CEO

Last summer a judge ruled against the city council in a lawsuit against the mayor's office in pursuit of greater oversight of how the city disperses funds derived from the Wisner Trust.  The already complex matter of the trust has only become more convoluted in recent years after Mayor Cantrell took the controversial step of negotiating a deal with the Wisner heirs and other parties to the, technically, expired trust.

It had been thought that when the original trust expired, its assets would transfer permanently to the city. But the mayor's deal effectively establishes a new, apparently perpetual, arrangement that maintains the terms of the original trust, keeping the Wisner heirs, LSU, Tulane, and the Salvation Army as co-beneficiaries. This sounds like a bad deal for the city. But because it allows the mayor maximum discretion to distribute the city's cut with minimal oversight from the council or the public, it is a very good deal for the mayor. And, really, that's all that matters, isn't it? 

Anyway, here is how that money gets used now. 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration improperly paid a city contractor tasked with cleaning up blighted lots and then tried to rush through a renewal of the contract, according to a report by the New Orleans Office of Inspector General that alleged the payments made by City Hall may have violated the state constitution.

The report, issued Thursday by Inspector General Ed Michel and based on interviews with city employees involved in the contracting process, also includes allegations that one employee was forced to resign after trying to slow down the contract renewal.

While it is not clear if the agreement with the Center for Employment Opportunities was eventually renewed, the OIG found that the administration violated its own contract — and possibly the state constitution, which prohibits anything that could be considered giving public money without a public purpose — by paying the group $500,000 without verifying that work it was hired for had been performed.

It feels like a story as old as time in New Orleans.  You've got a seemingly good cause. (We're cleaning up blight! We're helping incarcerated people transition back to work!) But look further and there is no documentation any of that work is done or information about how they go about it. It's a bit reminiscent of the NOAH home remediation scam back during the Nagin Administration. This isn't likely to draw as much attention, though. We're in a different era now. The volume of graft that goes on has magnified several times over and the capacity of the press to keep up is so greatly diminished that it all seems to wash over us like water from a busted main. If a scandal doesn't involve some salacious bit about the mayor's rumored paramour, it barely even registers.

But, alright, fine. Just for laughs, please tell us more about this Center for Employment Opportunities. 

The Center for Employment opportunities, known as CEO, is a New York-based nonprofit that employs recently incarcerated people and aims to help them get back on their feet.

In December, 2021, CEO signed a $1 million contract with the city to clean up abandoned lots, to be paid using money from the Wisner Trust fund. In addition to providing cleanup services to the city, the contract also required CEO to provide support services for the recently incarcerated people it employed. As part of the contract, CEO was to document the work it did and the services it provided to its workers.

But city employees said that documentation for some of that work was never requested nor submitted, according to interview summaries attached to the OIG report. CEO was also told it didn't have to submit invoices, despite contractual provisions requiring them, employees told OIG investigators.

If nothing else, the name of the organization has to be a red flag, right?  Why does the leadership of a supposedly charitable non-profit want its acronym to evoke in our minds the image of ruthless business moguls?  It's amateurish and insulting on its face. 

Or maybe it's just showing off. After all, there's nothing to stop any of this. Not, really. An Inspector General's report can sound like a dressing down, but the accountability is rarely likely to go beyond that. Especially when patronage scams like this are the bread and butter of city politics. And, frankly, that is the reason City Council keeps fighting with the mayor over the Wisner money. They don't necessarily want this sort of thing to stop. It's just that the way the mayor has structured the terms of the trust has frozen them out of the action. For now, anyway.