Content area
Full Text
Now that the New Orleans City Council has promised to fully fund his new office, Inspector General Robert Cerasoli is racing to ramp up his operations.
On Tuesday, the City Council promised to provide Cerasoli's complete funding request of $2.9 million for the OIG and $300,000 for the Ethics Review Board. It finalized the budget Friday.
"The only thing I can leave New Orleans with is that I've done a good job, helped people, left with my reputation intact and did my part as a citizen of the United States to help New Orleans recover," Cerasoli told the Council Budget Committee Tuesday.
Council President Arnie Fielkow said the funding for Cerasoli's office "will be the third chapter in a historic period" of the city.
"I believe we need this desperately," said Fielkow, adding that "racial disharmony" demonstrated during last Monday's sanitation budget hearing regarding minority contracts "was hurtful" to him "spiritually."
If the city is going to talk seriously about economic development, fighting crime and reforming the "vulnerable" education system, then it is inconceivable not to give Cerasoli...