Doug Dowie is out as general manager of the Los Angeles office of public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard. But there are two spins swirling around the move announced today in the agency's downtown offices. The official version is it's a promotion to greater responsibility. The other take buzzing through political circles is that Dowie's recent high profile became too undesirable to continue unchanged.

The note from Curt Kundred, the California regional head for Fleishman, reads:

I am pleased to announce an important step in the growth of Fleishman-Hillard as a leader in public affairs consulting in California. Doug Dowie, who has successfully led the Los Angeles office since 1999, will assume leadership of FH’s California Public Affairs Practice and become co-chairman of our agency’s national public affairs practice. In this capacity, Doug's assignment will be to coordinate and lead a statewide public affairs consulting practice and manage our already strong growth in public affairs accounts in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In recent months, we have added new public affairs group leaders in San Francisco and Sacramento, and have begun coalescing our firm's resources, including the public affairs advertising firm GMMB, to win more business in this sector. I have great confidence that Doug will guide us into a position of statewide public affairs leadership. We will have further details about Doug’s promotion and the structure of FH’s California public affairs practice in the weeks ahead.

As Doug begins his new assignment, I will serve as interim general manager for Los Angeles, as we begin a search for a candidate to fill this position permanently.

Curt

In the latest media story to center on Dowie, DA Steve Cooley told KNBC's Ana Garcia that Fleishman's billing practices under Dowie "create an appearance that maybe something is rotten in Denmark. Except this is not Denmark -- it's Los Angeles." The Channel 4 report, which aired Friday, looked at the billing used on Fleishman's lucrative contract with the city's Department of Water and Power.

Earlier: 'Cripes, it's the media'