In The News › Orleans Parish

Even before Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans, activists and businesses charged that the city had an opaque and cronyism-ridden system for awarding building and contracting deals — a major hurdle for local firms. The Bureau of Governmental Research, a private, independent research organization released a major report entitled “Contracting with Confidence” to call attention to the matter and make recommendations in March.

“That you would end up with a major blight problem was absolutely predictable,” said Janet R. Howard, executive director of the Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonprofit advisory group here. “You come to a point where you have to get beyond the political question to the actual question.”

Experts cautioned that, even with billions of dollars in aid expected to flow to the city, New Orleans wouldn’t get enough to properly rebuild every section of town — or to keep rebuilt facilities in good shape.

“Unless the city’s plan addresses the mismatch between the city’s footprint and its population by initially directing development into more compact areas, the outcome will be random, scattered development in a sea of blight,” the nonprofit Bureau of Governmental Research wrote in December 2005.

The Bureau of Governmental Research has put out a new report addressing the infrastructure needs of the city of New Orleans and recommendations for how to budget for improvements that need to be made. Dennis sits down with Janet Howard, the CEO of the Bureau of Governmental Research, to discuss the findings.

New Orleans, at age 292, has far more creaky infrastructure than any agency can afford to fix, according to a new report from the Bureau of Governmental Research. “The Price of Civilization” defines the problem in detail, although researchers say their tally of capital needs is not complete.

A new study by the independent Bureau of Governmental Research suggests there are “startling gaps” in the city’s ability to prevent the type of flooding seen in parts of New Orleans, Wednesday morning.

A report released Wednesday from the Bureau of Governmental Research indicated that the city needs billions to upgrade its badly impaired infrastructure.

While much attention has been paid recently to a projected $67.5 million shortfall in New Orleans’ 2010 operating budget, the Bureau of Governmental Research has been focusing on a shortfall of billions of dollars in the city’s ability to address its infrastructure needs.

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.

Janet Howard of the Bureau of Governmental Research calls these numbers “shocking.” Howard says, “to have overtime at these rates is a red flag that something needs to be evaluated.”

“It is shocking when you have an employee making $171,000 when his base salary is $59,000,” Janet Howard of the Bureau of Governmental Research said. “What is going on there? That’s almost triple the base salary. Something is out of whack.”

As the head of the Bureau of Governmental Research looks over a document we sent her, she says something is out of whack.

A 2003 study by the Bureau of Governmental Research, an independent watchdog group, said the current CZO, written about 40 years ago and since amended hundreds of times, is “incoherent, overamended, outdated and vague,” and that “interpreting (it) is well beyond the reach of the typical developer, not to mention the average citizen.”

In other actions at Thursday’s meeting, all by unanimous votes, the council… Called on the state to start fulfilling its legal obligation to reimburse local governments for money they lose in property tax revenue because of the homestead exemption. A recent report by the Bureau of Governmental Research pointed out that under a little-known provision in the state Constitution, the state is supposed to reimburse parishes and cities for money lost because of the exemption, but in 2009, the state provided only $90 million for that purpose — just 12.5 percent of the $716 million lost statewide.

The commission flatly rejected one of the council’s most far-reaching suggestions: to “remove all topics not related to the physical growth of the city,” the basic subject of the master plan. Removing such unrelated material has been advocated by the Bureau of Governmental Research, but the commission said it considers including discussions of other issues appropriate.

On Thursday, June 4, 2010, Mayor Mitch Landrieu signed Executive Orders that enact sweeping reforms of city contracting procedures. In doing so, the newly inaugurated Chief Executive attempts to weigh transparency reforms long advocated by good government groups like the Bureau of Governmental Research and critics in the African-American community that worry such changes might exclude minority contractors from the bidding process.

Mr. Quatrevaux gave his stamp of approval to the new contracting plan. And Janet Howard, executive director of the nonprofit Bureau of Governmental Research, described the new rules as “big, big steps forward.”

Since Landrieu’s election, BGR has jumped back into the fray, with a new slate of recommendations that align closely with the new policy.

The report, titled “Managing Innovation: Models for Governing the System of Public Schools in New Orleans,” was released by two watchdog groups: Tulane University’s Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives and the Bureau of Governmental Research.

It comes at an opportune time; the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education must decide by late this year whether to extend state control over most of the city’s public schools beyond 2011 or return them to local control.

The first test will come from the battle to end the city’s haphazard, Persian bazaar method of awarding professional service contracts. In an interview with The Louisiana Weekly on the eve of his inauguration, Landrieu explained that he hoped to have a reform that would satisfy both the Bureau of Governmental Research and the Black community. That is a tall order, but one that is eminently possible.

