Everybody gets a mulligan

It's been almost a full year since allegations about LaToya Cantrell's use of a city issued credit card during her time as a councilperson added a small (and ultimately inconsequential) measure of intrigue to the mayoral election.  This week, the Advocate reported that it has an advance copy of a long awaited report from the legislative auditor focusing on the practice as it relates to the entire Council (not just LaToya). From the looks of things, the report is basically a shrug.

The audit does not rule out the possibility of a criminal prosecution, noting that various categories of purchases by council members "may have violated the Louisiana Constitution and state law," a common finding in reports from the Legislative Auditor's Office.

However, reports that include allegations of what auditors believe are serious crimes typically delve far more deeply into the specifics of those acts than does the credit-card audit.

Instead, the report largely focuses on the weak oversight of the council's credit card usage and the frequency with which the body as a whole ignored policies requiring receipts and documentation showing why a particular purchase was made. That criticism largely tracks with reporting at the time, which showed that council offices used their credit cards for a range of expenses, from travel and meals to equipment and furniture, without needing any outside approval.

In other words, it says what these councilmembers had been doing was probably bad. But they all did it. And when they were doing it they probably didn't know it was bad. So it's fine. But not really fine. Maybe.

So the implications here are open to interpretation.

Cantrell claims the report as vindication saying "I agree with this finding as it supports my assertion from the beginning that my use of the card was consistent with the then-established policies of the City Council." But according to the Advocate description, it's really more that there weren't any recognizable policies established by the City Council in the first place.

A report by WWLTV's David Hammer didn't necessarily agree with that last October, though. 

The City Council policy is far looser than Landrieu’s, but it does have some specific prohibitions.

“Cardholders MAY NOT … use the procurement card for personal or unauthorized purposes ... (or) use the procurement card to purchase alcoholic beverages,” the policy states.

Hammer's report enumerated several charges incurred by Cantrell that easily fall into "gray areas" with regard to that stipulation. Cantrell asserts that travel expenses appearing on the card qualify as city business. No doubt some of that is legitimate. But a lot of it is more about advancing LaToya's career than anything else. To take one example, any time a public official trundles off to Aspen to attend a weekend of  neoliberal "policy seminars" and networking with bankers they are definitely not acting in the public interest. 

The auditor's report doesn't really single out Cantrell, though.  Instead it places her in the context of a loosely interpreted City Council policy that may have led them all astray of state law. But the suggestion is that maybe they all get a mulligan on that.

So far Jeff Landry hasn't said whether or not he agrees with that, though.  Previously, Landry's office had dropped self-contradictory hints as to whether or not their "investigation" was leading to anything.  There was some expectation that we'd get an update on that once the auditor's report was done. But, most likely, Landry's choice here will hinge on whether or not poking at this helps his campaign for Governor in any way.  Right now he's a little busy conspicuously ignoring sexual abuse complaints so it might be a while before he makes a decision.

Cantrell's spokespeople have previously characterized Landry's... investigation? series of occasional press statements? whatever he's doing.... as a "witch hunt." And they have a good point about that.  Landry is only interested in this issue as demagogue fodder.  But, as we've tried to point out, there's value in looking further into LaToya's (and really every councilmember's) finances.  There are definitely some compromising relationships in there that should call into question the democratic legitimacy of the whole of city government.  But we already know Jeff Landry doesn't care about any of that.  Probably nobody does.