Working Assets

"Well, the council aides are trying to get an ordinance passed..." begins Ramona Perrault, aide to Council Member Daryl Slusher. You eagerly lean into the tiny table at the window of Little City, thinking that perhaps after a couple of weeks of begging for the mayor and city council members' executive assistants -- the aides -- to sit for an interview for a story about them, there is going to be a huge payoff. You can be so very naive sometimes. "So that we can cast votes for council members when they're off the dais." Perrault's poker face explodes into an enormous grin.

Larry Warshaw, aide to Mayor Kirk Watson since he took office in 1997, served as Watson's deputy campaign manager.

It's a joke, of course, but you're grateful for that brief moment of levity after a week of being treated like the dentist. See, when you ask people used to maneuvering behind the scenes of Austin's city government to step into the light for a moment, they tend to be just a tad resistant. It's not that they don't know how to work the press. Perrault and the gang answer pesky reporters' questions all the time -- on behalf of their bosses -- to provide background about city policy, programs, budget numbers, and rumors. What these folks don't ever talk about, though, is who they are and exactly how they move along their bosses' agenda through the morass of city government. And the idea of doing so is making everyone nervous. "We're not the story," several say, hoping to convince you to forget the whole thing. "We're just not that interesting."

Richard Arellano, aide to Jackie Goodman since 1998, previously worked for U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett.

You want The Real World ("This is the true story of seven strangers picked to run a city together without driving each other crazy..."). They give you the Heisenberg Principle of council aides (you cannot observe us without altering our existence). They don't understand why you don't understand: Talking about themselves is not part of the job description; intense loyalty to their bosses' agenda is. And as the council prepares to take on yet another ambitious set of sweeping initiatives (just a few, simple things like ensuring that economic prosperity benefits all Austin residents), the council members' aides are not too keen about shifting the spotlight to themselves.

John Gilvar was Beverly Griffith's campaign manager and ran Rep. Sherri Greenberg's state race before becoming Griffith's aide in 1996.

Equal parts booster, soldier, adviser, diplomat, spokesperson, and policy wonk, the City Council aide straddles that gulf between elected politician and city staff. They work behind the scenes but step out front to be where the council members cannot, due to restrictions of time and quorum rules. There's a tendency among some council watchers to see the aides as idealistic, young protégés or "Mini-Mes," and to try to draw parallels in personality and philosophy between the aide and the council member. For example: Observers frequently liken Mayor Kirk Watson's aide, Larry Warshaw, to Michael J. Fox's character on the TV show Spin City, and say he shares his boss' love for the big ideas. Kristen Vassallo, an LBJ School of Public Affairs grad, is said to be as likely to pull out a calculator or draw a decision tree as her boss Bill Spelman. John Gilvar seems to share Beverly Griffith's instinct to go against the grain. But fun facts and personality tics don't tell the whole story. After all, these are smart, savvy adults, not the council kiddie table. Like legislative or congressional staff members, these are folks with a good deal of influence in the way the business of government is run, but it's in their best interest (and their bosses') to keep that fact as understated as possible.

Kristen Vassallo, aide to Bill Spelman, is a graduate of the LBJ School of Public Affairs and worked on Bill Spelman's campaign before joining his staff in 1997.

If the most nagging criticism of this council is that too often schemes seem to explode fully formed onto the unsuspecting public, the efficiency of the seven aides' deal-brokering and bargaining skills may be partly to blame. If the most frequent point of praise for this council is that it has successfully taken on a number of ambitious initiatives, then the aides can share the credit. While they don't have the final say on the deal (and yes, they admit that they sometimes don't agree with their bosses when the final vote goes down), each has some power over the way policy moves from thought to action.

Gilvar likens the job of the seven aides to a think tank. The analogy seems accurate. Take the council's social equity initiatives -- neighborhood planning, child care, affordable housing, and workforce development. Each initative means rounds of meetings with each other, with staff, with residents, with community organizations, with other cities, with their bosses, and with each other again. Each aide must become an instant expert in every housing program in the city one day, and in effective child care programs the next, so they can distill all this information to the folks in charge.

These days, they tell you, the party line is that the aides are working together, despite signs that two years of unity may be starting to chafe on some council members. Sure there have been tensions. Much has been made of how the Griffith-Watson split has spilled over into some Gilvar-Warshaw spats. But these days everyone's talking about "improving relations" and learning not to take disagreements personally. The aides talk about the social equity initiative like it's a team project, something that various offices were working on separately but makes more sense to pool together. Gilvar says it's a far cry from the cloak-and-dagger days of the 4-3 split council under Bruce Todd.

Ramona Perrault worked on Daryl Slusher's council campaign before joining his staff in 1996. A former preschool teacher, she also worked for SOS.

"It's kind of like a big family sharing one bathroom," says Vassallo. "You will get along or it will be very difficult."

But the team mentality, however earnest, can easily be undone by the reality of politics. After all, the mayor and council are elected officials, so each needs to get credit individually for ideas and achievements. And making sure their guy or woman is out front getting his or her props is a big part of the aides' jobs. It's a tricky balancing act.

Paul Saldaña, aide to Gus Garcia for the past five years, previously worked for the city's health and human services department and for the city manager's office under Camille Barnett.

The joke about the aides getting to vote on ordinances is just that. But in the stupor of a 12-hour Thursday meeting, you can understand how they might sometimes fantasize about storming the dais and making this thing called city government move a little faster. But that dream, if they have it, is fleeting. Questions about trading the shadows for the spotlight and running for office one day themselves evoke a variety of invariably diplomatic words and a mix of grins and grimaces that scream "No way." There are a variety of excuses (it would mean a cut in pay, for one -- the median council aide salary is more than $38,000, while council members make about $8,000 less), but most point to the scrutiny and the rigors of holding elected office.

Adana Barry, aide to Willie Lewis, is the new kid. She became Lewis' aide in June after working two years as his executive secretary.

"I'm not sure I'd want my Saturdays and Sundays scheduled in 15-minute increments week in and week out," says Warshaw.

And besides, they'd have to talk about themselves.