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Investigative Report

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Mark Sokolow’s Competence in Question

Posted Monday June 14, 2010 7:01pm
Georgetown City Attorney's
Competence Called Into Question

His Contract Never Legally Executed,
His Support Nearly Nonexistent
Investigative Report by Ken Martin

Mark SokolowThe municipal legal career of Mark Sokolow has seen its ups and downs:

Up: In 1991, Sokolow was hired by the City of League City, Texas.

Down: In February 1996 he was fired as city attorney of League City; he returned the favor by suing the city.

Up: Despite getting canned by League City, he was hired the very next month as city attorney for the City of Port Arthur; a council member in Port Arthur when Sokolow was hired said the council wasn’t aware of what had happened in League City.

Down: Sokolow's lawsuit against League City was so flimsy it was dismissed without getting a trial.

Up: When Sokolow resigned last October to take the job of Georgetown’s city attorney, the Port Arthur city council handed him a hefty bonus.

Up: Sokolow was hired by the City of Georgetown and started work last October 19 for $125,000 a year.

Down: He is working for the City of Georgetown under a contract that was never legally executed.

Down: The Austin Bulldog reported on May 4 how Sokolow facilitated the illegal payment of $13,600 for Georgetown Council Member Pat Berryman last December.

Down: He screwed up a deal to buy property for city facilities, hacked off the school district and embarrassed the city he represents.

Up: After six months on the job the city council evaluated his performance and gave him a $5,000 raise.

Down: He has alienated numerous colleagues. Examples abound, as detailed below.

Down: City staff is rooting for his ouster, though they fear being fired if they speak up.

The defense rests: Sokolow declined to be interviewed for this story.


Hardball tactics blow up in his face
The city wanted to acquire land where it could build a new fire station, police station and storage yard. The most critical element was the new fire station, which was needed to meet response times on fire alarms on the west side of I-35.

The negotiation process for the targeted site had been underway for almost a year when Sokolow got involved. It had taken that long because of the necessity to coordinate the location of the city’s new fire station with an Emergency Services District, which provides fire protection outside the city limits. Settling the terms of a purchase agreement for the city’s tract was to be the final step in closing the deal.

Council Member’s Pay Violates Texas Constitution

Posted Tuesday May 4, 2010 2:39pm
Updated Wednesday May 5, 2010 10:56am
Georgetown Council Member’s
Pay Violates Texas Constitution
Investigative Report by Ken Martin

Pat BerrymanPat Berryman, who is serving in her second term as a member of the Georgetown City Council, was paid a lump sum of $13,600 by the City of Georgetown in an apparent violation of the Texas Constitution.

The payment was requested by Berryman as reimbursement of expenses from July 2008 through December 2009.

The payment is reflected in a copy of Council Member Berryman’s city payroll record obtained from the City of Georgetown using the Texas Public Information Act.

During the entire period for which Berryman claimed reimbursement, she was a state employee working for State Senator Steve Ogden (R-Bryan), according to state payroll records obtained from the Secretary of the Texas Senate through an open records request.

Section 40(b) of the Texas Constitution prohibits a state employee who is a member of a governing body from drawing a salary. A state employee serving as a council member may be reimbursed for actual expenses but must prove that the expenses equal or exceed the amount reimbursed.

Council Member Berryman has not met that requirement.

How it happened

Mark-SokolowIn a December 15, 2009, e-mail to Georgetown City Attorney Mark Sokolow, Berryman requested reimbursement of expenses from July 2008 through December 2009.

The $13,600 she was paid represents 17 months at $800 a month.

Berryman’s e-mail to Sokolow lists 16 items, or types of expenses. The e-mail provides no indication of the amount of expenses incurred for any or all of these items. Berryman provided no receipts for the stated expenses.

Reimbursement previously refused

According to the minutes of the Georgetown City Council Meeting of April 8, 2008, under Agenda Item T, the council voted 7-0 to approve a change to the compensation schedule for the mayor and council members.

The new schedule was based on recommendations of a compensation committee appointed by the council to study the matter.

The compensation schedule authorized:

• “Base compensation” of $450 a month for the mayor and $300 a month for each of the seven council members.

• An “optional stipend” of $800 a month for the mayor and council members.

The minutes of that council meeting do not fully explain the compensation, but the minutes specify—as the compensation committee recommended—that the mayor and council members “would not be required to explain their reason for accepting the stipend.”

