Private dealing

Would the mayor, who sets the schedule, include the arena on the next briefing agenda in two weeks? I asked. Upstairs, he had just told The Dallas Morning News he would.

"It will be on the agenda if the city manager decides there's some new information that must be presented to the council," Kirk said (meaning no). I asked again. "I don't expect another briefing until John Ware comes back to us with a deal," Kirk said (meaning no).

Hell, let's just have a briefing when we start digging the hole. That's how the public learned it was getting Reunion Arena--the city just started shoveling dirt one day.

What's most astonishing here is how blatant all of this is--how Ron Kirk, for all his public hands-off posture, is working overtime to protect his firm's client, Don Carter, who is well-known for flying into rages whenever the media get a crumb of information out of city hall.

So, with his back up against the wall, and his client threatening, as always, to walk at any moment, what does the mayor do? He squelches all public dialogue about the arena by brandishing--of all things--his conflict-of-interest problem to kill the quorum.

City hall aficionados know that former Mayor Steve Bartlett's Waterloo was his maniacal period--the entire first half of his term actually--when he decided to practice the fine art of neck-chopping by wielding the axe on Jan Hart, who, unfortunately for him, was a very popular city manager at the time.

And Kirk? His Waterloo started early--two weeks before he was elected, on a brief flight to Austin.