Dallas News Blog

Patrick Michels

Bonus: Since the city's Calatrava construction cam is still stuck in September, we decided to update it with some fresh pics available right here.

​Oh, you caught me here at my desk doing a little quick calculation, totting some things up, always a dangerous exercise for a history major. I picked up what I thought was jarring news during a routine city council committee meeting this morning. I'm trying to see how things might work out.

You know that huge Trinity River project we have devoted much of our municipal energy to over the last decade and a half, with the parks and the trails and the lakes and the Standing Wave (whatever the hell that is)? You know what I mean, right?

Apparently there's no money to run any of it.

None. Not dime one. And apparently our astute city council sort of doesn't quite know that yet.

This morning, the council's Trinity River Corridor Project Committee was getting an update on the design for the Continental Bridge, which is to be converted into a linear park. For a while they were stuck on the meaning of the word "bollard," which, I admit, I also found challenging. I was thinking it was some kind of song, typically accompanied by guitar, but that was just my Yankee accent fouling me up again.

A bollard -- do you care about this? -- it's a park thing. A post or something. Can we leave that one?

OK, moving on. Council member Delia Jasso asked assistant city manager Jill Jordan, who will be responsible for promoting events on the bridge once it's a park, "What's our projection on programming for the bridge? Who's going to do special events there?"

Jordan told her, "You have raised a question we have been thinking about for many years, about how are we going to handle the park. Is it going to be run by the Park Department, or is it going to be run by somebody else?"

Not the bridge park. That's one tiny little detail in the overall Trinity River park plan. Jordan meant the whole thing -- lakes, stand-up water whatever, not to mention the gigantic Great Trinity Forest. I mean, that's how they sold it to voters - the biggest urban park in America.

They don't even know what department will be over it.

Patrick Michels

​In an editorial today The Dallas Morning News gives all the credit for better ethics at City Hall to Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert because, "In the end, Tom Leppert didn't blink."

They must have sent a greenhorn over to cover the city council's straw vote on ethics reform last week. An experienced reporter would have known that Mr. Leppert never blinks --- a trait that usually gives people the willies.

In this case The News's editorial page is on a mission. It wants people to know that Tom Leppert -- by all appearances soon to be a Republican candidate for Kay Bailey Hutchison's Senate seat -- is the one, the only source of disinfectant for the toxic corridors of City Hall, still stenchy from a sordid federal corruption trial.

"Several city council members spent last week scrambling in a determined effort to derail the Dallas mayor's plan to vote on ethics reform," the editorial page moaned. "Their colleague Angela Hunt ostensibly was on the side of reforming the ethics code, but she spent some of her microphone time trying to stop the vote."

Reality check: Hunt is the reason we're having this conversation. Leppert only jumped on it after Hunt put together a caucus of colleagues to ask the city attorney for a briefing. And when he did race out front of the parade, Leppert was, as usual, all prance and no tuba. His proposal for "lobbyist reform" read like something probably drafted by one of his own favorite, well, uh ... you know ... lobbyists. It featured some flashy language requiring professional lobbyists to list everybody they talk to at City Hall.

For most professional lobbyists, that would be easy: everybody at City Hall.

We can thank council members Hunt, Ann Margolin and Linda Koop for adding the only real teeth in this poor gum-smacker: At the council debate so sneeringly dismissed by the editorialists, council members greatly expanded the list of people required to report their lobbying activities to include the stakeholders typically hiding behind the façade of paid lobbyists.

DISD trustee Edwin Flores

​The Dallas Morning News op-ed page always bends over backward to give both sides their say. If somebody turns in an opinion piece saying babies should not be cut into chunks and eaten, they'll hunt around all week until they find someone else to write the opposing view.

But if they really have to do it that way -- if there is no truth, only argument -- then at least they could choose people who come to the argument with equally clean or dirty hands.

To wit, in today's paper former school board member, legislator and community activist Harryette Ehrhardt makes a powerfully stated case for tossing out the incumbents on the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees in Tuesday's lection. She presents a lengthy indictment of the people who are on the board now, reminding us of the board's stunning history of malfeasance, misfeasance and really-bad-feasance over the last year.

Then, for the opposing view, we have a long essay arguing that incumbency is a virtue and that the incumbents did everything right and should all be voted back to their seats on the board. And this side of the argument is handled by whom? Why, none other than Edwin Flores, one of the incumbents.

