Rumors I wish were true: Stormy Daniels and Trashanova

I was so excited when I heard the rumor that garbage contractor Sidney Torres, the Trashanova, had fallen for your next Senator from the Great State, pornography entrepreneur Stormy Daniels.

Unfortunately the rumor is false. That is too bad because it sounds like a lot of fun.

Can't you picture the type of hilarity that would ensue if Stormy, SDT, Kid Rock, and Lenny Kravitz jumped on a campaign bus tour through the North Louisiana Bible Belt as the Sinator's opening act?

A guy can dream.

I was able to speak to a source close to Daniels' campaign for Senate against David Vitter.

"I have heard from students at UNO that Sidney Torres was dating a UNO student named Stormy since at least the spring of 2009. I do not know the current status or validity of that relationship. I have been told that this alleged girlfriend of Mr. Torres's has blond hair and similar upper body attributes to Stormy Daniels. But they are two different people."

Too bad!

Red Stick Recycles

I learned sometime last week that Baton Rouge, yes lame-ass Baton Rouge is more progressive than New Orleans as it relates to recycling.

Don't adjust your screens. Just sit down and take a deep breath. Serenity now.

Baton Rouge provides single stream recycling services for its residents. That means you don't have to sort paper from plastic. You just stick your recyclables out on the damn curb.

If stupid Baton Rouge can do it, we can certainly do it too.

We should be horrified that they beat us there.

See previous post on NOLA's green hypocrisy.

In Which 'Going Green' Is Not A Reference To Corruption

The City of Philadelphia recently took advantage of a state grant to replace - at no cost to municipal coffers - Center City's metal wire garbage cans with new solar powered trash compactors.

Called "Big Bellies," the new cans harness solar energy to compact refuse, so that each is able to hold more of it. Thus, they don't have to be emptied as often, which saves gas and manpower. Whereas the old wire cans held 55 gallons of trash, the new compactors can hold four times as much. They also are not open air like the old cans, eliminating the litter blown out onto the streets from overflowing receptacles.



The city is also installing solar recycling compactors at some sites, marking the first time pedestrian recycling services have been made available in Philadelphia.

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Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and his allies on City Council fell just short in the most recent attempt to ban plastic shopping bags after late lobbying from plastics interests and big supermarket chains. The bags take forever to break down in landfills, are often littered on city streets, and are especially damaging when they end up in waterways.

Though the measure fell short, even opponents acknowledged such a step was inevitable and would succeed in some form soon.

San Fransisco was the first American city to institute such a ban, in 2007. Hundreds of towns and cities around the world have already done so or may soon follow suit. San Fransisco has banned the bags outright, while other cities are levying mandatory surcharges in order to discourage their use.

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San Fransisco, true to form as the nation's most progressive city on environmental issues, very recently became the first city to enact a mandatory composting program. By requiring residents to separate biodegradable foodstuffs from the garbage, San Fransisco appears on its way to fulfilling its goal of eliminating landfill waste by 2020.

When food scraps go to landfills, they unnecessarily take space and release methane gas as they break down. Compost is, of course, very useful to farmers and gardeners.

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In January, Philadelphia debuted single stream recycling. The new initiative means an end to separating plastic from paper from glass and combines recycling day with regular trash pickup schedules.

Philadelphia has long had a reputation for filth, dating back to colonial times. Residents are notorious litterers and even though there has been curbside recycling pickup for a decade-ish, the city had embarrassingly low recycling rates.

Since the institution of single stream, recycling rates have doubled.

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It's a good thing when cities reduce the amount of trash they produce. Not only does trash strain natural resources end energy, but it contributes to air and water pollution. It also costs a lot of money. Cities like Philadelphia and New Orleans pay landfills to take our waste based on weight. Reducing the amount of trash we produce reduces the amount we pay out of taxes for landfills.

Philadelphia has reversed a longstanding reputation for overall uncleanliness and residential indifference toward the environment. Mayor Nutter promised to set the city on a pathway toward becoming one of the nation's greenest and his initiatives since his inauguration indicate that the city is on a path to success.

New Orleans' very existence, more than any other city on the planet, partially depends on the world's ability to reduce greenhouse gases. New Orleans, more than any other city in the nation, depends on massive federal spending to protect it from the specter of rising seas and vulnerability to hurricanes. New Orleans, more than any other city in the nation, badly needs to take advantage of federal incentives promoting green industries by making itself attractive to environmentally-oriented start-ups.

Yet New Orleans is not examining mandatory composting laws, single stream recycling, plastic bag bans, or rain barrel distribution programs.

In fact, the City of New Orleans does not have any recycling services.

We're practically begging for the environmental movement to somehow solve our existential crisis while we continue gorge ourselves on the most wasteful consumption practices.

What kills me is more than simply not having the laws, is not even having a discussion about them on the agenda.

It's exceedingly hypocritical.

It's embarrassing and it's pathetic.

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New Orleans pays exorbitant fees to dump trash at Old Gentilly Landfill, which of course, is co-operated by sanitation dept. contractor Jimmie Woods of Metro Disposal and construction caballer Steven Stumpf.

Though the city owns the landfill, they 'tip' the operators based on the amount of trash they handle. See the T-P:

In 2001, Stumpf and Woods formed a joint venture and submitted the only proposal to operate the new facility. In the final days of the Morial administration in early 2002, they signed a deal under which -- provided the landfill received a state permit -- they would keep 97 percent of the proceeds, with the city getting the other 3 percent.

Stumpf and Woods, as well as other contractors dependent on sanitation department contracts, are major contributors to political campaigns at all levels. Moldy City has blogged extensively about this over many moons.

It is not in the personal interests of private trash hauling and landfill operating contractors and their political allies to do anything that might jeopardize the volume of waste produced in the city of New Orleans.

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Anyone considering a run for Mayor better have a detailed plan for how we can make up for lost time on these environmental quality issues, one that acknowledges the difficulty to navigate through the poisoned political waters that have contaminated all discussions around reforming how we do sanitation.

These are the types of things Mayoral candidates should start offering right now so that citizens have an opportunity to see if there is any substance to these people before the campaign gets reduced to lawn signs and robo-calls.

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See also these two (1, 2) articles in the New York Times magazine about inner-city minorities taking charge of local green and good food initatives, busting negative stereotypes that poor people don't care about the environment.

Trash Talk

This is just embarrassing. Raw video available at WWLTV.

There was surprisingly some intelligent, cool-hearded, rational discussion about the personal tensions underlying the gridlock. But none of that gets to the substance of the sanitation contracts and the selective enforcement of the rule of law.

We simply do not have civilized debate on policy in the public realm in New Orleans.

Bad Politics By French Quarter Chotchky Elite

Unless you've been living under a soundproof rock, you know that this city's been gripped by a particularly nasty wave of violent crime since the New Year and citizens across New Orleans are fed up.

Of course people are fed up with the actions of violent criminals but what makes the reaction to this crime wave different is the overwhelming frustration with the NOPD itself.

