What would you do with 3 Trillion dollars?

This has everything to do with New Orleans and Kanye West was correct, W doesn't give a fuck about black people.

FEMA to close Renaissance Village trailer site May 31

BAKER -- Margaret Chopin is quick to share her photograph of an East Baton Rouge Parish garden home, highlighting its well-kept lawn, ample garage and generous space for her husband, son and granddaughter.


But the New Orleans native and former Gentilly resident won't call it home any time soon.

Because a possible lease on the property fell through, Chopin shows it off only to illustrate the frustration and longing that come with living in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer in Renaissance Village, which opened in October 2005 in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

For Chopin and her neighbors, most of them from the New Orleans area and most having lived in Renaissance Village since it opened, the angst magnifies daily with the approach of FEMA's May 31 deadline to close all its remaining group trailer sites.

At one time the largest concentration of the travel trailers along the Gulf Coast, Renaissance's fences now envelop fewer than 190 trailers. This is down from the 580 that once filled the expansive gravel lot, which is just a short drive from the Louisiana Capitol. Residents have no monthly rent but do pay for propane.

Those who are left essentially have two choices: Find permanent housing or move to a hotel for 30 days on the federal government's dime while continuing their hunt.

Most would qualify for subsidized rent under a program financed by FEMA and run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Residents would have to contribute $50 rent the first month, with their share increasing by $50 each month thereafter. The subsidy would end when the beneficiary covers the full rent amount or in March 2009, whichever comes first.

"I think some people think FEMA is going to come down out of the sky and give a lump sum to the people still here," said resident Bonnie Vernon, originally from Metairie, as she folded clothing in the communal laundry facility before hauling it back to her trailer in a red wagon with only three wheels. "I don't see how anybody who's lived through the last two years could believe that."

Manuel Broussard, spokesman for FEMA's Gulf Coast Recovery Office, described the situation as an opportunity for flood victims to couple self-reliance with the aid of FEMA case workers and the financial boost from the HUD-FEMA Disaster Housing Assistance Program to resume their lives.

'There's no way'

Statewide, group sites account for about 900 of the 20,146 FEMA trailers that were occupied as of April 4. More than 80 percent of those still in group sites were renters before the storms.

All residents are assigned a FEMA case worker to provide rental listings and put them in touch with potential landlords, but residents must secure the leases.

Broussard expressed concerns about meeting the closure deadline for parks in places such as Plaquemines Parish and southwest Louisiana, where he said trailer occupants outnumber viable rental units. But, he said, "we believe we're going to be in pretty good shape" getting the last 185-plus households out of Renaissance.

A more pessimistic view pervades among Renaissance residents, employees and Catholic Charities case managers who work in the park alongside FEMA's case workers. Citing a web of aggravating factors, they said the transition from a trailer is easier to talk about than to accomplish.

Wilbert Ross, displaced from the Lower 9th Ward, said "there's no way" FEMA will meet its deadline at Renaissance. Ross already has left the park once, but could not keep up with his rent.

Sam Sammartino, disaster response director for the Diocese of Baton Rouge, noted that FEMA has failed to meet previous deadlines for other Baton Rouge-area parks -- Mount Olive, Granberry, Sugar Hill -- typically by several months. He said Catholic Charities even attempts to slow down some residents who might be signing a lease they won't be able to afford once the subsidy runs out.

"It's easy to sit there and say, 'These people ought to get a job, get it together and move out,'" said Sammartino, who supervises more than a dozen recovery case workers for more than 900 client households in 12 parishes. "We would want everyone to consider that each case is complex, each case different."

The peak population for Renaissance was estimated in excess of 1,600 -- with more than 3,000 people residing there at some point since its opening. Sammartino said the current number of residents likely is at least double the 188 trailers. Most of the remaining households have children or senior citizens, or both.

Broussard said FEMA does not keep statistics on whether evacuees return to their original home parishes or neighborhoods. He said a majority have settled around Baton Rouge. New Orleanians who want to return mostly can do so, he said, provided they do not insist on returning to their previous neighborhood.

High local rents

The chief complaint about housing for those still looking is the rising rents of post-storm East Baton Rouge Parish, which was growing before the 2005 hurricanes and has absorbed a net gain of at least 25,000 people since.

Chopin, who works three part-time jobs inside the park, said her search for a home in East Baton Rouge Parish had been mostly discouraging. "If you can afford it, you don't want to live there," she said.

The disaster housing assistance will pay as much as 125 percent of the average fair market value for a residence in a given parish. Carol Spruell, spokeswoman for Catholic Charities, estimated that in East Baton Rouge, this is $800 to $900 for a two-bedroom apartment, more for a house. Both figures are considerably higher in Orleans Parish, she said.

