Sounds familiar

The lead contractor on the Iberville redevelopment has been accused of ignoring or subverting DBE requirements.

Not one but two companies that were supposed to be big beneficiaries of rules aimed at making sure companies owned by minorities and women got some of the work on the massive redevelopment of the former Iberville public housing complex in fact passed on most of the money they received to subcontractors that don’t qualify as either minority- or woman-owned, newly released documents show.

It was revealed last month that the Housing Authority of New Orleans was scrutinizing the work of one of those companies, Nolmar, which accounted for the biggest chunk of supposed spending on minority-owned subcontractors by Woodward Design+Build, the lead contractor on the Iberville project. HANO says that 90 percent of the money that Woodward paid to Nolmar ended up with white-owned subcontractors.

New records obtained by The New Orleans Advocate show that some of the money passed through by Nolmar actually went to subsidiaries of Woodward.

The Advocate spent a lot of time and a lot of column space flushing out the details here.  Strange that they wouldn't mention the similar dust-up involving Woodward which delayed the airport project last year.