This frustration is felt in black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, uptown neighborhoods, and downtown neighborhoods. People do not trust the police. People do not respect the police. Too many officers have been arrested for crimes themselves. There are too many documented and anecdotal stories of indifference and laziness, brutality and violence on the part of the NOPD. Too many caught criminals have been released because NOPD officers don't file police reports properly or on time. Statistically speaking, if you murder somebody tomorrow in Orleans Parish, there's only a 20-30% chance you'll ever fact legitimate punitive jail time. And so on and so forth...

Again:

[E]xperts have already identified many of the major issues facing the NOPD. The NOPD itself ordered an audit by BGI in 2007. But after BGI identified several systemic failures and prescribed a blueprint toward the superior community policing model, the NOPD suppressed the report for months. To this day, Warren Riley has failed to substantively institute the suggested reforms.

Wendy Byrne's murder in the French Quarter was certainly a flash point. But so were the murders of little Ja'Shawn Powell and Adolph Grimes. It's the compounded frustration of so many instances of violence touching so many of our lives that I think compelled so many people to participate in some of the organic anti-crime activities of the last week.

But piggybacking on some of those efforts was today's so-called "Meeting of the Minds." They called a big press conference in the Royal Omni Hotel to call attention to a petition they circulated that calls for a number of both totally reasonable and extraordinary measures to address crime in the French Quarter and Marigny Triangle. Here is the list of signatories:

• Chuck Ransdell, chair, Meeting of the Minds
• Eric Reitman, president, French Quarter Business Association
• CoCo Paddison, president, French Quarter Citizens
• Jude Marullo, president, Bourbon Street Merchants Association
• Chris Costello, president, Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association
• Lori Herbert, vice-chair, North Rampart Main Street
• Samara Poché, president, Lower Quarter Crime Watch
• Ken Ferdinand, executive director, French Market Corporation
• Darryl Berger, senior chair, French Quarter-Marigny Historic Area Management District
• Mike Moffit, president, Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents & Associates
• Christine Sory, president, French Quarter Business Women’s Network
• Beth Lovett, representative, Upper Quarter Neighborhood Watch
• Stephen Swain, president, Patio Planters
• Jason Patterson, chair, Frenchmen Street Coalition

Anybody missing from that petition?

Yes. The entire rest of the city.

By discussing the crime problem as something specific to the French Quarter and the Marigny, these organizations are demonstrating a callousness to the much more frequent violence occurring in every other neighborhood.

It allowed Superintendent Riley to couch his response in these terms (video available):

"We understand the value of the Quarter to the city, but we also understand the value of every community."
--
"This is one New Orleans,” he said. “We are not gonna pull other resources from other parts of the city, to put into the Quarter, when we feel we have a sufficient force there at this point."

That argument is going to win every time.

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In a similar vein, the Mayor has challenged the same business community by backing off a prior compromise agreement with City Council to fund full sanitation services. Council is livid because the Mayor seemingly sprung this upon them without any kind of warning. They're threatening legal action to compel the Mayor to continue FQ sanitation services. After it seemed like a compromise was already in place, why would the Mayor all of sudden threaten to pull the rug out from under the French Quarter by cutting sanitation right before the busiest season of the year?

It's a proxy war, I tells ya.

It's another opportunity to force French Quarter business owners to demand extra services, money, and attention denied to the rest of the city's residents.

It forces the FQ business community to engage in two geographically-specific battles against the administration at once.

Good divide-and-conquer strategy by the Nagin administration.

Predictably bad strategy of exclusion by various French Quarter business associations.

Nagin Taking It Out On Torres

It strikes me as an attempt to give the finger to Council for tightening the purse strings on he and his friends.

But I actually don't mind at all.

We don't need to be paying $270,000 a month for a lemon chemical spray. Twice a day trash can pickup might not be quite as good as 24 hour nonstop vigilance, but you make sacrifices in a recession.

Mission Accomp... Naaah

What a blast I had today at City Hall delivering the petition to dismiss Sanitation Director Veronica White.

Each City Councilor's office has received their very own limited edition personalized copy of the petition.

Of course, so has the Office of the Mayor.

Did it work?

Well, Veronica White is still on payroll. So no, not yet.

However, I was able to generate some press for the issue, and for the greater specter of progressive grassroots coalition building.

Earlier this morning, Mayor Nagin announced some difficult budget decisions.

Council decided to hold a significant portion of the Sanitation Department's budget in reserve, presumably giving Veronica White the opportunity to prove that she has the credibility to lead the agency.

The Mayor's office has rejected that.

Instead, the Mayor is reducing the sanitation budget by cutting services.

I'm happy to sacrifice the French Quarter's chemical lemon scent, but I don't believe such action does anything to address the fundamental issues plaguing the Department of Sanitation. There is an underlying lack of transparency and credibility that has undermined public trust.

Service cuts don't address the procedures for awarding sanitation contracts. They don't magically reproduce the accounting numbers that were so poorly kept over the last two years. We're not being reimbursed for services not rendered. Seemingly, we're further away from a citywide recycling program than we were a year ago.

Relieving SDT of some of it's French Quarter responsibilities certainly does nothing to address the flawed demolition process that has allowed some of our neighbors' homes to be rendered prairie mid renovation.

The Department of Sanitation cannot change until our Director of Sanitation has the legitimacy needed to earn back the trust of the public.

Veronica White has lost that basic credibility as a public official. She must be replaced.

Trash Delivery Day

I'll be heading over to City Hall at 1PM tomorrow to deliver the unprecedented and amazing petition calling for the dismissal of Sanitation Director Veronica White.

This will hopefully coincide nicely with the scheduled delivery of the Mayor's sham audit.

I'll be delivering a copy of the petition to each member of City Council and to the Office of the Mayor.

I spent all day at the Kinkos so these better be read thoroughly.

I'd suggest recycling the paper afterward, but, um, we don't have recycling services in New Orleans.

I was hoping to arrive in a gold plated garbage truck. In a perfect world I'd dump thousands of copies of the petition out of the back of the truck and just stay double parked on Perdido for the whole day.Unfortunately those kind of theatrics will have to wait for Mardi Gras season.

Instead, it'll just be me and a stack of paper.

Feel free to meet me there, I'll need moral support.

Thanks to all that signed and to all that spread word.

More Info From McBride and WWL, More Silence From Nagin and White

WWL did a report on the city's "audit" of our sanitation contracts. There's also video.

"A normal standard audit would be comparing the data the contractor gives you with reality," said Councilwoman Shelley Midura.

But the company hired to do the report for the Mayor's Office, Public Financial Management, says they're not doing an audit. In an e-mail to Councilwoman Stacy Head, PFM Consultant David Hoskins writes, "We want to emphasize the fact that the project is not an audit of the collection contracts. Our assignment has been to create a baseline assessment of the number of locations served by the three contractors."

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In a statement e-mailed to us, the Mayor Nagin's Director of Communications Ceeon Quiett writes "the letter sent by PFM to the Councilmember, emphasizes and reiterates the testimony and comments made by the Sanitation Director and a PFM representative before council several weeks ago."

Yet, according to council minutes and video tape from an April 25 meeting, Sanitation Director Veronica White called the report an "audit."

Neither the Mayor nor Sanitation Director Veronica White will speak to the press or answer questions about any of this. Wouldn't that go a long way toward clearing this up, if it can be cleared up? The silence is deafening. For many, it is damning.

