Burnt Orange Report

Michael Berry's delusions of grandeur

By Jim Dallas

Recently I blogged on Houston mayoral candidate Michael Berry's new ad campaign which is trying to paint Berry as the populist ubermensch, fighting the "waste" in the Houston city budget.

Incidentally, Berry's attacking the same "cow that eats gold and gives no milk" budget that he voted for, but only after trying to make an eleventh-hour effort to make irresponsible tax cuts (from the Houston Chronicle, June 20, via Lexis-Nexis):

In the end, council approved the budget 13-1.

Councilman Bruce Tatro was the lone dissenter, voting against what he called "a virtual budget" devoid of true cost cutting.

"I think we just failed to address a lot of issues that were supposedly priorities going into this," Tatro said.

Council considered about 80 amendments before adopting the budget, including a last-ditch push by Councilman Michael Berry to cut the city's property tax rate.

Berry proposed shaving one cent from the city's rate of 65 cents per $ 100 assessed value weeks ago, but few of his colleagues or the administration took it seriously. But Berry's quiet last-minute lobbying forced a defensive flurry by administration officials, who whirled around the council table shoring up opposition. The amendment was voted down 8-6.

Berry said he thought the tax cut would have passed had Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Rodriguez been present for the vote.

Sekula-Rodriguez never returned from council's lunch break. A spokeswoman from her office said the councilwoman had a "personal emergency."

Berry said that, had Sekula-Rodriguez been present and voted for the tax decrease, Councilman Gabriel Vasquez would have cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the cut.

"Vasquez was with me if he was the deciding vote," Berry said. "He said if he was casting the deciding vote, he would vote for it, so I had eight votes."

Vasquez neither confirmed nor denied Berry's claim, saying only: "It's all rumors. There was no eight votes there."

So let's get this straight. Michael Berry got his butt kicked and then kow-towed to the rest of the council by voting for a budget he is now attacking.