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New Orleans: Corruption
Sunday, September 04, 2005 One of the biggest challenges facing Louisiana has little to do with the catastrophe we see being played out street by street. The biggest challenge, in my view, will be political. Can Louisiana reform its politics as it rebuilds its largest city? Can FEMA clean up its record of fraud? Louisiana’s unusual legal system, odd election rules, bizarre constitutional history, and unmatched record of political corruption have weakened the ability of local government to govern. We saw the tragic consequences this week. When I first traveled to Louisiana twenty year ago to work, a local business man told me to read Louisiana Hayride by Harnett Kane. The book examines the political culture that arose in the state after Huey Long. Political corruption runs deep in Louisiana. I directly experienced problems over the past twenty years with a number of projects: a State senator grabbing $200,000 of a $800,000 loan commitment to a cut and sew operation we were moving from Nachitoches to Shreveport; a Shreveport city attorney in the pocket of a local casino; supplier kickbacks at a local manufacturing plant; political interference into an entrepreneurship program for African-Americans; and, perhaps the largest heist of all, the alleged skimming of federal and local money from the Biomedical Research Foundation I established in 1984. (In my view, the allegations are probably true. The foundation built a 100,000 building for $30 million in federal funds from the U.S. Department of Energy. By my math, that's $300 per square foot.) The great casino shakedown in Louisiana, well-told in Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards, landed Edwards in jail. Prior to the hurricane, federal investigations of Louisiana politicians were in full swing. During the August recess, federal agents had raided the houses and business offices of U.S. Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-New Orleans). An investigation over contracts let during the administration of former Mayor Marc Morial continues with a recent indictment of Morial's uncle. He is accused of bilking the Regional Transit Authority of over a half-million dollars in a bond refinancing scheme. (People laugh at the strange mix. And it leads to some very interesting stories, like the whereabouts of Huey Long's deduct box. Ten percent of the salary of state employees went to Long's campaign fund in the deduct box. While he was governor, Long kept in a safe at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans. When he later went to Washington as a senator, Long moved the box to the Mayflower Hotel and, later, to a vault in the Riggs National Bank.) One of the sad ironies of Hurricane Katrina is that the two politicans most responsible for altering Louisiana's corrupt practices in state and local government -- Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin -- may find their political careers deeply damaged. But corruption is not only a Louisiana problem. FEMA is rife with problems. A U.S. Senate investigation last spring uncovered widespread fraud in FEMA in the wake of the Florida hurricanes. Read more. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, FEMA "handed out millions in Miami-Dade neighborhoods with no reported damage, paid for funerals unrelated to the hurricanes and relied on contracted inspectors with criminal records to verify damages." posted by Ed Morrison | |
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