I did try hard to get a response from Dallas Area Rapid Transit board of director chair Lynn Flint Shaw for my item yesterday about the $17,000 discrepancy in her city council campaign finance report. She says she paid attorney Michael Sorrell $19,225 as a political consultant. He says got less than $2,000 from her.
In spite of all my messages, I never heard from her -- no big surprise, because in a couple years of calling, I never have heard from her. But I did hear from a man named Travis Carter, who said he was the public relations representative for Bickel & Brewer, the law firm representing Shaw on an accusation that she forged the signature of the Dallas County District Attorney in an attempt to defraud a creditor.
Carter sent me an e-mail yesterday at 10:30 a.m. saying, “I understand we are pulling some bank records for you. Can you give us a little more time?”
At that point, my item about Shaw’s campaign finance report had already been on Unfair Park for about half an hour. We had delayed publication of it for four hours waiting for Shaw to call back, then another 12 hours after Carter’s first promise to give us a response. We decided yesterday morning it was unlikely we were ever actually going to hear from Carter and that Bickel & Brewer probably had given him the job of just slowing us down.
Now, 40 hours later, I think I can say with some certainty that Carter does not intend to provide us with the “bank records” he suggested Bickel and Brewer were looking at. When I called this morning, I was told Carter was “out of the office.”
Yeah. And good luck with those bank records, B&B. --Jim Schutze
