Last week, City Council Chairman Charles Walker told reporters he had no idea how he came to be listed as the sponsor of a resolution authorizing the city to float $2.1 million in bonds so developer Frank Parlato could knock down the old Occidental Building. Since the resolution was written by the corporation counsel's office, someone in the administration had to have authored it, he said.

Not so, claimed Mayor Vince Anello, who declined to speculate on how a spending resolution might have come out of the law office and wound up on the Council agenda without anyone in the administration knowing about it.

Let's see. Who's lying?

Nearly a year ago, in May 2005, when the Reporter revealed he had taken $40,000 in under-the-table payments from developer "Smokin'" Joe Anderson and that the FBI was investigating the matter, Anello initially told the media we made the whole thing up in order to hurt him politically.

"Published reports about alleged misconduct on my behalf are totally unfounded," he told one daily newspaper stenographer. The Reporter article was "totally unfounded, false and defamatory," he told another.

In other words, Anello was lying through his teeth.

He also lied when he said that giving much of the Hyde Park Golf Course away to a group of developers who had no track record of developing anything was in "the best interests of the city." And he lied when he promised a good-faith bargaining effort by his administration with Ciminelli Construction for the Main Street courthouse project.

Anello has lied on television, radio and in the newspapers. He lies when telling the truth wouldn't hurt him. In fact, he lies so often that it's legitimate to question whether he knows what the truth is on any given subject or day of the week.

By contrast, we can't think of a single instance in which Charles Walker was caught in a lie during his more than seven years as a city councilman. While we haven't always agreed with him on policy, we have no reason to doubt he is a man of the highest integrity.

If he says he didn't have anything to do with the bond resolution, that he doesn't know how his name came to be on it and that the Anello administration is responsible for trying to push it through, that's good enough for us.