to show her the e-mails City Hall wanted to hide from the public. Now the case goes back to the same judge.
The e-mails will chronicle the Mayor’s efforts to deny ECOHUB the contract to recycling all of the city’s garbage. The company had promised to save the City millions and share profits to help pay for Houston firefighter pay raises.
“The Court of Appeals ruling proves what we felt all along, the City’s appeal was a meritless waste of taxpayer funds strategically designed to throw a wrench into the trial court’s laudable efforts to promote the public right to now,” says Stewart Hoffer of the law firm of Hicks-Thomas.
Dolcefino Consulting already has e-mails showing City Garbage Boss Harry Hayes solicited a foreign company FCC to come to town to build a recycling plant even while the City was finalizing a contract with ECOHUB. ECOHUB envisioned the end of expensive landfills and had 800 million dollars in private money to build a plant to convert trash into new products. There are other e-mails detailing Turner’s efforts to kill the contract.
“We can now go back to the business of unmasking what really happened behind the scenes on the City’s approach to the ECOHUB deal”, says Hoffer.
“Mayor Turner needs to come clean today. He is wasting tax dollars that we can use to give our firefighters the fair pay they deserve”, says Wayne Dolcefino, President of Dolcefino Consulting. “This Mayor has made a mockery of the public right to know.”
Dolcefino Consulting also wants the Mayor to release a detailed account of the companies and consultants making money on the FCC deal.
“I have said for months this deal stinks worse than the garbage in your trashcan”, says Dolcefino. “Remember the Mayor now says we can’t afford to give our firefighters the pay they deserve because we don’t have the money,” says Dolcefino. “ The only one to blame for that is Mayor Turner.”
The truth shall set you free! Well, maybe not in this case. What is Sylvester Turner hiding? For more on the ECOHUB matter, see Ted Oberg’s report on ABC13.com.
In 2013, the city of Houston unveiled a prestigious million dollar grant to work toward collecting all your trash and recycling and remake much of it into brand new products. The city spent years trying to finalize a deal. Then it fell apart and it’s incredibly tough to figure out why.
Meanwhile, one of the Mayor’s communications team members continues to campaign for Prop A and against Prop B on the taxpayer dime. She’s so far removed from the reporter I knew several years ago. Now she’s like the Donald Trump of spokespeople. Check this one out:
So now I’m misogynistic and biased because I asked for a copy of a document that she claimed to have seen yet doesn’t exist?
Meanwhile, Bill King just keeps plugging along showing the miscues and misdeeds of the Sylvester Turner administration. From his latest email:
City has Shortchanged the Rebuild Fund by Nearly $250 Million
The more I study the Rebuild Houston program, the more apparent it becomes that the City’s administration of the program is a complete fraud. The most recent discovery we have made is that the City has been using a legal loophole to shortchange the amount of money that was supposed to be transferred from the General Fund to Rebuild Houston.
That one’s not on his website yet but it will be shortly, so check it out and sign up for his emails. And don’t forget this Ted Oberg report on Rebuild Houston. And Downtown Houston Pachyderm Rebuild Houston guest tries to sell ice to Eskimos.
Most corrupt in Houston history? Probably not but I’ll let you decide.
Sad to see Harry Hayes get caught up this mess. And now that China has stopped buying most of our recyclables that deal he struck with FCC better not put the citizens of Houston on the hook for a bad contract.
The rain tax was a scheme that was easy to see as it was being promoted. When I saw my civil engineering buds hooking up with the clown circus coalition that Anise Parker assembled to sell it I knew it was sham.
That you could do the math to show it was being advanced at a cost that was just about exactly what Ma Parker’s 2012 Budget Task Force showed we owed in pension debt at the time baked in the sham notion. The Public Works Department that traditionally rocked along at about 11% of the budget (including pension costs pre Lee Brown) got thrown into the mix of the ‘lockbox’ that was the rain tax. Huh? we were told the rain tax was for streets and flood control infrastructure only prior to the vote. Then when they were rewriting City of Houston ordinances they sure didn’t bother to change the drainage criteria for new development to be any higher than the existing two year storms.
But when they did rewrite the chapter on residential lot sizes they somehow decided having 93% impermeable cover was just dandy on those new 1,400 sf zero setback lots the new minimum size allowed. That was after the rain tax sham.
And then the Texas Supreme Court voted unanimously to void the results of the vote for it because the language was pure fraud. Yet we still have to pay under threat of having our water cut off.
Hurts to admit I voted for Turner the first time he ran for mayor in 1991.
Absolutely, 100%, hands down, the most corrupt Mayor the city of Houston has ever had! Vote Yes for Prop B! And give Eco Hub the recycling contract they rightfully deserve!
He just got his butt handed to him last week in a lawsuit against HFD.
How much taxpayer money has he wasted on all of these ill advised lawsuits and appeals ?
For months and months We told everyone on the City Council and the Mayor’s Office and the Public Works department that they were going to be left holding the bag when–not if–the China market collapsed. It was as obvious as the dawn that a new day was coming.
Hayes and Turner should be held responsible. If Mayor Turner hadn’t continually lied to us in 2016-17 and Harry Hayes had negotiated in good faith for the 18 months in 2014-15 and the more than 50 contract iterations that he made us go through, there would be a new operating EcoHub, 600 Houstonians employed and a solid waste department budget that was at least 25% smaller than it is now. Maybe that’s what Harry was afraid of all along, his fiefdom would be eroded.
Rob Watson, Chief Sustainability Officer, EcoHub
Thanks Rob. I’m guessing your comments never made it into the Comical.