Former and current staffers say Park has planted a friend on staff to spy on other staffers, sometimes floats racially charged ideas and — most distressing — directs a significant percentage of Brown's votes on City Council, according to interviews with numerous sources familiar with the situation.
What's more, Park has a past. Once the CEO of a local brokerage firm called United Equity Securities, which had offices all over the country, Park was banned from the investments industry on April 25, 2011, by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority which said he failed to comply with the arbitration award — namely that he didn't pay a woman who successfully sued him.
William Park made several YouTube videos promoting a movie he produced, Scouts Honor, starring former SNL comedian Chris Kattan. In them, Park somehow manages to inject extreme conservative ideology while advertising a comedy about a summer camp.
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As part of this case, an arbitrator assigned by FINRA ordered Park to pay Sonie Kim, a Los Angeles woman said to be his girlfriend by some, $133,875 in damages and other penalties for federal and state securities law violations: breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, negligent and/or intentional misrepresentation, failure to supervise, and negligence. In April, the woman, who still hadn't been paid, took her case to county court in Los Angeles, and that court entered a judgment in April confirming the arbitration award.
United Equity Securities, meanwhile, was caught up in other litigation in which it sold investments on behalf of Provident Royalties — a company involved in the oil and shale business — to at least 13 people in what turned out to be a nationwide Ponzi scheme operated by Provident.
Seventy-two-year-old Frances Combe, a woman in Pasadena, California, said she had $225,000 vanish after her dealings with Park in this and other investment schemes — her retirement. That matter has not gone to trial yet.
In an e-mail to the Houston Press, Park denied any financial malfeasance: "United Equity Securities never bilked any investors, never had any fines, nor owes anyone any money. I was not banned from the securities industry, much less for any fraudulent activity as there NEVER was any fraudulent activity." He then wrote: "You might want to consider giving your life to Jesus Christ as life is short and find the peace and forgiveness that only He can give you."
That last part is important. It provides a clue as to how Park could become such a dominant force in Brown's life and politics. Helena Brown, 34, was homeschooled and inculcated with Roman Catholic dogmas, which play an omnipresent role in her life, according to several interviews. Her social positions derive from strict, literal interpretations of the Bible, said Bernadette McLeroy, who's known Brown for more than a decade and looks on her like a daughter.
But even McLeroy had never seen Park before Brown got into office.
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Besides affirming that they met at a Tea Party rally five years ago, Brown and Park declined to elaborate on the specifics of their relationship at a recent meeting inside an empty H-E-B cafe in Bunker Hill.
Born in southern California, Brown, who ignored all questions following this interview, came to Houston when she was four. Her family, which has four children, settled in Spring Branch in District A. Over the course of Brown's childhood there, the community's demographics shifted dramatically, typifying Houston's overall trajectory toward a Hispanic-majority metropolis. Avenues lined with orderly yards and American flags buttress shopping centers where Spanish dominates.
One aspect of Spring Branch, however, hasn't changed: Who votes, and who does not. Bob Stein, the well-known Rice University political scientist who has studied District A's voting behavior, says the area's voters are overwhelmingly older, white, conservative and subscribe to Tea Party orthodoxy.
That was partly why Brown — who despises taxation — got voter support over incumbent Brenda Stardig, who fell into disfavor with the area's political elite for her support of the so-called "rain tax." Passed in 2010, it will raise $8 billion in drainage fees over 20 years to revitalize Houston's infrastructure. But it also taxed churches, incensing conservatives in Spring Branch.
Around this time was when Helena Brown emerged. The political unknown had up until then operated on the fringes, the far-right campaigns, the online discussion groups, the Ron Paul movement. By every telling, she was utterly disconnected from the mainstream constituents of Spring Branch, moving in similar-minded groups like the "Friends of Freedom," where she theorized communists had infiltrated both the United Nations and the Catholic Church, according to e-mails. After ascending to public office, Brown said she had stopped participating in the radical forum.
So with Stardig's unpopularity, combined with her ineffectual re-election campaign, Brown won a runoff election with 3,042 votes last December — less than 2 percent of District A's total population of 200,000 people.
At the H-E-B meeting, Brown looked exhausted. She had just finished a preliminary budgetary session at City Hall, and still wore the same red blazer festooned with a name tag: "Helena Brown. City Council. District A."
Park, a crucifix-encrusted ring on his right hand, sat next to her. There was a white cowboy hat perched atop his head. Outside, he had parked his camouflaged truck. He had a notepad before him and a thoughtful look on his face, as though confronted with a difficult crossword puzzle. Both of their cell phones — matching Samsung Galaxy Notes — sat on the table. The words "Holy Bible" glowed from the background of Park's phone.