Incumbent Flores argues, "As an incumbent, I have the knowledge and experience to vote in the best interests of all DISD students, and on the basis of the best available data and practices, to do what is required."

But if that were true, then why did Flores lead the board in voting to illegally suspend board elections?

​Here's proof, as if we needed it, that Woodrow Wilosn is the one high school in Dallas capable of producing high-achieving graduates not afraid to appear in international situations wearing odd pants. We offer this photo of Woodrow Wilson High School Over-and-Over Achiever Thomas Simpson and the Princeton University Tigertones glee club, of which Simpson's a member, appearing in Bermuda with His Excellency Sir Richard Gozny. We confess that Unfair Park had to Google Sir Richard to find out what's so excellent about him. He's the British "Governor and Commander" of Bermuda. Don't we wish we had one.

But anybody from East Dallas knows what's excellent about young Simpson. He was a star in the Woodrow Musicals, including the 50th, Fiddler on the Roof, in which played Lazar Wolf, the rich butcher. Simpson was a National Merit Scholar, named "Best Advocate" in the Texas Mock Trial Team competition and was one of a record seven Woodrow Wildcats sent to the Texas High School Coaches Association 2007 Academic All-State Football Team. Then he followed his old man, former Dallas city councilman Lee Simpson, to Princeton.

Patrick Michels

Dallas City Attorney Tom Perkins

​Angela Hunt is putting the bite on the mayor today on the issue of ethics reform.

The council is being briefed on possible new ethics rules growing out of the City Hall corruption case. Council member Hunt and four other members signed a letter a couple weeks ago asking City Attorney Tom Perkins to give them a briefing on what other cities do, so this is that.

Perkins gave them a lot of technical stuff first. Now it's going around the horseshoe for questions, and Hunt, in her inimitably polite way, is getting down to brass tacks.

First, she asks what good it will do to have lobbyists provide information about their activities at City Hall on a quarterly basis, as Perkins has suggested, instead of having them do it right away, when they're lobbying and when there's daylight on the issue.

"The primary goal of this is to provide transparency and to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety," she says. In order to do any good, Hunt says lobbyists should have to file reports weekly.

Next, she says it doesn't do much good just to get a list of names of the council members the lobbyists have called. They'll just put a call in to every council member so they can say they called everybody.

Says Hunt, "On this document, it says, 'City officials contacted on issues.' But it doesn't note the date the officials were contacted, the length of time the lobbyists met with the officials. And to me those are two of the most important issues. If we're trying to get at transparency and disclosure, that's the type of information we want."

Courtesy Justin Cozart

This piece from 1945 must be what DowntownDallas's Kourtny Garrett means when she writes, "I'd say we're coming full circle."

​Grudgingly, I have to say that the two Dallas City Council members who asked the best questions at today's council briefing on downtown trolleys were Ron Natinsky and Dave Neumann. Both of them wanted to know why the proposed governing body for a downtown trolley system would put the City of Dallas in a minority role, since the system will be in downtown Dallas and Dallas will be paying for it.

In particular, Neumann wanted to know why Dallas Area Rapid Transit should get almost as many seats on the board of the proposed trolley authority as the city, since DART isn't putting any moolah into it.

No shit, Sherlock.

Putting DART and the suburbs in charge of a downtown Dallas trolley system paid for by Dallas taxpayers is the brainchild of transportation chair Linda Koop, who has never seen a suburb she didn't want to smooch. Must be running for Congress.

City council member Carolyn Davis asked whether the trolleys will be on tracks "or on rubber" in downtown. The answer from a consultant: "Tracks."

Then Davis asked if the trolleys will be on tracks or on rubber when the trolleys leave downtown and go out into the neighborhoods. The answer: "Tracks."

I see her point. Otherwise we're going to be in a hell of a mess.

Brandon Thibodeaux

​Lots of speculation going on around town about whether the next shoe to fall in Dallas's ongoing City Hall corruption woes may be a Gucci to the head of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. Today, matter of fact, Kevin Krause has posted a tidbit on The News's City hall blog dealing with Price, Dallas County Judge Jim Foster and our coverage in the paper version of Unfair Park dealing with the Inland Port project.

