The city’s policies for emergency purchasing are riddled with inconsistencies and vague language, creating opportunities for public corruption, according to a letter by the New Orleans Office of Inspector General published Thursday (June 5).
When the mayor, governor or president officially declares an emergency — which typically happens during a hurricane or other major weather event, as well as other urgent and unusual situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic — state law allows local governments to waive their normal contracting policies, allowing them to quickly purchase supplies without going through the normal, often lengthy, procurement process.
But recent city policy rewrites under Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration have allowed departments to expedite the purchasing for urgent needs even without an emergency declaration. For the review issued Thursday, evaluators with the Office of Inspector General specifically studied the city’s internal procedures and policies for awarding contracts during undeclared emergencies. It found that city policies often contradicted one another and were unclear on what justifies an expedited purchase.
“This inconsistency allowed departments to selectively choose which City policies to follow for making emergency procurements in instances when purchases forbidden by some City procurement policies were not explicitly forbidden by other policies,” the letter said.
For example, while one city policy states that — even during an emergency — contracts for major public works projects must be awarded to the lowest bidder, another allows the lowest-bidder requirement to be waived.
The Inspector General evaluators also identified an apparently common practice in city contracting called “after-the-fact purchasing,” which, they said, is not allowed under state or city law. An after-the-fact purchase allows a department staffer to procure goods or services without advance authorization from the Bureau of Purchasing. But city law expressly prohibits such purchases.
“Evaluators found no City policies or City Code articles to support the use of ATF purchases,” the letter said. “Further, administrators and staff in Purchasing were unaware of any such written policies.”
When evaluators moved past policies and focused on the city’s practice of awarding emergency contracts, they said it was hard to actually find those contracts – a point echoed by the Bureau of Purchasing. This is because BRASS, the city’s accounting software, does not readily have a way for departments to “tag” emergency contracts or include the kind of documentation typically required in emergency contracts, like “after-the-fact” justification forms.
“The lack of categorized and easily identifiable emergency contract documentation in BRASS hindered Purchasing’s ability to monitor the emergency procurement process,” the letter said. “The lack of categorized and easily identifiable emergency contract documentation in BRASS hindered Purchasing’s ability to monitor the emergency procurement process.”
According to the letter, only one department could readily provide a list of all of its emergency contracts: the Department of Property Management. That was only because a “DPM staff member voluntarily categorized the department’s procurements and adopted a naming convention” that allowed the contracts to be easily identified.
When evaluators looked at Property Management’s emergency contracts, they found that the department has made extensive use of the city’s new rules allowing expedited purchasing without an emergency declaration. According to the letter, in 2024, the department made 72 emergency purchases, totalling $1.2 million, during undeclared emergencies. At least 53 of them, totalling $337,000, were made with after-the-fact purchasing.
“According to DPM staff, the department used [after-the-fact justification forms] more than they should, generally to cut costs or to pay vendors who were already on the site of a project and identified a new issue that needed immediate repair,” the report read.
In one example, the department quickly procured and approved $269,000 in fencing for Duncan Plaza, despite there being no declaration of emergency from the council, as required under the city’s 1999 governing policy for emergency contracts. Instead, the department used a 2022 policy, issued by Cantrell’s Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño, which created an expedited process for certain contracts without a declaration.
“On the approval form, the former Chief Procurement Officer commented that the Expediency Contract Routing Form should not have been used,” the Inspector General’s letter said.
The city is currently in the middle of developing a new procurement manual, which will involve a review of all of its procurement policies. So, the Office of Inspector General sees this as an opportunity for the city to remove “inconsistent, contradictory, and vague language” in its policies.
The watchdog agency has asked the city to work with BRASS administrators to develop tools that will make it easier to filter, sort and extract procurement data, which would make it easier for departments to “tag” and find contracts on emergency procurement.
The Mayor’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
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