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The aide, Latrice Bryant, had been followed by a Fox29 television crew, which on six days filmed her attending to personal business and arriving at work late while official time sheets showed her to be on the job in City Hall.
Late last month, City Controller Alan Butkovitz wrote to Goode asking him to provide by yesterday any documentation that would show that the station got it wrong.
Instead, Goode sent the controller a check.
"So that settles it, financially," Butkovitz said.
Butkovitz said he did not have the resources to audit Goode's office, but noted past controller reports that criticized City Council for lax enforcement of personnel policies.
Butkovitz has the power to withhold employees' paychecks, and he said he had contemplated taking that action had neither Bryant nor Goode accounted for Bryant's supposedly unworked hours.
"This needed to be dealt with because it sent a terrible message," Butkovitz said. "It wasn't important that your time records match your actual time."
Goode said yesterday that he was still reviewing phone and e-mail records to determine if Bryant made up the missing hours while working from home. But he could not finish that job, he said, before yesterday.
"We'll continue to do our own research, but we could not reconstruct what happened or didn't happen before the controller's deadline," Goode said.
"I decided it was easier to cut a check, and if we later prove she worked the hours, then the controller can choose to reimburse me."
A message left with Bryant's attorney yesterday afternoon was not returned.
Though Fox's report did confirm on multiple occasions that Bryant's time sheets bore little resemblance to her actual schedule, the television crew did not consistently track her comings and goings from City Hall.
Goode said it was possible that she worked full hours even if she recorded them incorrectly.
When asked if he had urged Bryant to pay the $836 bill, Goode would only say that she had received a copy of the controller's letter and was entitled to respond to it "however she chooses to."
Before the Fox29 report aired, Bryant fashioned homemade signs accusing the station and one of its reporters of being racist, and held them up at a City Council meeting.
Later, the station aired photos apparently taken several years ago that showed Bryant and Goode cozying up to one another on a Jamaican beach.
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