You’ve all likely heard about the dumpster-record scandal that broke news recently.
This headline from NOLA.com said it all: “New Orleans court officials search landfill for records tossed by city hall, clerk says.”
These records date back to the 1950s and contain details of cases that include things like capital murder and aggravated rape.
Clerk of Criminal District Court Darren Lombard broke the news, telling the press just how dire the situation is, and the poor state of the infrastructure and lack of ability to maintain and preserve these vital, permanent records.
In most towns, this might be the scandal of the year. In New Orleans, we call it Wednesday afternoon.
And what I want to do, instead of focusing on the fact that there are city employees dissecting a landfill for sensitive case records, is to focus on one sentence in the article. A sentence that wasn’t even directly related to the event.
This observation is about the New Orleans Department of Public Works and its director, Rick Hathaway. It says, “Hathaway’s staff members—including those in charge of repairing traffic lights—have been working in dilapidated FEMA trailers while their building sits, still damaged from Hurricane Katrina.”
I read the sentence a good three times to make sure my eyes were ok. On August 29th, we’re commemorating the 20th anniversary of Katrina. And on the day we memorialize, the Department of Public Works will work out of trailers provided to us in the aftermath of the historic catastrophe almost two decades ago.
If you feel anything like me, you’re of the mind that heads ought to roll.
And we all know there's no plan to fix it; we’re not conducting audits of our municipal buildings. Instead, our sights are on what? A municipal ID.
It’s a sick joke of Herculean proportions.
I don’t know how this mayor and her administration can put their heads on their pillows at night knowing they're responsible for their employees working out of 20-year-old FEMA trailers.
Fixing it isn't rocket science. But yet there they are, acting like it demands a PhD in aeronautical engineering.
The issue is that we have leaders focused on the symbolic, ideological, feel-good politics, things that get likes on Instagram, but don’t do a damn thing to keep people willing to stay invested in this city.
How about instead of a Crescent City ID, we store records properly, audit buildings, fix elevators, repave streets (in under a decade), and rehaul permitting processes?
We sit and scratch our heads and wonder why there’s a staffing crisis at City Hall and a population crisis in the metro area.
Something has to change. But will it?
I direct this at everyone campaigning for mayor, because we already know the current leader doesn’t give one-tenth of a damn about this city: We cannot involve ourselves in anything else until we can get the basic functions of government, and what we owe the tax-paying citizens of this city, working at the most basic level.
And I direct this at all those voting in the October election: Be very thoughtful about the questions you ask the candidates from now until election day. We must ask them: How do you explain that we got this way? Did you play a part in it? If not, who’s responsible? Who has failed to set priorities to make sure there is an adequate capital budget, staff, and plan to deal with these issues? What’s your plan to do it differently?
What will you do to avoid sending permanent records to the dump? When will it end?