The Bureau of Governmental Research in 2008 called on City Hall to adopt such a program to cure what the watchdog agency saw as three critical problems: “the unsophisticated, and at times ad hoc, process for managing street work; inadequate coordination with utilities, particularly the Sewerage & Water Board, (in planning construction); and the city’s utter failure to invest in preventive maintenance and rehabilitation.”

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Governmental Research issued a report criticizing the latest draft of the New Orleans Master Plan and Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, saying it “does not live up to its mission in key areas” and “still falls short of the requirements for a good master plan.”

The Bureau of Governmental Research (BGR), a local nonprofit think tank, has followed the planning process since its inception and released several reports assessing various drafts of the plan. BGR’s latest report, “A Need for Clarity,” concludes that the most recent draft “still falls short of the requirements for a good master plan.”

Janet Howard, president of the Bureau of Governmental Research, said the latest version of the plan corrects some of the problems the bureau found in an earlier draft last year. But in an analysis posted Wednesday on its Web site, www.bgr.org, the bureau said the current version still “does not provide sufficient guidance on the physical development of the city,” is confusingly organized and hard to use, and “strays from its mission by covering an array” of unrelated issues.

While the nonprofit Bureau of Governmental Research says the latest draft of the master plan has “limited improvements” over the previous draft, it says the draft still “falls short of the requirements for a good master plan.”

The Bureau of Governmental Research is expected to issue a report Wednesday on the document approved by the planning commission and now before the council. The bureau last year released a highly critical assessment of a preliminary draft of the plan, saying it did “not provide an effective guide for shaping the future physical presence of the city” and failed to “prioritize goals and policies in any meaningful way.”

If Williams hires any of the current district assessors, there is sure to be an outcry from the reform-minded wing that supported Lemle’s candidacy, and from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Bureau of Governmental Research, which has closely tracked the assessors’ performances. Williams cannot make a fresh start if he retains the most visible faces of the old system, said BGR’s president and CEO Janet Howard.

WWL-TV: …do you think the BGR’s report is a good start that the (Mitch) Landrieu administration and City Council can take a look at?

EQ: Yes, I think the BGR report is an excellent report. I don’t disagree with anything in it. I think the recommendations do move this city to a better system.

Its previous calls for eliminating politics from the way New Orleans awards contracts for professional services seemed to fall on mostly deaf ears, but the Bureau of Governmental Research is not giving up.

“The need for reform is clear,” BGR says in a press release, citing “numerous problems with the city’s process for awarding professional services contracts,” including “bloated contracts for political allies, an alleged kickback scheme, poor monitoring of contractor performance and an expanding definition of ‘professional service’ to avoid low-bid requirements.”

Speaking at a Bureau of Governmental Research breakfast Tuesday, Williams defended Mauberret’s assessment of the W Hotel, adding more fuel to the speculation that the outgoing 2nd District assessor would have a place in Williams’ office.

Newly elected citywide assessor Erroll Williams raised eyebrows at a recent Bureau of Governmental Research meeting when he launched into an unprompted defense of 2nd District Assessor Claude Mauberret’s appraisal of the W Hotel in the French Quarter.

“Contracts are in some ways, when misused, the new form of patronage,” said Janet Howard, president/CEO of the Bureau of Governmental Research.

Janet Howard, head of the New Orleans based Bureau of Governmental Research, said there is concern over how Williams will build the new office and whether he’ll use current assessors. The existing seven assessor model, which dates back to the 1870s, has established a sort of coziness between the public and assessors, according to Howard.

The new mayor will need to bring residents back, lower crime and improve public education, said Janet Howard, chief executive officer of the Bureau of Governmental Research, a non- partisan public policy research group in New Orleans.

The trade group has asked for a $6.2 million payment to terminate its lease of the building: $5 million that it was supposed to receive from the most recent failed redevelopment efforts, plus the $1.2 million lease termination payment that the Bureau of Government Research had suggested in a report last year.

“The whole point of consolidating assessors was to institute a new system, to reform the system, to ensure that everyone is paying on the same basis,” said Janet Howard, president and CEO of the Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonpartisan think tank. “One of the questions voters need to pose is, when someone claims they are going to adopt reform is, why didn’t they do it before?”

“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.”

Clarkson and others, including the nonprofit Bureau of Governmental Research, believe the city should rid itself of largely vacant skyscraper by selling it.

The Bureau of Governmental Research asked candidates to weigh in on the city’s budget, municipal services, infrastructure and blight. The group didn’t ask the candidates to make any promises, just to provide succinct answers to two questions per topic.

The Bureau of Governmental Research has released the second part of a four-part series of questionnaires completed by the candidates for New Orleans mayor.

