An employee of the Ground Transportation Bureau who processed taxi paperwork at City Hall resigns
Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office suspended another Ground Transportation Bureau employee on Friday, and a second resigned amid a deepening probe into malfeasance within the embattled agency that oversees taxis, pedicabs, for-hire vehicles and carriages.
View full sizeTaxis in the holding area at Louis Armstrong International Airport were photographed in May 2009. A 60-day "emergency" suspension was issued to bureau investigator Wilton Joiner for violating various city policies, including the "take-home car" policy, said Ryan Berni, a spokesman for Landrieu's office. Bureau employee Kewana Fortune, who processed taxi paperwork at City Hall, resigned.
Berni declined to specify the reasons for her quitting, but both Joiner and Fortune were the subject of allegations raised by another suspended investigator, Joie Cutrer, to The Times-Picayune, following the April 12 arrests of taxicab inspector Ronnie Blake and United Cab Co. executive Donald "Cornbread" Juneau in an alleged inspection-sticker scam.
Cutrer had accused Landrieu's deputy chief administrative officer, Ann Duplessis, of impeding investigations into Fortune for allegedly accepting tips in exchange for work processing taxi permits, and into Joiner for allegedly overlooking violations at a city inspection station on Old Gentilly Road.
Within days, the city handed 120-day suspensions to Cutrer and fellow investigator Travis Trahan -- who worked undercover on the inspection-sticker case -- for "discrepancies in time and attendance." The city also suspended their supervisor, Michael Lentz, for negligent supervision in letting the alleged payroll fraud happen.
Department of Safety and Permits Director Paul May also accused Lentz of dropping the ball on the undercover work, writing that "it appears that the undercover investigation ceased after July of 2009, and was dormant until March 2011." Cutrer, Trahan and Lentz are challenging their suspensions before the Civil Service Commission.
Donald Juneau, left, and Ronnie BlakeCutrer provided The Times-Picayune with an audio recording in which Juneau, a United Cab vice president, can be heard telling a dispatcher to tell company cabbies to hustle to the city inspection station on Old Gentilly Road because "Big Will" -- referring to Joiner -- is working. Cutrer also provided a sworn affidavit from Jonas Foreman, a former United Cab president, describing the routine "tipping" of Fortune -- $10 per certificate renewal.
Fortune also was the subject of a different allegation lodged by Blake in December, more than four months before his arrest, according to an internal memo dated Dec. 1. In the memo, the city's former taxicab administrator, Jesse Bridges, relayed a series of complaints from Blake to Duplessis, including an accusation that Fortune only reported $300 of $2,100 in payments to transfer cab permits for seven taxis.
Neither Fortune nor Joiner could be reached late Friday.
Berni said the city has turned over the allegations to the Office of Inspector General, which is investigating the earlier suspensions as well as other complaints within the bureau.
Federal agents also are digging into the bureau, a probe that came to light last week. FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office officials have said they can neither confirm nor deny it.
Berni said Landrieu's office is conducting a "top-to-bottom" reform of the taxi bureau, which harbors a longstanding reputation for corruption that has resisted scrubbing over several mayoral administrations. Landrieu this week tapped New Orleans native Malachi Hull, recently director of the taxicab bureau for the Atlanta Police Department, to head the agency.
City officials said they handed off the undercover investigation to NOPD not long after Duplessis launched a review of the bureau last fall, learned that bureau employees were investigating their own and discovered that the probe had long since stalled.
Cutrer's attorney, Raymond Burkart III, said the news Friday about Joiner and Fortune suggests otherwise.
"If these are the guys that (Cutrer) was targeting, maybe my client was doing his job," he said.
John Simerman can be reached at jsimerman@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3330.