Is the Orleans Levee Board doing its job? (Critics allege corruption, wasteful spending)

MSNBC ^ | 9/15/05 | Lisa Myers

[Libloather]

Is the Orleans Levee Board doing its job?
Critics allege corruption, charge the board with wasteful spending
By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
NBC News
Updated: 11:52 a.m. ET Sept. 15, 2005

Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent

The unveiling of the Mardi Gras Fountain was celebrated this year in typical New Orleans style. The cost of $2.4 million was paid by the Orleans Levee Board, the state agency whose main job is to protect the levees surrounding New Orleans — the same levees that failed after Katrina hit.

"They misspent the money," says Billy Nungesser, a former top Republican official who was briefly president of the Levee Board. "Any dollar they wasted was a dollar that could have went in the levees."

Nungesser says he lost his job because he targeted wasteful spending.

"A cesspool of politics, that’s all it was," says Nungesser. "[Its purpose was to] provide jobs for people."

In fact, NBC News has uncovered a pattern of what critics call questionable spending practices by the Levee Board — a board which, at one point, was accused by a state inspector general of "a long-standing and continuing disregard of the public interest."

Beyond the fountain, there's the $15 million spent on two overpasses that helped gamblers get to Bally's riverboat casino. Critics tried and failed to put some of that money into flood protection.

There was also $45,000 for private investigators to dig up dirt on radio host and board critic Robert Namer.

"They hired a private eye for nine months to find something to make me look wacko, to make me look crazy or bad." says Namer. "They couldn’t find anything."

Namer sued and the board then spent another $45,000 to settle.

[LA Woman3]

http://www.crowleypostsignal.com/Jim.Brown.Justice.html

Jim Brown, the former Commissioner of Insurance was acquitted by a jury of the charges against him brought by the U. S. Attorney’s office in New Orleans. However he was convicted of lying to an FBI agent. That’s kind of an odd situation even for the federal judicial system in Louisiana.

Mr. Brown was elected to the Insurance Commissioner’s post by a large margin even after he was indicted by the federal government several months before his trial began. The people apparently didn’t believe he was guilty as charged and elected him despite the government’s attempt to discredit him by waiting to file the grand jury’s indictment just a few months before the election: a move many believe has happened in other cases too in an effort to influence elections in the state. -snip-

[LA Woman3]