The Inland Port is a gigantic shipping center under development in Southern Dallas. One of the big principals in it, Richard Allen of The Allen Group, has complained that after he refused to hire a group of expensive "consultants" in South Dallas, Price and the North Texas Council of Governments sabotaged his efforts to get a bridge built. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, speaking about it to the Observer, described Price as always "shaking people down" in Southern Dallas.

Krause's item reveals that Price's lawyers now have deposed Foster a second time concerning his remarks to me that Price was "all about a shakedown." Foster has been maintaining in depositions that he told me that other people thought Price was involved in shakedowns. He has also been saying under oath that he has been talking a lot to the FBI about Price. For complicated reasons of confidentiality, I will have to let the reader be Sherlock Holmes on that one.

The amusing element here for me is The News.

AIA Dallas

So, why wasn't former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller on trial? Because "there was nothing improper about former Mayor Laura Miller's campaign contributions," that's why. After the jump, the current mayor weighs in.

​At a mid-afternoon press conference dealing with the blizzard of guilty verdicts earlier today for five defendants in the Dallas City Hall corruption case, U.S. Attorney Jim Jacks of the Northern District of Texas seemed to wag a cautionary finger in the direction of Dallas voters:

"At the end of the day," Jacks said in prepared remarks, "the citizens of a community are the ones that ultimately decide what type of government they will have in that community."

So what type have we got?

"Through this lengthy investigation and subsequent trial, the government presented compelling evidence showing that an elected official and many of those non-elected officials working around him sought to use that position as a means to line their own pockets at the expense of the public."

Jacks seemed to throw the citizens a bone for the verdicts, which he said show "that the citizens of this community do not want a government where the game is rigged and the people in positions of power seek to further their own interests before that of the citizens they are supposed to be serving."

Unfair Park would observe, however, that it was the jurors who found former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill guilty. The citizens of Dallas elected him to office five times in a row.

Unfair Park asked Marcus Busch, the lead trial attorney for the government, about repeated suggestions by the defense that the government practiced a double standard by not investigating and charging former Mayor Laura Miller in relation to campaign contributions she received from one of the contractors who confessed to paying Hill bribes.

Busch pretty much jumped on it.

"There is no inconsistency," he said. "There was nothing improper about former Mayor Laura Miller's campaign contributions that she received."

He went on...

Sam Merten

Don and Sheila Hill and attorney Victor Vital after the jury handed down its guilty verdicts today in the Dallas City Hall federal corruption trial

​So, it turns out Patrick "Buzz" Williams was right. No matter how you do the accounting, how you structure the contracts, how you interpret arcane campaign finance laws and city ethics policies, getting caught on camera accepting 10 grand in cash out back of a church is still like getting caught naked in your neighbor's house.

Moments ago, of course, a racially diverse jury in the Dallas City Hall corruption trial in federal court picked up its ax and whacked through a dense tangle of counter-arguments by the defense: Guilty, guilty, guilty, the jury said of five defendants ranging from a popular former Dallas city council member to an unknown used car dealer.

Observer reporters have been talking to people around Dallas for the last two weeks about what this trial will have to say about Dallas City Hall. The overwhelming sentiment has been that this kind of verdict -- everybody guilty -- should go straight to the heart of the way this city does politics. Should. Assuming there is a heart.

Don Hill, elected to the Dallas city council in 1999, 2002, '03, '05 and '07 and once considered a serious contender for mayor of Dallas, is now a convicted felon. So is his wife, Sheila Farrington-Hill, also his appointee to the City Plan Commission, D'Angelo Lee, and his political crony Darren Reagan (proprietor of the Black State Employees Association of Texas which had no black state employees as members) and Ricky Robertson, a little-known little guy who wandered into the middle of a far-reaching extortion bribery plot.

The big theme offered by the defense was "politics as usual." In other words, the 14 defendants in this mess (several of whom pleaded guilty before the trial) were just doing business the way everybody does it at Dallas City Hall -- selling their votes for money filtered through consulting contracts and campaign contributions.

Brandon Thibodeaux

Russell Fish

​Dallas pot-stirrer, education activist and computer inventor Russell Fish -- the subject of a Dallas Observer cover story a couple years ago -- is making trouble Down Under. One of Fish's many diverse and unpredictable hats is as an activist on sexual predation issues, apparently on a world-wide basis. Fish and the Victoria Herald Sun are putting heat on Australian cops for sheltering a fugitive from sexual assault charges in Scotland.

We can tell the Victoria Police one thing for sure: Mr. Fish will not go away.

