HISD trustee Larry Marshall, fresh off a two-day school board retreat, flew from Houston to Tampa, Fla., on a clear winter day to watch the 2009 Super Bowl in Raymond James Stadium.
Cheap seats for the match-up between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals cost $500 each, but brokers were charging $2,000. The price, however, didn’t matter to Marshall, who paid nothing for his ticket, his airfare or his hotel that weekend.
The school district’s most senior trustee recently disclosed under oath that he accepted the free trip from the owners of Fort Bend Mechanical, a Stafford company that three months earlier had won an HISD construction contract potentially worth millions.
New deposition testimony reveals that the Super Bowl trip was just one example of Marshall’s social interactions with actual or prospective HISD contractors. He also forged relationships over meals at places like the Four Seasons and Fleming’s, with the contractors typically picking up his tab, he said.
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