(C) Verite News New Orleans This story was originally published by Verite News New Orleans and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Smart cities findings prompt proposed changes to city contracting, disclosure laws [1] ['Katie Jane Fernelius', 'More Katie Jane Fernelius', 'Verite News'] Date: 2024-01-10 New Orleans City Councilmember Helena Moreno has introduced three proposed changes to city law meant to help the city avoid some of the problems that led to Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s scandal-plagued “smart cities” proposal in 2021 and 2022. If passed, the ordinances would broaden and further clarify how the city and its employees should conduct themselves when soliciting and selecting vendors for city contracts as well as adding new financial disclosure requirements for some high-level city officials. The proposed ordinances, discussed at a Wednesday (Jan. 10) council committee meeting, come two months after the Office of the Inspector General released a report of its investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by two city employees during the bidding process for the smart cities contract. The smart cities initiative had two primary goals: creating a “city-directed” internet service provider and outfitting city infrastructure, like traffic lights, with data-collecting “smart” devices. The deal was abandoned in 2022 as allegations of bid-rigging and self-dealing started to surface following a series of investigative reports by The Lens. The Inspector General’s investigation centered on former Director of the Mayor’s Office of Utilities Jonathan Rhodes and Christopher Wolff, a city IT staffer, who were involved in the smart cities proposal and contracting process. The November OIG report concluded that the two had a pre-existing relationship with the group that was ultimately selected to lead the smart cities project and did not properly disclose that information or recuse themselves from the bidding process, potentially violating several city and state laws. Rhodes and Wolff were previously cleared of state ethics code violations, and both have since maintained that they did nothing wrong. But the November report went beyond that, alleging that the two may have violated criminal law. The report was forwarded to the Louisiana Board of Ethics and the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office. Asked to comment on Moreno’s proposals, Wolff’s attorney Michael Kennedy wrote in an email that his client is a technology expert, not a legal one. “The authoring of city ordinances falls to the officials, duly elected by the citizens of New Orleans,” Kennedy wrote. “As such these ordinances and any language contained therein fall outside his area of expertise, and it would be improper to comment on them at this time.” Rhodes did not respond to a request for comment. The Office of Inspector General also identified failures by the city to be fully transparent about its relationship with Ignite Cities, a Chicago-based consulting firm (now called Elevate Cities) that provided “pro bono” consulting services to the city, but also pushed the smart cities plan even as it had a working relationship with some of the companies behind Smart+Connected NOLA, the business consortium that was selected to lead the smart cities deal in 2022 before bowing out as a council investigation began to take shape. Moreno’s proposed ordinances directly respond to the issues surfaced in the OIG investigation and were drafted based on its recommendations. At Wednesday’s meeting, Inspector General Ed Michel spoke in favor of the ordinances proposed by Moreno, and directly connected it to the smart cities investigation. “Once these ordinances are enacted, part of the mitigation strategy will help us before it gets to that point,” Michel said. “Given that the city spends more than $300 million each year in association with procurement, it is incumbent upon us to mitigate fraud, waste and abuse where and when we find it.” The proposed ordinances require more rigorous documentation of the city’s working relationships with outside groups in BRASS – the city’s software for procurement and finance – and broadening and clarifying the language in the city code to require employees to disclose their affiliations with both nonprofit and for-profit entities, even those that make no money. The latter proposal is also a response to the report’s findings. Rhodes and Wolff worked on outside projects with JLC Infrastructure and Qualcomm, two of the companies behind Smart+Connected NOLA, while the group was seeking to do business with New Orleans. The IG’s office did not find evidence that the two city employees received kickbacks related to their smart cities work, and the two have disputed that the side work constitutes wrongdoing because, they said, Verge Internet never made any money. “We heard from the city employees that while they may have been working with Qualcomm in another city, they weren’t necessarily being paid, or that even though they had a company listed in documents for another project, that company hadn’t made any money,” Moreno said. “This closes a very important loophole where we can find those work connections with work contractors and potential employees even if at this time they aren’t getting paid.” Initially the city did not disclose that it had a formal working agreement with Ignite Cities. But documents subpoenaed as part of the council investigation revealed a signed agreement showing that the city began formally working with the consultant in 2019. The agreement was not entered into the contracting database. The city also resisted providing documentation when subpoenaed by the city council, but eventually complied. One of Moreno’s proposed ordinances clarifies the city’s responsibility to comply with future OIG investigations, providing documentation when asked, and another broadens the language of “contract” in a part of city law specifying what contracts must be made easily available to the public so that all formalized relationships, even pro bono ones, must be documented and shared in BRASS. “These safeguards are really a result of the findings from the IG recent report on the procurement around the smart cities project,” Moreno said at the meeting. “As you all may recall from seeing the report, [Michel] did find some potential violations of several local and state laws by city employees around this procurement, including false swearing and filing and maintaining false public records among others.” Related Stories Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. [END] --- [1] Url: https://veritenews.org/2024/01/10/smart-cities-findings-prompt-proposed-changes-to-city-contracting-disclosure-laws/ Published and (C) by Verite News New Orleans Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 US. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/veritenews/