So, park in the wrong direction, get a $45 ticket. OK, then. But there's this curb ...

​This morning, I think I saw the first little indicator of how the city plans to deal with these lean times. I'm coming back up my street from walking my dog, and I see a little natural-gas-powered city car with a Public Works logo on the side stopped with the door open, and the city guy is arguing with my neighbor, Larry Offut.

Turns out the city guy has just written a ticket on an automobile that belongs to a young woman in the duplex across the street from me. Her offense? Her car is parked pointed in the wrong direction. The ticket, for $45, is for wrong-way parking on a two-way street.

The city guy is gone by the time I get up there -- speeding down on our street, if I may say so. Offut tells me he saw the guy writing the ticket and was struck by how seldom we see representatives of our fine Public Works Department out here in the 'hood.

Offut told me: "I said to him, 'If you're from Public Works, how about reporting this broken curb in front of my house that's a threat to safety?' He said, 'We don't have anything to do with that,' and he took off."

Wonder if Schutze ran into Angela Hunt when she was out snapping photos of the flooded Trinity River

​Rudy Bush has a story in this morning's Dallas Morning News attempting, thank goodness, to do the reporting that Bruce Tomaso did not do yesterday in his blog item about flooding and the proposed Trinity River toll road. Bush has accepted our suggestion on Unfair Park yesterday that The News at least tell readers what the National Weather Service has to say about flood crests on the Trinity and related flood damage projections.

But, look: There is still a gaping logic hole in Bush's story. The headline is: "Would the rains have flooded the Trinity Toll Road?"

The first word of the story, set aside in its own paragraph, is: "No."

And how does he know that? Bush asserts four paragraphs later that the toll road, if built, "will be designed to withstand more than a 100 year flood."

The problem? It's this: Theoretically, you could design a road that would stand 500 feet above the crest of the highest predicted flood on the river. You could build the whole thing on gigantic stilts. But the cost would be in the kabillions of dollars.

Dallas has no idea how it is going to pay for the massive repair and restoration needed to bring the existing levee system up to minimal safety standards. Design work on the toll road has halted, because it's absurd to even think about designing a road between the levees when the levees themselves aren't safe.

The flat assertion that the toll road will be designed -- implicitly, built -- at levels higher than the 100-year flood without endangering the levee system is straight-up propaganda at this point, blithely reported as news in The News.

All photos by Jim Schutze

Down at the Margaret Hunt Hill construction site, where, we hope, nobody's in that Porta-John

​I had other work to do this morning, but Robert was right: I couldn't stay away from Old Man River. A bit after noon I ventured down to the site of the Calatrava suspension bridge construction site to see how the high water of the last 48 hours is affecting progress on bridge construction.

I am happy to say that the floods have not had any effect on the progress of the bridge, mainly because there is no progress. Well, somebody finally did deliver some of the pre-fabbed steel from Italy, but it's all just sitting out there in trailers, mostly underwater. I saw no signs of human activity.

The other thing I wanted to check out was the levee that protects West Dallas from devastation at the Ray's Gun Shop end of the Calatrava signature bridge. I have to tell you: Things look nasty, especially where construction had already eroded the levee.

The levee itself, from the water line to the top, is roughly the consistency of a well-made chocolate mousse. The mud was sucking my shoes off at several points. Had I stood in one spot long enough, I would have sunk to mid-calf. Quickly. And I'm talking about the top of the levee. I was afraid if I walked all the way down I would hear a giant sucking sound and then go on to meet my everlasting reward. But then, I feel that way sometimes about getting out of bed in the morning.

​Yesterday, in a pitch of live-blogging fever at the Dallas City hall corruption trial, I penned a little missive -- as a sort of aside, really -- about a certain sick symbiosis in Dallas politics between rich white arts mavens and sell-out minority politicians.

Between my wife and Sandra Crenshaw, I ran into a hell of a lot of debate about it for the rest of the day. Both Sandra and my wife thought I was giving short shrift to the role of the arts in making this is a good city to live in, and my wife thought I was demonizing people who are probably, in her words, "not evil, just clueless." (Personally, that's what I'm going for on my tombstone.) So today I am excerpting myself, which sounds like something probably forbidden by the Bible, in order to give it all a second airing and see what you think.

