Council members also questioned aides of the Nagin administration, with much of the questioning centered on the list the administration provided last week to Eyewitness News and to the council.  That is the list that a 4 Investigates report on Monday night revealed inaccuracies with.

“All this seems to be done behind the desk,” said District A councilmember Shelley Midura.

“It only took Channel 4 a week, with no auditors, to verify what was supposed to be the list, to come up with so many inaccuracies.”

According to Nagin aides, this week city inspectors will be eyeing properties identified through invoices they used to pay contractors.  According to City Hall, that will answer whether the NOAH program misspent any money.

“I cannot tell you exactly what they will find in the field,” said Nagin aide Julie Schwam Harris at Wednesday’s meeting.

“What I believe they will find is hundreds of houses were done appropriately.   There were mistakes made in transposition, and yes, we need to find those mistakes and ask for the funding to come back to us if we didn't pay for the service,” Harris said.

Also on Wednesday, Mayor Ray Nagin spoke to a group of attorneys at the Sheraton Hotel, beginning his talk by criticizing WWL-TV’s series of reports and saying the latest stories used an inaccurate list.

“I don't know what you're using,” Mayor Nagin said.  “I gave you the list NOAH gave us.  You need the list that supports the payments.”

That is a different story than Nagin told WWL last week, when he gave Eyewitness News the list referenced in Wednesday's interview.

“The list that counts is the list where we paid for services and that list was provided to you,” Nagin said.

From that list, Eyewitness News determined the two highest-paid contractors were Hall Enterprises and Parish-Dubuclet.  Secretary of State records show the owners of both companies have past or present business ties to the former executive director of NOAH, Stacey Jackson.

When asked on Wednesday whether he had any concerns that Jackson had hired the contractors for NOAH because of those ties, Nagin said “I think that it's something if it's true, we'll investigate and we'll deal with it.”

The fourth highest-paid contractor, S&A Construction earned $137,000 in the home remediation program.  According to Secretary of State records, the owner of S&A Construction is Nagin's brother-in-law, Cedric Smith.

When asked whether there was any conflict, Nagin said Wednesday “Not that I'm aware of.” 

When asked by WWL whether he had asked NOAH former executive director Stacey Jackson to hire Smith, Nagin answered “Absolutely not.  I don't deal with Ms. Jackson.”

Through his attorney Robert Jenkins, Cedric Smith had no comment.

On Tuesday, WWL-TV submitted a request to view all of the invoices the city used to pay NOAH contractors.  The station is still waiting to see those invoices.