Thursday, March 12, 2009
transparent as garbage
T-P:In a break with longstanding city policy, [activist lawyer Tracie] Washington got the council e-mails from [Sanitation Director Veronica] White, an appointee of Mayor Ray Nagin. The handoff from White to Washington took place without the City Council's knowledge and without involvement by the city Law Department.
...
[Washington] sought e-mails dating to July 1, 2006, from City Council members Jackie Clarkson, Arnie Fielkow, Stacy Head and Shelley Midura, plus their staff members. Washington did not request the e-mails of council members James Carter, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell or Cynthia Willard-Lewis.
...
And in another departure from policy, ... the city attorney has acknowledged White did not keep a copy of the compact disks that contained the messages. Normally, the Law Department keeps a record of all documents it hands out.
It's also very unusual that Washington got the information request for 30,000+ emails ON COMPUTER DISK, rather than on hard copies at a cost of 25 cents/page, like every other citizen. WIST 690am Radio host
Kaare Johnson was the first to note this departure from longstanding policy, and the obvious monetary savings involved.
Today, the
T-P profiled lawyer/activist Tracie Washington. She says it's all about transparency. Sure. The T-P reports that
In 2007, [Washington] led a group seeking to raise money and sympathy for then-U.S. Rep. William Jefferson after his indictment.
An excellent use of time and money. Weeks ago, after this e-mail scandal broke, Tracie Washington "talked back" on WBOK 1230am radio. She claimed that [her fellow Trinity Episcopal Church member] Stacy Head used government email to support or campaign for a candidate running for Congress.
Omigod! (She got all those unredacted emails and
that's the best she could come up with?)
Washington also went out of her way to disparage
Clancy Dubos, whose political analysis had aired on WWL tv the night before. She called him a "so called lawyer" and dismissed his suggestion that a judge could stop her from publicly releasing the unedited emails. Washington claimed that those horses were already "out of the gate" and that her group, the Louisiana Justice Institute, had provided copies of those emails "to anyone who had asked" for them.
But who knew to ask for such a thing? Who knew that LJI had them?
Here's an interesting nugget from Washington's profile:
Where the money for Washington's advocacy comes from is something of a mystery.
Her nonprofit group, which rents space in an office building on Elysian Fields Avenue owned by politically active lawyer Ike Spears, has a staff of six people, including two attorneys. Its federal tax form for 2007 indicates that all of the group's revenue for the year -- $134,682 -- came from "government contributions (grants)."
But Washington said that's incorrect; in fact, all the group's money comes from private, nonprofit agencies, she said. Washington noted there is no line on the tax form specifically dedicated to such contributions. She declined to name the groups that have donated.
If memory serves, Ike Spears has represented both Betty Jefferson and Mose Jefferson, siblings of disgraced former Congressman "Dollar" Bill Jefferson. He was a big opponent of the "IQ" assessor reform movement. State Rep. Cedric Richmond cites Spears as his
"mentor", and when he ran for Congress, he had a
campaign office by Ike Spears' law firm on Elysian Fields.
As BayouStJohnDavid stated in a
comment, Richmond lobbied the city on behalf of trash hauler
Jimmie Woods:[Richmond] urged the council of a broke city to approve a ridiculously expensive sanitation budget, then he lobbied on behalf of the companies involved when the contracts came under fire.
Again, in the name of transparency, select unredacted, uncopied, unauthorized City Council emails were delivered
on disk to Tracie Washington by City
Sanitation Director Veronica White.
Labels: City Council, Cronies, Dollar bill, Nagin
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15 Comments:
yes yes yes.....if you want to pursue it....I can assure you Washington has some interesting business dealings in her past...particularly with the Jefferson machine.
Dan and Dave on the Air, the only progressive radio show in the new orleans area, will be having Councilman Fielkow on the air Friday at 5pm to discuss transparency in government and other issues.
Daniel, quit spamming the... oh wait nevermind.
Anyway, I'm glad you picked up on the Jefferson-Spears-Richmond connection. I first learned about that office on Elysian Fields by reading YRHT.
Finally, let's cut Ms Washington a little slack. It's always at least a little bit enjoyable to see someone take a swipe at Clancy.
Watching that youtube of her on WWL after it broke was disgusting...
I pulled the 2008 990 for Washington's group (I assume this is what Lolis meant by "tax forms"). They still show all income as government grants.
I find it hard to believe that there is no other place to account for this. And don't non-profits have to disclose the source of their income? Don't they give up a certain amount of privacy in exchange for not paying taxes?
501(c)3's don't have to disclose that sorta stuff...But I'm not sure what they're listed as, specifically...
If you ever win the lottery, you should form a non-profit the very next freaking day, though...
That's free advice...
Did Kaare point that out, or was it a caller? When he ran for city council he seemed to refuse to even consider the possibility that Nagin operated in bad faith. Of course, there were only two candidates who did.
It's only tangentially related, but Nagin's brother-in-law was mentioned in the first article about the Justice for Jefferson Committee:
Several women from Smith & Associates, a firm owned by Cedric Smith, the brother-in-law of Mayor Ray Nagin, also turned out for the event.
Which led me to observe that, since Nagin's re-election campaign paid smith a $20,000 consulting fee, anybody who gave money to the Nagin campaign indirectly contributed to the William Jefferson legal defense fund.
Kaare pointed it out repeatedly on his shows, numerous times during the past couple weeks. If he believed that about Nagin then, he has turned a 180, and now regularly asserts that Nagin only operates in bad faith.
At the forum that I went to, all the candidates other than Boulet and Clarkson acted like the whole subpoena controversy boiled down to a clash of egos between the mayor and some council members. Kaare couldn't understand how it got that far, he would have crossed Loyola Ave and talked to Veronica White (I think that's who it was) face-to-face if that's what it took. It didn't seem to have occurred to anybody other than Boulet and Clarkson that the mayor was stonewalling because he had something to hide.
BTW, I understood why so many bloggers wanted Boulet to apologize for endorsing Nagin, but I just wanted her to come out and say what she was implying more strongly than any other candidates -- that if the mayor wasn't flat out lying, he was sure acting like somebody with something to hide.
Clarence Roby also has ties to the Jefferson machine.
Kaare is an entertainer and not a very creative one at that. He "regularly asserts that Nagin only operates in bad faith" because that's what his audience wants to hear. It's easy.
Rockefeller's are one of Washington's/LJI'a funders:
http://rockpa.org/special_programs/gulf-coast-fund/grantees/
I haven't had the time, but I think it would be pretty simple to go to the sites of the major philanthropist investors in the regions recovery and see if LJI is in their grantee roster. Annie Casey, Kellogg, Living cities... GNOF's site should have a comprehensive list of funders for our region
Just to add a bit of spice to the conversation.....Ms. Boulet endorsed Bill Jefferson for re-election to Congress against both Moreno & Cao.
Secondly--why is it that you bloggers haven't mentioned ONE SINGLE TIME that Tracie Washington is Veronica White's attorney????
Washington said this back in November 08 on WVUE. Come on guys you are supposed to be sleuths. Washington was going to represent White in the discrimination suit against Head, Fielkow, Midura & Clarkson.
HELLO IS ANYONE DOING ANY RESEARCH ON THIS?
Jeffrey: I just cant help myself ;)
Here's something interesting: On Tracie Washington's Facebook site in her list of friends, Jimmie M. Woods appears.
He has a F/B site and he has 4 friends, one of them Washington.
It's kind of fun to see who else is on there. Vincent Sylvain has a page, Richmond, etc.
