KPRC-TV Reporter Mario Diaz is still trying to get Mayor Turner to answer questions about his relationship with the intern he helped land a secret $95,000 a year internship at the airport.
Turner initially claimed twice to not know Marvin Agumagu. Then after evidence piled up including photos together and a letter of recommendation Turner wrote for him, the Mayor’s office came clean.
KPRC-TV reports “Turner has refused to answer any questions on three occasions in the past week. On one occasion, Turner walked out on a scheduled news conference and, on another, he sneaked into the back of a building.Turner’s communications team also turned down our request for a formal interview days after it was requested”.
As far as Agumagu’s pay, “In his Oct. 4, 2018, letter recommending Agumagu as the airport's first executive intern, Airport Director Mario Diaz wrote, Agumagu had “significant work experience in Governmental Relations and International Affairs.”
Agumagu's resume shows a total of approximately 18 months of government relations experience. He had:
-Six-months as an intern in the mayor’s office
-One-month as an intern in City Attorney’s office
-Four-months as an administrative assistant in the Mayor’s Office of Trade and -International Affairs
-Five months as an international outreach liaison and constitute representative for the CongressWOMAN Sheila Jackson Lee.
In all, Agumagu's resume shows a total of approximately 18 months of government relations experience.
Turner’s supporters including Bill Kelly, the mayor's director of government relations, is defending his boss pointing out that Agumagu has a bachelor's, master's and law degrees, tweeting “Intern: Marvin Agumagu. Lawyer.”
Except as the KPRC-TV report points out, “Agumagu is not a lawyer, according to the State Bar of Texas. A Democratic strategist told Kelly to “stop tweeting.”
In fact, there are over 20-attorneys working for the city making less than Agumagu's $95,000-a-year salary, many of them have even more experience than him.
And of course, the $95,000 internship was created specifically for Agumagu because it was never publicly posted. The mayor kept the executive internship off the public radar by using a clause in the city charter.
As KPRC-TV points out, “Turner signed off, knowing full well that no one else could compete against Agumagu, whom Turner wrote he had known personally in 2017.”