NEW ORLEANS -- The New Orleans Council on Aging provides a long list of services to the elderly, including senior centers, health screening and Meals-on-Wheels.
But Executive Director Howard Rodgers says it's getting harder to provide those programs because the agency has outgrown its Canal Street headquarters.
“We're trying to find us another location because we're really cramped here,” Rodgers said.
After scouting for a new location that would provide enough room for a new senior center, Rodgers lined up financing for the move through an obscure 50-year-old state agency known as HEAL, the Health Education Authority of Louisiana.
“We turned our application in, met with his board of directors at that time, and they approved us to receive bonding,” Rodgers said.
But a recent government tug-of-war over a lucrative downtown New Orleans parking garage has put Rodgers' plans back to square one. The garage, adjacent to New Orleans City Hall at 300 LaSalle St., also houses HEAL’s main office.
So how does a power struggle over a parking garage affect the Council on Aging? The garage had been the sole source of money for HEAL, generating up to $350,000 a year. But it was recently the target of a successful takeover by the state department of administration, leaving HEAL without its own funding, and its future very much in doubt.
Over the past year, several obstacles standing in the way of a state takeover were removed.
First, former HEAL director Jacob Johnson was blasted in a 2017 report by the state Legislative Auditor. The audit criticized Johnson and HEAL for failing to fund new projects while racking up expenses on items like travel.
Johnson vigorously contested the audit findings, stating that new projects – like the Council on Aging expansion – were in the pipeline and expenses were necessary to jump-start a long-dormant agency.
More importantly, Johnson claimed that state officials eyeing a take-over of the parking garage targeted him with a negative audit to make it easier to get rid of him. Johnson backed up his claims with a defamation lawsuit against the legislative auditor’s office.
Johnson’s lawsuit is based largely on tape recordings he made during meetings with of an audit team member, accountant Justin James, who has since been fired.
“They felt like, look, we can divide and conquer here,” James can be heard telling Johnson on one of the tapes. “Let's find out everything we can. Let's divide him. Let's leave him on an island alone so we can crush this agency.”
With the added friction of the lawsuit, a newly appointed board of directors, meeting Johnson for the first time at a Feb. 1 meeting, decided not to renew his contract.
With Johnson gone, board chairman Charles Cravins pushed for an agreement for the state to take over the garage. The transfer was approved despite a warning from longtime board attorney Henry Kinney that the move is illegal.
“You have no legislative authority to do what is proposed in this document,” Kinney told the board at a recent meeting.
After the parking garage was transferred to the state, Cravins abruptly resigned as board chairman.
That left one last step in closing the agency: an act of the legislature. An amendment to do just that was tacked on to a bill in the last days of the spring session.
“They were clearly trying to sneak this by us,” activist Kim Ford said. “That brought this girl from the Lower Ninth Ward to the capitol to fight this.”
Ford and a handful of other supporters were able to kill the amendment at the last minute.
“Three or four people were able to change the course of what others might view as an impossible push,” activist Tracy Riley said.
Riley is a retired Army major who sought HEAL funding of her own, to help veterans with mental illness. But Riley recently received a message from HEAL that the agency has “suspended” its application process.
“Nothing's really moving forward as state law dictates that it should,” Riley said.
Without a director, without a permanent board chairman, and its operations suspended, HEAL and its two remaining employees have no mission and no clue about its future.
The New Orleans Council on Aging also was left in the lurch.
With his need for a new headquarters becoming urgent, Rodgers says he will soon have to find some other way to finance the move. For now, expanded programs for the city's growing elderly population will have to wait.
“It's basically we're all just sitting in limbo right now waiting to hear what's going on,” he said. “At this point it doesn't seem like it's there, so it's a little disappointing, but it's just something that happens in life.”