On a Thursday in May, City Hall reporter Bradley Olson from the Houston Chronicle e-mailed the mayor's office a series of questions following Houston Airport System head Richard Vacar's abrupt departure. The questions were fairly specific. Some could be answered with a yes or no, others by pulling some travel records and counting.

Minutes after the e-mail questions were sent, Frank Michel, a high-ranking press aide for Mayor Bill White, appears to have laid out a plan to keep Olson from getting his answers for as long as possible.

Michel circulated this note to a handful of press staff members for the airport and the mayor to discuss Olson's request:

He still hasn't stated when his deadline is, so I would respond to him that, given the illness of the person with some of the answers and the advent of the holiday weekend, it may be next week before we can gather this information. We'll all want to review the answers before they are given to him. ...

As you know we generally don't subject city employees who are not designated spokespersons to give interviews. If all else fails, we will see if we can get him to submit written questions for that person. Let's talk about that one tomorrow.

Check out the full memo from Michel here.

Some frustrations about this from a reporter’s point of view: We work over holiday weekends. City officials may also want to do the same thing, occasionally.

In addition, we like talking to people who are closest to the action. “Designated spokespersons” often don’t have the details or the color to tell the story. At best, talking with “designated spokespersons” often means having to go back and forth with questions in a quest to get the details to make stories as accurate as possible for the public. At worst, it could mean that reporters are getting a complete whitewash.

Wanting to review all the answers before they are given to a reporter? That sounds like bureaucrats wanting to get a story straight.

And our favorite: If all else fails? Does that mean if the reporter keeps asking questions city officials might actually have to cough up some questions?

Olson said the e-mail matched his recollection of the chain of events.

Asked whether he felt the e-mail indicated intentional delays or even stonewalling on the part of the mayor's office, Olson diplomatically declined to comment. Olson contrasted it with his previous work covering the world of intelligence, where stonewalling is officials' "stock and trade."

"I just haven't felt the same thing here," Olson said. "Things are open here."

Prodded again to make some evaluation of the e-mail correspondence, Olson refrained.

"Readers can make up their own minds," he said. "Who cares what I think?"

A spokesman for the mayor's office said the public relations staff were trying to get the answers to Olson's questions.

"There's nothing in that (e-mail) that suggests a stall," said White spokesman Patrick Trahan. "Why would we conclude that?"

The letter talks about the illness of the key staffer and the holiday weekend, Trahan pointed out -- "that's explicit. There's nothing implied there. It says the person who has some of the answers is ill and there's a holiday weekend.

"It looks like he's trying to get answers to the questions. ... I see nothing there that sounds like he's trying to delay him."

The answers were posted to the Chronicle's Houston Politics blog on June 1.

That’s 11 days after the Olson's e-mail questions were initially sent.

Trent Seibert can be reached at 713-980-9776, and Lee Ann O'Neal can be reached at 713-980-9777. E-mail news@texaswatchdog.org. Texas Watchdog Deputy Editor Jennifer Peebles contributed to this report.