Spruell said her organization estimates it would take at least a $17-an-hour, full-time job to make that rent in Baton Rouge with two dependents.

Transportation troubles

Residents say the lack of transportation also hampers their housing search.

Chopin said she and her husband have one car, but he uses it to get to his job on the support staff at a local school. That makes it difficult, she said, to balance her typical 11- to 12-hour work days with trips to find housing. "A case worker might take you or might not," she said.

A bus route, paid for by FEMA, runs about every hour from the park to the local Wal-Mart, Baker Library and central public bus terminal in Baton Rouge. But the last bus typically returns to the park at 9 to 10 p.m., residents said, limiting late-shift employment options.

For Renaissance residents who can find a place, additional barriers come in the form of utility and lease deposits, transporting trailer belongings to an apartment and buying appliances that none of them has now.

FEMA pays some deposits, and Catholic Charities fills some additional needs not covered by FEMA. But help with furniture and appliances falls entirely on private organizations.

One of the most frustrating gaps in service, Sammartino said, is transportation for moving. FEMA has a relocation assistance program, but the Renaissance residents who hail from the New Orleans area but settle around Baton Rouge do not qualify because they are not returning close enough to home.

"I've asked FEMA just to send trucks up here," he said. "I've gotten no response."

Mood of 'despair'

In some respects, FEMA officials said, Renaissance Village represents success stories. Empty trailer spots, marked by water pipes and other infrastructure rising from the gravel, dwarf the number of temporary residences still set up.

In the rear of the park are a playground and classroom buildings housing early childhood learning centers. The project was financed by actress-comic Rosie O'Donnell's foundation. Arcenia Crayton, a resident of the park from its opening until October 2007, staffs another building that serves as a community center in the morning before shifting to an after-school program.

But Chopin said the overriding mood still is "depression, ... despair." Sammartino said he daily fights "fear of the unknown" and "paralysis even among people who know what they need to do." And "FEMA" remains a four-letter word in most conversations.

Sammartino and others, meanwhile, said they worry FEMA will begin urging residents into hotels come June.

"Their job is not necessarily to get people into the right situation," said Crayton, who before the storm lived in Marrero with her husband and three sons. "Their job," she said, "is to get people out of that trailer."

Report: FEMA Spent Millions Fraudulently

The Federal Emergency Management Agency misspent millions of dollars it received from selling used travel trailers, government investigators have found.

Instead of buying more trailers - as allowed under the law - FEMA used more than $13 million toward fully loaded sport utility vehicles, travel expenses and purchase card accounts, according to a draft report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general obtained by The Associated Press. The report is to be released Friday.

During its three-month review last summer, the inspector general found that FEMA used some of the proceeds from trailer sales for tree-removal services, agency decals and banners and global positioning systems. FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said the agency discovered these problems on its own and has taken steps to fix them.

After Hurricane Katrina, FEMA purchased 200,000 travel trailers and mobile homes. When displaced hurricane victims leave these housing units, FEMA may sell the units to the general public. The law states that FEMA must use proceeds from these sales to buy more trailers or return the money to the U.S. Treasury.

"Once again, FEMA has proven to be a poor steward of taxpayer money. In order to regain the public's trust, FEMA must ensure that this type of wasteful spending never occurs again," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the House committee that oversees the Homeland Security Department.

In its comments on the report, FEMA said it spent all the money received from the sales to help disaster victims, but the agency agrees with investigators that there needs to be better oversight and control in the future.

"The funds received from the sale of used travel trailers and mobile homes were used specifically for what they were originally obligated for - that is, the proceeds were used for disaster relief and emergency assistance," according to the agency's comments to the draft report. In its comments, FEMA said it will establish a system to track the sale proceeds so that the proper amount of money is returned to the U.S. Treasury.

Since the 2005 hurricanes, Congress and the government have investigated FEMA's spending practices and determined the agency was defrauded, purchased trailers that pose potential health risks and misspent taxpayer dollars. In 2006, a congressional investigation found that purchase cards were used improperly and the Homeland Security Department - FEMA's parent agency - wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on items like iPods, beer-making equipment and designer jackets.

Katrina Nursing Home Case Costly for La.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Louisiana taxpayers paid more than $360,000 for the failed prosecution of the owners of a nursing home where 35 people died during Hurricane Katrina, according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

The money spent by former state Attorney General Charles Foti include nearly $82,000 for lessons in jury selection and advice on running the trial, the documents show.

Sal and Mabel Mangano owned St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, which was flooded by the hurricane that hit Aug. 29, 2005. Prosecutors said they should have evacuated the home, and they charged the couple with 35 counts of negligent homicide and 24 counts of cruelty to the elderly or infirm.

