In The News › Ethics

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.

“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.*

Orleans Parish already has one, and now voters in Jefferson Parish will decide if they want one.

The push for an inspector general’s office in Jefferson Parish has garnered a broad base of support among business groups and government watchdogs, including the Bureau of Governmental Research, Parish President John Young said this week.

Last week, the New Orleans Public Belt’s executive committee met behind closed doors to discuss the future of General Manager Jim Bridger. However, half of the six members on that executive committee were not appointed to the Public Belt Board by the organizations picked to do so by law.

“Well it’s time to go back and change state law,” said Janet Howard, President of the Bureau of Governmental Research.

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 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.

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has once again ruled that the New Orleans City Council is within its rights to demand Mayor C. Ray Nagin open the administration’s professional service contract review to public scrutiny.

Despite Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell’s Oct. 15 opinion that the City Council is well within its rights to create greater transparency in city contracting by opening the professional services procurement process to Open Meetings Law, Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s administration continues to fight that effort by asking the AG for a reconsideration.

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.

New Orleans voters already have a chance this fall to approve a City Charter amendment making the inspector general’s office permanent.