You Are My Sunshine

It isn’t online yet, but this week’s Gambit is ringing in Sunshine Week by detailing some of the difficulties its staff has had getting Orleans Parish Clerk of Court Kimberly Williamson Butler to comply with public records requests made by the paper during an investigation of operational irregularities associated with her office. Butler, prior to the last six months, was a noted up and comer politically and a leading candidate to oppose an arguably vulnerable Mayor Nagin in the upcoming election. Butler first made a name for herself as Nagin’s CAO but resigned amid an ugly affair in which she claimed to have been marginalized within the city administration due to her devout Christianity. Her subsequent election as Clerk of Court could be interpreted as a sign of the mayor’s political weakness. Since then her stock has declined somewhat due to the controversy involving the failure of her office, along with the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office to deliver voting machines to polling locations in time for the September 18 primary elections. Further problems for Butler are detailed in the Gambit piece. Among the allegations laid out by the article are that Butler

• Spent inappropriate sums of public money on furniture and drapes for her office.
• Intimidated office staff into working at political fundraising events and attending services at her church.
• Hired a contractor with personal connections to her husband to install internet service in her office at a price that ordinarily necessitates a public bidding process. The same contractor also installed security cameras about which office employees were not informed.

Beyond these allegations, the story highlights Butler’s cavalier approach to Gambit’s attempts to get at the facts of the case through public records requests. Her refusal to comply has prompted the paper to file suit. Amazingly, Gambit further reports that she has missed court dates and taken steps to avoid being served her subpoena. That’s right. According to Gambit, the Clerk of Criminal Court is actively avoiding a subpoena.

Throughout the story, Butler appears at times obstinate (her several unsatisfactory responses to questions regarding her office’s culpability in the voting machine fiasco include a bizarre Scott Norwood analogy) and at other times outright insane. For example, here is a slice from the story in which one of Butler's former employees describes Butler's laying out of her.. um.. ambitions.

But Chapman recalls one day in Butler’s office when Butler began reading to her and Battee the story of the seven seals from the Book of Revelation. As Chapman tells it, Butler said she had broken her first seal as Nagin’s CAO, when she’d uncovered malfeasance in the city’s taxicab bureau. She opened the second seal when investigators arrested brake-tag inspectors for bribes. The third came when she won the clerk’s race. Now she had four more to break, she told them. Then, Champan recalls, Butler told them that she planned next to be mayor for eight years, then open a worldwide ministry.

If Butler becomes a candidate for mayor, voters will have a great deal to think about. Regardless of your opinion of the performance of the current administration (and there may indeed be some problems there) you really do have to pause if you suspect that your vote may be helping to further advance some sort of dark eschatological scheme. But then perhaps Butler can assuage doubts by managing to break a few of the seals she has fastened to those public records. I don’t imagine we’ll have to wait until the second coming. Her next opportunity to appear in court is this Thursday. Stay tuned.

Update: Story is up now along with this short chronicle of Gambit's lawsuit against Butler.