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Early this year Hofheinz brought on the showdown when he tried to bull through a 20% increase in property taxes which the councilmen had opposed. The councilmen retaliated by proposing 18 amendments to the city charter, designed to cut down the power of the mayor. Then the Houston Post uncovered a set of unsavory graft and kickback scandals, e.g., the "disappearance" of at least 60 city-owned houses from the city property list, and the councilmen thought they had the mayor on ice. Last month, although no one could connect the mayor to the scandals, the councilmen took the long step of voting a six count indictment—which they called an impeachment—of Mayor Hofheinz's general conduct in office; then they took the longer step of appointing a temporary mayor of their own. But Roy Hofheinz declined to resign: the councilmen, he said, were like"inmates of a penitentiary attempting to oust the warden." The civic war raged on, and it was Roy Hofheinz who soon began to win the battles. His lawyers cited an old city ordinance to prove that councilmen had no right to exercise such administrative functions as appointing new mayors—and the court upheld Roy Hofheinz. He challenged the councilmen, in effect, to call new mayoralty and council elections, confident that his supporters in the politically disciplined labor unions would bring him a solid new mandate. For all their public insistence that they would fight lurid Roy Hofheinz to the end, the councilmen were clearly beginning to weaken. Contemplating the cocksure mayor from Huckster House, one of the councilmen concluded: "I think the time has come to make a plea for peace."