The Office of Inspector General completed 15 of the 22 investigations it opened in 2009, according to an annual report the office submitted to the city Tuesday. “Most of the investigations concerned relatively minor matters. However, The Crime Surveillance Camera inspection revealed multiple evasions of competitive requirements, and generated suspicions of corruption in contract administration,” [...]
The Police Association of New Orleans held a fund-raiser over the weekend supporting Special Operations unit veterans Capt. Jeff Winn and Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann and the police officer union’s rapidly depleting legal defense budget. Winn and Scheuermann are under federal investigation in connection with the death of Henry Glover, whose remains were found in the [...]
After doling out nearly $3 million in loans for an expansion of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club headquarters and an entertainment complex on St. Bernard Avenue, the city of New Orleans has about $9 million left in its Urban Development Action Grant fund for revitalization projects in low-income neighborhoods. “We have $12 million [...]
Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu’s spokesman said late Monday that the transition team “strives to follow” the state open-meetings statues, “though it is not required to do so by law.” Spokesman Todd Ragusa was addressing a point raised earlier Monday by Norman Francis, Xavier University president and one of two leaders of Landrieu’s task force to vet [...]
Monday, Danatus King of the New Orleans NAACP resigned from Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu’s transition task force on crime citing transparency concerns. He is dissatisfied with Landrieu’s decision to keep from the public the names of all but the handful of finalists for police superintendent. My colleague Steve Beatty was thinking this could prove problematic last [...]
The national shortcomings of the federal stimulus act’s weatherization program were detailed in a Sunday Associated Press story, and a fresh look at local numbers show an equally dismal level of success. The long-running federal weatherization assistance program, financed by the U.S. Department of Energy, pays for low-income households to get home improvements to keep [...]
For all who were wondering who made up the “recovery board” that decided to pull the plug on a contract to develop a long-awaited linear park in New Orleans, The Lens has obtained an answer. Sort of. According to Mayor Ray Nagin spokesman James Ross, the executive branch board is comprised of “staff members who [...]
Perhaps you read this lovely article in The Times-Picayune. Over the weekend, the union that represents the NOPD, the Police Association of New Orleans, held a fund-raiser to benefit the legal-defense funds of officers under investigation for violent crimes, conspiracies and cover-ups that occurred in the aftermath of the federal levee failure. The event was [...]
Update: The public isn’t entitled to see all the applicants for the next police superintendent, and Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu’s transition team screening the applicants isn’t a public body or subject to public records law, its leader said today. Xavier University president Norman Francis took these positions at a press conference to address the resignation of [...]
After unexpectedly throwing out a hard-won contract for the development of a grand linear park through the heart of New Orleans, the city has reopened bidding. But this time, the urban planners who won the first contract say the question is not how to win the contract with City Hall, but whether they want to. [...]