E-mails show 'whiz' of the Nagin administration was also working to aid former partners
by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune
Tuesday March 24, 2009, 10:33 PM
When he became Mayor Ray Nagin's first technology chief, Greg Meffert -- who was hailed as an entrepreneurial wizard -- said he had forsaken lucrative options in the private sector for a selfless mission to modernize the city's broken bureaucracy.
Meffert, arguably the new mayor's boldest hire, blasted the legacy of waste he inherited, vowing a revolution in efficiency and transparency. He installed new computers and phones, offered city services on a redesigned Web site, and launched an intriguing crime-fighting tool: surveillance cameras in violent neighborhoods.
But since Meffert left City Hall in 2006, the luster has come off some of those monuments. None is more tarnished than the crime-camera system, the target of two recent scathing audits and one of the Nagin administration's most nettlesome failures. Not only have the cameras rarely worked, the project has been marred by allegations of favoritism and patronage of the sort Meffert once decried.
A review of Meffert's e-mails from his last year at City Hall casts further doubt on his record. The correspondence shows that he was deeply enmeshed in the business dealings of a group of former associates at the same time he steered multimillion-dollar, no-bid city contracts, including the camera deals, to companies they owned.
Meffert's exact role in the companies remains unclear, but the e-mails show that he often participated in and directed decisions that had nothing to do with the firms' work in New Orleans. And he traveled with company members to drum up business in other cities, including Baton Rouge, Houston and Chicago, using his public position to open doors.
In one case, Meffert pitched crime cameras to Houston's technology chief, claiming they produced "immediate and huge" reductions in New Orleans crime. Meffert then coordinated travel plans to Houston with Mark St. Pierre, who once worked for him in the private sector and went on to head three related firms -- Imagine, NetMethods and Veracent -- that earned money from no-bid city technology work.
In the exchange, St. Pierre asks Meffert: "Do you just want to do a day trip or did you have something else in mind?"
Meffert responded: "Day trip. We can party if we get to next step."
In another exchange, Meffert waxed enthusiastic as one of St. Pierre's employees asked him to set up a "mayor-to-mayor" meeting to pitch Baton Rouge officials on a crime camera deal for NetMethods.
Meffert wrote back: "Totally, and tell me if/when I need to do anything. Mayor will take 10 minutes to do that if you give me enough notice . . . let's get it!"
It's unclear whether the "mayor-to-mayor" meeting occurred -- Nagin has not responded to inquiries on the topic -- but NetMethods ultimately sold Baton Rouge 58 crime cameras.
Suit claims unfair dealing
The e-mails lend credence to allegations made in a civil lawsuit filed by the city's first two crime-camera contractors, Southern Electronics and Active Solutions, that is being monitored by federal law enforcement. The suit, which targets Meffert, St. Pierre, Nagin, and the city, among others, claims that in their capacity as city employees or contractors doing city work, Meffert and his tech-savvy pals filched the blueprint for a wireless crime-camera setup from the two companies.
The suit in part revolves around the relationship between Meffert and St. Pierre.
Sometime after 2002, St. Pierre became the managing partner of Imagine Software, the firm owned by former Meffert employees that ran the mayor's technology office for the first few years of the administration.
In 2005, St. Pierre and his three Imagine partners bought a yacht that Meffert often bragged of owning and was allowed to use. After Hurricane Katrina, a St. Pierre firm also provided an employee, Jimmy Goodson, whose duties included acting as bodyguard and chauffeur to Meffert and captaining the yacht. Taxpayers picked up Goodson's $156,000 annual salary.
St. Pierre also founded NetMethods and Veracent, both of which eventually got city work. NetMethods was a subcontractor to Earthlink on the city's post-Katrina deal to install free wireless Internet access citywide. Veracent was a subcontractor to Dell on a city crime-camera contract.
St. Pierre did not respond to phone or e-mail messages. Meffert's attorney, Randy Smith, did not directly answer questions about his client's business relationship with St. Pierre but said his client will be "vindicated" in the end.
"Greg contributed tremendously to our City during his tenure, " Smith wrote in an e-mail. "I urge you not to be misled by others' agendas -- which merit considerable scrutiny."
Peddling crime cameras
The city's crime cameras -- which so far have cost roughly triple their projected price of $2.6 million -- often simply haven't worked, and haven't caused any measurable drop in crime or rise in convictions. The contracts to install them also have drawn the attention of federal investigators; the city's inspector general sent an early version of his camera investigation to the U.S. attorney's office and has since been in discussions with that office.
Meffert's e-mails shed further light on his involvement in crime cameras, including his efforts to market St. Pierre's wares in other cities. A few months after Katrina, for instance, Meffert wrote to Matt Hyde of Houston's technology office to sympathize about crimes committed in Houston by Katrina-exiled New Orleanians. He then pitched cameras as the solution.
"I wanted to offer any assistance, " he wrote. "Please let me know if this is something you want to pursue and wish you the best regardless."
