Tuesday, October 06, 2009

The first sentence says it all


Amazing at it sounds, former chief technology officer Greg Meffert still doesn't seem to grasp just how much trouble he's in
.

Stephanie Grace spells out Muppet's fate better than anyone has to date. I've always maintained that the "amazing" thing about New Orleans' corrupt elite is that they can't keep their damn mouths shut. Its not enough that they're lining their pockets, they feel the need to verbally justify it or in Muppet's case...even brag about it.

Basically, his defense for setting up the credit card kickback scheme was "I'm used to making more money....I deserved it." I'm not sure how that played with the jury in this civil case, but I'm really curious to see if that's his defense in a criminal case.

And Grace gives us this observation which I wasn't aware of:

He argued that it was a reward for unrelated work on kiosks and web solutions, and likened it to extra pay for police officers who work private security details.

A reward for kiosks and web solutions? The only companies I know of that got contracts for kiosks and web solutions are Logistix and MAS....both companies which he owns or has part ownership in, he had no ownership in Netmethods, St. Pierre's company who gave him the credit card. However both Logistix and MAS were awarded contracts immediately after he stepped down as CTO.

I don't quite get that....he was being rewarded for ideas he had to siphon more money out of the city IT department for things we probably didn't need to begin with....and to which his company would get the contracts for as soon as he stepped down as CTO. In other words, he was being rewarded for figuring out how to award himself, and possibly Netmethods, future contracts? I bet St. Pierre would like his 130k back right about now. And who was footing the bill for that reward? Who paid for that stroke of capitalistic genius? The city did...the city was ultimately paying that reward.

Imagine if that happened in the private sector. An agent of a company gets a credit card from a subcontractor as a reward for figuring out how to get the sub more money and future contracts regardless of whether or not the agent's company actually needed the services. It would most likely never happen because the brass in the company would never allow anything to bleed the bottom line and the agent would get canned in a heartbeat and possibly even sued.

In this case....the only brass Meffert had to justify his actions to was himself and Nagin. "Well....I think we need crime cameras....I think we need Kiosks...I think we have to use Dell...", yeah, he thought that because he was profiting from all of it. Even the stuff which we needed desperately, like an interoperability system, he scuttled because he was trying to push it back through his world. Not only did we get a bunch of shit we didn't need, we lost things we did need that could have saved lives in Katrina.

There is a very real cost of public corruption. What if all that money could have been diverted into the District Attorney's office....or used to put more police officers on the street? Or what if we actually would have been able do utilize the 7 million dollar grant the DOJ offered us to build an interoperability system that would have saved countless lives during Katrina?

I wonder if Meffert regrets those decisions or if he just regrets that he got caught....I wonder that a lot when I read stuff like this.

Correction:

Anonymous said...

zombie - "Logistix and MAS....both companies which he owns or has part ownership in"

Logistix is meffert's company. MAS has no known ownership link to meffert. please post otherwise.

Intelliport has an ownership link to meffert. and MAS licensed its CMS product. but that isnt ownership by any means.


11 comments:

Anonymous said...

This sentence says it all: It's called Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't help but share this comment from nola.com. My belly stil hurts from laughing...

Posted by ace00maker
October 06, 2009, 6:13AM
Bet Meffert's comments built a little chocolate city in Ray Ray's undergarments.

Anonymous said...

Meffert is unbelievable!

Any word yet on which of the genius City Attorneys told Greg "Satan is my Homeboy" Meffert that he was OK to pull this shit?

If Sherry Landry was the big Boss Lady over in the Law Department when this was going on, maybe she should be held accountable for what her staff was doing.

Anonymous said...

Put Meffert's ignorance in context: men who do not pay their own bills or arrange their own repayments talk in generalities such as this. You say it's elitism, but the more Meffert speaks, the more apparent it is he was the puppet and not the puppeteer.

How much did Nagin get from these contracts, to keep employing Ciber in its various formations? And how did the money get to him? Those are the real questions to dig for. City attorneys don't run the contract scams: there's got to be kickbacks or hidden deals from the top on out.

Jason Brad Berry said...

Anon 5:13,

That's a very astute observation. It does seem like he's almost clueless as to the gravity of the situation and to where money actually comes from.

Anonymous said...

Anon 5:13, thanks for the good post.

Request to those still working at City Hall:

Please blow the whistle on what you know. Just snitch. Please just snitch.

oyster said...

"the more Meffert speaks, the more apparent it is he was the puppet and not the puppeteer."

So concise! Very well put.

whirlygurl said...

Sociopath's have no sense of guilt Muppet is clueless because he actually thinks what he did was OK. I don't think Nagin knew....call me naive, but I think Nagin thought this was his parachute once he left city hall. Not during it. He needed a place to land and Meffert told him he had a plan....not sure Nagin knew the details. Meffert always looks like a deer in the headlights.....and anyone who admitted what he did during the civil trial, hoping to "clear" his name is delusional.

Anonymous said...

“There is no such thing as a ‘no bid’ contract.”

Untrue.

Just a few examples:

CIBER received their initial contract without submitting a bid or a proposal in response to an RFP.

Benetech – who Ellis admitted to performing side work for in the press -- received their contract with the technology department without submitting a bid or a proposal in response to an RFP.

The City routinely hands out contracts for $15,000 or less which do not require submission of a bid of a proposal in response to an RFP.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, last anon. Right on.

5:13, you are so cool.

Anonymous said...

zombie - "Logistix and MAS....both companies which he owns or has part ownership in"

Logistix is meffert's company. MAS has no known ownership link to meffert. please post otherwise.

Intelliport has an ownership link to meffert. and MAS licensed its CMS product. but that isnt ownership by any means.