Nov. 18, 2001, 12:36AM
Lee Brown has been chief of three major American police departments, including the nation's largest in New York.
He was drug czar for former President Clinton.
At 64, he holds one undergraduate degree, two master's degrees, six honorary degrees and a doctorate in criminology, quite possibly the first in that discipline earned by an African-American.
He has taught at five colleges, including Rice University and Texas Southern University in Houston.
He has a résumé almost as long as one of the arms attached to his 6-foot-3-inch frame.
Yet, throughout much of Brown's career, his performance has attracted scrutiny and often criticism.
"Ineffective everywhere he's been" has been virtually a mantra for those who dislike Brown.
Rob Mosbacher used that exact line in 1997 during the runoff campaign he lost to Brown when the mayor won his first term.
And in 2001, challenger Orlando Sanchez is using a similar message -- that the city's 3 1/2 years under Brown have been unbearable.
"I have supported him and have given him every benefit of the doubt," said Jack Rains, former chairman of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority and now Sanchez's campaign chairman. "But the bottom line is that he's not taking care of the city."
But others -- like former Mayor Bob Lanier, a Brown supporter -- say Brown has done a good job, in Houston and elsewhere.
"That's a load of bull when people say he hasn't done a good job," Lanier said. "You think of it, here is this black man from a one-room rental property who's worked his way up through a white society.
"He's shown leadership in Southern cities, served on the president's Cabinet, come back to be mayor of Houston. That's pretty impressive. You don't get it without performance. No one gives that to you.
"Is he perfect? No, but who is?"
Perhaps the worst blot on Brown's résumé elsewhere was his handling of the Crown Heights riots when he was the New York police commissioner. The 1991 riots involved clashes among blacks, Jews and police over a four-day period, after a 7-year-old black boy was run over by a car driven by an Orthodox Jew and a Jewish student was slain.
In 1993, a commission convened by then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo concluded that Brown failed to lead effective police response to the emergency. Brown has dismissed the criticism as politics.
Of more immediate importance to Houston voters now, however, is Brown's performance during his first two terms as mayor.
Even supporters admit some problems have festered on Brown's watch because he views himself as a chief executive officer who lets department heads do the heavy lifting.
Perhaps the biggest such problem has been the city's Public Works Department, which oversees street repairs, water lines and other municipal services that residents most cherish.
Two summers ago, water mains were breaking amid an unusually hot and dry period that forced the city to ration water.
The next winter, so many aging water and sewer lines broke during a cold spell that Public Works Director Tom Rolen admitted, "We can't handle it."
Last spring, Public Works employees were inflating reports of how much work they were doing, exaggerating by thousands the number of potholes they had filled, dumping asphalt so they could bring trucks back empty as expected and reporting that work had been completed after it was awarded to contractors, even though sometimes it had not even been started.
And downtown traffic was snarled because the city and Metropolitan Transit Authority couldn't seem to coordinate a major street construction project with the building of a new rail line along Main Street.
Brown's reputation also was tarnished by failures in the city budget process, specifically with estimating revenues. After problems with his first two budgets, Brown sought help from the private sector, which helped him cobble together a budget this past summer that mostly escaped criticism.
The record gives Sanchez plenty of material for criticism.
Besides public works and budgeting, Sanchez has taken the side of Houston firefighters in a dispute with the mayor over firetruck staffing. The issue is rife with tax, labor and political implications beyond public safety and can't easily be included or excluded as a Brown failure.
Brown contends that the department has acquired more than $60 million in new firefighting equipment since he became mayor, and that staffing is now at proper levels.
Lanier and others pointed out that as his first two terms progressed, Brown actively improved in places where he had problems. "With each misstep, he learns," Lanier said.
An issue that characterizes Brown's tenure has been the follow-up of his inaugural campaign pledge to establish what he called Neighborhood-Oriented Government.
The concept was an offshoot of the Neighborhood-Oriented Policing he helped establish as police chief in the 1980s -- old-fashioned community policing where officers spend more time in neighborhood beats.
Always the academic, Brown believed he could take a similar concept to neighborhoods as a way to empower citizens who felt left out of the system. Some, however, dismissed Neighborhood-Oriented Government as not much more than a slogan.
For months after Brown took office, city officials struggled with the concept, said Mike O'Brien, president of the Houston Homeowners Association. They wanted to do something, but they weren't sure what.
