Testifying in New Orleans federal court last week, former New Orleans Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert said tech vendor Mark St. Pierre struck a quid pro quo in 2005 with then-Lafayette CTO Keith Thibodeaux, under which LCG would hire one of St. Pierre’s companies, NetMethods, if Meffert would hire Thibodeaux’s wife. St. Pierre is on trial for allegedly bribing two New Orleans technology chiefs in exchange for no-bid city contracts; he is charged with wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.
The Times-Picayune reported:
Meffert also testified about the arrangement he and St. Pierre made with the former technology chief in Lafayette. Meffert said he struck out on a proposal to Lafayette tech chief Keith Thibodeaux to get St. Pierre’s NetMethods business in the south-central Louisiana city, but St. Pierre came up with something that worked.
“Keith texted me and said they had worked out a deal where Lafayette would hire NetMethods if I hired Keith’s wife at the city (of New Orleans),” Meffert said. “I freaked out. I called him and said, ‘That’s great, but don’t ever write something like that in a text. It’s stupid.’”
For Lafayette city-parish officials — and anyone else who had been willing to give Thibodeaux the benefit of the doubt — that appears to be confirmation Thibodeaux not only knew of his wife’s involvement but played a key role in lining up the work for her. Chief Administrative Officer Dee Stanley, who also testified in the case earlier this week and was Thibodeaux’s boss at the time, declined comment.
City-Parish President Joey Durel and Stanley acted swiftly in terminating Thibodeaux in October 2010, shortly after federal investigators informed them of his wife’s contract with St. Pierre's company in New Orleans. Keith Thibodeaux has not been charged in the alleged kickback scheme. His attorney, Mike Skinner, declined to comment on Meffert’s testimony.
But it’s difficult to understand what motivation Meffert might have to lie at this point. He pleaded guilty in November to taking bribes from St. Pierre and faces a maximum of eight years in prison. He told jurors that he and St. Pierre had concocted stories about what they would say in case any issues arose in public questioning the deals, WWL reported.
Because Celeste Thibodeaux had no technology experience, Meffert testified that he came up with a position called “grant administrator” and paid her more than $90 an hour to work on the city’s contract with St. Pierre-owned Imagine, The T-P reported. He said that because she lived in Lafayette, Celeste hardly ever went to New Orleans, except once every few weeks “just to show her face,” the paper quoted him saying, noting Celeste made $236,000 in 14 months.
About the time Celeste was brought on board, Keith orchestrated a $45,000 contract between LCG and Meffert’s company for technology consulting and got him paid quickly, documents show (Keith even processed the invoice before the contract was signed). City-parish records also reveal that Stanley and others questioned Thibodeaux several times about the pre-payment for services and what LCG was getting for its money — at one point prompting the following April 5, 2007, email response from a frustrated Thibodeaux: “Double check it, triple check it, put on memo form, stamp and send. This is the third time I have been chastised for this. Maybe it will be the last.” In court, Stanley said after being contacted by the feds last year that he personally investigated how much work NetMethods did on the $45,000 contract. The result of his findings: “zero.”
Thibodeaux then secured another contract for NetMethods to provide crime cameras — this one for $141,000.
Read more from the T-P, which has extensive coverage of the trial on its website, here.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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