The public debate over who has to pay for hiring more guards and otherwise improving conditions at Orleans Parish Prison -- either Sheriff Marlin Gusman or the City of New Orleans -- resumed Friday afternoon, just a few business hours before legal arguments on the same topic are set to resume in U.S. District Judge Lance Africk's courtroom on...
The public debate over who has to pay for hiring more guards and otherwise improving conditions at Orleans Parish Prison -- either Sheriff Marlin Gusman or the City of New Orleans -- resumed Friday afternoon, just a few business hours before legal arguments on the same topic are set to resume in U.S. District Judge Lance Africk's courtroom on Monday.
In a three-page supplement to his earlier report on the issue, Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux tried to make it crystal clear that he believes Gusman should be using money his office makes in its civil division to help pay for operations at the jail. New Orleans' civil and criminal sheriffs' offices were combined in 2010, and Gusman was elected to run the consolidated office.
"If the sheriff's revenues, whether from the civil or criminal division, cannot be used to fund the costs of the consolidated office and save taxpayer dollars, then what was the purpose of the consolidation?" Quatrevaux's new statement asks rhetorically, before concluding, "Nothing in the law precludes the sheriff's office from using all non-restricted available public monies for the most expensive and extensive element of the office's mission."
That, of course, would be running the jail. Recent estimates from the city's attorneys and others claim that as much as $2 million could be made available from the sheriff's civil operations to supplement his jail operations.
But here's the rub: Gusman doesn't necessarily appear to disagree with Quatrevaux. Rather than claiming that the law stops him from using civil division revenue for the jail, the sheriff instead is arguing that nothing in the law requires him to use such revenue at the jail, and that legally the city is responsible for paying the full cost of inmate care, according to a memo filed on June 17.
And to make matters even more convoluted, Gusman said in June that in fact he was already using civil division money to help pay for inmate upkeep.
Quatrevaux released a report June 6 that criticized how Gusman was handling his office's finances. In it, the IG brought up the possibility that city funds were being used for operations other than the jail, including responsibilities handled on the civil side. Gusman denied this and said that actually the opposite was true.
"The civil division provided funds to pay for the costs of city inmates," stated Gusman's written response to the IG's June 6 report.
The city, of course, agrees with the inspector general on this. City Attorney Sharonda Williams released a statement Friday saying, "The OIG report is consistent with the city's position. All of the (sheriff's) funds are public funds and should be used to operate and maintain the jail, which is the sheriff's primary responsibility."
--Richard Rainey
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The answer generally has been that the cost -- in the billions of dollars, all of which would have to be paid by customers -- would be prohibitive. A report presented this week to the City Council's Utility Committee confirmed that.
The "Reliability Study of the Electric System in Orleans Parish" was done for Entergy by Quanta Technology, a North Carolina company. It concluded that the cost of shifting overhead distribution lines in New Orleans to underground would exceed the projected benefits -- i.e., fewer and shorter outages from major storms -- by $2.7 billion.
William Snyder, senior vice president of Quanta, and Joe Vumbaco, the council's chief technical adviser on regulating Entergy, agreed that there is another argument against underground electrical lines in New Orleans, or any other area prone to flooding: Damage to underground lines or equipment from floodwaters can be difficult and costly to diagnose, locate and repair. Above-ground lines may be more vulnerable during storms, but at least the damage in most cases is relatively easy to spot and correct.
Vumbaco said, however, that Entergy should consider moving some critical transmission and distribution facilities underground, especially if it could be done at the same time that other infrastructure projects, such as street or water line repairs, would require digging up the same areas.
"Targeted hardening is the way to go," Snyder agreed.
--Bruce Eggler
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WATCHING THE WATCHDOG: The Bureau of Governmental Research, the nonpartisan, nonprofit New Orleans watchdog group that bestows honors each year on public officials and employees it deems worthy of commendation, garnered a little praise of its own this week. At its national conference in Milwaukee, the Governmental Research Association honored BGR for its reports on parish pension programs and Crescent City Connection tolls.
The pension report, titled "The Rising Cost of Yesterday: Metro Area Pension Costs and the Factors that Drive Them," published in November 2012, earned BGR the GRA's award for Most Distinguished Research. The report described in great detail the rather generous benefits of 18 pension plans for government workers in Orleans, Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes.
BGR also won the Outstanding Policy Achievement award for a 2011 report titled "Over the River: The Future of the Crescent City Connection Bridge and Ferries" that decried the tolls on the Mississippi River bridge as unfair, unnecessary and inappropriate. It recommended they be allowed to expire. The report helped spark public outcry against the tolls, which were eventually canceled this year.
BGR has won accolades from the GRA, an umbrella group for government research organizations and professionals, in each of the last seven years.
--Richard Rainey