NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Inspector General released a new audit Thursday that found city building inspectors failed to show up for safety inspections at construction sites 20% of the time between April 2019 and March 2020.
The report echoes the findings of a joint WWL-TV/Times-Picayune investigation conducted in January and February 2020, which found the same 20% no-show rate by reviewing the GPS tracking data from city inspectors’ city vehicles and comparing those with the inspection reports they filed.
It's unclear why the Inspector General’s report looks back at how city building inspectors conducted their work more three years ago. The report says its analysis was prompted by the deadly collapse of the partially completed Hard Rock Hotel on Oct. 12, 2019.
Since the Hard Rock tragedy, which killed three workers and injured dozens, WWL-TV has conducted several investigations into the work of city inspectors. The station uncovered secret audio recorded in September 2019, less than a month before the Hard Rock collapse, in which the head of the Safety and Permits Department implored his staff to actually show up and take pictures at inspections.
“If we don't do a good job keeping those records and creating those records and doing our jobs, and everybody is relying on that, then it's all going to come tumbling down,” then-director of Safety and Permits Zach Smith said in a meeting of all inspectors on Sept. 16, 2019.
But in early 2020, WWL-TV and the newspaper used the GPS and inspection report data, which were obtained through public records requests, to determine that three city inspectors failed to show up to perform critical inspections at the Hard Rock prior to the collapse. That included one no-show inspection by former inspector Julie Tweeter on Oct. 1, 2019, that OK’d the pouring of cement on the top floors. Just one week later, those upper floors pancaked, crushing three workers to death.
A previous IG investigation recommended criminal charges against Tweeter and two other inspectors who allegedly skipped inspections, Eric Treadaway and Thomas Dwyer. District Attorney Jason Williams received that report a year ago but has said he is waiting to complete a full investigation on what caused the collapse before filing any criminal charges. The deadline to do so is Oct. 12, 2023.
After reviewing the three inspectors’ work at the Hard Rock, the IG expanded its review to include those three inspectors’ work on other construction projects and to look at the records of other city inspectors, just as WWL-TV and The Times-Picayune first did two and a half years ago. The IG looked at a sample of 90 inspections recorded by the three Hard Rock inspectors and found they had a 17% no-show rate overall. It also reviewed a sample of 93 inspections recorded by other city building, mechanical and electrical inspectors had an even worse no-show rate, 24%.
The IG also found inspectors tended to stay at construction sites for only a short time during the inspections they did attend – spending less than 10 minutes at 40% of the inspections the IG reviewed. The report says inspectors often failed to upload photos and other inspection records from the construction sites, as required by city policies.
“Improperly performed inspections could lead to catastrophic and deadly situations,” the report states. “It is imperative that city inspectors perform their inspections in accordance with policies and procedures before an inspection is passed to ensure buildings and work comply with applicable codes and approved plans.”
As WWL-TV first reported in 2021, the city conducted its own internal audit of inspections and GPS records that found no-show rates only marginally improved to about 17% in the summer of 2020, even after the Hard Rock collapse and the subsequent media and IG investigations.
The IG report recommends tighter policies for inspectors to attend inspections, upload photographs from those inspections and follow a checklist to ensure they are spending enough time checking for safety violations. The city said it already addressed those recommendations in August 2021.
Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano announced a total overhaul of the Safety & Permits Department in March 2020 after the WWL-TV/Times-Picayune investigation, but he acknowledged in October 2020 that the city was having trouble hiring new inspectors to meet increasing demand.
The backlog of building plan reviews, permitting and inspections has only worsened since Hurricane Ida and led to a rash of construction projects moving forward without required permits. Last month, a worker was electrocuted while doing a whole-house renovation without a permit, according to a violation recorded in city permitting records.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office said this week it is in the process of negotiating with private staffing companies to augment its inspections staff, both for permitting and code enforcement.
“The staff augmentation for the Departments of Code Enforcement and Safety and Permits is envisioned as a short-term measure while we solve the staffing challenges which the City of New Orleans, like nearly all organizations these days, faces,” city spokesman John Lawson said. “We intend to replace any private sector, contracted staff with full-time, public employees at the earliest opportunity.”
Lawson said Cantrell has launched programs to improve city salaries to compete for qualified applicants with private, third-party inspection firms.
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