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In comments published in The Tribune on May 30, Barry Bitzer, chief of staff to Mayor Martin Chavez, denied any involvement by the mayor or himself in a campaign against two city councilors who opposed a Chavez tax-cut proposal.

Instead, Bitzer called the Committee for Responsible Budgets' campaign, which included radio advertisements and robo-calls attacking conservatives Brad Winter and Don Harris, "a grass-roots movement."

City e-mail and phone records suggest otherwise.

The ads and robo-calls began shortly after the committee was formed on May 24, three days after the council's vote against the tax cut. But Bitzer and two others close to the mayor possessed scripts for the ads and robo-calls on May 20, the day before the council vote and four days before the committee was formed.

Documents obtained from the city through a records request show Bitzer sent the scripts that day, by e-mail, to Mark Fleisher, a Democratic operative who works for the mayor's gubernatorial exploratory committee, and Greg Payne, the city's transit director.

The scripts were sent from Bitzer's personal e-mail account and to Payne's personal account. I found them in the deleted items folder for Bitzer's government e-mail account and assume that's because he also sent the e-mails to that account as blind carbon copies.

In addition, Bitzer and Payne spoke several times on their city-owned cell phones with Roger Mickelson just before he became the spokesman for the committee. The three placed several calls to each other on May 22 and 23, according to city phone records.

And on May 29 - the day before the publishing of The Tribune's article that quoted Bitzer as saying he and the mayor were not involved in the committee - Mickelson called Bitzer. After that, Bitzer and Fleisher called each other 11 times throughout the day.

Bitzer wrote in an e-mail to me that he stands by his previous statement. He said the conversations with Mickelson "likely" involved speed humps, a road and the Winter and Harris opposition to the mayor's tax-cut proposal. Payne wrote in an e-mail that his phone conversations with Mickelson involved "an issue at one of the city's bus stops."

The phone calls in that eight-day span in May are the only times Mickelson's phone number appears on Bitzer's and Payne's city cell-phone records between April 1 and June 10. That, coupled with the fact that Bitzer and Payne possessed the scripts for the committee's ads and robo-calls before the council even voted on the tax-increase proposal, creates the appearance that Bitzer, Payne and Fleisher were involved in the attacks on Winter and Harris.

Bitzer refused to comment on why he possessed the scripts before the committee was formed or answer additional questions. Payne also refused to comment, saying his personal e-mails are no one else's business. Chavez and Fleisher didn't respond to e-mail requests for comments.

Obviously, city-owned phones can't be used for campaign purposes. The question during this testy election season is whether Chavez is waging a behind-the-scenes campaign to unseat his council opponents and, if so, whether he is or his staffers are violating ethics rules in the process.

In light of the Bitzer and Payne phone calls and e-mails, it's a valid question.