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

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.

“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.

Sheryl Cole Launches Mayoral Campaign

Large, diverse crowd voices loud support and
commitment to her call-and-response initiatives

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2014
Posted Saturday May 31, 2014 8:53pm
Updated Wednesday June 4, 2014 3:19pm (added recording and transcript of kickoff speech)

Sheryl Cole, the current mayor pro tem, is winding up her third term on the Austin City Council and—because of term limits—it's either up, out, or run a petition drive to get back on the ballot as a council member. She’s looking to step up to take the mayor’s job.

She is the first African-American woman to serve on the council and wants to be the first African-American mayor, and only the second woman mayor.

Cole, the third major mayoral candidate, formally kicked off her campaign to be Austin’s next mayor at a private home across the street from Lee Elementary School on a steamy hot Saturday afternoon.

Other mayoral candidates with significant resources are Council Member Mike Martinez and attorney Stephen Ira “Steve” Adler. Also running are Todd Phelps and Randall Stephens.

Decked out in skirt, cowgirl boots and a blue-jean jacket, Cole recalled that she had come to Lee Elementary to register the nephew she was raising after his mother died in a car accident. That’s when she met sixth-grade teacher Julie Brown, who calmed Cole’s fears and said, “Sheryl, Sheryl. We. Got. It.”

“There are some debts you can never pay back,” Cole said of that experience, “you can only pay forward.”

She praised the active members of PTA organizations, neighborhood associations, civic groups, the Democratic Party, and church groups for their commitment and service, despite lack of recognition.

“Now I’m a lawyer, and I’m a CPA, but some of the best lessons I learned were from the PTA,” she said. “I took that with me to go ahead and serve on several community boards,” including the Urban League, Planned Parenthood, Communities in Schools, “and I took it all the way to City Hall.”

“It served me well to be able to put groups of people together and watch what they could do for the city,” she said.

 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

The 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.

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.

“It 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.

Steve Adler Launches Mayoral Campaign

Big crowd turns out on a hot day to hear
what the little known candidate would do

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2014
Part 3 in a series
Posted Monday, May 5, 2012 11:08am
Updated May 5, 2014 9:50pm (to add a transcript of Adler’s recorded speech)

The shaded concrete bleachers at the City Hall plaza were filled with supporters of 58-year-old attorney Stephen Ira “Steve” Adler, who’s not well known outside the numerous nonprofit organizations that he’s assisted and led. The open-air plaza was likewise populated by fans standing in the 92-degree hot sun and enjoying treats from Amy’s Ice Cream.

Adler, who’s widely known for being soft-spoken, was nevertheless forceful in delivering a 22-minute speech that touched on most every major area of concern and sometimes varied from Steve Adler’s Scripted Campaign Kickoff Speech that was shared with the press during the event. (For a more accurate account of his speech, listen to the recording linked near the bottom of this article.)

Adler did not address his main political opponents by name, those being declared candidate Mike Martinez and possible candidate Sheryl Cole, both of whom have served on the Austin City Council since 2006.

But he took a backhanded swipe at both, near the end of his speech, when he said, “Others have had the chance over the last eight years (the length of time that Martinez and Cole have been in office) to address the very same challenges we face today. It is time for new leadership.

“We don’t want experience in how things have been done in the past; we need a new and broader experience and a vision for how things should be done tomorrow.”

What’s Steve Adler Done for Austin?

This mayoral candidate has given significant time,
energy, and money to numerous important causes

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2014
Part 2 of a series
Posted Thursday, May 1, 2014 2:45pm

Stephen Ira “Steve” Adler has for decades been an attorney specializing in eminent domain cases to protect the rights of property owners in condemnation proceedings.

But what has he done to demonstrate he has the skills needed to lead Austin into a new era of grassroots governance, in which for the first time every area of the city will have a representative seated on the council dais?

Plenty, according to the leaders of numerous significant organizations.

Adler started law school at the University of Texas in summer semester 1978, fresh out of Princeton, and immediately jelled with fellow law student Eliot Shapleigh, a future Texas state senator.

Shapleigh said in a recent interview that after serving three years in the Peace Corps he entered law school at the same time as Adler. Both were slow to graduate, Shapleigh in 1981, Adler in 1982.

“We took off a year and worked for Procter & Gamble,” Shapleigh said. “One of his friends in Princeton had a connection and Steve and I went over there and learned how to take a product and market and got an experience in life.”

For Adler, earning money was essential: “I took off a year-and-a-half after my first year to make some money to finish law school,” he said.

Shapleigh said, “We got to be really good friends, played on the touch football team against a guy who defended (President Richard) Nixon, Charles Alan Wright. ... Our team was set up to defeat Wright... (but) I broke my thumb so we got beat pretty bad.”

Adler and Shapleigh formed a lasting bond that included being best man at each others weddings. Adler married Melany Maddux in 1989 and they divorced in 1995. In 1998 he married Diane Tipton Land, president and CEO of DT Land Group Inc. The couple celebrated their 16th anniversary last month.

In 1996 Adler helped Shapleigh, an El Paso Democrat, achieve a come-from-behind election victory for a seat in the Texas Senate, then served as his chief of staff and later general counsel during the legislative sessions of 1997 through 2005.

“He wanted to do pubic education and in a few short months he was the expert on school funding formulas and how that works,” Shapleigh said of Adler's quick mastery.