Kitchen recall petition still a no-show

It has now been four days since a mysterious group announced it had gathered enough signatures to trigger the recall of City Council Member Ann Kitchen, but the Office of the City Clerk says it still hasn’t received the petition. On Monday, the Austin4All political action committee sent an email blast to local media outlets declaring that it had reached the threshold required to initiate the recall process. Since then, however, regular check-ins with the city clerk’s office have yielded naught but tumbleweeds. In addition, on Tuesday, a separate group announced it was joining A4A to collect more signatures. Justin Arman, executive director of Texans for Accountable Government, told the Austin Monitor that his group is helping to gather a “surplus” of signatures in order to give the petition greater room for error during the verification process. There was no sign from either group of impending delivery to the clerk’s office, but another ad seeking more paid canvassers was posted on Craigslist on Tuesday, and the Monitor has heard from residents in Kitchen’s South Austin district who reported encounters as late as Wednesday evening with recall petitioners.