Hyde wrote back to Meffert suggesting further conversations.
Meffert responded that he "could do a fly in with couple core team members for a day trip if you think it would really help." In a follow-up, he promises: "I will bring the president of the company (St. Pierre) that oversaw the camera implementation with me."
That meeting did occur, according to Hyde, now chief technology officer for Houston's three airports. But he passed on the deal, largely for two reasons: He was unimpressed with their technology, and he wasn't clear who Meffert and his friends -- who all handed him City of New Orleans business cards -- were representing.
"I didn't know who I was dealing with. It didn't pass the smell test, " Hyde said in an interview. "The thing that was in the back of my mind was, 'Am I dealing with a public employee or a private contractor?' "
Directing the business
Meffert's e-mail correspondence suggests he was more than just an interested observer in St. Pierre's business ventures.
In one exchange, Scott Domke, one of the Imagine partners, offers Meffert a menu of options on a matter that appears to be internal to NetMethods.
Domke asks Meffert to "take a look at these templates I can use to build out the NetMethods site."
He lists two links for Meffert to check out. Of the second one, he notes that "Mark (St. Pierre) likes this." He concludes: "I have plenty more if you don't see one you like."
Meffert writes back right away: "Let's go with Mark's."
The discussion ends there.
Another e-mail shows Meffert paying unusual attention to his friends' profits in a deal not involving the city of New Orleans.
In the exchange, Meffert and Chris Drake, a St. Pierre employee, are hatching a plan to sell cameras to the Crescent City Connection. The bridge is a subset of the state.
"Not our usual system, but if it wins us points we will do it and take a loss on labor side, " Drake wrote in one e-mail as he prepared a presentation.
"Sounds good. No need to lose money though, " Meffert writes back.
In a telephone interview, Drake said he worked for St. Pierre at the time and was not aware of any business partnership between Meffert and his boss. However, he said, if such a partnership existed, he probably would not have known.
He said he was familiar with Meffert's efforts to push St. Pierre's business products elsewhere. But he attributed them not to any possibility of financial gain on Meffert's part but to a desire to make New Orleans -- and himself -- look good by having other cities follow its lead in technology.
The dream of free wi-fi
Meffert's associates also sought to enter the municipal wireless Internet business, gaining a foothold in New Orleans, where Meffert controlled the deals. After Hurricane Katrina disrupted communications, the City Hall technology team had gained positive attention for installing a small, free, wi-fi "cloud" in downtown New Orleans.
Meffert talked grandly at the time of rebuilding a high-tech New Orleans and eliminating the "digital divide" between rich and poor.
He commenced talks with various technology giants, his e-mails show, among them Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. The deal wouldn't cost the city anything but Meffert got to pick the company that would win a franchise agreement. The company that got the contract would offer free wi-fi with limited bandwidth, in hopes of one day enticing new customers to pay for faster access.
The correspondence shows Yahoo and Google, in particular, gave serious consideration to the deal. In each case, NetMethods was to be a partner in the job.
"Basically only main difference is Yahoo wants NetMethods running the show, Google wants to give it to a WFI or Motorola and let them sub some piece of it to NM (NetMethods). Pluses and minuses both ways, " Drake wrote to Meffert and St. Pierre in one case.
In the end, both Yahoo and Google walked away, for reasons that are unclear.
Into the breach came EarthLink. In May 2006, Meffert selected the company, which announced it would expand the city's tiny network to 20 square miles.
NetMethods stayed in the deal. According to EarthLink spokeswoman Deisha Galberth, St. Pierre's company served as a subcontractor to Motorola, the primary installer. Galberth declined to say how much money NetMethods made, as did Motorola spokeswoman Kathi Haas. EarthLink initially said it would spend about $15 million overall to build the network.
The network, like many similar ones around the country, was unprofitable and Earthlink shut it down last year.
Aboard the Silicon Bayou
Along with elucidating the business ties between Meffert and his technology pals, the electronic correspondence sheds light on the intrigue surrounding ownership of the Silicon Bayou, the yacht members of the group purchased a few months before Katrina.
Meffert bragged in person to numerous colleagues, including the mayor, that the boat -- valued at nearly $300,000 -- was his. He did so in e-mails as well.
Records at the time showed that, on paper, the boat was actually owned by the four partners in Imagine. The state's ethics code prohibits public officials from taking "things of value" from contractors they oversee.
The correspondence makes clear that Meffert had free use of the boat; he often invited friends on cruises. In another e-mail, he notes that he has "had the decorators doing up the boat . . . should be pretty killer by this weekend. No more crappy porch furniture!"
In other exchanges, Meffert unabashedly claims ownership.
"Did your offer for the boat go through? It would be a great stress relief for you, " reads one e-mail from Zella May, a consultant who helps businesses deal with government.
"Yes dear it did. It's mine baby!" Meffert replies.