“We don’t believe that giving out grants to individual businesses is wise. It leaves you very exposed to the risk of patronage,” says BGR’s Janet Howard.

The Bureau of Governmental Research releases the first installment in a four-part Q&A series with mayoral candidates, “Questions for a New Mayor.”

“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.

The New Orleans mayor’s race will hold the main spotlight in the upcoming elections, and rightfully so as the voters’ choice could largely determine the outside world’s perception of the city for decades to come.

The Bureau of Governmental Research says the current seven-assessor system has been grossly inefficient and has produced inaccurate assessments, depriving the city of needed revenue. But the move to a one assessor system is not guaranteed to make things better.

Some New Orleans homeowners in Lakeview are taking 7th District Property Assessor Henry Heaton to task.

Replacing New Orleans’ seven elected tax assessors with a single assessor was a triumph of civic activism, a sign that New Orleanians were determined not just to rebuild their city but to reform its government.

The Bureau of Governmental Research issued a report Monday urging the eventual winner of New Orleans’ first citywide assessor’s election to hire an expert staff and adopt the latest computer technology to correct a “grossly inefficient” system.

Praising Louisianians’ “unbelievable resilience and perseverance” in recovering from Hurricane Katrina, a Washington Post editorial writer said Tuesday that most Americans still have “a reservoir of goodwill” toward the still-struggling region.

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.

The Industrial Development Board of New Orleans is expected to get an earful today at a public hearing about a property tax break given to the developers of the Hyatt hotel last month even though the board’s own advisers say it was excessive.

One month after City Council members approved a 96 percent pay increase for themselves and a 6.5 percent increase for the mayor, plus an annual increase of 2.5 percent, they are considering a budget proposal by Mayor Ray Nagin that would cut the salaries of City Hall employees by at least 4.6 percent.

I have a dog. He’s a pretty good dog. He’s a good companion; he’s friendly. But he’s a pretty lousy watchdog.

When members of the New Orleans City Planning Commission decided Tuesday to postpone for a month their scheduled vote on the city’s proposed master plan, they were worried how City Council members might respond.

One thing that cannot be disputed about the latest draft of the city’s proposed Master Plan is that it’s a monster-sized document. The plan comprises three volumes and hundreds of pages. As experts and citizens consider the efficacy of the plan, a threshold issue is: How long should the deliberative process take? Earlier this month, the nonprofit Bureau of Governmental Research (BGR), a local government watchdog, released a study criticizing the plan and suggested that the process be slowed down so shortcomings in the current draft can be corrected. “At this point, it is more important to get it right than to get it done quickly,” BGR concluded. We agree — up to a point.

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.

A philosophical clash over the city’s master plan is surfacing among authors of the plan’s current draft and those who helped craft the 2008 city charter amendment that gives the plan legal force.

The litigation involving the latest failed bid to redevelop the World Trade Center building has been settled, raising questions about whether the city and trade club will continue with the same approach that they’ve been trying since 1998 to redevelop the building, which remains largely empty.

The legal power afforded to the city’s master plan is driving a gap between expectations and what planners say is reality in New Orleans.

New Orleanians can’t express informed opinions on the city’s proposed master plan if they haven’t seen the entire document.

A nationally known urban planner hired by the Bureau of Governmental Research panned New Orleans’ proposed master plan Tuesday, saying the latest draft would be the longest master plan in America yet would fail to provide basic guidance on land-use issues.

New Orleans residents got their first chance to sound off on the first draft of the city’s new master plan.

The city’s draft master plan is “so deficient that it would be a mistake to adopt it.”

A government watchdog group on Monday called on the City Planning Commission to postpone public meetings on New Orleans’ master plan, including two this week, until the entire document is available for review.

Even before it opened in July, renters were anxious to land an apartment in Walnut Square, a new mixed-income apartment complex in eastern New Orleans.

After more than two hours of debate that divided longtime allies and created some of the strangest political bedfellows in memory, the New Orleans City Council voted 6-1 Thursday to authorize millions of dollars in tax breaks for a team of businessmen hoping to redevelop the mostly empty site of the former Lake Forest Plaza mall in eastern New Orleans.

A controversial tax break to fund the redevelopment of an eastern New Orleans mall won approval from the New Orleans City Council today, even thought the council member in whose district the mall resides voted against it.

After hours of apparently tense closed-door negotiations, the leader of an effort to redevelop the site of the former Lake Forest Plaza mall in eastern New Orleans said late today that he expects the New Orleans City Council to vote Thursday to approve a significant tax break for the project.

The council will once again take up the issue of a high-profile tax break. It would help a developer who says his vision will dramatically transform what used to be the Lake Forest Plaza.

