Wednesday, July 23, 2008

NOAH so far

Update: This update exists ostensibly to link once again to WCBF where E promises a post-Council meeting clearinghouse for scuttlebutt. But really it's here because I want everyone to know that this post should have been titled "NOAH knowns and NOAH unknowns"


Just a primer in case you haven't been following this.


Yesterday afternoon, the Mayor escalated the controversy over the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corporation (NOAH) by taking the extraordinary step of holding a press conference to angrily refute the content of the previous evening's WWLTV report which alleged that NOAH may have misused federal community development block grant funds.

The agency's mission is to gut and clean up blighted or flood damaged property belonging to senior and low-income residents. In the report, Lee Zurik takes a look at a list of homes NOAH had been charged with remediating. Zurik's findings are similar to Karen Gadbois' which reveal homes on the list that are owned by shadowy LLCs, or by absentee landlords, or by other city agencies, in other words, various entities other than "seniors and low income residents". Some of the properties on NOAH's the list were not touched. Others appear not to exist at all.

The irregularities first came to light when Karen noticed this house on the city's Imminent Health Threat Demolition list. A brand new sign advertised the fact that it had been gutted by NOAH... just in time to be demolished with a different pool of federal funds provided by FEMA. And so folks started asking questions. E over at We Could Be Famous immediately asked 1) Who are the contractors involved in doing the remediation work? and 2) Can we call them? The results were mixed... and not without comedy.

So I took out my magical google machine and looked up the first one on the list, Biagas Enterprises. Their website listed a toll-free phone number. I decided, to give that 866 number a call. I figured I could easily figure out if this was a real company or not upon hitting the answering machine. I knew I'd hit the answering machine because it was 12:30 AM on a Sunday.

Turns out someone was on the other end. A woman's voice.

"Hello?"

I hung up figuring I must have misdialed.

I didn't.

I got a phone call 10 minutes later from another number, a local area code. It was the woman at the other end of the 866 I dialed. She asked if I had called her.

I said, "yes I was trying to call a construction company, I thought I'd dialed an 866 number."

She replied:

"No, this is a 225 area code."

The number she'd called me back from matched a directory listing for Biagas Enterprises in Baton Rouge.

This episode struck me as extremely bizarre. I supposed that you could reroute a toll free number to go to a cell phone. And I supposed that this could be a small enough mom-and-pop construction firm that it wouldn't have a business landline. (Even though Thaddeus 'Matt' Biagas has "a long history in government projects.")


I will note that the website E originally googled up for this Biagas Enterprises no longer exists. In a follow-up post, E discovered
So being as generous as possible, only five of ten contractors awarded municipal money for NOAH's remediation program are verifiably active and in good standing. Two firms, Biagas Enterprises and Blue Carpentry Construction are clearly defunct. Two more, Carter's Renovations and Mathews Developers may not exist at all, at least as they are described in the Mayor's press release.
But it wasn't just the contractors who were difficult to reach. E also had trouble getting information out of NOAH.

Finally, I called NOAH's office today to request a list of homes awarded free remediation. The woman on the other end of the line was extremely defensive and informed me that they had never received such a request before. When inquired as to the proper procedure for obtaining the records, she told me that she would have to refer it to lawyers at another agency. She then told me that NOAH was in the middle of changing offices and did not have an opporational email account to which I could send an electronic request.


And then later (apologies for all the block quotes... I think they push the narrative though)

I have emailed Stacey Jackson of NOAH with two public records requests. One asked for the contracts signed with the ten companies paid for remediation work. The other asked for the database of properties serviced under the program not excluding the name of the contractor responsible for each property. I tried two different email addresses for Ms. Jackson, I'll keep you posted.


As it turned out, Jackson had actually resigned her position. Her last day in the office was June 27... a few days before E sent his request. At this point, the story had been picked up by Gambit Weekly's David Winkler-Schmit who asked Jackson's replacement Tonya Durden for some of the contract records and a list of completed properties, Durden was unable to furnish any information because... “I can’t find the key to (Jackson's) office”

One day after Zurik's excellent investigation, the Mayor's office hastily called a press conference ostensibly to refute the "biased and inaccurate" information contained therein. Footage of the press conference is available from WWLTV here Adrastos has posted a link to additional video here.

The refutation was unusual in several respects. First of all, because it was called so suddenly and late in the day, the press conference wasn't very well attended. From what I understand, the Times-Picayune was not present for example. (Mention of the controversy has yet to appear in the paper.) One almost gets the impression that the entire event was put together as an attempt to publicly browbeat Karen Gadbois and Lee Zurik over their reporting on NOAH.

The Mayor's statements ranged from obstruction, "We have the list that counts" to bullying "(Reporting on municipal affairs) is hurting the city and you need to stop it" to the absurd comparison of brand new "Mayor Nagin NOAH Home Remediation" signs put on some of the properties to "campaign signs (from 2006) I still have out there". This is all indicative of an attempt to dodge and tar rather than answer questions from the press and the public. The mere act of calling a press conference over a single report looks incredibly bad from a public relations standpoint. It's certainly more suspicious than saying nothing at all. From here it looks like another poorly thought out attempt by the Mayor to "cold cock" his critics. But the wild swinging hasn't deterred anyone so far.

In fact, this morning Concilwoman Stacy Head (typically not a favorite of ours here) issued a statement to the affect that she has been "working in-house" (read in secret) to cut off Neighborhood Housing Improvement Funds (read City generated as opposed to federal money) to NOAH. Head comes right out and says that she has been harboring concerns that the program "was at best mismanaged and at worst fraud." Stacy Head is a lot of things. Diplomatic is not one of them. I haven't seen much in the way of reporting on today's Council proceedings yet but I'll go ahead and guess that the coming weeks will see the Council members arguing in accordance with their predictable factions about things that are not exactly germane to the mismanagement issue. ("My district didn't get as much attention from this program as hers" or some such thing.) I'm not expecting a political investigation on the city council level to yield much. But as BSJD points out the fact that federal money is involved may... finally.... attract the attention of the U. S. Attorney. I think this may be the very thing that has the administration so nervous.

Meanwhile there are still a ton of questions to be asked. Today, E is already back on the case of the NOAH contractor's list. It's a complicated mess to untangle which is why it's good to have WWL and Gambit on the case as well. The Mayor's odd and defensive press conference is a tantalizing indicator of blood in the water... journalisticaly speaking. Can we expect the T-P to dispatch a shark or two? Perhaps in time for next week's "Viewpoint" page?

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