Mayor Pothole's Latest

Mayor Pothole is warning of budget shortfalls, pledging to cut services without layoffs. In reality, he should be cutting staff in non-essential areas of city government in order to pay for needed fire and other public safety upgrades, but then that would require setting priorities (an Orlando Sanchez theme, if I recall correctly).

In the same speech -- given before the infamous Greater Houston Partnership (who else?) -- Mayor Pothole also put forth the notion of a mayoral residence, with apparently no sense of irony at all that he was proposing improving the mayor's lifestyle while at the same time talking of the most significant city cutbacks in a decade. Apparently, though, certain folks in the Greater Houston Partnership are not so dim as their puppet mayor (though with his other rebuke this week, maybe he's not such a good puppet), and the idea was withdrawn thirty minutes after it was announced. Or, described with the tortured grammar that epitomizes Houston's Leading Information Source,

Thirty minutes later, the idea went, withdrawn by its originator under questioning from reporters.

[Posted at 00:29 CST on 01/29/02] [Link]