On Tuesday night, the Ethics Review Board and Cerasoli were on full display as Cerasoli gave an overview of his position and his role in government of New Orleans, how it would interface with the various law enforcement agencies and how un-political the position would be in the future.

The event Tuesday night was sponsored by many civic organizations and held at Loyola University.

From his own statements and comments from New Orleans City Councilpersons, Shelly Midura and James Carter, Cerasoli would have a free hand in attempting to root out and prevent corruption and audit agencies and making the public accountable to the people of New Orleans.

Many of the finer details are left to be worked out and many of the cases the department will handle will occur on a case-by-case basis in terms of whether the Ethics Board, the New Orleans police, the federal government or even the state Attorney General’s office would be involved.

Councilwoman, Shelly Midura made it known that the idea of the Inspector General’s position emanated from Mayor Nagin’s office.  Should the City Council ultimately finalize the Inspector General budget as it approves the overall city budget, it will be more than the initial money requested by Mayor Nagin in his budget proposal to the Council. 

One of the functions of the inspector general will be to follow leads even if there are no prosecutorial results or criminal “wrong doings”.

Without doubt, one of the roles for the Inspector General would be to verify that certain events are ethical or are legal.

An occurrence this week would be a good example.

The City of New Orleans attempted an online tax sale which has raised the ire of some who feel that the process was “rigged”.  I personally do not believe that based upon the individuals involved, the intent of the Mayor’s technology office and the explanation provided to me by the operators that there was anything criminal.  I do not believe any tax sale property buyers were intentionally shut out from buying property while others were able to purchase the “choice” parcels.  However, I do think that mistakes were definitely made in the process that were foreseeable, that the system was not set up as well as it could have been and the entire ordeal has only fueled the suspicions of a number of individuals who believe that more than negligence occurred.

Thus, I believe the inspector general’s office should take on as one of its first assignments the entire process and determine whether there were foul ups as the complaints appear to be loud and many that there was some inside trading. 

Without doubt, there will be times when mistakes are made but the appearance of impropriety rings loud.  In this case, the policing authorities should take immediate digital snap shots of all of the data involved and begin to investigate and then bring in the Inspector General’s Office.  Ultimately, the entire operation may prove to be a good noble technology attempt that had glitches.  However, since we are talking about a post-Katrina economy involving large parcels of real estate, it would be wise to establish that either there was wrongdoing, or there was negligence or the best practices under the circumstances were utilized and that there were technology failings.

To date, there has been media coverage on this issue and some in the community are frustrated over the entire matter.   If there was ever a job for the inspector general, this would be it.  More technology contracts will be approved by the city for more government services and establishing a clean bill of health is important.

New Orleans government must be totally above board given the recent spate of criminal violations.  The new office should sometimes follow the leads to establish “right doing” especially when the situation warrants and when the public outrage or the city’s reputation goes begging for answers.