Cannizzaro makes plea for budget increase from City Council

3rd November 2014   ·   0 Comments

Orleans Parish Dis­trict Attorney Leon Cannizzaro small loans doncaster said last week that he has serious budget concerns for next year.

FOX 8 News reported that Cannizzaro says under the current budget, he’ll be forced to lay off between 10 and 20 percent of his staff next year. He’s also worried about losing some critical programs that benefit the community.

Cannizzaro is asking the City Council for an additional $600,000 to keep his staff and give them some much-needed pay raises. He’s also proposing taking over all Municipal Court and Traffic Court prosecutions, which would give his office the $800,000 already allotted to the City Attorney’s Office.

“It appears the proposed 2015 budget calls for 14 new positions in the City Attorney’s Office. In light of the fact that the DA’s office is already prosecuting state cases in Municipal Court, we believe we could accomplish this with no more than five additional people,” Cannizzaro told FOX 9.

Cannizzaro pointed out that Orleans is the only parish where the DA’s office doesn’t handle Traffic Court cases.
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The D.A. is asking the NOPD to begin writing traffic violations using state statutes instead of municipal codes. He says if that changes, his office would receive $20 from fines associated with each ticket.

Earlier this month, Cannizzaro, whose only opponent in the 2014 Orleans Parish District Attorney’s race was forced by the courts to drop out, settled a lawsuit filed by former prosecutor Josie Numa who alleged that she was fired because she is Black.

On October 7, U.S. District Court Judge Ivan Lemelle closed the courtroom and instructed a bailiff to remove all reporters who entered from the courtroom before the settlement was announced.

Nola.com reported that a spokesman for the D.A.’s Office left the courtroom without commenting and Numa and her attorney said they could not comment on the settlement.

In her lawsuit, Numa alleges that she and other Blacks who worked in the D.A.’s office were targeted by a white supervisor. Numa, who worked in the office’s Child Support Division payday loans urbana il when she was fired in 2011, was hired in 2007 by then Orleans Parish District Attorney and former U.S. Attorney Eddie Jordan.

The lawsuit alleges that other Black attorneys were also targeted, sharply criticized and harassed by the supervisor.

The lawsuit also accused the supervisor, Cherie Huffman, of ignoring a formal complaint filed by Numa, 39, after a co-worker mocked Numa’s Caribbean accent.

While the official reason cited for Numa’s termination in 2011 was budget cuts, Numa alleged that seven new attorneys were hired in the 2012-2013 budget year. She said her termination and the transfer of several others in the office resulted in the removal of all of the Black attorneys who worked in the Child Support Division. There were reportedly no Black employees in that division between June 2012 and May 2013.

Cannizzaro and his top prosecutor, Graymond Martin, took the witness stand during the court proceedings but their remarks under oath were not included in court records.

Cheryl Legoux, the cash advance in canoga park Child Sup­port Division’s operations manager, testified about a heated conversation between Duma and Cherie Huffman after allegedly whispered something to a colleague during a meeting.

Legoux said that at one point during the meeting, Duma complained loudly that she was being “treated like a child” and told the supervisor “I’m not on a plantation.”

Legoux, who is Black, told the court that she had worked with Huffman for about 30 years and never suspected that the woman was racist. She also said that she did not see any racial overtones to the heated conversation between Numa and the Huffman.

“I honestly don’t know what (Numa) was talking about,” Legoux said.

One of the other Black attorneys who Numa says was treated unfairly by Huffman was Yolanda King, who subsequently defeated an ally of D.A. Cannizzaro to become a Juvenile Court judge several years ago, only to have New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu maneuver to eliminate her judge seat while she was fighting charges that she wrongfully indicated personal loan for temporary resident that she was living in Orleans Parish when she was elected to the judgeship.

King showed up at court with her attorney when the Numa lawsuit was settled but did not testify in the case.

The racial bias settlement brings to mind the racially divisive case involving former Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan, who was sued by former white employees who were hired by former D.A. Harry Connick and alleged that they were replaced by Black employees solely because of the color of their skin.

In 2005, two years after a newly elected Jordan fired 56 white employees, a financially strapped City of New Orleans settled the lawsuit filed by those angry former employees.

During an interview with The Louisiana Weekly in 2005, Jordan described the hostile environment he walked into after being elected the city’s first Black district attorney. Among other things, he said that paper and other items had been stuffed into toilets upstairs, causing them to overflow and water alaska usa personal loans to leak down the walls and from the ceiling into the first floor offices.

Jordan resigned as district attorney in 2007.

Jordan supporters argued that it is common practice for newly elected officials to make personnel changes and assemble a new staff. While some former employees may retain their old positions, no one is guaranteed a job as a member of the staff, they argued.

U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle did not provide a reason for barring reporters from his courtroom before resolving the case.

“The public and the press generally have a First Amendment right to view all proceedings conducted in open court,” Loyola law professor Dane Ciolino told The Advocate. “Only when the court finds compelling reasons for closing the courtroom and states those reasons on the record is this presumptive right of access denied.”

“What’s interesting about this situation is the way the Cannizzaro settlement is being handled differently from the Jordan settlement,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, fast cash of bartlett told The Louisiana Weekly. “With this case, everything is hush-hush. the media is barred from reporting on the settlement and the specifics about the resolution of the lawsuit. No one gets to know what the D.A. said under oath and for the most part the media has not said much about the case before it was settled.

“With Jordan, there was a lot of public shaming of the D.A. and former white employees who were angry about being terminated by a Black district attorney took their outrage to the media, which gave the Jordan case more than its fair share of coverage,” Aha added. “It’s just more proof that race, wealth and privilege continue to dictate not only how justice is administered in this city but how efforts to secure justice and equity are handled by the media.”

“Getting justice is an uphill battle and a constant struggle, even in the halls of justice.”

This article originally published in the November 3, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.