The specific instance here is evidence presented at the trial that former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and Lynn Flint Shaw, who was chair of Mayor Tom Leppert's political fund-raising committee, cooked up a deal to get money out of the arts crowd for the anti-strong-mayor campaign in 2005.

Here is what I wrote yesterday:

Sam Merten

Don Hill had quite the, um, rough day yesterday. And now he's got Jim to contend with.

​Judge Barbara Lynn, Ms. Punctuality, is 15 minutes late getting the Dallas City Hall federal corruption trial started at the Earle Cabell this morning. Usually she keeps the jury informed about every little blip in court procedure, but today she sits down and fires up the day's proceedings without a fare-thee-well.

U.S. Attorney Marcus Busch starts right in on former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill about the role of so-called community housing development organizations, or "CHODOs," in development projects, especially one called Bright Three.

Hill is maintaining his cool. In bullfight terms, this would be the "tercio de varas," where they have to get the bull stirred up for the bull-fighter. Busch plays the part of "picador," circling the bull on horseback and jabbing at this neck with a pike.

Before asking questions having to do with Hill's current wife, Sheila Farrington Hill, Busch asks, "Would you prefer for me to describe her as your mistress at that time?"

"I would prefer that you refer to her as my wife at this time," Hill said.

Very cool.

Psssst, Carol Reed, they're talking about you ...

​Five Dallas City Council members want the city to think about requiring people to register as lobbyists if they get paid to influence the council. The ongoing Dallas City Hall federal corruption trial has brought a series of revelations about so-called consultants -- a broad term apparently meaning anybody who can get you the votes you need for your deal with the city, for a price.

Five council members this morning signed a letter to City Attorney Tom Perkins asking him to research requirements for lobbyists at the state capitol and also in other cities. Angela Hunt, Jerry Allen, Pauline Medrano, Ann Margolin and Linda Koop write in the letter, which you'll find in full after the jump, "In order to ensure transparent, open government, and discourage even the appearance of impropriety, we request that the City Council consider adopting a registration process for paid lobbyists similar to that employed by the State of Texas."

I'm writing about this issue in my column for this week's Dallas Observer. I spoke with Hunt about the letter this morning and told her I was hearing some resistance from people who think asking lobbyists to identify themselves might impinge on First Amendment rights (speech, assembly, petition, payola).

Former Dallas Housing Authority CEO Ann Lott

​This morning at the Dallas City Hall federal corruption trial at the Earle Cabell, we are getting insight into the involvement of Ann Lott, former CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, in this whole sorry mess. I'm not sure where we're headed. But so far, an hour into it, let me share what I think I'm hearing.

Sounds to me like Lott, who was forced out of her job, blew the whistle on a bunch of this stuff. You know, she was accused of some obscure bookkeeping errors -- the kind of crap you can get on anybody if you want to. Was she punished for being honest? I haven't heard it all. It ain't half over. But see what you think.

Lott tells the court that she knew Don Hill first as Deacon Hill, "the person I saw sitting on the front row every Sunday." In 2001, when Lott was interim CEO of the DHA, she met him again as Dallas City Council Member Hill. They had lunch. Lott tells the court she was lobbying council members to get the job of permanent DHA director.

They talked about Beverly Brooks, a member of the DHA board. They misunderstood each other. Hill thought they were talking about Beverly Mitchell Brooks, head of the Dallas Urban League. She was talking about a white lady who was in the insurance business. Sarah Saldana, the assistant U.S. Attorney, asks if Hill said anything that worried her.

"He said in the past he had some issues with integrity. He said sometimes the lines were blurred, but he's working on it. I walked away from the meeting a little bit anxious about the comment, not really clear what he meant and wondering what I had to do to get his support, what it would cost me." That was 2001.

New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection/Library of Congress

At this point, Schutze is like the Mel Allen of the City Hall federal corruption trial.

​Today at the Dallas City Hall federal corruption trial at the Earle Cabell, defendant John Lewis, who has pleaded guilty and is testifying for the government, is being cross-examined by the defense. Lewis says he was part of a plot to buy votes from former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill, the lead defendant, for a developer of tax-subsidized affordable housing.

A very young Baker Botts lawyer, Jon Mureen, is standing in for Victor Vital, the lawyer defending Sheila Farrington Hill, wife of the former councilman. Mureen does a good job of getting Lewis to put nicks in the government's case, even though he's a government witness.

