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New Orleans Inspector General

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

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Being Bob Cerasoli: Web extra quotes

Posted by Kevin Allman on Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 11:35 PM

This week's cover story, "Being Bob Cerasoli," left out a lot of thoughts from New Orleans' first-ever inspector general. Here are some of Cerasoli's quotes that didn't make the final cut (taken straight from the transcript):

On New Orleans' use, or misuse, of federal funds:

There are enormous amounts of federal money that are being used here that you could be using now, in the last four years, to educate, to have schools. They could have got together with the AFL-CIO. I even had this conversation with the head of the AFL-CIO trust fund who’s here from BostonI said, “Why aren’t they taking a portion of this money, using it to educate New Orleans youth, at-risk youth in the city of New Orleans?” And the projects that are left here have to use these youth that are educated with these funds to get the experience to build their own lives.

It’s a very simple thing. The money’s here now. It’s gonna be used over the next 10 years. Why isn’t anyone thinking this way? No, they’re not. They’re giving out all these contracts to all these people who aren’t from here, and none of the people that are here are going to benefit from this money.

It blows my mind. It’s absolutely… I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you. But I can’t… I’m an IG. I’ve gotta look at the stuff here. I’ve gotta find out what they’re doing with this money. But that would make sense to me. It would be a generation, truly, truly. If they took 1,000 youths from the inner city here, then did that, that alone would help transform a generation here....

There are kids here who are never gonna go to college. And if you want to put them on the same street corner with the drug dealer, and say, “Hey, I’m giving you a choice. You can do that, and end up dead like a lot of people you know; or you can do this, become an electrician or a plumber, and eventually, look, own your own business like those people there, and live in a secure environment, and have all the things you want.” Then at least you’re giving a choice, an option. You’re displaying that there is some public will to change things here.

But I don’t see that happening. I don’t see anyone stepping to the fore and doing that. And I understand. There are a lot of people that are engaged in the business community, there are a lot of non-profits that are engaged. But it’s not up to them; it’s up to the government. This attitude here, of putting everything into the hands of non-profits to do, instead of having the government do, has gotta end.

The government has to stand up for its responsibility. And that will initially, by the way, be counter-intuitive. It’s counter-intuitive. For us to go public and say, “We want to take all of the government and put it under the mayor and the council,” people might step back right now and say, “Oh, God, I don’t want to do that.” But in the future, you have to, because there’s no accountability here, there’s no “the buck stops here, it’s our responsibility, how come this isn’t being done?”

Tags: Blog Watch, News & Politics, Conspiracy Theories, Bob Cerasoli, New Orleans Inspector General, General