MOLDY CITY

3/30/07: If the anonymous commenter (the fifth comment) is correct, the contract is even worse than I thought.

Disclaimer: I'm feeling a little under the weather, so what follows may be somewhat disjointed and I may need to come back and supply some links at a future date, but I think it's important that all the facts about Veronica White's Sanitation Department be remembered. I should say, all the readily available facts about the Sanitation Department. On the plus side, I'm not feeling up to linking to pictures of monkeys covering their eyes and ears every time I type "Time Picayune."

Ralph Lupin was tactless to call Veronica White a bitch, but the local press has been so inept in its coverage of her Sanitation Department that it can be said to be guilty of journalistic malpractice. I know that the Picayune did some commendable reporting on the sanitation contracts, but even then it omitted some key points and dropped the story once the contracts were approved. I shouldn't say that the local media dropped the story, it merely forgot about costs and secrecy -- it never seemed to notice political connections and campaign contributions -- and started reporting on the fact that the French Quarter was clean. That was all that we heard on the subject until Ralph Lupin called Veronica White a bitch. The sad thing is, had he called her a liar and a crook instead of a bitch, neither Nagin or White would want to keep the subject alive.

With so many French Quarter residents saying that White lied, and the Nagin administration pushing for a French Quarter taxing district, I think that any demands that Lupin apologize for calling White a liar would have been half-hearted.

If the local media paid more attention to the Sanitation Department, Lupin would have known to call White a crook rather than a bitch. More likely, we wouldn't have the sanitation contracts that led to the incident in the first place. A brief review will explain.

The Nagin administration, with Charles Rice as CAO, hired Veronica White as sanitation director in late 2003. About a year later, the city signed a $450K no-bid contract to purchase new garbage cans that other firms offered to provide for free. Not only did the contract go to a firm with close ties to Charles Rice, the city lied about the reasons for awarding the contract:

Nagin's chief administrative officer, Charles Rice, defended the city's decision to buy the cans, saying among other things that bidding would have been unfair to Niche, which he said submitted to the city the idea of advertising on cans.

But one of the three companies that said it would have provided the cans for free, Verres Media, submitted a proposal about two years ago that mentioned its ability to provide cans with advertising.

To be fair, it's unclear what, if any, role White had in that deal. However, there's no doubt about her part in a later deal with Charles Rice:

The day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Mayor Ray Nagin signed a contract potentially worth tens of millions of dollars with Omni Pinnacle of Slidell.

Omni's offer wasn't the cheapest of the six offers the city received. But the city didn't have to pick the low bidder, an experienced firm, because the job was considered a professional service rather than a finite task.

City sanitation director Veronica White, who oversaw the selection process, was hired into her city post by Rice. Rice, meanwhile, has turned up on Omni's payroll in his new position as a lawyer. Omni has also been represented in contract talks with the city and the Army Corps of Engineers by Rice's brother, Terrence Rice, according to a corps official.

It was also White's Sanitation Department that informed Chris Rose that the city's garbage cans were no longer on the street because they were being "cleaned and serviced." In a vacuum, such a "dog-ate-my-homework" story might have been belonged in the living section, under the circumstances it showed questionable journalistic judgement at best.

The local press corps definitely came to close to malpractice when it didn't even question Veronica's White's July announcement that city was purchasing 500 new garbage cans. This was a year and a half after the purchase of bombproof garbage cans and less than four months after we were told that the old cans were being "cleaned and serviced," yet nobody questioned the announcement. I couldn't find any mention of the contract on the city's website and I wasn't about to request a day off of work to play citizen journalist filling out FOIA requests, but it's inexcusable that the paper didn't ask about the terms of the purchase.

When the garbage contracts were proposed, the Picayune did a good job of reporting on the secrecy and wastefulness, but it failed to mention the Sanitation Department's history of questionable contracts. To the best of my knowledge, it never mentioned the fact that the two biggest contracts went to Nagin campaign donors. Since Nagin made an issue of campaign contributions in the mayor's race, I find the omission perplexing. As I've said before, not only did Richards Disposal and Metro Disposal contribute to the Nagin campaign, their owners and affiliated companies also did. It also failed to mention that Jimmie Woods of Metro Disposal is, or was, a business partner of a Nagin business associate:

One of the most confusing questions in New Orleans politics in this past week has dealt with who City Hall insider and Morial confidant Roy Rodney is supporting for mayor. Rumors some weeks ago implied that Rodney would back Councilman Troy Carter as his friend and ally Ira Middleberg had.

In fact, a rumor campaign to that effect circulated around the city. Even the entry of Rodney's business partner Ray Nagin into the race did little to quell the idea that the Morial insider planned to team up with Carter.
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As strong as a political position as L.I.F.E. continues to hold in the Crescent City, there is an attitude held by many of the candidates this season that a strong connection to the Mayor is the political kiss of death, considering the reform attitude that prevails in the city today. One can observe this displayed in the lengths that the Pennington camp goes to separate itself from Mayor Morial and show the Chief's independence.

One source says that Rodney does indeed support his friend and business partner Ray Nagin, but one can never tell in the somewhat Byzantine atmosphere that has descended upon this year's fractured election.

Just for the record, any implication or statement that this column might have made to connect Roy Rodney to Troy Carter is inaccurate, and we retract it.

Like I said, I'm a little under the weather, but too little attention was paid to the fact that Nagin waited until September to reveal any details of the sanitation contracts when he apparently had begun planning them by May (scroll down to "Nagin outlines 100 day"):

At a news conference Sunday, Nagin further said he will spearhead an aggressive effort to get trash off city streets. He said his administration will seek new proposals for a garbage collection contract that would divide the city into three zones to expedite clean-up.

He was being secretive even as he promised transparency.

Additional Questions: Would Nagin be happy with an apology from Ralph Lupin if members of the Vieux Carre Commission were nominated by the governor and approved by the legislature? Does his insistence on Lupin's removal have anything to do with the fact that the mayor nominates VCC members with the council's approval? Remember, the council rubber-stamped his renomination of business partner David White to the aviation board. For that matter, should the mayor be nominationg members of boards that any have regulatory power over, or dealings in, any part of the local real estate market until he divulges all the details of his real estate venture? One final question, wasn't it a conflict of interest for him to re-appoint David White to the aviation board? In most cities, that last question would be considered a rhetorical one.