Mureen wants to show the jury that the money in the bribery plot to which Lewis has pleaded guilty never went to Hill and that Hill had no knowledge of the plot. He also wants to show that affordable housing developer Bill Fisher, the government's key informant, was a tricky man whose word cannot be trusted.

"You're here today because you feel badly about what you did back in 2005," Mureen asks Lewis.

"It's not that I feel badly. I want to tell the truth."

"You want to clear the air."

"I have nothing to say. I want to answer every question you have."

"You were guilty of extorting Bill Fisher, correct?"

Sam Merten

D'Angelo Lee, who's apparently going to claim he was entraped by the feds

​Big news. Doug Greene has just revealed the core strategy of the defense in the federal Dallas City Hall corruption trial.

Entrapment.

He has also just been administered a smart spanking from the judge for wasting her time.

I missed this morning's proceedings in federal district court. I kept up, though, via Jennifer Emily's very capable coverage on The Dallas Morning News's live blog. So here I am, back in the ad hoc press room upstairs from the courtroom. The judge, Barbara Lynn, lets us use computers and cell phones up here -- verboten in the real courtroom. We watch on closed-circuit TV.

Greene, D'Angelo Lee's lawyer, is now moving toward the end of his cross-examination of Bill Fisher, the affordable housing developer who gathered evidence against the 14 accused co-conspirators by wearing covert transmitter. This is about stuff that happened four and five years ago. The accusation is that former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and Lee, his appointee to the plan commission, traded their votes on tax-subsidized housing projects for contracts given to their buddies.

Fisher is in his third day of cross-examination by half a dozen defense lawyers: They are working to show that the so-called conspirators were engaging in legitimate political activity in pursuance of city policies.

​As Unfair Park has dutifully informed you, The Trinity Trust this week debuted an advertising campaign for the Calatrava signature bridge "under construction" (or not) on the Trinity River, called "Suspense is Building." Oh, yeah?

The purpose is to convey the impression that all is well with the bridge project and progress toward completion of Dallas's faux suspension bridge has been just MAHVELOUS! MAHVELOUS!

I have decided, therefore, to launch my own campaign to proffer my own view of the project, which is that it is literally and figuratively DEAD IN THE WATER! Not a stitch of work is going on. I drive by it all the time. It's dead. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not yet and may never give the city permission to complete this half-built hundred-million-dollar folly. It is destined to become the largest standing monument to municipal stupidity in America.

So ... I call my campaign, "Calatravahenge! A Neolithic Relic of the Future." On my way to the office from the federal building yesterday, I stopped and shot some snaps of the wonderful progress underway at the site. See what you think.

Sam Merten

Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller outside the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse, when she testified in the City Hall federal corruption trial a few weeks ago

​Victor Vital, attorney for Sheila Farrington, began the morning's proceedings in the federal Dallas City Hall corruption trial by asking affordable housing developer Bill Fisher several questions about whether he hoped the jury in this case would render a "just and merciful" verdict. Finally the judge told him to move on.

Then, after a long silence, Vital asked Fisher, "What do you think about Laura Miller?"

He asked Fisher a series of questions about Miller's career as a journalist and politician. Then he read a news clipping in which Fisher was quoted as saying that Miller was taking "massive donations" from Brian Potashnik and, in a tit for tat, "opposing my projects." Fisher and Potashnik were competitors as developers of tax-subsidized affordable housing in Dallas in 2003 through '05. Fisher, of course, is also the government's main witness against former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill; his wife, the former Sheila Farrington; and the other defendants in this bribery-corruption trial.

Fisher, who came to the FBI's attention over contracts he gave to a company owned by a city council member, agreed to wear a transmitter and gather evidence in the case. Potashnik is a defendant who pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the prosecution as this trial began nine weeks ago. The central allegation is that Hill ran an extortion operation from his council office, squeezing money from affordable housing developers who needed his vote for zoning and other approvals.

​Today's testimony from Bill Fisher, the government's wire-wearing witness in the City Hall corruption trial in federal court, brings us an even more explicit bribery-extortion scenario than we have seen before in this two-months-old trial.

Fisher is alleging a series of events that followed a meeting with hair-care magnate Comer Cottrell and Kevin Dean, a paving contractor. At that meeting -- a tape of which was played last week -- Cottrell promises to help Fisher get former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill's vote on zoning and approvals for Fisher's tax-subsidized affordable housing development deals.