Matt McBride has done amazing research and has provided a lot of the raw information to us, which no surcharge on our monthly statements:

Dear New Orleanians,

As you now know, the Metro and Richard's trash collection contracts have been poorly administered by the city's Sanitation Department. It is possible millions of dollars have been wasted, and an upcoming report from the Nagin administration - touted as an "audit," will do nothing but cloud the issue by attempting to replace existing inadequate records with even more records of dubious value. You can find the previous piece in my series of missives about this here (thanks, Eli):

http://wecouldbefamous.blogspot.com/2008/12/mcbride-and-another-thing.html

I thought it would be best for the public to see the actual records from the trash companies which were contractually required; these records are supposed to be the basis for the monthly invoices and payments on the contracts.

In addition to locating the texts of the trash companies' contracts there, I have created two new folders at the following link:

http://www.box.net/shared/18s6vzjbao

One contains the original, raw address list files as the city council received them from the administration on November 14th. There are four files there: the May, 2007 and October, 2008 address lists from both Metro and Richard's. To reduce download times, I've also placed those files inside a ZIP file.

The other folder includes my annotated files. The annotated October, 2008 lists from both companies are there, as well as the annotated May, 2007 list from Metro. I've also placed those files inside a ZIP file. I ran out of steam and never got to the Richard's May, 2007 to clean it up. It was a lot of work to get these files in a shape to use for analysis. Note that I didn't destroy anything in this analysis, only added stuff. But when I found obvious errors and misspellings, I corrected them.

If you are interested in finding your address or any other address, I strongly encourage you to look at the annotated files, since the original files are not very well sorted (Metro much more so than Richard's). My files are sorted by street, direction, and then street number.

Metro's area covers roughly everything north of I-610, while Richard's covers roughly everything south of I-610 and Algiers (except the Quarter, whch is SDT's). The actual map can be found in the text of the contracts, which are also at the link above.

I've hidden some columns that I used for work purposes. The columns with numbers in them and with titles including "Duplicate" contain how many instances either a complete address (which includes an apartment number or letter) or a building (which excludes apartment numbers) occurs on the list. I used these to find duplicates. Also included - for the October, 2008 sheets - are columns showing the results of cross referencing the building addresses against various demolition-related lists.

I've left the Autofilter feature on to allow folks to easily drill down to particular results, address, or whatever they wish.

The "audit" is expected to be released on Friday.

Dismiss Veronica White Now

McBride: And Another Thing!

From Matt McBride:

On Friday, I sent out a little something on the Nagin administration's upcoming "audit" of the city's municipal trash collection contracts. That audit appears to be very unlike a normal audit. It looks to be more of a public relations effort. You can read more here (thanks, Eli):

http://wecouldbefamous.blogspot.com/2008/12/mcbride-sanitation-audit-sham.html

In composing that email, I neglected to point out something very obvious which should be part of the audit, but which, according to the webpage of one of the companies performing it, will likely be avoided.

As you know the Sewerage & Water Board collects the trash payments from city residents and small business owners for their municipal trash pickup as part of the monthly water bill. So there should be an easily accessible list of places getting billed for trash services. Thus, the audit should be simply comparing those billing records against the trash companies' address lists to determine irregularities and duplicate billings. Of course, that doesn't appear to be happening.

WWL-TV's Katie Moore looked into this and did a comparison of the two sets of records a couple of weeks ago. On November 28th, they aired the following report:

4 Investigates: Is the city being overbilled for trash pick-up?

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl112807khtrashpickup.4bb35eee.html

In there, Ms. Moore pointed out a huge discrepancy:

"According to records requested from the Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, obtained by Eyewitness News, an average of 68,000 homes are billed each month for the city sanitation fee, but the city has been paying to pick up trash at more than 104,000 homes."

Yes, you read that right. A difference of 36,000 between billed households and households the companies claim they are servicing. Of course that 104,000 number is not the actual number of households, as I pointed out yesterday and as Ms. Moore also highlighted in her story. It comes from the city estimates that were in the bid solicitations. But even taking that into account (i.e. 2500 duplicates, and determining the actual number of unique addresses), there's still a difference of well over 30,000 addresses between the S&WB and contractor lists.

Of course, the provenance on those contractor address lists is also questionable, which is probably one of the reasons the address lists are not being used for the Nagin audit. What I mean is that many of them likely did not exist when the audit began in August. The "date of creation" field on most of the Excel spreadsheets containing Metro's monthly address lists for the last two years was from November of this year. Is it any wonder the Nagin audit is effectively making up new address lists?

Finally, here's one more rather outstanding irregularity with these contracts. The text of the bid specifications for Metro's contract (found here: http://www.box.net/shared/55z3zyxtdv), which is incorporated into the contract, calls for 100% performance and payment bonds:

"2. Bonds: At the Contractor’s expense, the Contractor shall maintain performance and payment bonds acceptable to the City during the Agreement life:

A. The Performance Bond shall issue in the sum of 100 percent of the Total Estimated Annual Agreement Amount as revised from year to year to secure the faithful performance of the Agreement in all respects.

[...]

B. The Payment Bond shall issue in the sum of 100 percent of the Total Annual Agreement Amount to secure the payment of all subcontractors, materials suppliers, and other accounts payable in connection with the contract, and otherwise according to Louisiana Revised Statute Title 38:2241."

Metro's bid was for $8,712,000 per year. But in the main text of the contract, their performance and payment bonds are each for only 50% of that amount. I find that very odd.

These contracts are an absolute mess. And the "audit" won't be much better. There's duplicate addresses, cruddy administration, phony auditing, and massive holes down which there are being poured millions of dollars. The citizens of New Orleans deserve much better than this.

Matt McBride

Dismiss Veronica White Now!

McBride: Sanitation "Audit" A Sham

Following up on this, also from Matt McBride:

Dear New Orleanians,

On Wednesday I shared my findings regarding the Metro and Richard's lists of addresses where city trash service is supposedly being received. You can read the text of that report here:

http://wecouldbefamous.blogspot.com/2008/12/mcbride-trash-irregularities-abound.html

I showed how many of those addresses were simply not legitimate. That's a problem, since the part of the trash contracts that deals with invoicing says this:

"The invoice will count service locations approved and receiving services on the 15th of the invoicing month."

You can find those contracts, presented publicly for the first time, here:

http://www.box.net/shared/18s6vzjbao

That provision, which is identical in both the Richard's and Metro contracts, says the trash contractors are supposed to be invoicing the city based on actual service locations. That's why the address lists are so important, and irregularities in the lists are such a problem; the lists are the contractual, legal basis for the millions of dollars the city is paying every year.

At least, that would be the problem, if the contracts were being run according to how they're written. They're not.

Instead of invoicing based on the number of actual service locations, the contractors invoiced (and city paid) using numbers bearing only a truthy resemblance to reality. Invoices were submitted - and paid! - based on numbers either from:

a) city estimates in the bid specifications issued before the contract was activated in January, 2007. These numbers were only meant to be estimates to make comparisons among competing bids easier, but somehow they got carved into stone when the contracts were awarded. These numbers - 60,000 locations for Richard's and 40,000 for Metro - were the basis for the invoices and payments throughout 2007. They never changed, even though the city was trumpeting the fact that people were returning every day.

or b) numbers which have murkier sources. In 2008, Richard's started invoicing for 63,000 locations, while Metro increased the invoiced total twice to numbers that don't match actual unique address counts.

