Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration waited two months to refer to the city's inspector general allegations that former French Market Corp. director Kenneth Ferdinand had misspent as much as $20,000 in agency funds, though a deputy mayor was present when Ferdinand agreed to resign and make a donation to the agency of $5,000. Rusty Costanza/The Times-PicayuneA spokeswoman for Mayor...
Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration waited two months to refer to the city's inspector general allegations that former French Market Corp. director Kenneth Ferdinand had misspent as much as $20,000 in agency funds, though a deputy mayor was present when Ferdinand agreed to resign and make a donation to the agency of $5,000.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the administration played no role in setting the $5,000 reimbursement.A July 28 e-mail message from Greg St. Etienne, then a deputy mayor, addressed to Landrieu's top political aide Mike Sherman, suggests that the French Market's leadership and the Landrieu administration hoped the Ferdinand episode would fade away without the public taking notice. It describes a meeting, attended by three members of the French Market board, St. Etienne and board attorney Henry Julien, at which the terms of Ferdinand's departure were confected.
"Ferdinand wanted the atty (Julien) and me to know, after the others had departed, that he did nothing wrong and wanted to ensure that his reputation was not sullied," wrote St. Etienne, who resigned himself a few weeks later. "We assured him that we wanted this to be a nonevent in which he chose to take a different career direction."
Ferdinand submitted his written resignation the next day, July 29. But his alleged misspending with an agency credit card, discovered by members of the French Market's unpaid board, was not turned over to Inspector General Edouard Quatrevaux's office until Sept. 30, when Ferdinand's alleged misspending first made news.
Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, called the attempt to resolve the matter without a thorough probe "unacceptable."
"If the board identified some questionable spending practices by Mr. Ferdinand, they had a fiduciary responsibility to conduct a complete investigation -- not just of his credit card purchases, but of the agency's checking account," he said. "They have a responsibility to investigate to determine the extent of the problem."
There should have been no severance deal without a formal finding about how much money Ferdinand misspent, Goyeneche said.
"If it's '$5,000 and let's call it even,' that's unacceptable," he said. "For the board and the administration to say they would sanction some type of settlement without knowing the extent of the potential inappropriate spending ... it's unacceptable."
It's not clear who approved the settlement.
St. Etienne's e-mail, which was obtained by The Times-Picayune in response to a request for all records related to Ferdinand's departure, does not say who suggested or authorized the severance, although it suggests that both Julien and St. Etienne endorsed it.
Charles Napoli, chairman of the French Market's board, was one of three board members at the meeting with Julien and St. Etienne, according to the e-mail message.
The message says Napoli thought Ferdinand had previously agreed to reimburse all the money he misspent, but that Ferdinand saw things differently. Ferdinand "contended that all was proper but in the interest of quelling any potential dispute, he submitted a $5,000 check to staff ... as a 'donation' to the FMC," St. Etienne wrote.
Napoli said Friday that "the $5,000 settlement was not brought before the board or discussed by the board."
He referred other questions to Julien, the board's attorney.
Julien said he could not discuss anything about the meeting, including "who was there and why they were there," because it involved legal matters.
St. Etienne did not return a phone message. He resigned his position with the city Sept. 24 after news broke that he had steered taxpayer-subsidized loans to family members in a previous job.
Ferdinand also did not return a phone message.
Devona Dolliole, Landrieu's communications director, said that before his departure from City Hall, St. Etienne was "a liaison" to the French Market who "did not have any official role in personnel decisions." Those were the board's responsibility, she said.
Dolliole said the administration played no role in setting the $5,000 reimbursement, and left open the possibility the amount will be increased later.
"We did not arrive at any figure as our administration is not done with this matter pending review by the inspector general," she wrote in an e-mail statement.
Dolliole said the administration acted quickly when it learned about the Ferdinand issue.
"When several French Market board members brought their concerns about the executive director to the administration's attention, we met with them within 24 hours," she wrote. "The board then moved forward with their decision to remove the executive director. After reviewing public records related to the French Market, it became evident that this matter required further independent review, and the administration turned it over to the OIG."