All in the Family

Michael Reed of the West Houston Examiner takes a peek at a cozy little deal made by the outgoing Metro board and their Real Estate firm....

A three-year contract approved by an outgoing Metro board in December could prove to be quite a lucrative one for their long-time real estate consultant, McDade Smith Gould Johnston Mason + Co.

Lucrative vendor contracts, numbers that don't add up. This pretty much has all of the makings of business as usual under the old regime at Houston's worst-ran public agency.

But wait, there's more. The real good stuff comes down near the bottom:

Todd Mason, a partner of McDade Smith, is also Metro’s vice president of real estate services. Mason signed the December contract modification for McDade Smith, listing his title as chief financial officer of McDade Smith.

(emphasis mine)

There's STILL more, including a McDade family member that's also a Metro employee and some details to the contract that seem....well.... Just follow the link and go read the entire story. A story that's about as Houston Way as it gets.

Congratulations to Reed for his watchdog reporting. It will be interesting to see how long it is before ChronBlog runs an uncritical story detailing Metro's response.