 

To facilitate these payments, the city devised a form that provided boxes to be checked, to either accept or decline each form of compensation

A warning was printed on the form:

Georgetown City Attorney Hired In Secret

Posted Wednesday April 28, 2010 5:31pm
Updated Friday April 30, 2010
Georgetown City Attorney Hired In Secret
Investigative Report by Ken Martin

The City of Georgetown has legal problems.

On September 8, 2009, the Georgetown City Council made the decision to hire a new, in-house city attorney, Mark Sokolow, in a closed-door executive session. That appears to be a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

James HemphillAttorney Jim Hemphill of the Austin law firm Graves Dougherty Hearon and Moody, serving as a volunteer attorney on behalf of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, described the nature of such a violation.

“While the Open Meetings Act allows deliberation of personnel matters to be held in executive session, it does not have any provision authorizing hiring decisions to be made in executive session,” Hemphill said.

Hemphill pointed to Open Records Decision No. 605, issued by then Texas Attorney General Dan Morales, that states:

“Although deliberation may take place in an executive session, the board may take action to hire an employee only in an open session properly noticed in accordance with section 3A of the Open Meetings Act.”

Strike two
A possible second violation of the Open Meetings Act is also connected to the hiring of Mark Sokolow. This one relates to the description of an agenda item for the executive session. The notice did not adequately describe what the city council was to discuss behind closed doors. The posting for the 6pm session of the September 8, 2009, agenda stated for Item BB:

“Sec. 551.074 Personnel Matters — City attorney.”

Patricia CarlsPatricia “Trish” Carls of the Austin law firm Carls, McDonald and Dalrymple had served as Georgetown’s city attorney for years. She was present and acted in that capacity at the September 8 council meeting. (It is common practice for small cities to contract with outside law firms for legal services rather than hire the staff necessary to provide such services.)

The wording of the agenda item for the executive session is unclear. It could be construed by the public to mean that a discussion of Carls would be undertaken.

What actually occurred, however, was revealed in the minutes of the September 8 council meeting, which under “Action from Executive Session,” reads as follows:

“Motion by (Council Member Pat) Berryman, second by (Council Member Gabe) Sansing that the Human Resources (sic) have the authority to continue his discussions with the

Who Protects the Texas Environment?

Published Monday April 1, 2010 9:08am
Updated Wednesday April 14, 2010
Who Protects the Texas Environment?
Hint: It Isn’t the State Agency That’s Supposed To
Investigative Report by Greg M. Schwartz

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s mission statement says the agency “strives to protect our state’s human and natural resources consistent with sustainable economic development. Our goal is clean air, clean water, and the safe management of waste.” But the agency’s numerous critics charge that the environmental protection of Texas is repeatedly trumped by politically motivated management decisions concerned only with the economic development part of the equation.

Neil Carman“There is so much dirt on the agency and most of it has never been investigated,” says Neil Carman, clean air director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, based in Austin. From 1980 to 1992, Carman worked as an investigator and inspector for the Texas Air Control Board, a predecessor agency that was merged into what is now the TCEQ. Carman says he has a list of criminal cases against the TCEQ that have never been pursued, compiled from trading war stories with other investigators around the state. One of the primary areas of malfeasance Carman cites is the TCEQ’s air permitting system.

“TCEQ issued more than 150 state flexible air permits from 1995-2009 to major industrial plants by using an illegal permitting program that circumvented the Clean Air Act,” Carman says. These plants include many large industrial sources of toxic air pollutants, particulate matter, ozone-forming compounds, acid rain-producing gases, and haze-forming chemicals. The U.S. EPA Region 6 headquarters listed 142 plants in Texas in a September 25, 2007, letter that was sent to companies. The letter indicated the need for grandfathered, industrial plants that hold so-called “Flexible Permits” to reduce pollution and comply with the Clean Air Act.

Carman authored a 1999 report on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention. The report identified about 1,070 Texas plants partly or totally grandfathered under the state law known as the Texas Clean Air Act.

“We have a permitting system that creates enforcement nightmares,” Carman says. He said the TCEQ has issued somewhere around 86,000 permits for industrial plants and facilities since 1971, and only denied about 15. Eighty-six thousand permits over 40 years averages out to 2,150 a year—more than eight every single day. Carman says the incredulous number comes directly from the permit numbers assigned by the TCEQ.

“People are shocked when they hear about all the air permits being more than 86,000—and that is a dated total. But that is good for ‘bidness’ in Texas. They issue this stuff like candy, every day, state

A con man gets his just reward

Loan packager finds easy targets in tough times About 4600 wordsThis is a four-part series of articles about a man who was ripping off small...