Other than the stir he caused with the release this summer of his Katrina memoir — and an occasionally provocative posting to Twitter – Ray Nagin has kept a pretty low public profile in New Orleans since leaving the mayor’s office in May 2010. So it was a bit of a surprise when he turned up Wednesday to play the role of statesman in the latest Uptown kerfuffle, this one over a yard sign depicting President Obama in diapers (and a couple other similarly themed posters).

WBOK-AM highlighted the signs on a morning talk show, calling them racist and organizing a protest that drew dozens of people to the Calhoun Street home where the signs were displayed, according to WWL-TV.

The former mayor was in that number, although he was more peacemaker than protester, according to Timothy Reily, who put up the signs. Reily, who noted he was an early supporter of Nagin during his first campaign for mayor — campaign finance reports show he gave Nagin $1,000 in January 2002 — invited the former mayor to come inside his house. The two men had a 30-minute discussion that Reily described as “congenial.”

“He was here for quite a while,” Reily said. “We had some casual conversation about politics. He said he wanted me to take the sign down because he felt it was disrespectful to the office of the president. But he didn’t demand it.”

(Nagin did not respond to a request for an interview, though he did issue a haiku-like tweet about his intercession, saying in part: “Owner and I met. Tensions high. Sign may come down. Has others. Explosive!”)

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(Reuters) – Sylvia McKenzie has seen it all in her New Orleans neighborhood where she was once held up at gunpoint on her front step: Drug deals, shootings and even prostitution on a nearby street.

What she has not seen much of, she says, are police officers who she believes could clean up the area she has lived in for 40 years if they so chose but who face an uphill battle gaining residents’ trust after a series of missteps.

“Those streets have been bad for years and nothing has changed,” she said in her eastern New Orleans neighborhood, damaged in Hurricane Katrina, where she complained blighted homes and overgrown lots were inviting crime. “You’re taking a chance every time you come out your door.”

Like many New Orleans residents who doubted police involved in killing two civilians in the 2005 aftermath of Hurricane Katrina would ever be held accountable, McKenzie is heartened by guilty verdicts returned in the case earlier this month.

But relations between police and New Orleans residents, especially those in long-neglected crime-ridden neighborhoods, remain fraught, and the jury is still out on whether public confidence in the police will now improve.

Continue at Reuters

New Orleans Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux said Tuesday he will decide by next week whether to press ahead with the creation of an anti-fraud unit to monitor $1.8 billion in public school construction projects despite the city Civil Service Commission’s denial of his request to staff the office with four new employees whose job responsibilities, salaries and tenure would rest entirely in his hands.

While the commission on Monday unanimously allowed Quatrevaux to hire two new unclassified appointees, the panel voted that the two other employees he sought to hire should fall within the classified service, meaning Quatrevaux would have to abide by the normal City Hall pay scale, professional certification requirements and other rules in hiring and managing them. The workers also would enjoy job protections that commissioners described as critical for fraud investigators.

The inspector general has lambasted the decision, saying Tuesday that “it would just be inordinately time-consuming” for him to jump through civil service hoops for what essentially are three-year assignments.

“These people are going to be gone in a few years,” he said. “They’re not going to do a career in city government. It just seems so inflexible for such a special situation. But I guess everyone thinks their situation is special.”

In a letter Tuesday to The Times-Picayune, the three commissioners who voted on the matter — William Forrester, Dana Douglas and Debra Neveu — defended their decision against criticisms Quatrevaux made Monday in a news release. They said city employees, particularly those probing possible graft, should be “unaffected by political influence of any sort.”

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. . .

‘I started wondering if during the night I would be visited by specially trained CIA agents. Could they secretly shoot me with a miniature, slow-acting poison dart?’

His paranoia reached new heights the Monday after the hurricane, when he visited the USS Iwo Jima, an assault ship which served as the base for the federal rescue operation.

When he arrived, he was taken to the infirmary, where two doctors ‘had orders to examine me and give me shots.’

