Memo may have authorized some pro tem bonuses

Investigators with the Harris County's DA's office seized more than 15 boxes of records from the mayor pro tem's office Tuesday, the same day an April 2005 memo came to light in which former Pro Tem Office Manager Rosita Hernandez asked then-Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado to approve $5,500 in bonuses. Hernandez and the three other pro tem employees were fired last week for taking $143,000 in bonuses city officials say were unauthorized.

The $5,500, which was to be split between the four pro tem employees, is far less than the workers ended up taking. Two weeks before the date of the memo, for example, they shared $9,000 in bonuses, and about six weeks after the memo they split another $12,000. Even so, the memo could could help support Hernandez's claim that at least some of the bonuses were documented. Hernandez says Alvarado (who temporarily stepped down from the pro tem position) OK'd the bonuses, but Alvarado says she didn't. As expected, Alvarado also says, through her new spokesman, that she doesn't remember the memo in question.

As for the seized documents, DA Chuck Rosenthal said they could help with the pay scandal investgation and may lead to an expanded probe of the pro tem office:

"I have heard clues and rumors for years about various expenses being run through the mayor pro tem's office — city officials and-or elected folks doing that," he said. He declined to be more specific.

"Since we were looking into personnel in the mayor pro tem's office, it made sense to me to go ahead and see if there are other things that went through that office that would be criminal in nature." He has assigned a prosecutor and investigator to conduct a "parallel" probe.

Rosenthal said he had been told the files weren't secure, which jives with suspicions about the dent in a pro tem file cabinet discovered last week. Looks like the fun has just begun ...