Quarterback sneak

Stimson didn't like being lied to then--and he doesn't like it now any better. "This really is inexcusable," says Stimson, who was supposedly on the new mayor's "team" of people who were going to work with the mayor to take Dallas to new heights of commerce and peacefulness.

But Stimson is starting to see what other councilmembers, such as Donna Blumer, have been seeing for some time. "Kirk is running the whole show on his own," Blumer told me last Sunday, in the middle of an unprecedented two-week spring recess that Kirk has implemented. "Kirk keeps us out of City Hall while he stays in and does all these things. We have fewer meetings, and the meetings we do have are very short. You barely read about what we're doing in the media any more, because, in truth, we're not doing anything. He's doing it all behind the scenes."

And Steve Hatchell can sit in his house in University Park and breathe a sigh of relief for it. He's just tickled about the mayor's handiwork on this one. Says Hatchell, sizing things up: "He's a two-fisted guy about a lot of things."

So we're finding out.