I saw Dallas Morning News reporter Rudy Bush at yesterday’s meeting of the city council's Transportation and Environment Committee, and, you know, just trying to make small-talk, I said, “Hey, when are you guys going to do your Lynn Flint Shaw story?”
They’ve been all over town trying to talk to people about her. Some of what they’re getting is showing up in editorials -- as in, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board chairman’s assertion that the 14 payments to lawyer Michael Sorrell listed in her city council campaign finance statement were “a typo.” (Ah, I think that would be 14 typos. Also, a little credit woulda been nice.) Some of it has been alluded to on The News' Metro blog -- as in, James Ragland’s gossipy tidbit that City Hall reporter Dave Levinthal has been out beating the bushes for a Shaw story (thanks, Rags, and keep them outta-school stories coming).
They were doing decent coverage early on of the forgery accusation against Shaw. But the big Lynn Flint Shaw story keeps not showing up. It’s not just me. The people want to know. Where the hell is it? Bush and Levinthal seem to have run into a story troll somewhere. Could it be a troll named Lepperdecherd?
Anyway, when I asked him where the story was -- in the most innocent and congenial spirit of comradely good sportsmanship imaginable -- I would describe Bush’s response as polite but concerted silence conveying an unspoken message of, “Eat shit and die.”
The nasty business DART must swallow now is the revelation a week ago that Shaw had a heretofore undisclosed $20,000 contract with Deloitte & Touche, DART’s auditors, in which she was being paid to promote accounting as a profession among minority high school students. The word I get is that DART’s lawyers will try to fashion an opinion in which the $10,000 Shaw had received before the agreement was discovered was not enough money to be noticeable, and, anyway, her contract was with a Deloitte subsidiary, not the main office.
At its February 12 Committee-of-the-Whole meeting, DART will probably try to go into an illegal closed session to discuss the matter. Then I’m told they’re going to ask the legislature to take away the right of voters to approve or disapprove their borrowings in the bond market.
I can only say that I hope and pray these things will unfold just as I have laid them out. The only greater gift I can imagine from the story gods would be for Waldemar Rojas to come back and take over the school district. Sometimes, you know, it’s like fishin’ with dynamite. In a stocked pond. Without gettin’ out of bed.
Do we think Councilman Dwaine Caraway could combine Lynn Flint Shaw’s accounting initiative with his anti-sagging campaign? Like, "More Touche, less tuches?” Ah, maybe not. --Jim Schutze
