THE FULTON INVESTIGATION: THE CITY COUNCIL BLEW IT

Yesterday morning, I called into KSYL radio and told them that Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy was to appear in court in his attempt to try to block the Finance Committee's investigation into the expenses that the City spent on the Alexander Fulton Hotel. Listen to that phone call here and co-host Fred Rosenfeld's basically calling me a liar.

FRED'S RESPONSE TO MY PHONE CALL (4:47)

We all know by now that, thanks to the reporting by KALB TV and the Town Talk, what I said was true.

In fact, the Town Talk reported that: "The attorneys for Roy and his staff members -- Chief Operating Officer Kay Michiels, Public Works Director T.W. Thompson, Utilities Director Michael Marcotte and Acting Finance Director David Johnson -- spent much of Thursday attempting to quash subpoenas issued by the council for the administration members to testify at Thursday afternoon's Finance Committee meeting", and  "City Court Judge Richard Starling, however, ruled he didn't have jurisdiction to quash the subpoenas, setting the stage for Thursday's meeting to continue". (See: "Legal tussling over Alexandria hotel receipts ends in call for mending administration-council relationship").

This wasn't the first time that Fred doubted what I said (See: "FRED MAKES FUN OF ME ON KSYL THIS MORNING" and "CAN KSYL LEARN A FEW THINGS FROM SOME OF ITS CALLERS?") and it turned out that I was right on the Chief Tully resignation.

Perhaps Fred, who is only interested in things that effect him and his businesses (like the apartments at the Masonic Children's Home), should hang around with some other people than his blue-blood friends and he too would hear what is really going on in the City of Alexandria. 

THE FULTON INVESTIGATION

After all the attempts by Mayor Jacques Roy he finally had to appear at yesterdays investigation into the expenditures of the Alexander Fulton Hotel.

Mayor Roy had most of his kinfolk lawyers there (Chris Roy, Jr., Greg Gravel, and Misty Antoon). He also had George Gaiennie, III in attendance and I think that I saw Albin Provosty present.

I could see that the City Council was losing control of its investigation when it knuckled under from the arguments and threats of Jacques bevy of lawyers to not require the witnesses to be under oath.

This is where the City Council first screwed up. It apparently didn't have enough sense to realize that the arguments of attorneys are not necessarily law, and are made in the best interests of their clients. If the Council had its own attorney handling this, he or she, just like myself, would have halted the investigation at this point and had the Council hold them in contempt and Jacques and crew could have gone to court over it if they wished.

I am not so sure that the laws on service of a subpoena even apply to a city council investigation anyway.

Councilman Ed Larvadaain, III basically conducted the investigation, which never turned out to be. Ed was basically left with egg on his face.

I know that the City Council had my posts wherein Fred Rosenfeld, a former manager of the Fulton and the Bentley hotels, told it exactly what questions to ask. (See: "FRED HAS SOME QUESTIONS FOR THE COUNCIL TO ASK ABOUT THE FULTON HOTEL" and "KSYL WITH SOME MORE ON THE DOWNTOWN HOTELS"). Apparently Fred was correct when he said that the Council did not have enough sense to run the investigation.

Although Ed showed proof the the City was indeed in the hotel business, all of the checks and invoices were from the pre-Downtown Hotels Initiative (D.H.I.) days and not since then when Jacques claims that the management contract with H.I.P. and Noble required them to pay all of the expenses.

Ed also kept showing a Neblett, Beard and Arsenault advertisement, which is against the regulations for a public access channel like Channel 4.

Another thing that was crystal clear yesterday, was that City Attorney Chuck Johnson does not represent the City Council as he is required to do by law.

Chuck clearly represented the mayor's side to this investigations. He even said "If I were representing these people, I would tell them to get up and walk out of this room". id. With his constant chiding the Council and his constantly having to be told to shut his mouth by Council Pres. Johnson, Chuck should have had the police called on him for disrupting a public meeting.

I would like to see the Council adopt a resolution asking the mayor to fire him.

"Although Larvadain wanted to push ahead, at the request of the administration and Councilman Harry Silver, Roosevelt Johnson eventually agreed to delay the questioning and ended the meeting on a positive note." id.

"Although Mayor Roy said he felt Thursday's meeting was a "waste of time," if it helped to heal some of the fractured relationship between the administration and council, then it was "worth it." id. Mayor Roy promised that, as long as the Council could reign in Councilman Larvadain, he would return to the Council chambers at the meetings and answer any questions that it had.

The bottom line is that despite this dog and pony show, we taxpayers of Alexandria are no closer to finding out the truth behind Mayor Roy's hotel deals and why he successfully fought to keep them from us.

See this video of the "investigation" here: