Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Did I hear the smug prick say, "name one"?

I can't find either a transcript or a recording, but I thought I heard the smug prick challenge his critics to name one questionable professional service contract. When he defended his executive order suspending professional service contract review panels, Nagin that that the 311 and crime camera contracts were bid contracts, not professional service contracts. I'm not familiar with the details of those particular contracts, but I'd be willing to bet that's a technically true, but misleading, statement.

Real cute for the mayor to challenge ordinary residents to any questionable professional service contracts. Real:
The city's Law Department explained that before it can make a contract available, it has to know who the contract is with. So until a reporter or member of the public knows who has a contract, he can't find out who has the contract.

cute:
First, a request was made through the Law Department for a complete list of the city’s active professional service contracts. The city responded with a list of 118 contracts totaling $42.9 million, but the list was incomplete. The city’s contract with Dallas-based ACS State and Local Solutions for the 311 non-emergency information service was at least one contract not on the list.

When asked how the city compiled the list of contracts for the request, City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields said her office must wait for other departments to file any contract amendments or extensions and then manually update the department’s contract database. Until then, those contracts would be rendered inactive in the city attorney’s database.

For the second public records request, a list of all current contracts either through public bid or professional services procurement was requested through Moses-Fields’ office, as well as through the purchasing department at Moses-Fields’ direction. The Law Department’s response to the request stated, “The city does not maintain or possess such a list and is unable to comply with your records request.”

Still, I can think of a few.

Before Katrina*, there was a contract for Jimmie Woods' brand new Community Based Corrections, a questionable parking meter contract and a no-bid contract for bombproof garbage cans.

Since Katrina, the mayor's awarded a no-bid contract to replace the bombproof garbage cans and a major embarrassment involving flooded and abandoned cars. A questionable contract for storm debris removal was signed the day before Katrina made landfall. I'm sure that I could easily find more.

Also, in an interview with Liz Reyes, Nagin said that there never has been a problem with RFP's for city contracts. That, of course, is bullshit.

Finally, I had to laugh when the smug prick called himself a "good steward" of public dollars. I'll return to this in a future post, but the man's spending priorities are so bizarre that even Dr. John and Dr. Jeremiah Wright said WTF?

*You know, back when Nagin was such a great reforming mayor.

Comments:
Since Ray Ray challenged us plebs to find a scandal, I think you should:

- email this to him
- cc all city council members, the IG, Penya, Hatfield, and all other high-ranking city officials
- send it to the TP

Let's call him on his bullshit.
 
in my minds eye the last two years he has been a petulant child.

i think i like smug prick a lot better.

thanks for rebooting my inner harddrive.

happy mardi gras cuz.
 
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