Grandma goes electric

As the comptroller's story about the tapes kept changing, so did the original line that Koebele had left the agency on his own to pursue other interests. Rylander decided it was in her best interest to let everyone know that she had fired him for secretly taping phone conversations. She wanted the public to know that she wouldn't allow such deception to occur in her office.

She didn't have a problem, though, in allowing herself and her aides to purposely mislead the public and press for a time about the existence of the tapes.

The Texas Tomorrow Fund is a state-run program that allows families to set aside money to cover a child's future college tuition costs. Earlier this year the Rylander administration decided to create a post for liaison with the professional advertising and public relations firms hired to market the fund.

Eight job applicants stepped forward, some of them with impressive résumés for the position.

Jeff Whitehurst applied, citing his graduate degree in international marketing and his company, which developed private, prepaid tuition loan programs for financial institutions. Another applicant, David Hurlbert, had been executive director of an outpatient mental-health and substance-abuse center in Belton since 1992, had conducted numerous management seminars and marketing studies for various businesses, had about 75 research articles published, and handled all public relations for his center.

However, the comptroller's office never got the chance to explore the breadth of experience of Whitehurst, Hurlbert, or five of the other applicants. "I did not even get an acknowledgment," Hurlbert says.

Instead, the only job hopeful interviewed was a 27-year-old woman who had just graduated from the University of Texas in December 1997 with a double major in Latin American studies and history. Helena Colyandro had only five months of full-time work of any kind.

But she was the one hired in June. In what smacks of nepotism, Colyandro is also the wife of John Colyandro, Rylander's chief of staff.

A formal posting for the job says applicants are required to have a minimum of five years of marketing and advertising experience. Sanders, speaking on behalf of Rylander and the Colyandros, could not demonstrate from looking at Helena Colyandro's résumé that she met this requirement, even though agency personnel records indicate she had.

"Exceptions are made for exceptional people," Sanders says. "We're not worried around here about minimum requirements but rather maximum capability."

According to the résumé Helena Colyandro submitted to the comptroller, she worked off and on from 1990 to 1997 on temporary projects for an Austin-based marketing company and the U.S. embassy in Mexico City. Her focus in those jobs was to increase the number of U.S. and Mexican companies doing business across the border.

Her most recent job was doing contract work for an Austin marketing firm, where she analyzed focus-group research for companies trying to sell their products to Latinos. She did that for about a year. Her résumé lists her fee at $100 an hour. Before that, she had a five-month stint for an Austin public relations firm specializing in Hispanic markets -- the only permanent job she ever held before working for the comptroller. At the public relations firm, she earned less than $1,700 a month.

In contrast, her starting salary as marketing director of the Texas Tomorrow Fund was $4,579 a month, the pinnacle of an annual pay scale that ranged from $41,000 to $55,000.

The job posting for marketing director says that bilingual and multicultural marketing experience is preferred, although its lengthy descriptions of the job say nothing about an emphasis toward marketing the fund to Hispanics. Yet Sanders says that Rylander is keenly interested in increasing the number of Hispanics who sign up with the fund, and that Helena Colyandro's knowledge of Hispanic markets along with her fluency in Spanish gave her an advantage over other applicants.

But what helped her the most, he says, is that Rylander already knew her and recruited her for the job. The fact that she was the wife of the chief of staff was not an issue, he says.

"The comptroller wants to hire the best and brightest that she can attract," Sanders says. "There is no marriage penalty here."

There is, however, an agency nepotism policy that says an employee cannot be in a direct line of supervision over his or her spouse. Although John Colyandro is chief of staff, Sanders says Helena Colyandro answers to fund manager Aaron Demerson, who works at the pleasure of the fund's investment board, which is chaired by Rylander. As a result, Sanders says, the hiring of Helena Colyandro does not violate the agency's nepotism policy. But the lines of duty are fuzzy, as Demerson is an employee of the comptroller's office, which oversees the program. Another person involved in the hiring of Helena Colyandro, human resources manager Morris Winn, definitely calls John Colyandro boss.

Sanders maintains that no one at the comptroller's office felt pressured to hire Helena Colyandro and dismisses any notion that Rylander's recruitment of Helena Colyandro was done as a favor to the chief of staff. In fact, Sanders says, John Colyandro advised his wife not to take the job.