ustxtxb_obs_1969_11_21_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

as the Observer went to press, he had not been endorsed by the Harris County AFL-CIO. Again, some labor leaders were offended because they had not been specifically asked to help the Graves campaign. Other labor leaders said they don’t think Houston is ready for a black mayor. Four other candidates are in the race, but none of them are expected to pull many votes. Bernard Calkins, the former president of Houston’s rapid transit system who lost his job through disagreement with Welch, tried to run in 1967 but was removed from the ballot because he was not a legal resident of Houston. This year he meets the residency requirements, but he is not well-known in the city because he spends only a couple of months a year here. Of all the candidates, Calkins is most critical of Welch, insisting that Houston Houston Before he entered city politics, Louie Welch was in the auto parts business. During his four terms on the city council he turned his business acumen to land dealings. Since then he has made a fortune in brokerage fees and land investments, but he insists that he has not acquired property on the basis of privileged information and Welch maintains that his moonlighting has been completely ethical. One of Welch’s earliest known speculations concerned the purchase of two tracts of undeveloped land north of the city in 1961. A few months later, the county announced the route of the North Belt, conveniently bisecting Welch’s land. It is not known how much the county paid for the right-of-way on Welch’s property, but he presumably made a profit. Welch acquired a real estate license in 1962. In 1963, the year he was elected mayor after four unsuccessful races, Welch reported earnings of $75,000. His financial situation has improved significantly since then. In a press conference this spring he said he was worth between $200,000 and $250,000. Although he has been speculating in land ever since he became mayor, it was not until 1968 that the Houston dailies revealed any of his real estate transactions to the public. In March of last year, the Chronicle and the Post pointed out that Welch acted as broker in a $6 million land deal in 1963. With Welch officiating, valuable 145-acre plot off Westheimer Road to Robert C. Lanier, a partner in Welch’s realty firm, and Fred Rizak, an doesn’t have a mayor but a part-time real estate broker. Robert E. Nesmith, a Republican, talks mostly about a monorail system for Houston’s clogged streets. Tony D’Amico, who is manager of the Harris County George Wallace organization, rambles on about how he is not a racist \(“I’ve been refused $300,000 from Kansas City gangsters who wanted to run his campaign. Dr. Daniel William Scott, a physician, says he entered the race “for the fun of it.” I t has ceased to be all jollies since an ‘unidentified gunman shot Scott in the back as he was standing outside his house. The wound was minor, however, and he continues to attend garden club gatherings and all-candidate rallies. Graves was expected to make it into a runoff with the mayor. K.N. apartment owner and developer. Rather than accept a brokerage fee, Welch took a one-fourth interest in the property and sold the land for $100,000 in December, 1964. \(As a matter of interest, Lanier and Rizak each contributed $2,500 to Welch’s 1967 campaign, and both were appointed by the mayor to the Houston Housing L ATER, AFTER he had sold his interest in the project, Welch supported a proposal for the city to spend somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million to improve streets and sewers in the Three Fountains development on the Westheimer property. City Councilman Bill Elliott criticized the proposal, saying that dev elopers were requesting vast expenditures on the part of the city while spending only $60,000 themselves on off-site improvements. The next land deal to hit the news involved Welch’s handpicked police chief, Herman Short. The chief made a $50,000 commission on his first real estate sale, a $4.95 million transaction, again involving R. E. Smith.* This second real estate revelation aroused some public criticism, so Welch named a committee, headed by his minister, Charles Allen of the First *Although Welch publicly defended Short as the “best police chief in the country,” in private he told his friend to get out of the real estate business, a former member of the Welch staff tells the Observer. Short answered that he could make more money in one big land deal than he could in years serving the police department, and that if another lucrative transaction came his way, he would take it. Short is still chief, however, and if he has participated in any more real estate sales, they have not been made public. Methodist Church, to set up guidelines for outside activities by city officials. The committee’s most controversial recommendation would prohibit city officials from becoming involved “in any outside employment or business activity which involves matters that may come before him for consideration or action in his official capacity.” Welch immediately adopted the code for his office. Later in the spring of 1968, the Post revealed that Welch had received an undisclosed amount \(estimated at around together on a $6.3 million Blue Ridge land deal in October, 1966. Welch acted as broker when W. E. King and Alvin S. Moody sold the 4,148.5-acre Blue Ridge prison farm tract to Dr. Thomas D. Watson for development as suburban housing. At the time, Moody was one of Welch’s appointees to the city planning commission. A year before buying the property from the state in 1965, Moody had participated in planning the extension of city streets into the area. At that time he told .a newspaper reporter he thought the property would be valuable for subdivision development if it had proper access. The mayor’s office later went to bat to get the city to extend sewage lines into the area, which is outside the city limits, but the city council balked at the request, arguing that it had more pressing obligations to people within the city limits. Both Welch’s and Moody’s actions would seem to violate the code of ethics adopted by the mayor. I N MARCH, 1969, the Houston newspapers asked the mayor in writing \(he listing of all the property in which he owned a percentage. Welch revealed more than $900,000 in land holdings, most of them acquired in 1968, with the disclaimer, “None of these prop6rties have been acquired on the basis of privileged information.” The largest holdings listed were 478 acres on Cedar Bayou, partially in Harris County and partially in Liberty County; 358 acres in Bandera County; and 70.4 acres on Spencer Highway in Pasadena. But Welch was holding out on a few other chunks of land. Less than a week later, the Chronicle revealed that the mayor had neglected to mention a 1% interest in a 330-acre tract on Cedar Bayou, which will be served by the Coastal Industrial Water Authority District system, an $80 million canal project devised to bring water from the Trinity River to Houston industry. Welch explained that he had not mentioned it earlier “because it is a stock holding rather than a real estate holding.” Any land purchase near the CIWA site is questionable, since Welch controls the canal board, appointing five of its seven members. J. M. Smith, one of the November 21, 1969 .3 Making Do In the Mayor’s Office