A jury took less than four hours to find the couple not guilty after the 2 1/2-week trial.
''This is a colossal waste of taxpayers' money on a case that should never have come to trial,'' said James Cobb, one of the lawyers who represented the Manganos.
Foti, now in private practice with a New Orleans law firm, did not immediately return a call for comment Friday.

Foti's office drew heavy criticism for prosecuting the Manganos and, in a separate case, prosecuting a doctor and two nurses for the post-hurricane deaths of nine patients at a New Orleans hospital. An accounting of the expenses from that case is not yet available.

Foti has repeatedly denied accusations that he used the trials to grandstand for his re-election bid. He lost last fall's Republican primary, and Democrat Buddy Caldwell became the new attorney general in a runoff election.

The initial expense figures in the Mangano case, provided by Caldwell's office, include $81,533 to Courtroom Sciences Inc., the company that instructed the assistant district attorneys who conducted the trial on jury selection, opening statements and trial tactics.

Other expenses include $58,401 for hurricane expert Brian Jarvinen, $72,018.82 to psychiatry professor Robert Stall and $52,607 to Dr. Stanford Finkel, a gerontologist.
It was not clear from the documents how Jarvinen, Stall and Finkel aided the prosecution.

In the hospital case, Foti led investigations that resulted in the arrests of cancer specialist Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, who worked at the flooded Memorial Medical Center after the storm.

A grand jury last year refused to indict Pou. Landry and Budo testified before the panel under immunity and were not indicted.

Philadelphia Sues HUD, Citing Threat of Losing Aid

The director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority has accused the federal housing secretary of ordering the city to turn over a $2 million property to a politically connected developer, then threatening to withhold millions of dollars in federal aid after his directive was refused, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the city.

But officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development denied those charges Monday, saying that the secretary, Alphonso R. Jackson, had no personal, political or business relationship with the developer who was seeking the $2 million parcel of vacant land, Kenny Gamble, the soul songwriter and producer. A spokesman for Mr. Jackson, Jerry Brown, also said that Philadelphia’s financing was in jeopardy because the city had failed to meet the requirements of a decade-old housing plan.

The accusations against Mr. Jackson by Philadelphia officials, first reported Monday in The Washington Post, come as the housing department’s inspector general and the Justice Department are reportedly investigating whether he improperly steered government contracts to friends in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands. Department officials did not address those accusations, but they were vehement in disputing the charges in the Philadelphia lawsuit.

“There was no retaliation,” Mr. Brown said in an interview Monday. “These two things had nothing whatsoever to do with each other.”

Neither Carl R. Greene, the executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, nor Abbe Fletman, a lawyer representing the authority, returned calls requesting comment.

The lawsuit, filed by Philadelphia housing officials in December, involves a long struggle over the city’s efforts to overhaul the blighted Martin Luther King Jr. projects. Mr. Gamble’s company, Universal Community Homes, was part of a partnership selected to build the first phase of the project in 1999, in a deal that promised to reward the developers with a parcel of vacant land in return for building 236 low-income units and providing counseling services to incoming residents.

Only 80 units were built when Universal’s partner withdrew from the project, forcing the authority to help with the rest of the construction. And Mr. Greene said Universal never fulfilled its obligation to provide counseling so he turned down its request for the $2 million parcel of land, where the company intended to build 19 homes at full market rates.

The dispute continued in 2006, when Mr. Jackson called John F. Street, who was the mayor of Philadelphia at the time, to urge that the land be turned over and the project advanced. In an affidavit, Mr. Greene said federal housing officials had continued to exert pressure on behalf of Mr. Gamble, whom it described as having political connections. Housing officials said Mr. Jackson’s call was an effort to move the project forward, not to bestow a favor on Mr. Gamble.

“The call wasn’t motivated by any desire to help Kenny Gamble,” said Mr. Brown, the HUD spokesman. “The secretary is closer to Carl Greene than he is to Kenny Gamble.”

As the city housing authority rebuffed Mr. Gamble’s effort to get control of the property, it was also in a dispute with housing officials in Washington about whether Philadelphia had failed to meet a federal requirement that 5 percent of its public housing be made accessible for the disabled.

In the lawsuit, Philadelphia officials said that they had exceeded that by 1 percent and provided detailed studies by experts who contend that federal housing inspectors had undercounted the city’s efforts. Mr. Greene’s affidavit stated that he and other Philadelphia housing officials had repeatedly urged federal officials to reconsider, even traveling to Washington last summer to make the case in person. But in his affidavit, Mr. Greene said that Mr. Jackson’s deputies told him that Philadelphia would get credit for its efforts to provide housing for the disabled — and qualify for millions of dollars in federal aid — only if the city agreed to transfer the property to Mr. Gamble.

