Mr. Mellow

Some 37 percent of the county's 5,076 total employees are persons of color; among the 1,622 workers who would be deemed professionals, 46 percent are black or Hispanic.

But whites still hold the great majority of the highest-ranking jobs. Of the 22 top administrators at the county, each paid more than $70,000 a year, only two are black: Dr. Mattye Mauldin-Taylor, director of personnel, and Betty Culbreath, director of Health and Human Services. Not one African-American or Hispanic man holds one of those top rungs. By the standards Price applies to other business and government entities, that absence amounts to a complete failure.

Price argues in his defense that one should look instead at the seven top supervisory positions for which the commissioners make hires. Culbreath and Taylor are in that group, so the way Price sees it, two of the top seven are people of color.

Hires for the other 15 supervisory positions are handled by the sheriff, the district attorney, and other white officials, Price contends, and he can't be held responsible. His argument provokes another question: Who, then, is supposed to influence the county's hiring of black and Hispanic administrators, if not Price?

The county's contracting with minority firms presents a murkier picture. Although Price frequently demands to know whether city and county contracts go to minorities, he and his staff have so far failed to keep worthwhile statistics about the county's deals with Hispanic-, black-, and women-controlled businesses. Irwin Hicks, the administrator who now handles such matters, says he's only recently been asked to develop such figures. With no relevant data on the computers, Hicks expects the task to take weeks.

Meanwhile, the other commissioners simply assume that Price is on top of the matter. "I know that John pays a lot of attention to that," Commissioner Jim Jackson says.

On the second floor of the School Book Depository Building--where the commissioners' offices are housed--Price's suite has a decidedly personal stamp. Old papers and a boombox lie on the floor. His crowded desk displays numerous photos, including one of him and his grown son.

On the walls, the bricks are almost outnumbered by a striking collection of black Americana. Under a drawing of Aunt Jemima, the words "No more" are written. A copy of an "admit one colored student" ticket for the state fair is blown up and framed. In another illustration, Ruby Bridges, the six-year-old girl who was the first black to attend an all-white New Orleans school in 1960, walks to class surrounded by federal marshals.

In person, Price makes as strong an impression as he does on television--but a much more favorable one. For a man who never played in organized sports in high school or college, the 46-year-old Price has made up in a big way. Every day before dawn, he pumps iron. Michael Brodnax, DeSoto's white police chief, lifts with Price and attests to the rigor of his workout regimen. So do the commissioner's broad chest and muscular limbs.

Indisputably handsome, with high cheekbones and piercing light-brown eyes, Price's face attracts attention because of how animated it is. In several minutes of conversation, his eyes can bulge in disbelief, his eyebrows rise in exasperation, and his mouth drop open in utter shock.

At the start of his first two-and-a-half-hour interview with the Observer, though, Price played coy, adopting a jaded, faraway look. He leaned back far in his chair. "I don't think I bring anything to the table," he said flatly. He was--rather transparently--trying to extricate himself from a commitment he'd made one day earlier to answer questions for the Observer.

The commissioner has had a long-standing policy, which he broke for this story, of refusing to speak to the Observer. Perhaps not coincidentally, Price reconsidered his own gag order only after Laura Miller, a six-year Observer columnist, put down her pen and won a seat on the Dallas City Council.

As a reporter, Miller has done more to cast doubt on Price's motives than anyone else. In March 1991, Miller, writing in a previous incarnation of D magazine (before Wick Allison revived the publication and several months before Miller joined the Observer staff), produced a scathing, watershed profile of Price. Coming at a time when articles on Price in the local dailies were either embarrassingly simplistic or shamelessly fawning, Miller's piece lunged straight for the throat. (To this day, the copy of the story in the clip files at the Dallas public library contains a piece of magnetic tape to prevent readers from pilfering it.)

The story raised questions about Price's business practices--alleging that the commissioner benefited financially from exploiting his position as a government official and black leader. Miller reported that Price and Kathy Nealy--a well-known black political consultant who, incidentally, played a role in Price's decision to back the Trinity River Plan--ran a business that advised companies on how to handle minorities. The implication: Price protested or threatened protests, then hit up the companies for money.