For fun?

Mayor Nagin has said that he does not believe additional oversight and accountability is a good thing. He believes it gets in the way of the recovery. Mayor Nagin's position is that New Orleans is amongst the most transparent in the nation as a result of the reforms he's made and therefore, he will not be championing anymore changes that would (further?) open the executive branch to public scrutiny.

Thus, though City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that requires the Mayor to hold in public all committee meetings that evaluate bids on legal, architectural, and engineering contracts, the Mayor has decided to veto the measure.

The following quotes come from this interview with Liz Reyes from the portion in which she asks about the open meetings/public records law at issue.

"Pure politics. Pure politics! That is the biggest misnomer out there. Go look at the records and you look at my administration. It is the most transparent it's ever been. Never before has there been the openness of contracting. Everything is done publicly."

"I think we're as transparent as just about anybody in the country and I challenge them to prove otherwise."

"We'll continue to work with them [Bureau of Governmental Research] to see if we can't get to a better place but that's for the next administration. I'm done. I have implemented transparency."

"There is nothing here of any substance. This is pure politics. Pure politics."

"There's nothing here. It's transparent already."

It would be one thing for the Mayor not to champion additional transparency measures. But to stand in the way of the consensus common-sense reforms passed unanimously by Council is beyond obstructionist.

He's blatantly playing politics because he knows and we all know that Council will soon vote to override the Mayor's veto.

He's openly and proudly standing in the way of recovery.

And since he's "done" opening government to public scrutiny. Perhaps he should resign his office. He seems to think that everything being done by Council represents political grandstanding for next year. He could make that transparent by leaving office now to move up that election timeline.