This morning the government played a tape in which Dean, president of Kevin Dean Asphalt Technology (KDAT), tells Fisher to bill bribe money for Hill and ex-City Plan Commission member D'Angelo Lee as "consultants." Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcus Busch asks Fisher, "In your dealings with Kevin Dean and Comer Cottrell, are there some similarities to your dealings with Darren Reagan and Ricky Robertson and Jibreel Rashad [defendants in an earlier alleged bribery scheme]?" Fisher says the parallel is that Dean and his confederates knew exactly when Fisher's projects were going to be up for approval by the city council, and, "they are going to make sure that doesn't happen until I have signed the contracts."

On another tape of a conversation with John Lewis, Dean's lawyer, Fisher says, "I don't think Don intends to zone it until I have signed with Kevin and Comer." Lewis, a defendant in this case, has pleaded guilty and will testify against Hill.

Carol Reed

​Everybody knew it was about "pay-to-play" at City Hall. Don Hill, a former city council member and 13 alleged confederates are accused of strong-arming real estate developers for money.

But nobody knew...

1. Carol Reed's name would come up. Reed is the top political guru and campaign consultant to the old Dallas establishment. Reed got kind of thrown under the bus by a fellow political hack, Kathy Nealy, who volunteered in testimony that Reed had helped engineer a smelly deal: They set it up so a council member could get contracts for his security guard company in what sure looked to the feds like a trade-out for his vote on a zoning issue. Reed's been outta town and unavailable for comment. Well, yeah! She works for Mayor Tom Leppert and the Citizens Council. How much do you think she wants to talk about this?

Sam Merten

The government has cast plan commission member D'Angelo Lee as Don Hill's henchman.

​O.K., this morning I think we are getting a more clear look at the government's case in the Dallas City Hall bribery case, in which former city council member Don Hill is accused of using racial affirmative action and "fair share" requirements to squeeze bribe money out of real estate developers.

The government is painting a picture of Hill as a sort of clever godfather, always saying the right thing, legally, to developers, but then sending his henchman, plan commission member D'Angelo Lee, to say the wrong thing.

Clearly, Lee, who was Hill's appointee to the plan commission, was worried that affordable housing developer Bill Fisher might be a spy for the FBI. Fisher has testified today that Lee hugged and patted him down at a Starbucks meeting. The government also played a surveillance tape of Lee asking Fisher what he had "in that big bag," a brief case.

In fact what Fisher had was an FBI video camera. But when Fisher dared Lee to search the bag, Lee demurred, apparently mollified.

Big mistake. Fisher had gone to work for the FBI months before.

Sam Merten

Don Hill and the missus, Sheila Farrington

​Victor Vital, Sheila Farrington Hill's attorney, is cross examining Allen McGill, Darren Reagan's partner in the Black State Employees Association of Texas (BSEAT), which prosecutors have characterized as a fake union and extortion scam. McGill, a defendant in the City Hall corruption case, has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the prosecutors. All this, incidentally, is a prelude to the testimony of afforable-housing developer and FBI informant Bill Fisher, who's been at the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse since yesterday awaiting his turn on the stand.

But, till them, back to McGill, a tall, bespectacled, gray-bearded man with a professorial bearing and speech. Vital led McGill through a long series of questions designed to show the jury that McGill only pleaded guilty to protect his wife, Gail Terrell, the District 8 Park Board member, appointed by Tennell Atkins. She has a minor role in some of the events in the case.

Hey. Do you have any idea what this trial is about? I have been chatting with a lot of people who say they really don't get it. My two-bit summary would be this: The federal government claims that former Dallas City council member Don Hill was leader of a ring of people who used phony claims of racial injustice to extort money from real estate developers.

The defense argues that the claims were not phony, and, anyway, none of the events cited by the feds is linked directly to Hill in what the law calls a direct quid pro quo -- as in, gimme the cash, I'll sell you my vote.

This is most decidedly not the Laura Miller who showed up to Dallas federal court this morning.

​Today's proceedings at the City Hall federal corruption trial opened with a determined attempt by the Dallas city attorney, once again, to bar witnesses from talking about anything that may have happened in a closed "executive" session of the Dallas city council. Basically, Judge Barbara Lynn told the city's lawyer to bag it. They're talkin', as far as she's concerned.

Now it's former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, back again, being grilled by Doug Greene, the lawyer for former City Plan Commission member D'Angelo Lee.

