The FBI is sweeping NOAH's Poydras St. offices for documents related to the corrupt home remediation program. Though Nagin's totally credibly internal investigation has yielded a call for reimbursement of just over $100,000 from contractors paid for services they did not render, because the Mayor himself has alluded to the fact that NOAH's records were so lame that he's can't really be sure which records are 'accurate,' it is likely that the FBI and Inspector General probes will yield a different conclusion.
Jeffrey says:
Of course, the real serious discrepancy that isn't given much attention here is this. This remediation program was originally conceived as a $15 million program to help poor and elderly homeowners recover their property. As we all know by now, the majority of that budget did not actualize as properties were left untouched or improperly demolished or just not even considered for the program. The fact that only about $2 million was actually spent reflects the real failure of NOAH. Be it the result of incompetence, indifference or thievery (and very petty theivery at that if the city's numbers are correct) the failure to follow through on a service like this represents an enormous breach of faith.
But I have a different take. I won't address whether or not $100,000 is a big or small amount to have been laundered because I don't believe Mayor Nagin's internal probe has any credibility. Rather, Jeffrey's assertion that "the real failure of NOAH" was their inability to spend the full amount they had been budgeted on a program for seniors misses the point.
In fact, the real failure, the real substantive problem, is that our city charter allows for quasi-governmental organizations like NOAH to even exist in the first place. Established by the city, funded through the city, staffed with city employees but with no day-to-day accountability to anyone, the questionable practices we've uncovered were enabled from inception.
Besides, please remember that the home remediation program was never really necessary in the first place:
Touted as a centerpiece of Nagin's 2007 budget, the mayor said in late 2006 that he wanted the city to offer gutting services because faith-based and grass-roots groups providing such services had become overwhelmed.
That theory, Davis said, raised eyebrows in the tight-knit community of disaster recovery organizers.
"The idea of this program always seemed silly to us, because we have hundreds of volunteers each month," she said. "There's no reason to hire professional demolition crews to gut houses for old people."
Indeed, as the community nonprofit groups prepared in the spring and summer last year to receive thousands of unskilled volunteers, they were at a loss for properties. Several, including ACORN, a Catholic church group and the Episcopal Diocese program, solicited NOAH officials for some of their addresses, city officials have said.
So while that raises questions for our Mayor and City Council as to why money was budgeted for a program like this no matter which agency got empowered to administer, it also begs why the city chose an agency that operated with such little oversight.
While it is sometimes difficult to seperate out the systems in play from the players under investigation, let us not lose sight of what this investigation should be about: identifying and fixing the broken systems that allowed such blatant waste and fraud to be carried out with such incredible ease without anyone catching it or without anyone saying anything.
From my viewpoint, the utility of the very concept of a city established, city funded, and city staffed non-profit answerable only to a part-time board of directors appointed by the Mayor needs to be examined. We may very well determine that all quasi-governmental non-profit agencies should be written out of existence entirely or folded into civic offices directly accountable to Mayoral overseers on a day-to-day basis.
There are other agencies structured similarly to NOAH and it could be very interesting to examine how they actually operate.
That is why this story is important, that is why all of this is a big deal. The numbers are irrelevant not just because they come from an invalid internal probe but because when legitimate ones are released, but also because, whatever the amounts are, they'll serve to sensationalize or disarm what should be an honest effort to reform the enabling systems in question.
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