N.O. Government Has Been Squeezed Again. What's Next to Cut?

    Nov. 12, 2006
    The Associated Press
    By Doug Simpson

    (NEW ORLEANS) - This city's shrinking bureaucracy continues to get smaller. Is that post-Katrina trend over, or does New Orleans' famously leaden government have more room for mergers and streamlining? Since the storm, the Legislature has decided the city will make do with one elected sheriff, instead of the two it has now. Lawmakers also merged the city's two court systems into one, and did the same with its two elected clerks of court. Voters decided in September to merge the region's levee boards; last week, they merged the city's seven tax assessors into one office. All told, this means a lot of political jobs have gone up in smoke, more than a century of cronyism and bureaucracy into the dustbin. So what else can be merged? Streamlined? Managed with regional collaboration? New Orleans City Council members met with Jefferson Parish Council last week, claiming it was a historic sign of new cooperation. A more likely source of more consolidation in southeast Louisiana is law enforcement, said Rafael Goyeneche, head of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, an independent nonprofit that keeps tabs on the region's police, prosecutors and court systems. There are plenty of signs that some convergence is already happening: State troopers and the New Orleans Police Department had a history of dislike for each other, dating from the days of Huey P. Long's so-called "siege" on the city. But state police now patrol the streets and work with city cops daily, not just at Mardi Gras time. The north shore town of Abita Springs has decided to abolish the town's police department, deciding that it's cheaper to pay the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office to handle crime and traffic headaches. Every time U.S. Attorney Jim Letten calls a press conference, he hands a good bit of credit to the locals who helped the FBI on his federal investigation. Authorities say task forces, with officers from different jurisdictions, are getting more common in investigating drug gangs and other criminal operations. A New Orleans police officer who was shot earlier this month in Jefferson Parish was apparently part of such a team, dealing with inter-parish crime. "The NOPD, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, Plaquemines, Gretna, all are working under the banner of one task force," Goyeneche said. Some of this cooperation was developing before the storm, but it has accelerated since partly because police and fire units around the region got used to daily interaction with counterparts from other parishes, other cities, other states as they rescued storm and flood victims. In the future, Goyeneche said the prime motivation will be money: it can be cheaper for parishes, towns and cities to share a crime lab's forensics equipment, for instance, maybe a coroner's office and information technology systems. "As we move toward maximizing our limited public safety dollars, I think the economics of it will drive for sharing, jurisdictions helping other jurisdictions," Goyeneche said. "What we're seeing is, crime has no boundaries and doesn't stop at the parish line. "The hope is, consolidated law enforcement will also mean improved law enforcement. In New Orleans alone, there's a huge problem: a backlog of court cases; a public defender who continues to demand more money, saying defendants' rights are getting violated; the NOPD's battles against a wave of extremely violent crime, with a reduced post-Katrina staff. As Letten put it, people in poorer neighborhoods of New Orleans and its suburbs are "rampantly killing each other." Maybe expanded coordination among police is one strategy that will get a few more of the killers in prison and help lead to improvements in some of the region's other problems: corruption, plus the rotten education system that breed new criminals. Said Letten: "That's a heck of a tall order, but that's something we need to do."

    EDITOR'S NOTE: Doug Simpson covers the state Capitol for The Associated Press.



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