Critics say it didn’t get enough public input
By Laura Maggi
Times-Picayune
NEW ORLEANS — As Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman urged taxpayers to approve a $63 million bond issue to improve New Orleans’ criminal justice infrastructure, two community leaders criticized the proposal because they felt it should have received more public input before being placed on Saturday’s ballot.
Norris Henderson, co-director of Safe Streets/Strong Communities, and Michael Cowan, assistant to the president of Loyola University, said citizens should have been given an opportunity to comment on the proposal, such as at a City Council hearing. They also criticized Gusman’s focus on constructing a new jail, claiming that overall jail size should be dramatically smaller.
But standing outside the temporary and substandard quarters of the Orleans Parish coroner’s office, which is housed within a former funeral parlor in Central City, supporters of the measure said the criticism is unwarranted.
Gusman, Municipal Court Judge Paul Sens and Frank Minyard, the coroner, said critics should focus on the dire need to improve the facilities within the criminal justice system. Gusman said he reached out to a number of groups, including individual city council members, to brief them on the proposal.
“This is a consolidated, comprehensive effort,” Sens said.
Sens pointed to the inadequate coroner facility that forces Minyard to outsource toxicology work. The judge said space at Municipal Court is so limited that officials are unable to offer secluded places for domestic violence victims to avoid encounters with their accused attackers before court hearings.
During a tour of his office, Minyard pointed to refrigerator trucks in the back parking lot, which house bodies waiting to be picked up by funeral parlors. A mechanic must come every other day to make sure the trucks are running properly, he said.
The dilapidated state of many jail buildings should be reason enough to vote for the proposal, Gusman said. More than $10 million will be combined with Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars to build a 1,500-bed jail that would also include centers to offer vocational training to certain inmates. Another $30 million will be directed to other projects at the jails.
Portions of money from the bond issue would go to five other New Orleans agencies: the municipal and juvenile courts, coroner, district attorney and clerk of criminal court. The $63 million in bonds would not require a tax increase; the work would by paid for extending the current 2.9 mills that Gusman’s law enforcement district assesses on property owners. The district last issued bonds in 2001.
The main focus of Henderson’s critique is the ultimate size of the Orleans Parish jail facilities, which went from more than 7,000 beds before Katrina to about 2,500 beds. Gusman said he ultimately wants a jail that can house 3,500 people.
Henderson said the city should have a much smaller facility, noting that the national average is 256 jailed people for every 100,000 residents in the city -- which even at a high estimate of 400,000 New Orleans residents would amount to a jail to house slightly more than 1,000 people.
Copyright 2008 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company