Mayoral hopeful King touts transparency
He’s proposing ‘ethics reforms’ in move to deter so-called pay-to-play, vowing to root out alleged corruption
Houston mayoral challenger Bill King on Monday proposed a series of “ethics reforms” he said would deter so-called pay-to-play and increase transparency, continuing to sharply focus his campaign on rooting out alleged corruption at City Hall.
King’s rollout came the day after a political action committee launched a petition drive aiming to amend Houston’s campaign finance ordinance by barring people who do business with the city from contributing more than $500 to municipal candidates. King, who helped author the petition, included that proposal in his reform package, pledging to put it to a city council vote if the petition drive fails and he becomes mayor.
Making his second try for Houston’s top office, King lost a close runoff to Mayor Sylvester Turner in 2015. This time, King and fellow candidate Tony Buzbee have centered their campaigns around ethicsrelated attacks on Turner. In response, the mayor has said Buzbee and King are not leveling accurate criticisms, contending that the city has “longestablished rules that govern potential conflicts of interest.”
A Turner campaign spokesperson declined comment on King’s plan Monday.
Asked about Turner’s prior comments, King said Houstonians have made clear they want some kind of ethics reforms within city government.
“Look, he can say that all he wants to, but I’m pretty sure that the people of Houston don’t agree with him about that, based on my interactions with them,” King said, adding that he believes the city cannot rely on people’s good intentions and should have “a framework in place that controls the actions of people, encourages them to do the right thing.”
Also included in King’s plan is a proposal to have the city’s Office of Inspector General, which investigates allegations of employee misconduct, report jointly to the mayor, controller and a city council member selected by a
council vote without the mayor’s input. Under Turner, the office is overseen by the city attorney, who reports to the mayor.
Under King’s proposal, all of the OIG’s final reports would be released to the public unless the mayor, controller and council representative “determine the complaint was frivolous.”
King otherwise would change how the city awards bids to contractors, requiring that contracts always go to firms with “the lowest responsive bid.” Removing other criteria, King said, would “eliminate the subjectivity that allows pay-to-play bidders to be rewarded for their campaign contributions.”
When considering bids, the city can grant preference to local companies, as long as they offer competitive pricing, under the Hire Houston First program implemented by former mayor Annise Parker. Other criteria can include the bidding company’s reputation and quality of goods, or their “past relationship and references.”
Adrian Shelley, director of the watchdog group Public Citizen’s Texas office, offered an overall positive assessment of King’s proposal to limit how much contractors can give to municipal candidates and the idea of creating an office to audit misconduct allegations with at least some independence from the mayor’s office.
“These are, I would say, generally pretty modest commonsense open government reforms,” Shelley said. “We would support anybody who was offering these sort of measures as a route toward transparency.”
King’s idea for awarding contracts to the lowest bidder raises questions, though, because “you can think of numerous reasons why the lowest bid wouldn’t be the best option,” Shelley said. He said the city should always be transparent about the criteria it uses to evaluate bids through its request-for-proposal process.
The final points of King’s seven-point plan include adding certain financial information back to the city budget that King says has been removed under Turner’s administration, and posting every city contract in a searchable online database. King also said he wants to make it harder for the mayor’s office to withhold certain documents that it has the discretion to keep private, by requiring joint agreement among the mayor, controller and city council representative to withhold the documents.
Part of King’s concern about the lack of government contract transparency appears to be addressed by a bill signed into law Monday by Gov. Greg Abbott that re-establishes the requirement that government contracts with businesses be made public. A 2015 Texas Supreme Court ruling in an open records case involving Boeing, previously had created a loophole that allowed local governments and state agencies to withhold the information if the involved business claimed the disclosure would give competitors an unfair advantage.
King’s proposal would not preclude the city from seeking an opinion from the attorney general if it wants to deny a public information request, Shelley noted.
He added that even though state law governs public information requests, King’s proposal to broaden discretion over certain documents appears not to violate state law.
“If a city makes a voluntary decision about how to release info, it’s hard to see someone stopping a city electing to be more transparent,” Shelley said.
Before running for mayor, King managed the Houston office of Linebarger, Goggan, Blair & Sampson, the delinquent-tax collection law firm that frequently has come under fire for its outsized political influence.
Buzbee criticized King for the petition drive, which King has said is not affiliated with his campaign even though he helped write the petition and was the first to sign it. Buzbee said the drive “is being used as a campaign prop to get votes” and “has no chance of getting the required signatures in the required time.”
“I have made ethics reform a key part of my platform from the beginning. The career politicians who are currently seeking the position of mayor never mentioned the issue until I did,” Buzbee said in a statement.
Buzbee has proposed that anyone who donates to a politician at City Hall be barred from getting a contract with the city or working for the city for a year. He also has proposed for more stringent reporting for city lobbyists and said he would implement “full online disclosure for all tax dollars” so residents can hold city politicians accountable.
He called Linebarger “the worst pay-to-play offender in Texas history,” accusing King of hypocrisy in backing ethics reform and the petition drive.
King acknowledged his history Monday, saying, “I’m not naive about the ways cities work. I’ve had government contracts, I’ve made plenty of contributions over my life.”
Houston Councilman Dwight Boykins, who launched his mayoral campaign Saturday, declined comment.