Eventually, they devised the super-neighborhood concept, where neighborhood councils work with city officials to come up with projects they would like.
District City Council members initially balked at the idea, afraid they would lose touch with constituents who went to other city officials for help. And many neighborhoods, especially those with strong homeowner associations, declined to participate.
But over time, more than 80 super-neighborhood councils were created, and they've had some success with measures such as sweeping for illegal signs and preventing residents from selling used cars in front of their houses.
Still, the process has been slow to evolve, and it doesn't go as far as O'Brien and others would like. The councils should help with long-range planning of important infrastructure like new parks, libraries and streets, O'Brien said.
"I don't want it to go away, because it's a good idea," O'Brien said. "But's it's running on five cylinders instead of eight."
Brown didn't argue with that. He said changing the thought process of the city isn't easy.
"It's not a program that you can plug in like a radio and unplug," Brown said.
"When you bring about a fundamental change, something that no one has ever done before, it takes time," he said.
Despite the well-documented problems, Lanier said, Brown has had successes that went unnoticed, partly because of his shortcomings as a communicator.
Lanier gave these examples:
· The airport system is almost doubling capacity at a time when most airports are short of space.
· A rail system debated for three decades is being built. Brown is accelerating the development of the central business district with sports facilities, an aquarium-restaurant and convention center hotel.
· Most city departments are in good shape, especially the Parks and Police departments.
· Houston is one of four U.S. finalists to be the host city for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
"Houston is going in a good direction, and it's happening while Brown is mayor," Lanier said. "Probably, as much as anything else, it's been difficult for him to claim credit in his public speaking.
"But you look at his accomplishments and he compares well with any mayor in the country."
Voters will decide that Dec. 1.
Nov. 18, 2001, 12:38AM
Houston mayoral candidate Orlando Sanchez's financial documents portray him as president of or partner in several companies -- an impressive list if the companies existed.
Most were just names, though, and never got off the ground. Sanchez's work experience comes down to a series of short stints in graphic reproduction, emergency medicine, military service, consulting and criminal justice. He now considers himself a full-time city councilman.
Sanchez admits he lacks the work history of Mayor Lee Brown, whom he faces in a Dec. 1 runoff.
"I'm much younger than the mayor," said Sanchez, who is 44 to Brown's 64. "My résumé isn't as thick, but I would say that my life experiences and my commitment to my city certainly qualify me to run for mayor."
Brown, a former police chief of several major cities and federal drug czar, says his opponent does not have the experience required to be mayor. He recently launched a television ad criticizing Sanchez's lack of managerial experience.
Sanchez counters that his résumé is written in community service rather than formal job titles.
On financial disclosure forms, Sanchez calls himself the proprietor of Ban-Tex Investments and a partner in S&L Properties. Both companies are simply names he has reserved the right to use and nothing more. He also lists himself as president of Sanchez Consultants, LLC, a company that he said in an interview "never materialized."
On his campaign Web site, Sanchez says he is managing director of Nexo Latino, a Hispanic marketing firm started by a friend about a year ago. In an interview, Sanchez referred to himself as an investor rather than an active participant in the company.
He also mentions on the Web site that he was vice president of operations at Lowry Graphics, a company that dissolved, filed for bankruptcy and was sued several times during the oil bust of the 1980s. Sanchez, who left the company when the financial problems started, oversaw the print shop there and said he had "zero" responsibility for the money troubles.
"Titles are cheap," he said. "I had no decision-making on the financials of the corporation."
Critics scoff at Sanchez's career history.
"He hasn't done anything. Nothing," Brown said. "The only thing he has done is become an expert in criticizing."
Former mayoral contender Chris Bell, who came in third behind Brown and Sanchez in the Nov. 6 election, endorsed Brown last week, saying Sanchez does not have the experience or vision to run the city.
"Obviously, his résumé doesn't compare to the mayor's in any way, shape or form," Bell said.
Sanchez's supporters see it differently.
Fred Zeidman, a friend and collaborator on Sanchez Consultants, said Sanchez is smart, honorable and intuitive, among other qualities that he believes would make Sanchez a good mayor.
"There's no training school for mayor," Zeidman said. "He certainly has a lot more knowledge of the workings of the city in running for mayor than Lee Brown had when he first ran."
