"We" deserve a piece of the action

Plaintiff says Greg Meffert ordered crime cameras from Dell before he left New Orleans City Hall

Perrin testified that he met in February 2005, more than a year into the crime camera project, with Chris Drake, one of St. Pierre's employees who worked in the city's tech office. It was at that meeting at Mr. John's Steakhouse that Drake floated the idea of having some of the work go to St. Pierre's companies.

"I was shocked the words came out of Chris’ mouth. He said Mr. Meffert told him this was the largest tech project in the city at the time 'and we didn’t even have a piece of it.' I thought that was kind of strange that (Meffert) was using the word 'we,'" Perrin said.

"I said, Chris, I don’t think this is ethical. He said they had already passed it by the city attorney, who said it would not be a conflict. I said, 'Chris, these guys worked way too hard to put this system together and for you to take one of them out and put yourself in would be wrong.' So, I declined."

That pretty much sums up how Meffert, St. Pierre, Drake, Domke viewed the city tech department....if there's a contract to be let...WE deserve it.
To me, the most interesting role in this whole mess is Mark Kurt's. I get this picture of Kurt as being the reluctant soldier. I think he really hated the position he was in and he knew it reeked to high heaven, but he probably got so far into it that he had to continue. He didn't want the CTO position in the first place but Nagin "assured" him he was the man for the job. I think when Stacy Head started putting pressure on him to answer questions about the cameras and then when the story started making its way into the press, he saw the writing on the wall and bailed out while he could. Note Kurt's comment to Perrin that Meffert had laid a turd on his desk before he left....I really think Kurt felt like he was trapped from the beginning...and he was.
Interesting to note that in the period immediately following Kurt's departure, Benetech was hired...without bid...to run the city's IT services as an interim contractor. Anthony Jones was eventually promoted to the CTO position...even though he didn't have the credentials to acquire the job. For that matter, Benetech wasn't qualified to do the job as the only "tech" part of their resume was creating security cards for casinos and NASA. Now of course they're doing everything from the French Market to a 100 million dollar ACE contract. I don't know what kind of stroke Bennett has but he's pulling the moon down from the sky.
Oh and when they "passed it by the city attorney" who said it was ok....who the hell would say that is ok?

UPDATE:  This explain's a lot:

Anonymous said...

as for benetech, they have this service disabled veteran owned small business deal that gets them set aside government contracts. iarrons dad, bill, must have slipped on a bannana peel while in the army medical corps. when associated contractors was bought by HSOA bill bennett was listed as owning 1/3 of a.c. making them unqualified as a SDVOSB. that did not stop them. in investor presentations HSOA would tell people of this SDVOSB scam they had going. this is a slap in the face to all truly disabled veterans.