The list of recommended consultants for the 2012 bond project is out – it heads to Council this week for approval – and in the wake of the Convention Center contract mess it's getting scoured for red flags. Yesterday a sharp-eyed reader emailed us about Rolando Briones, whose firm is listed as a consultant for the $6.5 million Menger Creek Drainage project. Briones, the gregarious engineer who has served on the Zoning and Planning commissions and the Zoning Board of Adjustment, is also running for the District 8 Council seat that Reed Williams is leaving open next May.

Briones can bid on and win contracts with the City while he's a candidate. If he's elected in May, his firm could complete its existing municipal contracts – Briones puts the likely number at four – but would be barred from bidding on new work. But he says he's taking the prohibition a step further: His firm is curtailing bids on City contracts they weren't already preparing for and pursuing before he declared his candidacy, and will give up contracts it already holds if he wins. 

District 1 Councilman Diego Bernal, a musician himself, has nominated Ernest Gonzales – better known as Mexicans With Guns to the likes of Pitchfork – to the City’s Arts and Cultural Advisory Committee (better known as the Cultural Arts Board to those of us still driving on Durango ...).

The 11-member board, which is appointed by Council, recommends the local HOT-tax arts funding each year, an often-controversial job, and helps Office of Cultural Affairs staff shape funding policy. Its current roster includes East Side activist Nettie Hinton (who’s been fighting Eugene Simor’s plans to build a microbrewery next to the Hays Street Bridge), visual artist Karen Mahaffy and new District 3 appointee Ernesto Olivo, also a musician. (You can find the complete list here.)

The streetcar opponents haven't gone away ... in fact they're going to Austin soon to meet with Attorney General Greg Abbott to figure out what their next best options might be. Senator Jeff Wentworth had asked Abbott on their behalf whether the County and VIA's plans to use ATD funds violated VIA's contract with the voters, because the agency promised it wouldn't use the sales-tax funds for light rail. Abbott replied, in short, that the issue included questions of fact – is streetcar really light rail, say – that could only be decided by a judge or jury. But that doesn't necessarily mean we're headed to court. In addition to the hurdle of money, the would-be plaintiffs need standing, and just being an aggrieved taxpayer and voter isn't enough – they would likely need to show a particularized injury distinct from that suffered by the general public (think of the River Road and Headwaters Coalition in their suit against the City, which is where we pulled that language).

Deputy City Manager Pat DiGiovanni is apparently no stranger to controversy.

Right now he's at the center of a storm over his "bad optics" in the awarding of a massive convention center contract to Hunt-Zachry while at the same time landing a job with Centro Partenership, where David Zachry serves as vice chair of the board. Zachry was one of four members of the board's executive committee who negotiated DiGiovanni's Centro employment terms.

In May 2005, before he came to San Antonio, Pat DiGiovanni resigned as city manager of Kalamazoo Michigan under another cloud of controversy.

Online news coverage paints a picture of impropriety within his department over a property lease contract for the city's public safety substation. An internal investigation revealed someone in the city manager's office awarded the contract without going through the proper bidding and approval process. DiGiovanni also took heat because that same substation was way over budget.