New Orleans Cracks Down on Corruption

Fed up with crime and political corruption, New Orleans' business leaders in 1952 organized to flush out the twin poisons they believed were harming economic development.

It was a time when illegal gambling and the Carlos Marcello crime family operated openly in a city that was a bustling business hub.

Fast forward 55 years. Gambling is legal and the mob has faded into obscurity. The city's economy is a shadow of its former self, thanks to the 1980s oil bust, an exodus of big businesses and the shattering blow of Hurricane Katrina, which ran off at least 2,000 employers.

As New Orleans' economy struggles to get back on its feet, street crime and political corruption have re-emerged as spoilers. But a wave of recent federal convictions shows New Orleans' most chronic image-killers -- crooked politicians -- are under assault.

For a city trying to convince corporate America to make long-term investments in the city's rebuilding, the crackdown couldn't come at a more important time.

A key player is the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a crime and corruption watchdog, safe house for tipsters and craw in the side of those with political punch and sticky fingers.

''It's pretty tough to be a whistleblower in the state of Louisiana,'' said MCC president Rafael Goyeneche, who has headed the group since 1989. ''Many people won't risk themselves, their families and their business associates if it means putting them in jeopardy by stepping forward. So, we're a conduit of information for those who don't want to be identified.''

The MCC, inspired by the Chicago Crime Commission formed after World War I, is the antithesis of the idea that size equates with effectiveness.

Besides Goyeneche, there is one investigator, a researcher, a community relations person and an office manager. Much of the annual budget of $677,000 is donated by businesses.

The MCC keeps a stealthy but effective profile. Federal officials said it played a key role in bringing down two suburban state judges who took bribes from a bail bondsman. FBI special agent in charge Jim Bernazzani also said the organization helped with a probe of corruption in the Orleans Parish School Board, which resulted in 30 convictions.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten calls the commission ''an important player'' in law enforcement. ''While they are not a law enforcement agency, per se, they have been instrumental in getting people with information on public corruption to come forward and they've been able to pass on information themselves to investigators,'' Letten said.

Goyeneche, a former New Orleans assistant district attorney, said the commission gets about 100 tips monthly on its local hotline, and another 20 or so on a new statewide corruption line. About 15 to 20 percent provide enough information to warrant consideration. Tips that show particular promise are passed on to law enforcement and prosecutors, often on the federal level where virtually all successful public corruption cases in New Orleans are handled.

For example, in 2005, a woman who alleged she was raped by a deputy city attorney in his private law office -- after being offered help on a municipal charge -- came first to the MCC, expressing doubt that local authorities would do anything. The commission forwarded its investigative report to federal prosecutors, who obtained a civil rights conviction and life prison sentence against the official, Henry Dillon III.

''We don't self-initiate any of our investigations,'' Goyeneche said. ''We have to be told what rock to look under.''

The commission also protects its informants. Goyeneche has been threatened a few times with jail unless he revealed an identity. In the MCC office, there is a photograph of Aaron Kohn, its first head, behind bars in the 1950s for refusing to do so.

The prime methods of corruption against local businesses include pressure to hire politically connected contractors, the hiring of ''ghost employees'' who are nothing more than a paycheck from a business and direct payoff demands from government officials for business or zoning changes.

''There isn't anything new,'' Goyeneche said. ''It's almost like these secrets have been passed down from one generation to another.''

For example, several close associates of former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial have been convicted in connection with skimming money from an energy-management contract signed by City Hall. Morial has not been accused of wrongdoing.

''These individuals basically leveraged their relationship with the mayor's office and siphoned off hundreds of thousands of dollars through some of subcontractors that were awarded contracts,'' Goyeneche said.

Goyeneche said the business community realizes more than cocktail party talk is needed about corruption. Many business leaders, fed up with public rackets, ''are not only willing to meet with the FBI, in many instances they are willing to wire up and provide the information that the FBI needs,'' he said.

Joe Exnicios, senior vice president at Whitney National Bank and chairman of the MCC board, said he got involved about six years ago because ''the perception that folks have outside of Louisiana and particularly New Orleans have is one I'm not very proud of.''

''Everyone likes to think they are operating on a level playing field,'' Exnicios said. ''If there is any public corruption taking place, or even the belief, it hinders companies from moving in here and companies that are here from expanding.''

Not all of MCC work involves criminal activity. The group also keeps an eye on public ethics and how limited criminal justice resources are being used.

For now, Goyeneche doesn't see a major influx of out-of-state businesses making their way into New Orleans -- partly due to the city's reputation.

But that will change, he predicts, as corrupt activities become more hazardous in New Orleans and local businesses spread the word around the country.