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Investigative Report

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Steve Adler Land Developer

Steve Adler Land Developer

The mayoral candidate profited from not
having to comply with the SOS Ordinance

Investigative Report by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2014
Part 6 in a series
Posted Tuesday August 5, 2014 10:25am

Steve AdlerEnvironmentalists sharply criticized mayoral candidate Stephen Ira “Steve” Adler for representing land owners who avoided compliance with current environmental ordinances, as The Austin Bulldog reported in Part 4 and Part 5 of this series.

A review of several hundred pages of public records obtained through research and public information requests indicate that Adler himself personally profited from not having to comply with the Save Our Springs Ordinance for development of a tract in Oak Hill.

The steeply sloped 16-acre tract that Adler and law partner Michael Barron bought in January 1995 carried with it a Restrictive Covenant executed in December 1987—more than 10 years before any development plans were filed. The Restrictive Covenant granted rights to 65 percent impervious cover on the tract. If subject to the Save Our Springs Ordinance, enacted more than two years before Barron and Adler purchased the tract, impervious cover would have been limited to 25 percent.

The site plan for development of the property was filed by Barron and Adler in May 1998, more than three years after they bought the land.

A post-bust bargain?

Steve Adler’s Other Environmental Lawsuits

Steve Adler's Other Environmental Lawsuits

 Three more cases in which the candidate’s legal
work pitted him against environmental regulations

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog
Part 5 in a series
Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2014 10:45am

Steve AdlerAustin mayoral candidate Stephen Ira “Steve” Adler has handled hundreds of lawsuits, he says, and he doesn’t want to be judged by the handful in which he represented developers who, through his legal assistance and occasional legislative maneuvering by others, were able to avoid complying with the City of Austin’s current environmental regulations.

“My concern is that others in the city want to get me defined by three cases out of hundreds of cases and there's a narrative they're trying to create on the street and it's not fair and it's not true,” Adler said in a May 15 interview. (For the record, there are four such cases.)

“I’m talking to as many people in the environmental community as I can,” he said. “I’m asking people to judge me on matters over time and not ... walk away thinking I was challenging SOS Ordinance.”

That’s one way of putting it. Another would be that he and other attorneys he worked with helped property owners avoid complying with the Save Our Springs Ordinance, or other environmental protection ordinances that preceded it, by asserting a right to develop under older, less restrictive ordinances.

Whether an attorney running for office should be judged by the clients he represented is a question for voters to decide.

But an attorney’s clients definitely played a decisive role in a past city council election.

Opponent’s clients helped Slusher get elected

Monitoring City Staff Conflicts of Interest

Monitoring City Staff Conflicts of Interest

Public information requests and ongoing investigation
triggers reforms by Austin’s Ethics Review Commission

Investigative Report by Joseph Caterine and Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2014
Posted Wednesday June 4, 2014 10:33am

The Austin Bulldog’s investigation indicates that 12 non-elected City of Austin officials failed to file Statements of Financial Information that were due in April 2013. That number is disputed by the City. (More about that later.) A public information request for the statements due in April 2014 is awaiting the City’s response.

Of the 147 Statements that were filed by non-elected officials in 2013, only 56 forms were filled out correctly, according to The Austin Bulldog’s analysis.

This is not a story exposing conflicts of interest among City of Austin staff members but about the city’s lack of oversight that would prevent or assist in the discovery of such conflicts.

This investigation exposed problems the city has in identifying which city staff members are required to file and found the city has done nothing to discipline those who file late or not at all.

The stir caused by six public information requests filed for this investigation between January 6 and April 2 caused the city staff and Ethics Review Commission to initiate a number of reforms. These reforms include revising reporting forms to clarify what information is required and agreeing to perform annual audits after the filing deadline.

Peter Einhorn“It’s always been my position that it seems like a waste to make people file this information if nobody actually looks at it,” Ethics Review Commission member Peter Einhorn said at the April 29 meeting.

And that's one of the key findings of this investigation: City Code requires designated city officials to file these reports but, beyond reminding officials to file, oversight has been nonexistent.

Steve Adler’s Baggage: Environmental Lawsuits

 Steve Adler’s Baggage: Environmental Lawsuits

Mayoral candidate a lawyer whose work puts
him at odds with environmental organizations

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog
Part 4 in a series
Posted Wednesday May 21, 2014 2:13pm

Kirk WatsonThe last lawyer elected mayor of Austin was Kirk Watson, now a state senator. Watson was elected in 1997 with strong endorsements of local environmental organizations. And why not, for he had served as the appointed chairman of the Texas Air Control Board, one of the predecessor agencies to what is now the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The Watson-led City Council was the first in which every member was endorsed by environmentalists—an important milestone in the mainstreaming of environmental values.

The 2014 mayoral election will be like none that preceded it. The strength of environmental group endorsements, as well as the endorsements of other groups, will be diluted now that elections are moving from May to November. Voter turnout will be much larger, about 300,000 as opposed to some 50,000 that usually vote in May elections. If no candidate wins an outright majority on November 4—and has to face a December 16 runoff while competing for voters’ attention during holiday shopping and vacations—the importance of the environmental vote may be a larger factor in who gets elected.

Still, no one aspiring to be mayor wants to be seen as anti-environmental.

Which may be a challenge for mayoral candidate Stephen Ira “Steve” Adler.

Steve Adler

As reported in Part 2 of this series, Adler earned respect for his work in the state legislative sessions 1997-2005 as chief of staff and general counsel for State Senator Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso), and for his leadership in, and financial support of, numerous important nonprofit organizations.

Environmentalists are wary of Adler because as an attorney he represented developers who gained rights to construct projects over the Barton Springs portion of the Edwards Aquifer without having to comply with the Save Our Springs Ordinance, in one instance, or with predecessor ordinances in two others.

Brad RockwellIt is important to remember that when Steve Adler helps clients evade City of Austin environmental regulations, Adler is representing polluters,” said attorney Brad Rockwell, who was deputy director of the Save Our Springs Alliance and represented it in a 2004 lawsuit that tried to stop the construction of a Lowe’s Home Center in Sunset Valley.

Open Meetings Investigative Reports

Council Member Randi Shade Goes on the Record About Private Meetings: Fourth in a series of recorded question-and-answer interviews, February 9, 2011City of Austin...