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In an October report, the Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonprofit policy research organization in New Orleans, recommended removing elected officials from the board and giving the board authority to increase water and sewerage rates by an indexed amount annually, citing that local politics have long interfered with needed rate increases.

The Bureau of Governmental Research suggested in January 2009 that instead of trying to make a deal with another developer, the city should buy out the trade organization’s lease and then sell the tower and garage outright to a private developer.

We, the Metropolitan Crime Commission, the Bureau of Governmental Research, Citizens for One Greater New Orleans, Women of the Storm, Levees.org and other citizen advocacy groups, promise to continue to hold government officials at all levels accountable for their actions.

But BGR President Janet Howard said the city’s decision to drop its efforts to change the exemption rules is alarming.

“It’s very disappointing news for taxpayers that there’s an unwillingness to take on the topic at all,” she said. “There’s a whole range of options, and they haven’t even taken steps to deal with the most egregious examples of over-generosity, where the nonprofit is providing no benefit to the public.”

“After the justice department issued its report, Chief Serpas proposed a plan to reform the NOPD’s detail policies and procedures, and one of the criticisms that is sometimes heard is that it would just shift the detail work to the sheriff’s department,” Janet Howard said. “ And clearly, the reforms should extend to all the law enforcement groups engaged in the practice in the jurisdiction.*

New Orleans voters will get a chance Saturday to weigh in on efforts to tighten oversight at the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, a once-obscure agency that was thrust into the spotlight as a result of misconduct by its top administrator.

“If you don’t have a fund balance, if you have an emergency, if you have terrible flooding or something like that, you don’t have money on hand to deal with it,” Bureau of Governmental Research CEO Janet Howard said. “Ideally you would have one in place, but when you are coming out of a $25 million hole, you have an issue of how fast you can rebuild.”

The beleaguered Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans needs the power to increase water and sewerage rates annually and fewer politicians controlling its activity in order to aptly tackle billions of dollars in city infrastructure improvements, according to a report the Bureau of Governmental Research released today.

A report issued Tuesday by the Bureau of Governmental Research is the first of two to be released by good-government groups in the coming weeks. The Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region will also make governance recommendations in response to a request from Mayor Mitch Landrieu for an outside review of the agency’s finances and management.

The beleaguered Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans needs the power to increase water and sewerage rates annually and fewer politicians controlling its activity in order to aptly tackle billions of dollars in city infrastructure improvements, according to a report the Bureau of Governmental Research released today.

“If you don’t have a fund balance, if you have an emergency, if you have terrible flooding or something like that, you don’t have money on hand to deal with it,” Bureau of Governmental Research CEO Janet Howard said. “Ideally you would have one in place, but when you are coming out of a $25 million hole, you have an issue of how fast you can rebuild.”

To its defenders, the 7,000-acre New Orleans Regional Business Park can be one of the city’s most important tools for promoting economic development. To its critics, the eastern New Orleans park has failed for 30 years to prove that its potential can be turned into reality. Instead, it has been the subject of frequent unfavorable publicity because of management turmoil, political squabbles and ethical problems.

As the Bureau of Governmental Research noted, the park has accomplished very little, and businesses that pay the tax haven’t benefited from it in services or infrastructure.

Janet Howard, president and CEO of the Bureau of Governmental Research, said the city’s “calcified and byzantine” civil service system has hampered the effort further.

The Bureau of Governmental Research, which supports ending the bump rule, has said the “organizational unit” language is too broad, and that’s a valid concern that the city needs to address. But eliminating the bump rule makes sense. The policy can trigger chain reactions that force good employees out while requiring the city to unnecessarily retrain workers.

New Orleans Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin made an appearance in the D.H. Holmes Ballroom at the Chateau Bourbon Hotel on Monday, Sept. 12, to brief members of the Bureau of Governmental Research (BGR) of the Landrieu Administration’s progress in reforming city government.

The Bureau of Governmental Research will honor the achievements of eight outstanding local government employees Thursday when it holds its annual Excellence in Government Awards ceremony.

The non-profit watchdog group, the Bureau of Governmental Research, hosted a briefing Tuesday morning on efforts to strengthen operations at New Orleans City Hall.

Janet Howard, president of the Bureau of Governmental Research, says the problems in city government are so widespread that prioritizing will be critical in attacking the issues. “You can’t expect a ship like New Orleans to turn around overnight,” said Howard.

Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin will present a status update Sept. 13 to the Bureau of Governmental Research (BGR), the local government watchdog group, on the Landrieu administration’s ongoing efforts to reform city government operations. Kopplin is expected to measure the city’s progress against a report produced last year by the Public Strategies Group (PSG).

The Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonprofit watchdog group, is planning a briefing on efforts to strengthen operations at New Orleans City Hall.

City government should be no different, but the problem New Orleans faces is that its system for evaluating civil service employees is nothing short of a joke. According to the Bureau of Governmental Research, an evaluation of 4,315 city employees last year showed that just 31 were in need of improvement.

According to a letter written to the Civil Service Commission by Janet Howard, president of the Bureau of Governmental Research, of the 4,315 city employees evaluated in 2010, only 31 were found to need improvement.