Before New Orleans City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis supports a tax break for the former Lake Forest Plaza mall, developers and the city are going to have to answer some questions — quickly.

Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, a major supporter of efforts in her district to redevelop the defunct Lake Forest Plaza into a modern lifestyle mall, has asked Mayor Ray Nagin to get more detailed information on the proposal and more assurances that the project will move forward as pitched.

Before New Orleans City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis supports a tax break for Lake Forest Plaza mall, the developers and the city are going to have to answer some questions.

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.

Over the objections of developer Cesar Burgos, the City Council deferred action Thursday on a tax break that Burgos has said he needs to redevelop the mostly vacant site of the former Lake Forest Plaza mall in eastern New Orleans.

The rebuilding of eastern New Orleans is vital to the city’s ongoing recovery, and city officials are right to look for ways to spark economic development there. But the deal being proposed by developers who want to use a portion of sales tax revenues to remake Lake Forest Plaza isn’t a smart way to achieve that goal.

A formal report by the Bureau of Governmental Research says that the proposed Lake Forest Plaza tax increment financing district that will be considered by the City Council Thursday is “fraught with problems.”

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Governmental Research released a report blasting the subsidy, saying tax dollars would be used to “pay for private problems.”

A plan to use taxpayer money to develop a new mall at the site of the old Lake Forest Plaza, while touted as an effort to benefit New Orleans East residents, is actually a plan to benefit the property owners, according to the non-partisan Bureau of Governmental Research.

If the defunct Lake Forest Plaza shopping mall is transformed into a modern lifestyle center, it will have a positive effect on sales and property tax collections in the city as it recaptures retail spending from other parishes, according to an economic impact study commissioned by the developers.

When the developers of Lake Forest Plaza mall go before the New Orleans City Council this week to request a subsidy to refurbish the shuttered site, they have a new economic impact study to support their request.

Developers who plan to overhaul Lake Forest Plaza mall, an 81-acre eastern New Orleans shopping venue that has been shuttered since Hurricane Katrina, envision a sparkling new mall complete with big-box retail, restaurants, a police substation and an amphitheater.

On Thursday, the New Orleans City Council is expected to consider a proposal to use future tax revenue to help transform the site of the defunct Lake Forest Plaza mall into a modern shopping center called the New Orleans East Marketplace.

Unveiling the most detailed plans yet for their proposed redevelopment of the mostly vacant site of the former Lake Forest Plaza mall in eastern New Orleans, developers Cesar Burgos and Ashton Ryan appeared to win several City Council members’ endorsement Tuesday for a tax break needed to let them move forward.

After three years of study and discussion, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Friday that he has issued an executive order establishing a city policy on use of tax increment financing.

The Orleans Parish School Board Financial Working Group is an independent group consisting of experts in education, law, facilities and finance put together by the Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives in October 2008. The Working Group members include Grover Austin, Rick Conway, Leslie Jacobs, Janet Howard, David Marcello, Farhad Patel, Cleland Powell and me.

Lake Forest Plaza moved a stop closer to revival on Friday, when a public agency agreed to use sales tax collections to help redevelop the eastern New Orleans shopping center, located in an area largely bereft of retail since Hurricane Katrina.

The Bureau of Governmental Research, a non-partisan, issues research organization in New Orleans, called Murray’s bill an “affront to the home rule charter” of the city.

New Orleans voters last fall approved a process to create a city master plan and opted to give the finished product the force of law.

The Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonprofit policy analysis group, says Murray’s bill conflicts with New Orleans’ home rule charter, which gives the city authority to make its own laws. In November, New Orleans voters approved an amendment to the charter to give the master plan the force of law once the plan is adopted.

The Bureau of Governmental Research is urging the Louisiana Legislature to reject three bills that would require voter approval of the city’s not-yet-written master plan before the plan could take effect.

New Orleans City Councilwoman Stacy Head wants to tweak a city program that gives property tax breaks to developers upgrading outdated properties, but a key development official says more significant changes are needed to make the incentive worthwhile.

With the board’s blessing, BGR began surveying what practices economic development boards in other cities have adopted for awarding tax breaks to housing developments, retail centers and other projects. Some of these practices will be a model for New Orleans.

The nonprofit research organization’s report, “The House that Uncle Sam Built: The Continued Expansion of Subsidized Housing in New Orleans,” found that the number of subsidized units in New Orleans jumped from 19,865 in 2005 to 23,999 in 2009, a 21 percent increase.

Group warns trend puts stress on city

The owner of Lake Forest Plaza agreed Friday to repay a delinquent loan he and his former business partners owe the city, while persuading Mayor Ray Nagin to pour additional public money into redeveloping the former shopping center.