Council of Glass Houses

posted by Alan Greenblatt

Only people in Iowa are following the CIETC scandal. For our purposes today, it's enough to know that Archie Brooks, a Des Moines city councilman, has resigned under threat of legal proceedings since he apparently directed hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to a woman he once dated.

That tidbit alone should be enough to give you some idea about the seriousness of the investigation, which has been dragging on for months already. Nonetheless, two of his erstwhile colleagues giggled at a news conference Wednesday when a reporter asked the mayor about the situation.

One of them is Tom Vlassis, who is also under investigation. We quoted him in Governing as describing his role on the CIETC board this way: "I was there to be a rubber stamp."

What makes his giggling especially noteworthy, though, is that the Des Moines Register quotes him today as sending an email to a constituent, who called him "corrupt and incompetent," demanding, "I expect to have your apology within the hour, not later than 12:15 p.m. today!"

Vlassis didn't get his apology -- obviously his correspondent leaked his email to the paper instead -- so he's threatening legal action. But the Register doesn't tell us whether the thin-skinned Vlassis has apologized to Brooks for laughing about his resignation.

Vlassis