New Orleans gets a new Inspector General

On last Wednesday, the Ethics Review Board voted 6-1 to appoint Derry Harper, Nashville’s assistant district attorney general, to take over the helm at the Office of Inspector General in New Orleans.

Prior to selecting Harper, the Ethics Review Board voted 3-4 in a failed motion to name interim Inspector General Howard Schwartz, the author of a scathing report that placed former IG Ed Quatrevaux and members of his team in an unfavorable light, the new Inspector General.

DERRY HARPER

Quatrevaux fired Schwartz after the report was made public and tried to block Schwartz’s appointment as interim IG until a successor could be founded.

Quatrevaux also tried unsuccessfully last week to persuade the Ethics Review Board to delay selecting a new IG, citing a “conflict of interest.”

Harper, 63, was one of more than two dozen candidates who applied for the post after Quatrevaux announced his retirement this past fall.

He pledged last week to work with members of the community to ensure that the Office of Inspector General carries out its mission.

“My prime directive is, I can’t do this alone,” he told Nola.com. “It’s to identify problems and fix them. It’s to restore, and to earn the trust and respect of this community, and make a difference.”

Harper has nearly four decades of investigatory and auditory roles under his belt, including his current post in Nashville and his stints as Florida’s chief investigator general for internal audits and investigations and as inspector general for the State University System of Florida.

His salary and starting date have not yet been negotiated with the Ethics Review Board.

Prior to selecting Derry Harper at Wednesday’s meeting at Xavier University, the Ethics Review Board allowed members of the public to question Schwartz and Harper and interviewed both candidates in public before casting their votes for a new IG.

This article originally published in the December 25, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.