It’s been more than 10 years in the making, but New Orleans is another step closer to ending public corruption. The city council is set to vote Nov. 30 on funding for Inspector General Robert Cerasoli’s office, which for now is located in a study room in Monroe Library.
Cerasoli addressed a packed group of community leaders in Nunemaker Hall Nov. 27 and answered questions from a panel, which included two members of the city council and the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J, university president. Wildes is also chairman of the Ethics Review Board for New Orleans.
In 1995, New Orleans voters approved revisions to the City Charter, authorizing an inspector general’s office and creating an Ethics Review Board; however, neither was implemented until last year, when the City Council voted to set them up.
Giving credit to the city for creating his position, Cerasoli acknowledged the elected officials involved in bringing him to New Orleans, calling them “brave.”
“Criticism is healthy, it’s important. Indeed, the very purpose of the inspector general is to build into government a mechanism for criticism and self-correction,” Cerasoli said. “The major challenge confronting the inspector general has been and will always be to promote responsible change while opposing bad deals for the public.”
One of the goals of the inspector general, Cerasoli said, is to see that money allocated by the government for people in need gets to those people.
“Our principal objective is to prevent fraud, waste and abuse before they occur. A good inspector general puts 80 percent of (his) effort in staff labor to intensive prevention as opposed to detection,” Cerasoli said. “There will be detection, because as we do our prevention work, we will run across things that deserve to be investigated and eventually prosecuted. But make no mistake: The inspector general is not a prosecutor.”
The inspector general’s office will work with law enforcement agencies, he said. One of the first tasks on his list was to create relationships with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office in New Orleans, something he prides himself on already accomplishing.
Once in full operation, sometime in 2008, Cerasoli envisions his office serving four specific functions: investigating, auditing, inspecting and conducting performance reviews of all city agencies and projects.
The basis of his work is a set of principles he attributes to his former Harvard professor Cornel West, who calls them four fundamental features of prophetic thought. The first is discernment, second is empathy, third is keeping track of human hypocrisy and fourth is hope.
“There are so many hope peddlers in the United States now. We’ve all been faced with them. I don’t want to be another hope peddler. If I leave here just being a hope peddler, I leave here being a failure with my reputation in tatters,” Cerasoli said.
In a city accustomed to corruption and full of distrust for public officials, Cerasoli wants to create a brighter future.
“There are people who are capable, and I’m here to try and prove to you that I am,” he said. “I’m here to try and keep hope alive so that people can walk in the spirit of honesty and integrity and believe that their government is doing the right thing.”
Jordan Hultine can be reached at [email protected].
