NEW ORLEANS — From customer billing mistakes to shady inspectors, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board has suffered its share of self-inflicted controversies.
Add another ongoing problem to the list: S&WB employees using handicapped placards that weren't issued to them in order to park illegally in front of the utility’s Joseph Street office.
What's remarkable about this ongoing scam is that it has been flagged before. Repeatedly.
The New Orleans Inspector General's office exposed the problem in 2017, catching 26 employees illegally using other people’s handicapped placards. Then in 2018, WWL-TV caught several employees in the act.
Despite the previous exposure and crackdowns, Channel 4 caught one employee as recently as last week parked all day using the handicapped tag of a dead person, even though internal documents show she had been warned weeks earlier along with 16 other employee violators.
Notices issued on Dec. 6 from Sewerage and Water Board Chief Administrative Officer David Callahan warned the employees about “inappropriate or improper” use of the handicapped placards, according to documents obtained through a public records request.
“It's insensitive. Extremely insensitive,” said City Council member Oliver Thomas. Thomas was recently named chair of the Public Works Committee, which oversees the agency.
“First of all, I'm appalled by it,” Thomas said. “Secondly, to me it's personal because I grew up in a family where my oldest sister was handicapped.”
One difference from when the controversy surfaced three years ago is that the Sewerage and Water Board now has a contract with a parking garage three blocks away to provide spaces for 65 of its employees.
The contract with the Howard Avenue Garage shows the agency has been paying $5,200 a month for those spaces since February 2021. For employees who don't want to walk the three blocks to the office, the contract includes a shuttle service.
Despite the taxpayer-funded convenience, several employees with spaces in the parking garage have been caught in the past two months illegally using handicapped placards to park on St. Joseph Street.
“That's doubly egregious,” Thomas said. “That doesn't make sense because you already have a spot that's paid for.”
Documents exclusively obtained by Channel 4, show that the New Orleans Inspector General’s office has launched yet another investigation into the misconduct.
Placards of the deceased
The documents show that late last year, OIG investigators caught employees illegally using the handicapped placards of others, as well as those that had been issued to people who are now dead.
“This is a whole handicapped parking racket,” Thomas said.
Customers looking for scarce parking recently had an equally strong reaction.
Shay Butler had to park several blocks away because no spaces were available in front of the S&WB office.
“A lot of times you'll have to park maybe three or four blocks down,” Butler said. “It's very upsetting.”
Disabled military veteran Albert McKay said he often has difficulty finding a place to park in front of the Sewerage and Water Board office on Joseph Street. The scenario repeated itself last week.
“I'm a disabled veteran and I have to put money in the meter and they don't,” McKay said. “And that's a shame. They're a bunch of crooks. Sewerage and Water Board is a bunch of crooks.”
Inspector General Ed Michel said he couldn’t reveal much about his agency’s probe until a report is finalized, but he did say his office alerted the City to the violations in December.
“We conducted another investigation regarding the fraudulent use of disability parking permits by Sewerage and Water Board employees,” Michel said.
Violators will receive a $500 fine
The OIG probe led to the Dec. 6 internal memos being issued to the 17 employees caught by the investigators, reminding them about handicapped parking laws and the $500 fine for violators, the documents show.
Callahan followed up with a letter to Public Works Acting Director Josh Hartley alerting him to the violations.
“It is important to point out that SWBNO has no authority to enforce City and State parking regulations,” Callahan wrote in the Jan. 10 letter.
“This is the duty of the Public Works Parking Division. It is SWBNO’s expectation that when an agency with criminal investigative authority such as OIG develops and documents such violations, that the information would be provided to the appropriate enforcement authority.”
Despite the December warning memos and January request for a crackdown, the violations persisted as recently as last week. Michel said the OIG will follow up once it releases its findings.
“Any and all aspects of this report are going to be furnished to the district attorney as well as the Louisiana State Police for any actions that they deem necessary,” Michel said.
Thomas said he was dismayed that the violations have persisted.
“Being exposed by you and by WWL should probably be shame enough,” Thomas said. “But I would hope and pray that there's no karma in that I hope and pray that there's nobody in their family like mine and many others who is handicapped.”
In a statement, Sewerage and Water Board Director Ghassan Korban wrote, “We have warned our employees about parking violations around our buildings and our partners at DPW have amplified their enforcement of street parking regulations around our facilities, which we fully support.”
Somebody apparently got the memo. Records show that since the last week of January, eight citations have been issued to improperly parked handicapped vehicles in front of the utility’s Joseph Street office.