In Richardson Mayor Scandal, the Cover-Up Is Worse than the Crime
Richardson is supposed to be an orderly place, where a citizen can settle into a comfortable existence, which includes twice-weekly trash pickup and all the plastic grocery bags one can carry, and gaze dismissively down Central Expressway to the shit-show at Dallas City Hall while thinking, Not here.
And so things used to be, back before Mayor Laura Maczka threw her weight behind the Palisades, a mixed-use development along Central with 1,000 apartments adjacent to the NIMBY fortress of Canyon Creek; before rumors began circulating that she was in bed (literally) with the developer behind the project, JP Realty Partners' Mark Jordan; before she admitted in a March ethics filing that she had taken a job with the developer she was being accused of bedding; and before Brett Shipp cornered her with a vaguely flirtatious email between the two suggesting they take a jaunt together to NorthPark mall. Suddenly, Richardson city government has become a shit-show, too. The climax came -- or seemed to come -- Tuesday night, when the city unveiled the findings of an outside attorney's month-long ethics investigation spurred by Maczka's admission that she'd taken a job with Jordan.
But that summary undersells Tuesday night's drama. It is probably best described as a play in three acts, albeit one penned by a playwright who can't understand that the action is supposed to gradually crescendo into a climax and who inexplicably buries the crucial plot twist in a footnote.
Act I
Richardson's council chamber was packed. Five minutes before the scheduled 7 p.m. start time, a cop was standing at the door sending late-arriving citizens into an overflow room where the meeting would be broadcast. I pulled the I-write-for-the-Dallas-Observer card, but the officer rejected it on the grounds that all the seats were taken and that if he let me go in and stand and watch the meeting, he would have to let the rest of the people stand and watch the meeting which, I dunno, he feared would tire their legs or something. A scene was averted when a passing city staffer directed me to an open seat next to a gentleman in a Hawaiian shirt. Glancing behind me, I noticed that Brett Shipp had somehow secured permission to stand. His legs seemed to be holding up fine.
For more sordid details read at: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2015/04/in_richardson_mayor_scandal_the_cover-up_is_worse_than_the_crime.php
