Page 2: Executive has access to Mayor Bill White

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In an interview in Norway, Trygve Brekke, international director of Greater Stavanger Economic Development, told Texas Watchdog earlier this month that Abashawl was hired by the agency because of her close connections to Houston Mayor Bill White. However, he said he did not see her position with Greater Stavanger as a conflict of interest.

Brekke has since told White spokesman Frank Michel that Abashawl was not hired because of her connections to White, and denied ever making such a statement, Michel said. (See more in related blog post.)

Stavanger officials have had generous access to Houston's mayor. White went to Stavanger last August and attended Offshore Northern Seas, an oil-and-gas industry conference held there. His trip there was not paid for with city funds; his office said the mayor paid his own airfare, and his hotel bill was picked up by Opportunity Houston, an arm of the Greater Houston Partnership.

Abashawl also attended Offshore Northern Seas, but on the city's dime -- $4,194.39 for airfare, hotel and other travel costs, according to city records. Her tab was taxpayer-paid because she served as staff for the mayor during his visit, Michel said.

Abashawl may have helped pave the way for White to go to Stavanger, as her calendar -- obtained by Texas Watchdog under the state's public information act -- shows she was present in January 2008 when the mayor of Stavanger visited Houston to talk to White about taking "a prominent role at ONS." She also met later in the year with city officials and those from the Greater Houston Partnership and the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau regarding Houston's participation in the Stavanger conference; both entities have lucrative contracts with the Houston Airport System for marketing- and tourism-related services. Her calendar also shows Abashawl was on a conference call with Norwegian officials about Houston's participation in Offshore Northern Seas.

Both White and Stavanger's mayor are on the board of the World Energy Cities Partnership; Abashawl is the registered agent for the partnership's Houston office, according to the Texas Secretary of State's office. And Houston and Stavanger are "sister cities."

In terms of size, however, Stavanger has a long way to go to be like its bigger "sister." While Houston is the fourth-largest city in the U.S., Stavanger is the third-largest city in Norway. With about 300,000 people in its metro area, it has roughly the same population as Green Bay, Wis.

Once known as the herring capital of Norway -- and home to the country's oldest cathedral, built in the 1100s -- Stavanger, on Norway's southwestern coast, now bills itself as the petroleum capital of the nation. Its economy has been oil-dominated since the black gooey stuff was found in the North Sea in the mid-1960s; Norway's StatOil is headquartered there, along with the Norwegian operations of giants like BP. Funding for the Greater Stavanger group comes from nine area municipalities, along with additional funding from the oil industry and a local university.

Abashawl is at least one step removed in the city's chain of command from City Hall -- as an executive officer for the airport system, she would report to the city's aviation director, her department head -- but a review of her calendar shows she does have access to and contact with White, including attending several meetings and conference calls with White in calendar year 2008.

She also had several contacts with one of White's top aides, city Chief Administrative Officer Anthony W. Hall Jr. She and Hall both traveled last November to the World Energy Cities Partnership annual meeting in Aberdeen, Scotland, and they also both went to Angola in October 2007 for the World Energy Cities Partnership meeting there, according to city records. (Her airfare cost the city $4,025.90, but there were no hotel costs for the city, as the government of Angola picked up the hotel bill for everyone who attended, according to one city document.) Meanwhile, the birthday of Hall's administrative assistant, Jackie Pope, was among the birthdays of many prominent people in Abashawl's calendar, and Pope went to Stavanger in 2006, according to city records.

Continued on ...
Page 3: Executive's job may have overlapping interests
Page 4: Executive has many high-level contacts in oil industry
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