Greene is asking her about an executive session of the council five years ago, called by Miller, after she learned that former council member, the late James Fantroy, stood to get a big contract for his son's security company depending on how the council voted on the issue before it -- an affordable housing project proposed by developer Bill Fisher, the key government witness in this trial.

Greene wants to know more about a remark former Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill, the lead defendant here, made in the executive session that he thought it should be OK for a developer with a deal in a councilman's district to go to his church and drop $500 on the collection plate before the vote on his deal.

Miller is decidedly more aggressive today, ready to jump down the lawyer's throat. When he tries to cut her off, she says forcefully, "I'd like to answer the question."

Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller

​Laura Miller has begun testifying in the federal City Hall corruption trial, giving the jury her history in politics. She's poised, of course. Prosecutor Sarah Saldana began by addressing her as "Ms. Miller," then caught herself and asked, "Is that how you address a former mayor?"

Miller smiled and said, "Yes. I'm Laura."

So, off to the races.

Once again, this more or less provides the perfect description of the testimony now being heard in the federal City Hall corruption trial.

​O.K., I want to give you an example of the very good lawyering being done by the defense in the City Hall corruption trial going on right now at the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse. The witness on the stand this morning is the same guy who was on at the end of the day yesterday: Jerry Killingsworth, director of the city of Dallas's Housing Department.

Yesterday, Killingsworth testified that he had recommended the city council not approve a flood of new tax-subsidized affordable housing projects in 2004 and '05, because Killingsworth said the market was already flooded. This morning Sheila Farrington's lawyer, Victor Vital, walked Killingsworth through a long, dry discussion of the complicated criteria by which affordable housing projects were to be ranked, according to various government rules and regulations.

Asked Vital, "Isn't it true that ... that the deals that were approved in October 2004 were approved just as they should have been approved, in light of the fact that the council did not pay attention to your initial recommendation."

Killingsworth, who plays the part of the testy old white guy in a suit, said, "Restate the question. I want to make sure that I answer this correctly."

"Isn't it true that no member of the Dallas city council, including Don Hill, seemed to push any one project over any other project in the fall of 2004."

"No."

"That's not correct?"

"I don't think that's correct."

Susan Mead

​This is an interesting morning, City Hall federal corruption trial-wise. The government is presenting witnesses who are real City Hall lobbyists to show the jury how they work. Some of these -- like Willie Cothrum, for example, who is up next -- are the people who really make the wheels turn down there, and they never talk, so this is splendid fun for a guy like me.

They have to talk.

By the way, these are honest professionals for whom I have great respect. I just like seeing them forced to yak about themselves. Zoning lawyer-lobbyist Susan Mead is on the stand, being questioned by the prosecutors. She's been up for some time, and I don't think she's suffering exactly. Yet. In fact, so far it's all one big advertisement for Susan Mead. Somewhere, Brian Loncar is grinding his teeth in envy.

She's explaining how important it is to stay cool with individual council members: "It's very important, because typically if that council person doesn't support it, you're case won't get passed, because it's a courtesy that council members pay to one another... Usually it's the councilperson in the district who controls whether it gets passed or not."

Sam Merten

Low-income housing developer Brian Potashnik, who's still on the stand in the City Hall corruption trial

​In federal court today Ray Jackson, lawyer for former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill, has been working on affordable housing developer Brian Potashnik in an attempt to get him to tell the jury that he was forced against his will to plead guilty to bribing Hill. I don't think Jackson moved the ball an inch. If anything, by asking Potashnik open-ended questions, he has given him a forum to make himself look reasonable and truthful.

For example, Jackson has been trying to make something out of Potashnik's having spent millions of dollars on legal fees. What, I don't know. I guess Jackson's thesis is that a man who knew he was guilty wouldn't hire expensive lawyers. I sure as hell would.

Jackson got frustrated because Potashnik wouldn't tell him how much he had spent on lawyers. But I thought Potashnik gave a credible explanation for why he didn't know what is legal fees were - one that would work at my house, anyway. Jackson asked Potashnik, "Out of three of the top law firms in the business, are you telling this jury you did not spend millions of dollars in legal fees?"

Potashnik said, "I don't know."

"For you, spending a million dollars is a drop in the bucket?"

Potashnik explained that his wife is the one who writes the checks: "She controls the checkbook."