Cisneros Will Stand Tall When the Dust Settles

Earlier this year, shortly after Henry Cisneros moved to Los Angeles to become president of the Univision TV network, he was commuting to his new office in Century City and, quintessential policy wonk that he is, listening to National Public Radio.

“NPR was going on and on about some controversy inside the Beltway,” Cisneros told me later, “and I was trying to pay close attention. . . . But then I looked out at the bright sunshine, and all the other people and cars around me,” he added, flashing a broad grin, “and I thought how unimportant all the to-and-fro back in Washington must seem to them.”

“And suddenly,” he added, breaking into a full laugh, “it didn’t seem so important to me, either.”

I came away from that conversation hoping I’d seen the start of a new life for Cisneros. I even thought he could become like many other Californians--aware of what goes on in Washington, mindful of its importance, but able to keep whatever the hot issue is back there in proper perspective.

That is the mind set everyone should try to maintain now that the former Housing and Urban Development secretary has been indicted by a federal grand jury.

Cisneros is accused of having lied in the course of his confirmation in 1992 by misstating how much money he paid his former mistress, Linda Jones, after breaking off with her a few years earlier when he was mayor of San Antonio. He also stands accused of having paid Jones hush money to help ensure his Cabinet job.

To be sure, a special prosecutor’s 18-count indictment of Cisneros, Jones and two others is not much ado about nothing. But it is much ado about something that isn’t as important as it looks right now.

To understand why, one needs to look back to the last major scandal to rock HUD--the criminal convictions of a dozen people, including top HUD officials, in the 1980s. Back then, HUD was being maladministered by Samuel R. Pierce, who had been appointed by that sworn enemy of government waste, fraud and inefficiency, Ronald Reagan.

Pierce himself was never indicted, but two of his personal assistants, the No. 3 man at HUD and several agency contractors were. Details of the cases are far too dreary to bore readers with here, but they mostly involved steering millions of dollars in government contracts to developers with Republican connections.

The scandal became so wide-ranging that it eventually claimed another former Reagan Cabinet member, James T. Watt, one-time Interior secretary. After leaving government, Watt helped steer a HUD contract to a developer in the Virgin Islands for a project that was never built. For his trouble, Watt got a $300,000 fee and a 25-count federal indictment accusing him of perjury, obstruction of justice and hiding subpoenaed documents.

Watt, proclaiming his innocence, fought the indictments, and in 1993 the criminal charges that could have sent him to prison for 125 years were reduced to a single misdemeanor by a federal judge. Watt got five years’ probation and a $5,000 fine.

The judge explained the light sentence by saying he found that Watt’s actions were “out of character.”

Don’t be surprised to hear another federal judge come to a similar conclusion with Cisneros some day. For as time passes, people will barely recall the personal problems that led him to this public humiliation, and will focus instead on the good that Cisneros has done in public life.

At a minimum Cisneros deserves credit for having run HUD a lot more effectively than Pierce did. Cisneros also had the class--all too rare in modern politics--to publicly share credit for HUD’s improved performance with the Republican who preceded him in the job and began cleaning up Pierce’s mess, Jack Kemp.

Cisneros was also the right mayor at the right time for San Antonio, helping bring a once provincial city to international prominence. He did so while helping keep that city’s ethnic and social divisions from exploding, as has happened in other cities undergoing similar transitions.

Most important, as a college professor, big city mayor and Cabinet secretary, Cisneros was the role model for a rising young generation of Latino leaders. Like him, they are smart, idealistic and better prepared for public service than most of their predecessors were.

Long after Cisneros and his sad little scandal have faded from memory, I worry that the only lasting effect will be to further discourage young people of all ethnic backgrounds from even considering public service careers. Given our current obsession with dissecting the private lives of our public officials, who could fault them? Not Henry Cisneros.