NEW ORLEANS — In the blink of a news cycle, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson went from being praised as a hero of Carnival season to the subject of intense scrutiny for her decision to put more than a dozen top deputies in high-end hotel rooms while they helped with parade security.
WWL-TV exposed that Huston paid more than $18,000 for hotel rooms for 13 staff at the Omni Royal Orleans, some for eight days and nights leading up to Fat Tuesday. Two of the top officials stayed additional nights at the Sheraton and Marriott hotels over the first weekend of parades.
WWL-TV has now discovered that multiple rooms went empty for multiple nights, several sources confirmed. In addition, a full accounting of the rooms is under investigation by the New Orleans Inspector General’s office, the sheriff’s office acknowledged.
“So not only were they not entitled to receive those rooms, but those rooms, some of them, went unused. So it's waste on top of waste,” said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the non-profit Metropolitan Crime Commission. “This is the nightmare from Mardi Gras for the sheriff's office.”
Hutson declined to be interviewed about the empty rooms, but her office addressed some of the new issues being raised by the vacancies.
The rooms may have gone unused, the sheriff’s office stated, but they were “booked at the request of leadership based on an express need for a place that they could rest based on the long hours required of them,” the sheriff’s office said in an emailed statement.
“Providing a safe place for staff to sleep, wash or rest while they went above and beyond to perform their duties for this agency and the city is not something that needs justification,” the statement reads. “These men and women were asked not only to manage their regular job duties, but to also coordinate logistics for something that had never been done in the city’s history – a task they happily threw themselves into in support of the Mardi Gras krewes and the city who called on us for help.”
Hutson and the sheriff’s office were widely praised for helping secure a relatively safe Carnival parade season. But as reports of the hotel rooms surfaced, everyone from Goyeneche to city council members questioned the lodging expenses, especially after the city ruled against reimbursing the sheriff.
Most of the officers from agencies from outside of the metro area were put up in hotel rooms at the city’s expense. A cooperative endeavor agreement crafted by the city specified that lodging would be covered for agencies more than 35 miles away.
From the start, Hutson strongly defended getting rooms for her employees.
“This team, I am very proud of the work they did. And I think this is money well spent,” Sheriff Susan Hutson said in March after the controversy surfaced. “I think we made a good call with these folks.”
But not long after the sheriff’s full-throated defense, the city indicated it would not reimburse the hotel costs. That was followed by WWL-TV obtaining emails showing a fierce internal debate over the rooms and, ultimately, the forced resignations of four of Hutson’s executive leaders involved the controversy.
The emails revealed that then-Chief Financial Officer David Trautenberg and then-Legal Counsel Graham Bosworth not only questioned the rooms, but also whether the assigned deputies actually used them.
As the internal squabbling intensified, Trautenberg and Bosworth were fired a month later along with Assistant Sheriff Kristen Morales, who helped lead the Mardi Gras detail. One other executive staff member, Assistant Sheriff Pearlina Thomas was also fired.
“Looks like the CFO was terminated for providing the inconvenient truth,” Goyeneche said.
City Council Vice-President Helena Moreno was among the city council members who questioned the need to put sheriff’s office employees in hotel rooms in the city where they already report to work. Moreno said the new findings of vacant rooms makes a bad situation worse.
“Are they OK with just burning money, literally, like theirs on hotel rooms that nobody stayed at?” Moreno asked.
Amid the swirling controversy is the question of who finally did pay for the rooms.
After it became clear that the city would not, a Vermillion Parish K-9 company said it would donate the money, but it later reneged.
The sheriff's office now says the rooms were paid out of its “special projects account,” avoiding the direct use of taxpayer money.
That account uses money from sources like vending machines and fundraisers, Sheriff’s Office Communications Director Casey McGee said.
That arrangement raises a whole new set of financial questions, an area where Moreno and other council members say the sheriff continues to be vague. WWL-TV asked for a financial breakdown of the special projects account, but the Sheriff’s Office could not immediately supply the information.
“I think the only way to prevent these types of wasteful expenditures is for there to be full transparency,” Moreno said.
WWL-TV is not alone in trying to get a full accounting of the hotel rooms. Several sources told us that the city's inspector general has launched a full-scale investigation, including issuing subpoenas and questioning deputies. The sheriff's office acknowledged the investigation and said it is cooperating fully.
The IG’s office declined to comment on its probe.
Hutson, however, is questioning the basis of the probe.
“No public funds were spent on those hotel rooms,” the sheriff released in a statement. “I also want to mention that no one from the OIG has asked me anything about that bill before writing their report. And I’m curious about how many man-hours they spent for something that wasn’t paid with public funds.”