A product of Houston’s fifth ward and the daughter of a black, second generation welfare mom, Ms. Cuthbert came up hard, as we say back home. A prosecutor with political ambitions, she possesses the body of a gymnast, the beauty of a model, the professional scrappiness of an alley cat, and a politician’s savvy. My kind of lawyer. Zeroing in on the Baxter Brothers missive hinting I was not what they’d call a “team player,” she asked what that was all about. I sighed and told her. “It’s about change orders, Allison. Used to be, when the engineering and construction industry was in its heyday, contracts were let on a cost-plus basis. In other words, whatever it cost to complete, plus a set percentage over that. The Alaska Pipeline killed cost-plus forever. Murdered the goose and the egg. After the pipeline thing, the industry had to start bidding hard money. Actually estimating what a job was going to cost and, in theory, sticking to it. What a concept.” “Sounds reasonable to me,”