From what I found, it is clear there hasn't been any connection between these invoice numbers and the address lists, since the address lists actually contain far fewer "real" addresses than what the city is paying Richard's and Metro for. As a result, city taxpayers have ended up paying a flat, multi-million dollar amount to these companies over the last two years, which is likely millions more than would have been due under the actual contract terms. Add in all the irregularities with the companies' address lists, and its a very big mess.

With all that in mind, I wanted to preview the Nagin administration's latest effort to convince the public the trash contracts are being executed compentently and fairly. It is their "house count audit."

The "house count audit" is supposed to independently determine for the city exactly how many houses are getting trash service - nearly two years after the contracts started. In the public's minds, this would probably involve an outside firm coming into City Hall and poring over the trash companies' address lists. But that's not what this "audit" is about. In fact, it appears this audit is not an audit at all, but simply an elaborate exercise in CYA .

For this exercise, the Nagin administration paid $250,000 to city consultant PFM to conduct the audit. PFM subcontracted the effort to a partnership of local data slicer-and-dicer GCR & Associates and the Virginia solid waste consulting outfit of Gershner, Brickner & Bratton (GBB). There is a lengthy summary of the work on GBB's web page:

http://www.gbbinc.com/projects/new-orleans.shtml

The webpage subtly hints at the fact that the audit was months late in getting underway, noting a "aggressive" schedule. According to published reports, the audit is due Friday, December 12th.

The methodology for the audit is a whiz-bang technical mashup of vehicle-mounted GPS receivers and GCR's witches brew of data pulled from Entergy bills, post office records, and Sewerage & Water Board records.

From what I can gather, GCR is producing some kind of list where they think it is likely folks are receving trash service (not where they know service is received). GBB/GCR calls these addresses "prospective refuse collection points." Then GBB, with their GPS boxes and wireless antennas, seems to be going out on trash collection days and noting who has their cans out, and then tying that into the database.

Missing in this "audit" of the trash companies is the obvious - there is no interaction with the trash companies and their records. In effect, it is people driving around looking at trash cans and creating a brand new address list. There seems to be no provision whatsoever to determine if the city is getting double billed for any of those cans, or whether those cans should even be there. I also wonder how GBB/GCR accounts for people who might not put out their cans - or who do not have them within sight of a passing car - the days their auditmobiles roll by? And what about the year and a half of service the city had already paid for by the time the audit began?

Frankly, it's the goofiest audit methodology one could come up with. It's like going to the Grand Canyon, spending the entire time in the gift shop looking at postcards, and then coming home and telling everyone how Grand the Canyon is! It seems designed to avoid looking at the actual records in order to provide plausible deniability in case irregularities are uncovered. It also avoids placing the Sanitation Department in the uncomfortable position of having to explain their very poor oversight and contrary execution of these lucrative contracts. If nobody's looking at the records - and based on the actual records it seems no one is - then no one can say anything conclusive about them and their obvious problems.

Allow me just to remind you of some of those problems:

- claims of "service" to 2500 duplicate addresses between Metro and Richard's for their most recent monthly address lists. Examples include 90% of the addresses on Bellaire Drive and 95% of the Grand Route Saint John addresses. There's even two addressess (4924A and 4924B Bienville) which appear on both the Richard's' and Metro lists.

- claims of "service" to possibly hundreds of demolished properties and properties targeted for demolition

- claims of "service" to unallowed multiplexes and non-existent trailer parks, even including double bills on one Algiers trailer park which has been closed for over a year.

My conservative estimate of the combined result of this overbilling (which comes about by virtue of both the flawed contract administration by the city and the flawed recordkeeping by the contractors) is a loss to the city of at least $1 million over the past two years. That number is probably wildly low. Add in another $250,000 for performance of auditing tasks which should be done already, either by the contractors or the Sanitation Department, and there appears to be gobs of taxpayer money being wasted over the past two years, based on the contractors' own records.

Keep all this in mind when the Nagin administration soon announces that the trash contracts are just fine, because their bought-and-paid for "audit" says so. An audit that ignores records and creates replacements for them is no audit at all. It's a sham.

Best regards,

Matt McBride

Well done, Matt.


I'm curious to see the spin game prepared for the audit release.

We need to gut out our Department of Sanitation.

McBride: Trash Irregularities Abound

(I've added links to the photographs)

Matt McBride:

You are likely aware of the recent problems between the New Orleans City Council and the Sanitation Department. At the center of the dispute is an attempt to determine which houses are actually getting serviced by the city's three main garbage contractors, SDT, Metro, and Richards on a month by month basis.

A couple of weeks ago, the Sanitation Department handed over Microsoft Excel address lists from Richards and Metro to the City Council (no SDT information was submitted). Stacy Head's office compiled a memo summarizing preliminary findings after an examination of the data. It's attached, and it provides good baseline information like rates the companies charge and how many houses they were charging for at various times over the length of the contract.

I have also received the monthly house count spreadsheets for October, 2008 for both Richards and Metro, as well as the May, 2007 sheet for Metro. I spent a lot of time over the past few days cleaning the three sheets up, and then analyzing the results. They are very interesting...

Duplicates

While media accounts and and city officials have simply counted the number of rows on these sheets and considered that equal to the number of houses, I found that was false. In fact, there are thousands of duplicate addresses buried within these lists. This is found when one cleans up the addresses and sorts them properly.

The problems with duplicate addresses seem to be far more severe with the Metro contract than with the Richards one. I analyzed the lists to isolate unique addresses. Here's what I found;

Metro, May 2007, 40,110 rows, billed for 40,000, actually 38,835 unique addresses

Metro, October 2008, 45,626 rows, billed for 45,336, actually 43,592 unique addresses

Richards October 2008, 64,101 rows, billed for 63,000, actually 63,600 unique addresses (it appears they are underbilling the city, but read on...)

So if one just looks at the number of rows compared to the number of billings, it would appear the city is actually getting houses serviced free. However, when one takes into account the inflating effect of duplicate addresses on the spreadsheets, it appears the city is paying money they shouldn't.

In October, 2008, there were about 2500 duplicate addresses between the two companies, including some addresses which appeared four times. Here's the details:

Metro May 2007:

1265 duplicates (3.2% of unique addresses)

9 triplicate addresses

1 quadruplicate address (4319 Chartres, Apt B)

Metro October 2008:

2014 duplicates (4.6% of unique addresses)

18 triplicate addresses

2 quadruplicate addresses (4319 Chartres, Apt B, and 13411 Curran)

Richards October 2008:

484 duplicates (0.76% of unique addresses)

16 triplicate addresses

1 quadruplicate address (2723 Jackson)

As the City Council memo indicates, the billing rates for Metro are $18.15 a residence. Theoretically - if the city can find a way to recoup these funds - it appears the city paid an extra $23,000 in May, 2007 and an extra $36,500 in October, 2008 to Metro. Using an average of these two numbers ($29,750), that would mean an average estimated overbilling of $375,000 per year due to duplicate addresses on Metro's contract.

