From Times Picayune:
Council requires its OK on juvenile jail
In a move that could trigger Mayor Ray Nagin's second veto in as many months, the New Orleans City Council passed an ordinance Thursday prohibiting Nagin's administration from building a new Youth Study Center until a council committee approves the plans.
Administration officials warned that the measure could halt design work on a badly needed new detention center for troubled young people, but the council passed it 5-0, with Councilwomen Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and Cynthia Willard-Lewis absent.
The measure, introduced by Councilwoman Shelley Midura, reflects council members' fear that the administration intends to draw up plans for a new study center, replacing one severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, without consulting with national experts on youth detention or even with Juvenile Court officials.
Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Cynthia Sylvain-Lear promised the council that she and other administration officials will meet with all interested "stakeholders" before making decisions on the new center's design, but Midura said the council has found time after time that it cannot rely on such administration assurances.
The ordinance says the administration can't spend any of the $16 million money designated for the youth center without getting approval for the plans from the council's Criminal Justice Committee.
The council would need five votes to override a Nagin veto, as the council last month overrode his vetoes of several items in the 2009 city budget. The two sides later resolved their disagreements on the budget.
Nagin also might simply declare that he considers the new restriction illegal and therefore will ignore it, as he threatened to do with some of the provisions in the original budget.
The Youth Study Center, where juveniles accused of serious or repeated crimes live while awaiting trial, has long been a focus of controversy.
The Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana filed a federal lawsuit a year ago alleging squalid conditions at the facility, and it said last month that little has changed since then.
Juveniles held at the center last summer described sitting in cells for more than 20 hours a day, having little constructive contact with staff members, receiving haphazard education, and getting inadequate meals that sometimes included spoiled milk.
Attorneys from the Juvenile Justice Project said in December that the city has failed to work with national experts, specifically the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, to improve conditions at the center.
This initiative has helped the Juvenile Court judges develop a risk-assessment tool that proponents said ensures that only children who really need to be locked up are held at the center.
Ilona Picou, who coordinates the initiative as the head of community projects for Juvenile Court, told the council again Thursday that the administration has made no efforts to involve the Casey Foundation or other interested outsiders in making decisions about the center.
Sylvain-Lear said the administration has chosen an architect but is not yet ready to bring in outside stakeholders.
She said the administration is eager to use "best practices" in designing a new center, but she bristled when Midura said conditions at the center were "abominable for years" and that it took a lawsuit to get the administration to take action.
Midura's ordinance was intended to ensure that the Criminal Justice Committee will get a chance to review the completed design for the new center before the architects are authorized to create construction documents.
However, Sylvain-Lear and Capital Projects Administrator William Chrisman said the language is so broad that it could require the administration to go before the committee every time it wants to spend a single dollar on the project. Midura said the language was based on what Chrisman previously said would be acceptable.
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