City Council authorizes 2 new jobs; other 2 workers will be classified city workers
Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux is pushing ahead with the creation of an anti-fraud unit to monitor $1.8 billion in public school construction projects despite a dispute with the city's Civil Service Commission over how much control he can have over its employees' job responsibilities, salaries and tenure.
Langston Hughes inhabits the first new public school building to open in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.Quatrevaux wanted sole discretion over the hiring and management of all four proposed staff members, but the commission last month ruled that two of the positions should fall within the classified service, meaning the inspector general would have to abide by the normal City Hall pay scale, professional certification requirements and other rules in dealing with those two workers.
Quatrevaux at the time assailed the decision, calling it "inflexible" and saying it could derail his effort to keep tabs on the massive construction initiative.
But Quatrevaux on Thursday asked the City Council's Governmental Affairs Committee to authorize the two jobs that civil service officials said he could appoint: a chief to oversee the unit and a construction expert to monitor building contracts and activities. He added that he is working with civil service staffers to hammer out the parameters of the other two jobs.
All four members of the unit overseeing the school construction program would be paid from the $1.8 billion FEMA has agreed to pay to renovate and rebuild schools damaged by Hurricane Katrina, not from city coffers. Financing for the unit would be capped at $800,000, and its work would take three years, Quatrevaux said.
Committee members voted unanimously to recommend the creation of the two unclassified positions to the full council, though Councilman Arnie Fielkow reiterated his concern that FEMA money used to support the anti-fraud unit would be diverted from bricks-and-mortar projects.
School officials have estimated that the federal money will be enough to provide new or substantially renovated buildings for 83 percent of city students. That could leave restoration of the rest of the schools' inventory to local taxpayers, though education leaders also have suggested tapping various tax credit programs to generate more money.
"All of the children of New Orleans, every one of them, should have the opportunity to be in a new or renovated building to be educated ... and I want to make sure that we have enough funds at the end of the day to accomplish that task," Fielkow said.
In the end, the councilman said he would support efforts to launch the anti-fraud unit because of Quatrevaux's belief that "we're actually going to ultimately net more money by having a watchdog with expertise."
"The amounts of money lost to fraud are enormous in our society, in our government," the inspector general said. "So yeah, that is my belief."
Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer agreed.
"I think it's money that is well spent," she said. "We're going to see an unprecedented level of construction -- we're not just talking one or two schools -- and so I think it just magnifies the ability for a potential of waste and fraud, and I think if we didn't have this, we would actually see much more money wasted through this process."
Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3312.