They lie

This is a lie. Paul Rainwater is lying.

While the meeting covered a range of problems that continue to plague the agency, workers who filled the council chamber were particularly incensed by a plan to hire a company to bring in workers for some engineering and other technical positions that have remained unfilled.

Rainwater said the company chosen would bring in about 14 workers for up to a year, though the terms of the bid would allow for nearly 40 people to be brought on for up to three years.

That, many workers and residents argued, was an attempt to sneak in a private company to run the public utility.

“It sounds like privatization,” Angelina Elder said.

Rainwater said explicitly the workers to be hired are not an attempt at privatization but rather are needed to fill highly technical positions.

“This (bid) is not for privatization of the system, I want to say that loud and clear,” Rainwater said.

But council members said they were not convinced those positions cannot be filled with local, permanent workers.

“My question is, are we absolutely sure there’s no one here that can fill those 14 jobs?” Councilman James Gray said. “I have trouble believing there’s no one here that can fill those 14 jobs.” 

Actually there are something like 300 vacancies which they have made no honest effort to fill. There are various reasons for this. Some of them have to do with gatekeeping and patronage. Some of them have to do with plans to eventually privatize the system or at least move it out of Civil Service as this bill by J.P. Morrell would have done. 

Senate Bill 247 has languished in the Local and Municipal Affairs Committee since Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, proposed it in April. The lack of action signaled the bill was effectively dead on arrival.

The proposal would have ended civil service participation for employees hired after Dec. 31, 2017. It was a first step in a grander strategy to rewrite the public utility's employment benefits and protections. Grant had also indicated he wanted to phase out the board's pension program in favor of a portable 401(k) retirement benefit that he said would appeal to the next generation of workers.

Grant and Morrell had argued that removing the bureaucratic hurdles of the civil service system and giving employees more flexibility in their retirement benefits would help the S&WB attract younger, specialized talent.

J.P. changed his mind and killed it after Cedric and Mitch decided they were losing the argument for the time being. Instead they moved to contract out the management function. But that is an end-run toward the same purpose. That and cutting in the various consulting firms who are already profiting from the general process of demolition by neglect.

On Aug. 14, nine days after the flooding, Donald Case from the S&WB’s machine shop texted then-General Superintendent Joe Becker on the progress in fixing broken turbines.

“CH has pulled in a lot of staff to make sure the contractors don't put the screws to us... how do we know that CH isn't putting the screws to us?” he asked, apparently never getting a response.

Four days later, Bruce Adams, now the highest ranking official left at the S&WB, sent another text to Becker, pressing the issue further.

“Has it occurred to you that CH2 might be so anxious to junk these turbines to protect their liability?” Adams texted on Aug. 18, implying that the agency’s four old turbines were suffering repeated failures by design, to force the S&WB to scrap the refurbishment effort altogether.

“Absolutely,” responded Becker, who was later forced to resign over the S&WB’s response to the flooding. “I‘m not sure they have thought that far through. I am sure they see a t4 (Turbine No. 4) disaster turning into our t4 savior. I don‘t see much that we can do about it. Do you want to be the one that slows down this train?”

If you watched last night's final mayoral debate, you didn't see either candidate directly address this issue.  They each answered "no" to a yes or no question about privatization. But that's easy for anyone to do. Charbonnet talked about the need to fill the vacancies. LaToya said the employees need a "raise."  Neither gave a clear indication as to how they would achieve that. Each has received donations from CH2M just like the current mayor has.  A former CH2M engineer is serving as the interim director of operations.

Do we expect anything to change when the next administration takes over?  Jacques Morial has suggested folding S&WB into a city department. LaToya Cantrell, who is going to win tomorrow based partially on her penchant for seeming to take two or three different positions on any issue in the space of one breath, said last night that she would maybe think about this later. But now there is no time. There's plenty time to contract everything out, though. Wonder what's going to happen.