What is noteworthy regarding the Metro duplicates (besides the large amount of them), is that 665 addresses that only appeared once on the May, 2007 list then became duplicate addresses on the October, 2008 list. Additionally, all but six of the 1256 duplicates on the May 2007 remain as duplicates on the October 2008 list. The remaining 99 duplicates on the October 2008 list were brand new duplicates that month, when compared to the May 2007 list.

Since the city paid for 600 fewer unique addresses than Richards says they collected from in October, 2008, it seems that the problem of duplicates on the Richards contract did not affect payments. But there are other problems with the Richards contract, as detailed below.

Multiplexes

For multi-unit buildings with more than four units, the owner is required to contract with a private trash contractor rather than signing up for the city's service. Such places should not be showing up on the lists of residences serviced on these municipal contracts. But they are.

There's more of this irregularity on the Richards contract than on the Metro one, and it only appears to be a few instances. But they are obvious.

On Richards, I found the following more-than-four-unit properties getting billed in October, 2008:

418 Pelican (eight-plex)

1015 Washington (appears to be six-plex, and - oddly - owned by the same person as 418 Pelican, a William W. Benson)

3351 Kabel (what appears to be a commercial multiplex property)

3820 3rd (six-plex)

3214 Diana (nine-plex) - I've attached a picture of this place from Google StreetView with 7 Richards cans out front. If you go on Google Maps and search on this address, and then click the little guy to see it in StreetView, you'll see an 8th can against the building. All 9 units actually show up on the Richards list.

In total, there are 35 "buildings" on the Richards list apparently receiving five or more cans, though not all have five units or more like those examples above. Some are fourplexes with duplicate addresses in individual apartments. Others are legitimate, and are artifacts of odd address assignments by the city. For example, there are 16 cans shown as assigned to 1 St. John Court. But that's because all the houses in that Bayou St John cul-de-sac have the same number address, but use letters to distinguish themselves.

Temporary trailer parks

This was one of my oddest findings. I discovered that Richards is still billing for temporary trailer parks as recently as October, 2008. It is unclear if trailer parks were even allowed to receive city trash cans under the contract. However, that question seems moot, because Richards continues to bill for them on the October 2008 list, even though (I believe) all these parks were shut down months ago. The addresses are:

Trailer park at 1605 Horace and 3220 Lawrence (trailers are all gone) - Richards appears to have been double billing this place, since both addresses are at the same corner. Looking at this place on Google Maps StreetView shows it as an empty lot when the StreetView van went by (last summer I believe). I have attached a screenshot of this. In the lower right corner, you can see the even older overhead shot from Google Maps which shows the trailers when they were there.

Trailer park at 2379 Rousseau (picture attached of Richards cans in front of trailers - note Google StreetView van passed by in 2007, so this picture is a historic document - all the trailers are now gone)

Trailer park at 9018 Dixon (picture attached of Richards cans in front of trailers - note Google StreetView van passed by in 2007, so this picture is a historic document - all the trailers are now gone)

Demolished properties

In response to an order from a federal judge, on November 13th the city finally began issuing lists of properties it has demolished and for which it received FEMA reimbursements. The latest version of the list was issued on November 26th. It covers demolitions performed by the city's contractor, DRC, between December 2007 and November, 2008 and can be found here:

http://www.cityofno.com/Portals/ImminentHealthThreatDemolitionProperties/Resources/CompletedDemolitions11-25-08.pdf

This list is the most authoritative list of city-initiated demolitions, since it includes the actual date a house was demolished. I cross referenced this list against the Metro and Richards sheets for October, 2008. Here's what I found:

Metro: 67 properties with demolition dates between December 1, 2007 and October 31, 2008

Richards: 33 properties with demolition dates between December 1, 2007 and October 31, 2008

My research indicates that the rebuild rate on demolished lots is about 10 to 15 percent, meaning that the vast majority of these 100 lots are likely still empty, but the city is getting billed for trash collection at them.

I also cross referenced the Metro and Richards October 2008 lists against four other types of demolition-related lists:

a) Properties which have appeared on one of the 10 Imminent Danger of Collapse lists from September 15, 2007 until July 17, 2008. Imminent Danger of Collapse (IDC) properties are those targeted for demolition by the city because they are about to fall down, or have already fallen down.

b) Properties which have appeared on one of the 22 Imminent Health Threat lists issued by the city from March, 2007 until November 20, 2008. Imminent Health Threat (IHT) properties are those targeted by the city for demolition because they are ungutted, unsecured, have tall grass, or some combination of the three. They are not in as bad a shape as IDC properties, but they are extremely unlikely to be occupied and receiving trash service.

c) Properties which received demolition permits for anyone - private owners or the city's or Corps of Engineers' contractors - during the term of the contracts - from January 1, 2007 until October 31, 2008

d) Properties which received any demolition permits since Katrina.

Here are the results:

IDC properties

Metro - 11

Richards - 9

IHT properties:

Metro - 181

Richards - 90

Demo permits from 1/1/07 to 10/31/08:

Metro - 607; including 34 duplicates

Richards - 191; including 18 duplicates

Demo permits from 8/29/05 to 10/31/08:

Metro - 1284; including 85 duplicates

Richards - 365; including 29 duplicates

While appearance on the IDC or IHT lists, or even the existence of a demolition permit, does not necessarily guarantee that the property is gone, or unoccupied, or otherwise unsuitable for garbage collection, they are strong indicators of that unsuitability. When one adds in the estimated rebuild rate of 10-15% on demolished lots, it seems clear there seem to be very many questionable properties on both Richards' and Metro's address lists.

Conclusion

There are many irregularities in the Richards and Metro address lists provided to the City Council. While at first blush it would appear that both firms are actually underbilling the city, it would appear Metro is definitely overbilling, and Richards is borderline.

Among the irregularities are:

- thousands of duplicate addresses being counted in the billing totals,

- billing the city for apartment buildings with more than four units, commercial buildings, and non-existent trailers (even double billing a trailer park in one case)

- billing the city for properties that have been demolished, targeted for demolition by the city, determined by the city to be in imminent danger of collapse, or which have had demolition permits granted to them.

With this many irregularities, it seems the skepticism some have expressed over the contracts' cost effectiveness is justified.

Best regards,

Matt McBride

Here is a link to the helpful preliminary report from Stacy Head's office.

Is a real municipal department of sanitation out of the question? Why doesn't the city own trucks or employ a workforce? It doesn't really seem like it's been particularly cost effective to go the selfish contractor route.

Certainly one place to make a change is at the top.

Lolis Column "Defends" Veronica White

Lolis Eric Elie reasonably points out Veronica White's side of the story in his column today.

But his "defense" of the Sanitation Director almost follows a familiar WCBF format.

Head complimented the city in a memo sent by her then-assistant in June 2006. Head notes that she had been on the council roughly a month and wasn't sufficiently experienced then to analyze the deal.

The city has also provided the council with at least some of the documents detailing the number of households receiving sanitation services.

Moreover, Head and most residents agree that sanitation service has improved dramatically since Metro Disposal, Richard's Disposal and SDT Waste and Debris took over.

These points would not have been sufficient response to Head's questions, but the points would have made White look more competent...

This is worded fabulously.

"The city has also provided the council with at least some of the documents..."

Good stuff. Former FEMA chief Michael Brown had at least some experience.