But the argument falls apart in the face of how city employees are rated on performance. As Janet Howard of the Bureau of Governmental Research pointed out in a letter, only 31 of the city’s 4,315 employees were rated as needing improvement in 2010. Even more incredibly, only one employee in the entire municipal workforce was labeled unsatisfactory.

It’s no wonder that the Bureau of Governmental Research, which has long advocated for eliminating this policy, has called it “an incredibly messy process that wreaks havoc with the work force.” A consultant this year also cited the policy as a reason why City Hall is dysfunctional.

Elimination of the bumping rule has been urged for years by the watchdog Bureau of Governmental Research, which in a 2004 report called bumping “an incredibly messy process that wreaks havoc with the work force.”

In bird-dogging Landrieu’s 2011 budget proposal, the Bureau of Governmental Research pointed out that the three-person Public Information Office in Jefferson Parish, which has nearly 90,000 more residents than New Orleans, was allotted just $200,000 this year, with no money earmarked for outsourcing.

“He inherited tremendous, tremendous problems,” said Janet Howard, president of the Bureau of Governmental Research, a local watchdog group. “I mean, it was a government basically in shambles as far as I could tell.”

“Further, I will seek the assistance and advice of respected civic groups like the Bureau of Governmental Research, Public Affairs Research Council, Council for a Better Louisiana, etc., to form a watch committee, similar to Court Watch. This committee will have full access to the methods used and the information obtained by the Assessor’s Office and will have my full cooperation in answering any questions regarding the performance of my office.”

Capella’s resolution calls for the crime commission, the Jefferson Business Council, the Bureau of Governmental Research and the East Jefferson and West Jefferson civic coalitions each to appoint one person to an advisory committee. It would help define the job of inspector general and recommend a source of money to run the office.

Capella’s resolution will call for a five-member committee to select the IG. The committee will be comprised of civic and business leaders, the Metropolitan Crime Commission and the Bureau of Governmental Research.

The resolution calls for the creation of a 5 member committee. The panel members would be chosen by 5 different organizations, including one that keeps a close eye on how taxpayer dollars are spent, the Bureau of Governmental Research.

“Let’s face it, whether it be the Metropolitan Crime Commission, whether it be the BGR (Bureau of Governmental Research), whether it be the public-private Horizon Initiative to outsource (the economic development) element of government, whether it be outsourcing an element of NORD (the city’s Recreation Department), all of a sudden what the plan appears to be is that they want to in essence neuter African-American (political) power and then have economic leadership stay in the hands of the minority as opposed to the majority, the minority in this case being the white community,” Henry said. “We have to do better than that.”

Gressett explained that if elected assessor, he’ll structure the staff, and make other changes, along the recommendations of the city’s most prominent good government group. “I believe the Bureau of Governmental Research has outlined in their December report ‘In All Fairness’, a blueprint for the organizational structure of the new office into three main offices: appraisal, administration and technology.”

Bishop Paul Morton of Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church was angry with Nagin’s pledge to sign contract reform proposed by the Bureau of Governmental Research. Morton publicly called it a “slave contract” and sent the mayor-elect a letter claiming “that the majority of the African-Americans in this city are disappointed because our candidate of choice did not win.”

Forward New Orleans, a coalition of 30 civic and business groups, has released the results of its push to get all of the candidates for City Council to sign onto its seven-part reform agenda for the city.

Persuading candidates, especially front-runners, to sign a pledge vowing to undertake a particular reform can be an uphill battle. Getting the winner to live up his or her commitment can be even harder.

City workers could face a possible 12-day, unpaid furlough as part of a way to bridge an expected $68 million budget deficit in the upcoming year, according to sources.

The office produced few results under Mr. Cerasoli and even less under Mr. Odom, and New Orleanians expect and need a more active office in the future. For example, the Bureau of Governmental Research, a non-profit private watchdog, has been more productive uncovering government waste and inefficiencies — even though BGR has fewer than a third the staffers and budget of the inspector general’s office.

In his first full day on the job, New Orleans Inspector General Edouard Quatrevaux on Friday vowed to build on the “good foundation” laid by his predecessor, with his first order of business to lay out a plan of attack for improving the efficiency of city government and rooting out corruption.

The Armstrong Ballroom at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel was the site of the Bureau of Governmental Research 2009 Excellence in Government Awards, an annual event that rewards local government employees for outstanding performance and creative problem-solving and for their effective use of public resources.

Tim Whitmer, chief administrative officer for Jefferson Parish government since 1998, received a lifetime achievement award from the Bureau of Governmental Research last week.

Eyewitness News found that a Gentilly home owned by one of the city’s most powerful political families, the Morrells, is also on the city of New Orleans’ list for delinquent property taxes.

The City Council voted unanimously in favor of 100 percent transparency in city contracting, approving council Vice President Arnie Fielkow’s ordinance to open the city’s professional services contract selection process to the state’s open meetings law with a 7-0 vote.

This newspaper makes the following recommendations for the Nov. 4 ballot.

New Orleans voters will decide Nov. 4 whether to amend the City Charter to give the city’s forthcoming master plan the force of law, meaning that all zoning and land-use decisions would have to conform to the plan.

New Orleans City Council members and government watchdogs continue to search for greater transparency in professional services contracts in spite of Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s most recent and comprehensive executive order on the process issued in April.