Sanchez, whose family immigrated to the United States from Cuba when he was a child, graduated from Bellaire High School in 1976 and joined the U.S. Air Force. He was part of a supply squadron at a base in Del Rio, where he performed tasks such as refueling airplanes.
After about two years, he moved back to Houston and took a job with a graphics company. He then moved to Lowry Graphics, eventually working his way up to vice president.
When Lowry Graphics "started going down the tubes," Sanchez left the company and enrolled at the University of Houston, graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science. While there, he worked at another graphics company and drove limousines to pay his tuition.
He also volunteered as an emergency medical technician, spending 1,200 hours in an ambulance with North Channel Emergency Medical Service east of the Houston city limits.
After college, Sanchez took a job as a Harris County probation officer for three years. His former supervisor has retired from the probation office and could not be reached for comment, and those there now had little recollection of Sanchez.
While working there, Sanchez launched two unsuccessful bids for public office. In 1992, he ran to represent southwest Houston in the state Legislature. A year later he tried for a City Council seat, also representing southwest Houston in District C.
In the latter race, Sanchez suggested the city take a greater role in getting the federal government to deport illegal immigrants.
"As a legal immigrant to this country, I am embarrassed by the behavior of some of the illegal immigrants," Sanchez said at the time, adding that the probationers he supervised told him that half the gang members in southwest Houston came here illegally.
In early 1994, Sanchez left the probation office and started doing consulting work for a construction company, helping it to comply with government regulations.
The next year Sanchez won an at-large seat on the City Council, and he now chairs the council's Legislative Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations Committee. He was prohibited by term limits from seeking a fourth term.
Sanchez considers the council position a full-time job.
"I did try to keep the consulting thing going, but that wasn't going to work," he said, adding that he feared he would be asked to "do something that would lead me into a potential conflict. To avoid any semblance of impropriety, I simply stopped that."
In Sanchez's personal income tax returns -- which he voluntarily supplied to the Chronicle -- he lists from $10,000 to $14,000 a year in business losses every year since 1996. His income, including his $44,000-a-year council salary, never surpassed $47,000 in the past six years.
He said the losses were the cost of trying to keep his consulting work going.
"There are expenses associated with trying to maintain a company that isn't bringing in revenue," Sanchez said. "Obviously, you lose. At some point you just cut your losses and say, `The hell with it.' "
City Hall regulars question his claim of being a full-time council member.
"I've never thought of him in that vein," said Mike O'Brien, a neighborhood activist. "I have never been in a meeting in the neighborhoods that Orlando has also attended, and I attend a ton of meetings."
Bell, a lawyer who considers himself a part-time city councilman, agreed.
"I doubt he ever put in any more hours down at City Hall than I did," Bell said.
The city does not tabulate attendance at regular City Council meetings, but Sanchez's scanty attendance at budget workshops -- where council members have an opportunity to give their input on the city's $1.4 billion budget -- is on record.
In 2001, after declaring his candidacy for mayor, Sanchez attended eight of 18 budget workshops. He attended one meeting out of 20 in 2000 and one of 23 in 1999.
Sanchez is divorced and has joint custody of his daughter, Aubrie, who turns 9 this week. He declined to say whether he pays or receives child support.
He has been attacked by his opponents for accepting a $2,000 anonymous donation that pays part of his daughter's private school tuition. Sanchez has maintained since the donation became public a year ago that it is a gift to his daughter and not an ethical breach on his part.
Sanchez admits that he has never made much money and does not have a career.
"I consider myself somebody who has a history of volunteering and making a difference in his community," he said. "Hardly a career, but check with me in about 20 or 30 years."
Sanchez added that by the time he is the mayor's age, he expects to have an equally thick résumé.
When Brown was Sanchez's age, he had served as police chief in Atlanta and Portland, Ore., and worked as a professor at Howard and Portland State universities.
Birds of a feather flock together. Brown and Bell are both liberal democrats of the tax and waste gang. Mayor Brown's record of failure can not be surpassed. Even the vice-president of his own party, Gore, recognized Houston as the dirtiest city in the U.S. during Brown's care and he assented. Brown's mismanegement and incompetence can not be compared in any way, shape and form with Orlando Sanchez's conservative record and proven honesty during his 6 years tenure as councilman.