And the last line:

"...the points would have made White look more competent."

That's also an amazing structure. White provided at least some documents and services are better, and if these talking points had been highlighted, White would have looked more competent at the one particular hearing where she was exposed as a liar.

So while Lolis "defends" White in the first part of the column, here are some lines from later on:

...White's inability to answer questions in a reasonable manner makes it seem as if she has no explanations for her department's performance.

In the absence of an explanation, New Orleanians are inclined to suspect corruption.

Mayor Ray Nagin defends White, apparently convinced of her competence. But even if White has done a great job, her demonstrated inability to explain her department's actions is itself a form of incompetence. And things are about to get worse.

He goes on to profile some of the issues the city is having with SDT Waste, which has provided ZERO documentation, and had previously been given a pass on account of the pretty boy.

Things are going to get worse.

One suggestion is to dismiss Veronica White because she is incompetent, or as Elie might say, because she always makes herself appear that way.

Sanitation Contract Audits

Guess what?

An audit of our city's sanitation contracts reveals a pretty murky situation. Our contractors are either keeping horrendous records, or they're reluctant to show their hand.

Either way, it's hard to justify continuing to pay SDT, Metro, and Richards at their current rates.

I've published the audit, conducted by Councilwoman Head's staff.
It's a quick read and can be accessed here.

Veronica White has not done her job.

We could have 500 signatures on this petition demanding her dismissal by the end of the hour.

----

So now that we've succeeded in collected 500 signatures, how should we deliver them and when?

I have some ideas but what are yours?


----

UPDATE:

Phase 1 complete. We have secured five hundred signatures. Thanks to everyone who signed, blogged, emailed their friends, etc.

There's more to do. Keep those suggestions coming. How do we deliver our petition?

Fielkow: "I Don't Think That's Democracy"

Arnie Fielkow isn't particularly enthused about the latest detente negotiated between Councilwoman Clarkson, Councilwoman Hedge-Morrell, and Mayor Nagin.

Responding to a question about Councilwoman Hedge-Morrell's plan to cut off microphones in the event of future heated exchanges, Councilman Fielkow concludes:

"I don't think that's Democracy."

He doesn't believe it's addressed the underlying issue that lead to the recent spat over decorum - whether or not the Nagin administration is providing the information that Council requests.

“Ultimately, that is the most important question. Does the council have the information needed to formulate an opinion on the particular sanitation contract? I don’t know the answer to that,” Fielkow said.

Here's another WWL report.

Apparently, then-Councilman Jay Batt tried to get Veronica White removed in 2004 with an ordinance.

The only other 'yea' vote in that effort belonged to none other than Jackie Clarkson.

-

I did not know that.

I wonder if Jackie has signed this petition, which calls for Veronica White's dismissal from her post as Director of Sanitation.

Sign it and spread it, friends.

In Defense of Mayor Nagin (Part II)

I wrote part I over the summer.

Today I wrote another.

Let me preface it with a call for the immediate resignation or dismissal of Sanitation Director Veronica White.


Mayor C. Ray Nagin sure was dealt a tough hand when Katrina came. At the point the storm came 2005, he was well into the third year of his first term. His administration had earned a reputation for adequacy. Unfortunately, Mayor Nagin had not pressed for updated hurricane evacuation plans as aggressively as he should have. A strong municipal game plan became that much more necessary when President Bush left FEMA in the stead of political hacks. We were on our own without viable hurricane preparations and were finally facing the worst-case scenario storm that we’d always been told would come. As the federal rescue failed to materialize, while Michael Brown was eating steak dinners in Baton Rouge, Mayor Nagin was left on his own. Our government failed us and our Mayor was put in an impossible situation. Certainly, he had not done enough to revamp our evacuation procedures but the newly minted Department of Homeland Security was created to help coordinate that very effort, especially at the nation’s most vulnerable locales. The DHS failed New Orleans and it failed the nation. Instead of revamping our country’s disaster response mechanisms, President Bush had merely assembled a leach-like bureaucracy from which to reward political patrons with jobs and contracts. Our country was no more prepared for a catastrophic hurricane than it was for a terrorist attack, disease outbreak or earthquake. And Ray Nagin was left holding the bag.

It wasn’t fair. It was too much for one man. For New Orleans, Mayor Nagin was the town crier, the constable, and the bucket brigade. For the President, his henchman Karl Rove, and the rest of the right-wing machine, he was the fall guy.

I will never ever forgive those people for what they did to this city. I will never forgive George Bush or Karl Rove or the conservative court jesters that left this city to drown or advocated we abandon it forever when it didn’t.

But I forgave Ray Nagin.

I forgave him because even though he didn’t do enough, he was asked to do it all. I forgave him because he yelled and cursed and cried while Bush, Brown, and Chertoff patted each other on the back. I forgave him because I thought he would never forgive them. I forgave Ray Nagin because I thought he’d never forget what they did to our city and I thought he’d keep yelling and cursing and crying until they made it up to us. I respected C. Ray Nagin enough as a man to believe that if he didn’t have the decency to do right by us as a matter of service, we’d at least benefit from the revenge campaign.

But since then…

Since then, Mayor C. Ray Nagin has worked to earn my utmost contempt. His second term in office has been a disaster of epic proportions, a criminal enterprise, a human rights violation for which Ray Nagin can never earn forgiveness. Ever. Let alone respect.

And he has crafted a city in his own image:

A city incapable of delivering basic public services to its citizens, a city unwilling to expand economic opportunity for those most routinely left behind. Mayor Nagin squandered every last ounce of international goodwill and sympathy with a recovery agenda that favors every whim of big business and every impulse of his well-heeled friends.

Instead of working toward a compromise plan to rehabilitate our public housing stock, Ray Nagin laughed his way to the wrecking ball as his city burst at the seems with the same racist rhetoric of so many public service debates of years past. Instead of embracing the permanent supportive housing initiatives that prove to be the best means of reducing homelessness in cities all across the nation, Mayor Nagin and his police chief Warren Riley used entrapment tactics and insidious loitering laws to arrest them or herd them into camp-like barracks. That episode got so bad that the Bush administration had to send down representatives to talk Ray Nagin into a more humanitarian approach.

Instead of using this cities recovery funds, Katrina reparations belonging to victims of the Federal Flood, Mayor Nagin and his incompetent planning stooge Ed Blakely hatched ridiculous development schemes that don’t come close to addressing our emergency recovery priorities. Take our community block grant development funds: What could have gone toward needed infrastructure improvements at target zone sites around O.C. Haley Boulevard or St. Claude Avenue were instead allocated in huge sums toward a river redevelopment scheme being planned for the distant future. What could have been used to reopen Charity Hospital was instead allocated in vast amounts to demolishing a recovering Mid-City neighborhood for a new LSU/VA hospital that won’t materialize for years to come. When basic municipal functions like the police, the fire department, EMS, and the DA office are struggling to find enough support to staff their temporary offices, the Mayor heralds plans for golf courses, tennis courts, and condominiums. He touts the return of the tourists as the benchmark for which we are too judge our own quality of life.

