GRAY AND WHITE: So Nate Gray's other shoe has finally dropped on Mike White. Apparently Pete Kotz's one-day scoop in Scene really was one of (or part of) Doug Clifton's suppressed PD stories, because there it was on the PD's front page this morning.

Yes, it turns out it was material under court seal in a Federal case. And yes, it was the Nate Gray case. You read it here first.

But most people read it in Scene first, so the scalp (along with the chance to print a picture of Mike White in a target on your front page) goes to Kotz and Scene. Now we'll find out if the PD has anything else.

In reading both the Scene and PD stories (and if you haven't, you should), here are some critical things to keep in mind:

1) As mayor, Mike White was a total micro-manager. I mean total. When my wife worked as a nurse for the City Health Department in 1995, setting up neighborhood immunization clinics, every single flyer she produced (not just the template) had to be cleared by the Mayor's Office. Nobody made a move in White's City Hall that White didn't know about.

2) Nate Gray's reputation as a fixer was common knowledge in and around City Hall. I personally heard it joked about in casual conversation with a Cabinet member in 1998... and believe me, I was way outside anybody's inner circle.

3) The Scene story says the FBI found the first big cash deposits into Gray's bank account early in White's first term.

4) White and his wife, a former Lakewood City Council member with a very good job running a big East Side social service agency, both abruptly decided in 2001 to give up the urban rat race for a life of alpaca ranching in Newcomerstown. "Abruptly" may only be the way it appears to us, of course; they might have been planning the change for years. But 2001 also seems to be when the FBI interviews and phone intercepts got hot and heavy.

Several months ago, a usually well-informed person told me that getting out of town and out of politics was part of a deal the former mayor made with the Federal prosecutor. Nothing in yesterday and today's stories contradicts this assertion.