NEW ORLEANS -- A city contract, signed by the indicted ex-chief of New Orleans’ technology office, paid a computer vendor millions of dollars for services the city could not prove it had provided, according to a state legislative auditor’s report.
Eyewitness News obtained a draft copy of the report Friday evening. It shows that Meffert signed a contract with a company called Ciber for $1.85 million, for a school software system called Globalview.
The report says city officials were unaware of the software and could provide no evidence that the software even existed.
The contract was signed by Meffert, whom the audit said circumvented the bid process and state law.
A call Friday seeking comment from Meffert’s criminal defense attorney, Randy Smith,was not returned.
Meffert, his wife Linda and former city technology vendor Mark St. Pierre, face a 63-count indictment in an unrelated public corruption case.
In all, there were fiveCiber contracts totaling $47 million, but the legislative auditor’s office says those contracts lacked performance measures, schedules and monitoring plans to ensure the work was performed and on schedule.
Ciber, based in Colorado, was one of the defendants sued in an earlier civil case involving the city’s beleaguered crime camera program. The plaintiffs eventually settled with the company and dropped them from the suit.
The name of the company also surfaced when another former technology director for the city, Anthony Jones, was fired after an audit accused him of taking a gratuity from Ciber.
