The office of Inspector General's report on the city's budget process is now final. IG Ed Quatreveaux describes some of its conclusions. He says, "The city's budgeting process failed to comply with various requirements of state law and the city charter. It also did a benchmark comparison with a group of comparable cities which indicated that the city spends more on overall services on a per capita basis than these other cities and spends more in lots of categories." For example, the IG's report shows Buffalo spends $69 a person on sanitation while New Orleans spends $124.
The city's CAO Brenda Hatfield responds, "We appreciate the fact that Inspector General was looking at the budget process. We are always open to new ideas because that is what we expected from him. I must say we did have concerns about the data and the comparable cities that were used. Hatfield disputes that some of the comparison cities are really comparable. She points out, "Buffalo is a city that has a much smaller land mass area than New Orleans. Buffalo has a steady population. We have one that is constantly growing. We are also a city that has lots of special events such as Mardi Gras that Buffalo does not have." Quatreveaux adds, "We did exclude Mardi Gras clean up and other unique characteristics. If you read the report carefully you can see the staff bent over backwards to make it a fair comparison."
It is not clear if any of the information in the IG's report will change the way the city of New Orleans budgets.