His actions as Mayor, his policies, have squandered our national goodwill. New Orleans is seen as a money pit and Mayor Nagin is viewed as a laughingstock. While the media’s treatment of certain ill-conceived remarks has not helped, those do not constitute the substance of the Nagin administration’s well-deserved reputation. Rather, it is his reactionary ideas, his lack of vision, and above all, the lack of results.

Though African Americans no longer constitute the overwhelming majority of the city’s population, it can be safely said that the African American community has been most victimized by Mayor Nagin’s wrongheaded recovery policy. This is what is so disconcerting about his most recent invocation of race in defense of his administrations incompetence, and really his repeated use of this defense mechanism throughout his term. What happened this week at City Council is clear. Our city’s sanitation department is dysfunctional on a number of counts. Sanitation Director Veronica White has locked us into some exploitative trash service contracts with the Mayor’s closest political friends and donors at a time where every saved penny is needed for other public service emergencies. Her stewardship over demolition contracts have made her an integral cog in the broken machine that is this city’s blight removal program. Instead of leaning on delinquent slumlords, the city has improperly subjected scores of salvageable homes to the wrecking ball. The city now stands to lose millions more in lawsuits from wronged property owners. But when Stacy Head has the audacity to question Veronica White about her job, all of a sudden she’s being inappropriately racial and profane.

It is like the time last year that Council called hearings into the ‘unlimited bulky waste’ provision that was retroactively stripped from the sanitation contracts. Instead of correcting the mistake and saving the city millions of dollars, Mayor Nagin encouraged his administration to defend the contractors on racial grounds. When it was discovered that the quasi-governmental nonprofit had essentially embezzled millions of dollars in CDBG money, Mayor Nagin maliciously attacked the citizens that had brought the issue to light as enemies of the recovery. He purposely lumps liberal bloggers with the unfiltered anonymous conservative and racist talk radio leftovers on Nola.com as the new Ku Klux Klan. Now he accuses Stacy Head of race-baiting because she dared to suggest that Veronica White was wasting millions more of the citizens’ dollars.

It is patterned behavior. The Mayor categorizes all of his critics, be they from the right or the left, as racially motivated. It is a mechanism he has employed time and again to avoid providing justification for his administration’s policies or avoids holding his underlings accountable for their failings. Critics are not looking for criminal activity to throw people in jail and claim victory. We just need our government to do better for us. When watchdogs discover waste, when they call attention to instances of incompetence, it is because they want you to correct them and move on. Instead, the Mayor refuses to acknowledge that problems exist, erects a smoke and mirrors campaign to obscure the information available, or accuses detractors of racism. Instead of embracing efforts to improve the function of government, the Mayor’s defensive posturing only magnifies the appearance of criminal impropriety.

In a sense, I understand where it comes from. African Americans fought too long and hard to earn their fair share of power in this historically racist city. That African Americans sometimes feel defensive about criticisms lobbed at high profile black officials is understandable given historical context and more recent efforts to use planning to eradicate communities deemed inviable and invaluable. When African American leaders use race as a political bludgeon, it effectively evokes not just the dark chapters of the past but also the sinister efforts of parts of the white establishment in the present-day.

The ‘chocolate city’ speech resounded in this city because African American communities were truly fighting to stay on the map. Now, C. Ray Nagin can no longer credibly sound that alarm because he has switched teams. Instead of fighting for the greater African American community he promised to represent, he has embraced the plan B agenda of the very same interests that originally sought to avoid rebuilding poor neighborhoods all together. We’ve become all too familiar with what that Plan B looks like. In it, Mayor Nagin clings desperately to the loyalty of political patronage while the people of this city, and African Americans disproportionately, are deprived of basic public services, intermediate opportunity, and advanced vision for this city's ultimate revenge: A full, just, and equitable recovery.

Respectfully, Jackie Clarkson. No Charge for Extra Deference

Jackie Clarkson responds to Nagin's email.

From WDSU:

Dear Mayor Nagin:

I am writing to acknowledge receiving your letter concerning the recent appearance of Sanitation Head Veronica White before the City Council Wednesday afternoon. Thank you for taking the time to address me directly about this issue.

You wrote in your letter that we should focus on recovery and not “allow mean-spirited accusations to destroy the integrity of hard-working public servants now or ever.” And I agree. I agree there should have been more professionalism exhibited in the Chambers Wednesday. But I respectfully disagree with your assessment of who was out of line.

Councilmembers, Mr. Mayor, are elected by the people to ask tough questions. Department heads are appointed to give accurate answers.

Although there ought to have been more civility displayed on both sides Wednesday, I strongly believe no department head should behave toward an elected representative of the people as Ms. White behaved toward Councilmember Head. Before sending you this letter, I reviewed the tapes several times, in addition to being present at the meeting myself. And it was Ms. White who made a professional conversation personal, accusing Councilmember Head of being motivated by a desire to malign the Sanitation Department and implying Councilmember Head was a crook and thief. Moreover, never once did I hear Councilmember Head pronounce any “race-baiting remark.”

I’d like to take this opportunity to reaffirm my professional respect for you and the city’s department heads and make clear my determination to lead the council in acting in a civil manner toward the executive branch of government. I believe this best serves the people to whom my greatest loyalty belongs – the residents of New Orleans, who elected me to lead their council, and who expect and deserve representatives that will diligently weed through the budget.

I believe that you and I ought to discuss this incident, face-to-face, and move on for the sake of our residents and continued recovery.

Respectfully,

Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson

President

New Orleans City Council

For Councilwoman Clarkson, this is pretty much throwing down the gauntlet.

Veronica White: Wasting Our Money

I'll be back later with a longer piece.

In the mean time read Karen and Big Red Cotton.

From BRC:

Not too long ago, we received a correspondence from Ms. White in response to our neighborhood's numerous complaints about trash pickup in our area. Her response is reprinted below:

"I apologize for any inconveniences that have experience. I will address the miss- trash collection and empting your trash can fully someone will be by to service you today...."

Wow...

Wow indeed.

The Facts on Trash

Councilwoman Head has written a primer on Council's inquiry into our city's sanitation contracts.

I have reproduced it with a couple of readability/formatting edits.
Enjoy.

I. We bought a Rolls Royce when we could only afford a Camry

In late 2006, during hearings for the 2007 Budget, Cm. Midura and I questioned the judgment of entering into a solid waste contract that was double the cost of the previous contract and more expensive than sanitation services in similar metropolitan areas. We lost that debate. The administration, through its Sanitation Director, Veronica White, defended the choice to embark on a very expensive solid waste removal program for a variety of reasons. One reason was that this new program would provide superior service because of the “automation” required under the contracts. Specifically, Ms. White testified that the automated trucks, which were “high tech,” would reduce physical stress on the sanitation workers by mechanically lifting the cans into the trucks and would also reduce trash escaping from cans during pick-up. In addition, these contracts called for removal of “unlimited bulky waste.”


II. The obligations under the contract are not being met

As stated above, the city opted to engage in a very expensive solid waste removal program that required automated truck pick-up. The problem is that the automation component is not being used. The sanitation workers almost uniformly physically pick up the cans, just as they did under the prior and less expensive sanitation system. A fundamental reason for the high cost was this high-tech component. Regardless of whether the ultimate result of the collection is good, the reason for the high cost has been retroactively deleted from the contracts.


