COVER STORY ECRS (EGOV.CITYOFNO.COM/ECRS_CONVIEW), THE CITY’S OLD SYSTEM FOR POSTING CONTRACTS, WAS DEVELOPED UNDER THE NAGIN ADMINISTRATION AND NEVER WORKED PROPERLY.
THE CITY HAS BEEN POSTING NEWLY SIGNED CONTRACTS TO ITS NEW SYSTEM, BUYSPEED (WWW.PURCHASING.CITYOFNO.COM/BSO), SINCE SEPTEMBER.
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > noVember 15 > 2011
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Among our findings: • The city has been unable to produce a comprehensive list of all currently active contracts, including values, dates and descriptions. • The City Attorney’s Office, in theory the central record-keeper for city contracts, was unable to deliver any list, instead turning to the office of the mayor. • Though Gambit could identify only one missing contract that was initiated by Landrieu, we found many cases where the city’s two contracting websites are missing information on currently active and recently expired contracts, including professional service contracts signed before Landrieu took office. • Despite promises of more openness and transparency, the Landrieu Administration has no plans to fill in the gaps we found. Less than a week before Oct. 17, when Landrieu presented his proposed city budget for 2012, Gambit asked acting City Attorney Richard Cortizas for a list of all currently active contracts. We wanted to compare that list to what is posted on the city’s two contract sites: the Ray Nagin-era electronic contract routing system (ECRS) and the newer BuySpeed portal, which the city has licensed from a vendor, Periscope Holdings. Gambit sent a public records request Oct. 11 asking for a list of active contracts, including the date each was executed, the duration or term of each contract, names of vendors, names of purchasers, the name of each city department or component unit for which each contract was prepared, the dollar value of each contract and a description of the services or materials the city would receive from the contract. We received an initial response two days later, which technically complies with state law — and stands in stark contrast to the Nagin administration’s record on requests for public documents. However, City Hall’s first response merely acknowledged our request. We received a substantive response about a week later — but it still didn’t include all the information we sought. In particular, we were given a 56-page list of all contracts signed by the mayor since his term began in May 2010. That list did not contain dates, dollar amounts, or in most cases descriptions of the services or materi-
als provided. It also did not contain any information about contracts signed by Nagin that are still in effect. Included in that response was a comment by Assistant City Attorney Anita Curran, stating, “City contracts from approximately 2008 to present are available on the City’s website. … Please be advised, however, that the mayor’s office has provided us with additional records responsive to your request.” Landrieu’s press secretary Ryan Berni initially assured us that the list represented all active contracts. We later learned — and Berni subsequently admitted — that the list included only those agreements signed by Landrieu since May 2010, some of which had already expired. The involvement of the mayor’s office in responding to our public records request was somewhat unusual in that the City Attorney’s Office typically handles all public records requests. The City Attorney’s Office was budgeted $13 million and has 70 full-time employees this year. It’s also the official repository of all city contracts. Gambit’s requests for comment from Cortizas’ office were unanswered by press time. However, Berni says centralizing procurement record-keeping in the City Attorney’s Office is “certainly a goal” of the administration. The 56-page list provided by the city makes it difficult to crossreference online records because it contains few details about most contracts. For vendors that appear more than once on the printed list, or for vendors who only appear once on that list but more than once on either of the websites, it’s difficult if not impossible to tell which hard-copy item corresponds to which online item. Without a centralized, up-to-date list of all its current contracts, the city may be unable to accurately, in Landrieu’s words, “budget for outcomes.” “Most everything we do in City Hall is by department,” Berni explains. “The departments themselves manage their active contracts. But there’s various checks and balances, checks internally, between finance and purchasing and law and other places, to ensure that people who are getting paid are getting paid on an active contract or valid procurement.” A city audit for 2010, released in September, noted that the city PAGE 24