Why Dallas city manager Mary Suhm should be grilled like a hanger steak. Plus: Kahlua!

Today the Dallas City Council will question city manager Mary Suhm about some shady stuff. It’s kinda complicated. It’s about gas-drilling rights, city-owned parkland, and whether Suhm lied to the council when she told the gas-drilling company it could probably do itself some gas drilling on said city-owned parkland.

If you want to read more on the matter, check out Jim Schutze (who broke the story) here and here and here. Or you can read Rudy Bush here and here. Once you’re up-to-date, you just need to know one thing about what is going on today.

As soon as she’s done explaining exactly what happened, and how the city attorney says she was within her right to tell the gas-drilling concern it could concern itself with all the gas drilling it wants, you should close your eyes and picture Joe Pesci saying this: “Everything that [gal] just said is bullshit. Thank you.”

This is not just my opinion. This is the opinion of anyone, including councilmembers, who read what Suhm wrote in her infamous “letter of good faith” (which was pretty clear). Suhm can throw out The Otter Defense all she wants — and you should watch that video, because it’s awesome — but that doesn’t mean we have to agree with her tortured, specious reasoning.

Because, again to quote Mr. Pesci: “Does the defense’s case hold water?” No it does not! Read that last Rudy Bush link above, the one where the environmental group puts Suhm in a figure-four leg lock and refuses to let go. It shows pretty clearly (as though this wasn’t already apparent) that Suhm believes she could do whatever she wanted, and that included telling the council one thing and then doing the opposite.

Such hubris has been standard operating procedure for Suhm for a long time. But to quote one councilmember who talked to me earlier this week, this episode is “the height of her arrogance.” (That councilmember was not Angela Hunt, for what it’s worth. I know I worked for her, but she puts her name behind her words. Witness her quote in the Rudy Bush story from Saturday regarding the fox and the henhouse.) It is further proof what one former city staffer told me when he e-mailed the following:

Why is the council scared to grill her publicly on this? I honestly don’t know. Finally, at least, the Dallas Morning News ed board seems to be interested in exploring one of her messes. That sort of public heat is important, because for too long Suhm’s ridiculous standard line — that she’s just a city servant, doesn’t like the limelight, and therefore deserves to operate behind the scenes — has allowed her to skate.

Such a position has never made sense. She’s the most powerful person in Dallas! Hold her freaking accountable! Demand more than her recent half-hearted contrition. (“I have to take the responsibility for it.” Aw, do you have to?) In today’s case, we should see from her complete honesty and unmitigated proclamations of guilt, or she should be roasted. Under our system, the only check we have to a city manager, especially one who runs the city as she sees fit while lying to our representatives, is public humiliation. So let’s get to it.

Elsewhere

City leaders can complain all they want about the DMN’s alleged jihad against Parkland, but if a federal inspection were held today — a year after the hospital was given a laundry list of changes to implement — it still wouldn’t pass.

Cornyn and Cruz — a.k.a., C&C Wingnut Factory … No? Maybe? — voted “no” on Hagel as Defense Secretary, to the surprise of no one.

As much as I like making fun of Irving, I think the city’s ISD has a point here. Everyone says schools shouldn’t teach to the test, but those who don’t are punished for not playing the game. That said: IRVING! Ha! Amirite?

Retweets

I have nothing to add.

Except that I’m not sure this is the answer.