III. Retroactive revisions of the contracts are unfair to other potential bidders

Mandating automated collection in the public bid for solid waste collection services arguably discouraged companies from bidding on the work when the bids were published in 2006. And now, to retroactively relieve the winning contractors of this obligation is fundamentally unfair. This retroactive revision of the contracts is not limited to the automation issue. In addition, after the contracts were executed, the administration proposed an ordinance to prohibit New Orleans residents from placing bulky waste items out for collection. This was in direct conflict with terms of the contracts, which require that the contractors provide “unlimited bulky waste” removal. This onerous bulky waste requirement did, in fact, discourage several vendors from bidding (for example, SWDI and Waste Management). For the administration to retroactively remove that obligation reeks of foul play. Ultimately, after much wrangling, the laws were changed back to allow citizens to put out for collection unlimited bulky waste. But this scenario illustrates how the entire sanitation contract bidding and management process has been flawed since 2006.


IV. There has been no basis for payments of roughly $60,000,000 over two years

For two years, the city has paid roughly $30,000,000 per year for garbage collection and another $9,000,000 for dumping. The sanitation contracts clearly call for monthly garbage collection payments based on the actual number of “approved service locations” from which garbage was collected. Per the contracts, the lists of serviced locations were to be contained on a monthly report, in spreadsheet form, delivered to the sanitation department by the 10th of each month. Contractor payment was to be calculated by multiplying the contract fee (depending on the contractor, between $18.15 and $34.00 per month) by the “approved service locations” from which garbage was collected that month.

Instead, the city has been paying based on a set number of 106,500 households every month since the inception of the contracts in January 2007. This number, 106,500, was an arbitrary number provided in the bid documents for bid comparison only. The payments defy logic. How can a city with a fluctuating and growing population have the exact same number of garbage collections every month since January 2007? When I learned that the basis for the payments was not based on the actual house count, I began requesting the rational from Ms. White for the payments. My requests included any monthly invoices, house counts, monthly reports, serviced locations or the like. In response, the administration provided the following justifications for payments:

1) Three notebooks full of listings of cart delivery addresses; and

2) Billing records from the Sewerage and Water Board (customers receiving solid waste collection services should pay $12-24 per month on their S&WB bill).

The first basis, the cart delivery lists, was fraught with problems. For example, those lists contained only 72,132 cart delivery addresses (not 106,500). In addition, an audit of those lists showed that there were many errors and duplications (at a rate of almost 30%). And the Sewerage and Water Board records for 2007 total payments of only $9,493,669, which indicates that the actual number of households paying for services was substantially lower than 106,500.


V. A $250,000 audit will not solve the problems

Now, the administration has engaged a firm at a cost of $250,000 to conduct an actual house count audit. This audit ostensibly will allow the city to determine what current payments should be made, and will allow corrections in prior over or under payments. To use this audit in any meaningful way to correct prior over or underpayments will be difficult at best. How will the city use data from winter 2008 to establish what appropriate payments would have been in the spring of 2007? Moreover, the obligation to provide a monthly accurate house count was with the contractors. And their failure to do so, under the contract, is cause for termination. The sanitation department should have been receiving these monthly house count reports for two years, auditing them for accuracy all along, and requiring improvement from the contractors where needed.

Guess what? It really does sound a lot like NOAH, from the disclosure of 'wrong' lists right down to the illegitimate in-house audit.

C. Ray Nagin Throws the Red Challenge Flag

And like Andy Reid, he'll lose a timeout.

The Mayor has an opinion about what happened at City Council. He sent an email to every member of City Council. WDSU kindly reprinted the whole thing:

It is my understanding that a council member verbally abused the City sanitation department head, used profanity, and boldly proclaimed very crude race-baiting remarks during a public meeting.

What? At what point did Stacy Head use profanity? Did she race-bait?

Let's review an actual tape of the confrontation. Go ahead and invest the two minutes and twenty six seconds it takes to ascertain what actually happened.

Seems to me that Stacy Head caught Veronica White in a lie and then expressed her displeasure with Ms. White's repeated stonewalling of information requests. Then Stacy Head moved on to ask another question, which Ms. White refused to answer. Then Councilwoman Head said that Ms. White was not being truthful. Then Ms. White got belligerent and stormed out of the room.

For the sake of comparison, watch that video of the confrontation between Stacy Head and Veronica White and then watch this one. Even Bush administration officials are more graceful in stonewalling inquiries from Congress, many of which are far more strident than what occurred here.

So did Ray Nagin even see what happened?

The answer is no.

From the transcript:

I have not reviewed the full tape yet, but it has been reported that the employee was publicly chastised, threatened, belittled, and carelessly accused of being a liar in spite of any clear facts being presented. I am formally requesting a copy of the videotape from this meeting and a formal investigation to include obtaining statements from all witnesses immediately.

And thank God he's formally requesting a tape. He could just watch it on TV or online like everybody else. But it's clearly better to go through an administrative process that will take as much time as possible. He shouldn't actually just look at the video, he should wait as long as possible so that Jackie Clarkson backs down and the issue goes away.

And while we're at it, why don't you encourage Veronica White's response to questioning from all of your department heads:

This type of behavior must stop immediately as I am instructing all department heads that if they are verbally assaulted or personally insulted at a council meeting that they should immediately leave. Tough questioning is generally appropriate. Personal attacks are just not acceptable. I also believe that professional rules for council members should be updated and enforced at all times.

When the questions get tough, it's much better to 'immediately leave' than to incriminate yourself by providing answers.

So what is Mayor Nagin's play here? He writes an email accusing Stacy Head of race-baiting and expects that this will put her on the defensive and totally obscure the waste he seems to encourage from his department heads. Is that it? Is it that easy?

Or is he just hoping that Council President Jackie Clarkson forgets what she saw?

Either way, I think Nagin is overplaying his hand. First of all, everyone in this city and around the country knows that Ray Nagin is a sell-out of elephantine proportions. His recovery ideology prioritizes the fantasies of the business community. He won't raise the minimum wage because of his ridiculous delusion that po-boy shop workers are making $60k a year. He's a national laughingstock and Democratic party leaders do somersaults to avoid being pictured near him.

Meanwhile, if there's one thing Jackie Clarkson values, and I don't say many nice things about Jackie Clarkson, but if there's one thing she cares about, it's 'playing nice.' She might cave on issues but she certainly knows when someone owes and apology to someone else. She was there when all this went down and she was decisive in diagnosing Veronica White's behavior as wildly inappropriate. I don't think Ray Nagin's instant replay can convince her otherwise.

Apparently, Veronica White is filing a complaint with the EEOC.

Best of luck to her.


UPDATE

Councilwoman Head calls Nagin's accusations reckless and groundless.

She does well to draw parallels between her attempts to question Veronica White about the city's sanitation contracts to some of the Nagin administrations other reactionary responses to basic due diligence inquiry:

"Regularly, the Mayor becomes incensed when the Council exercises its charter oversight authority," Head wrote, adding that the mayor got similarly bent out of shape when his administration's oversight of the NOAH home-gutting program was questioned.

"This is no different than his defensive posture during the NOAH investigation," Head wrote. "Instead of looking into credible information that the NOAH program was fraught with problems, he challenged the Council and the media that we were off base."