You’ve heard of the Peter Principle, yes? It’s the notion that people can be elevated to their “highest level of incompetence.”

Here, then, is a startling example of that principle at work.

David Wallace, the one-time co-owner of a master development firm that galloped into Amarillo making huge promises to re-create the city’s moribund downtown district, has been hired as a “business mentor” for a firm that teaches foreign entrepreneurs how to succeed in business.

Why is this so weird? Wallace’s company — Wallace Bajjali Development Partners — vaporized into thin air earlier this year in a dispute with co-owner Costa Bajjali. He left Amarillo — and Joplin, Mo. — high and dry. Joplin had hired Wallace Bajjali to help the city recover from the destruction caused by a tornado that tore through the city.

I don’t know whether to laugh or scream.

http://www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/david-wallace-finds-employment-as-business-mentor/article_5327216f-8a0a-56d2-a9f0-f1a0c7ee6bb4.html

Amarillo is proceeding with its downtown development efforts without David Wallace, the former Sugar Land mayor and self-proclaimed urban development hotshot.

His new employer is International Accelerator of Austin. Its website, according to the Joplin Globe newspaper, touts Wallace as a “key” player in the firm’s organizational chart.

As the Globe notes in its story on Wallace’s hiring, International Accelerator’s website doesn’t mention a key part of Wallace’s recent history.

You see, after he and Bajjali parted company, Wallace filed personal bankruptcy, claiming debts totaling in the millions of dollars and leaving him, according to the Globe, “in financial shambles.”

The Globe reports: “Wallace’s biography listed on the website touts his three-term history as mayor of Sugar Land, Texas, his work with the son of the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and his experience in public-private partnerships.”

It makes me wonder if his new employers know the rest of the story.