He wrote: ‘I was still a little paranoid and again started imagining a secret CIA plot where in six months I would be gone,.

‘After thinking for a minute, I said to them, “Okay, you can give me shots, but I want you to do the same for my two security guys”.

‘My thinking was it would have been easier to spin that stress ultimately took me out, but it would be much harder to explain all three of us suddenly dying mysteriously.’

Excerpt from a Daily Mail article about Nagin’s new book.  Read the full story here.

A judge holds a hearing today in the ethics case against former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. It is a precursor to a Louisiana Ethics Board investigation.

What kind of trouble could Nagin be in for taking free trips to Hawaii and Jamaica?

“Well the Ethics Board doesn’t have the ability to initiate a prosecution or put somebody in jail. All they can really do is issue a fine against the violator.” Legal Analyst Tim Meche told WWL First News.

He says Nagin could also have to fork over cash for the cost of the trips, but won’t likely face criminal charges.

“Had the government believed he violated the federal criminal law, they would have put him in the Greg Meffert case along with Mark St. Pierre,” Meche said.

Nagin has said all along he thought his tech chief Greg Meffert paid for the vacations. Meffert has testified it was actually convicted city vendor Mark St. Pierre that footed the bill, but the mayor didn’t know that.

The ethics case was on hold during St. Pierre’s trial.

From WWL

A coalition of more than 30 organizations committed to reforming New Orleans government has given Mayor Mitch Landrieu a glowing report card on his first year in office.

In a laudatory report issued Wednesday, the group gave Landrieu’s administration assessments of “good progress” in six of the seven areas it surveyed, including crime, blight, city finances and economic development. It issued a grade of “satisfactory progress” in the seventh area, city services and infrastructure.

The Forward New Orleans coalition is led by the Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region, and represents numerous civic, neighborhood and business organizations. It was founded in December 2009 to secure written pledges from mayoral and City Council candidates in the 2010 elections in regard to their plans for seven major issues.

The one-year assessment was even more favorable to Landrieu than the initial report card the group issued in September, four months after Landrieu took office. That report cited “good progress” in four areas and “satisfactory progress” in two but gave only a judgment of “pending” on fighting blight.

The latest report does not rate the City Council’s performance. The group said it will issue a report on the council at an unspecified future date.

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He may have walked away with only probation for his first three offenses on the Southshore, but a Northshore judge has sentenced Cornell Hood II to life in jail.

It’s a case of four strikes and you’re out, said Rick Wood, spokesman for District Attorney Walter Reed.

Hood, 35, was convicted in 2005 in Orleans Parish for possession with the intent to distribute marijuana and again in 2009 for distribution of marijuana and possession with the intent to distribute marijuana. He received suspended sentences for those crimes and was placed on probation, seeing very little, if any, time behind bars. However, after his last conviction, Hood left New Orleans and moved to the Slidell area.

He was arrested last year after a probation check revealed marijuana in the Slidell home where he was living.

He was arrested on possession charges and in February, a jury found him guilty of the lesser attempted possession with intent to distribute marijuana charge.

Assistant District Attorney Nick Noriea Jr. argued Thursday before District Judge Raymond Childress to have Hood sentenced under the state’s habitual offender law. Childress sentenced Hood to the maximum allowed by that law — life in prison.

From SlidellSentry

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu was sworn into office in exactly one year ago and while he won’t give himself a grade on year one, he did say his administration has done a good job.

”It’s been a very action packed 365 days and it’s been intense and relentless,” said Landrieu.

UNO Political Science Professor Dr. Ed Chervenak said Landrieu continues to enjoy widespread popularity in a city desperate for leadership. Chervenak notes the mayor has many challenges to tackle.

”It’s like turning around an aircraft carrier, it’s not going to happen at once, its going to take time,” he said.

Chervenak said no matter how many good things Landrieu does the crime problem is the biggest challenge of all.

”That is certainly his number one concern and until that is taken care of everything else is secondary,” he explained.

Chervenak contends Landrieu is the strongest advocate for New Orleans and the biggest cheerleader for the city.

From WWL