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Louisiana bogged down levee politics

New Orleans Times-Picuyene:

Embattled Orleans Levee Board President Jim Huey resigned Wednesday amid cries of foul by colleagues that he might have overstepped his authority with unilateral decisions to hand no-bid contracts to relatives in the days after Hurricane Katrina and to collect nearly $100,000 in back pay several weeks before the storm.

Huey, whose nine-year-plus tenure at the agency's helm is the longest on record, made no apologies for steering work to members of his wife's family, saying those steps were taken under emergency conditions. As for the back pay, Huey said he was legally entitled to the money.

"Every single decision made during this crisis situation was made in the best interest of the levee district, and that will be proven in time," Huey said minutes after he faxed a letter of resignation to Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who controls six of the eight seats on the Levee Board.

While Huey maintains that his resignation was voluntary, sources close to Blanco said Wednesday that she demanded that he step down, citing the negative publicity he has attracted in recent weeks.

Huey, 55, said he resigned because the furor over his post-Katrina maneuvers had become "a sideshow" for the board as it struggles to recover from a disaster that destroyed levees and laid to waste much of the agency's real estate holdings, from Lakefront Airport in eastern New Orleans to a commercial strip at West End.

And, these people wonder how they got the reputation they have?