New Orleans: Five-fingered FOIA request?

If it’s too much trouble to go through the prescribed channels to request information, you can just ask the city’s sanitation director:

At the same time New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration was citing storage problems as its reason for erasing all but about a dozen of the mayor’s e-mail messages from 2008, another administration official was providing an activist lawyer with thousands of electronic messages written by or sent to at least four City Council members and their staffers during the past three years.

The council said sanitation director Veronica White, without any involvement by the city attorney or the council itself, handed over emails that may have included materials falling under attorney-client privilege, personal correspondence and communications from constituents, and details on pending lawsuits and criminal investigations, as well as council members’ private opinions on pending ordinances. Lawyer Tracie Washington, who obtained the messages, has clashed with the council on various issues including its attempt to demolish some public housing projects. [Times-Picayune/NOLA.com]

One Comment

  • It’s good to see that in spite of all the devastation heaped upon N’Awlins by hurricane Katrina, former Governor Kathleen Blanco and FEMA that Mayor Ray Nagin and his trusty minions can maintain such a high level of political corruption. The Nagin Years, A Farce in Two Acts.