Can’t make a decision, so he will let the fed’s do it, that way he can blame them. He made the initial decision not pay the contractor, flip a frigging coin. Grow some balls, we all make mistakes.
Did the contractor do the work? If yes, pay him. If not, don’t pay him.
For the Houston City Council, the decision was complex: Should they pay out a contract to a builder indicted in a bribery case, or should they keep the cash and risk having to repay $9 million in U.S. Housing and Urban Development grant funding?
After months of discussion, Houston officials opted Wednesday to send the matter back to Mayor John Whitmire’s desk to give the city more time to discuss the matter with federal officials and see if they can provide an exception given the nature of the situation.
The city still owes $400,000 of an $8.3 million contract to Nerie Construction, whose owner Joseph Nerie had admitted to bribing Patrece Lee, a former Houston Public Works employee, in a widespread scheme involving a water line repair contract in 2023. Lee pleaded guilty and entered a plea deal to serve 10 years in prison for steering money to her own construction company through rigged contracts.
The city’s contract, which was separate from the bribery case, was for work on drainage and paving improvements in Bonita Gardens in northeast Houston. At the heart of Wednesday’s debate was the financial and legal risks of not paying out Nerie’s contract, and how the optics of a payment could look to residents given Nerie’s history with city contracts.
Whitmire said Wednesday that nothing pained him more than adding the Nerie contract back to the agenda two weeks ago after first discussing the item in August. He has advocated for not giving Nerie and his company a dollar more since he had proven to be untrustworthy.
The mayor said he had team members talking to HUD to warn them they wouldn’t want their “fingerprints” on the deal any more than Houston did, and that he was optimistic the push back could possibly help the city get a waiver in the situation so they wouldn’t have to pay Nerie.
“Mr. Nerie does not deserve any (additional) payment. He’s a bad actor,” Whitmire said. “We’re doing everything we can to protect taxpayers, but in this instance … our hands are tied.”
The one sure optic is that John Whitmire is not qualified to be Mayor.