Public is Stuck With a $3.5 Million Tab for Jordan's Racist Personnel Policies
by James Gill - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

Eddie Jordan broke the law, but he gets off scot-free while the public is stuck with a $3.5 million tab.

Of course, a lot of people have broken the law and gotten off scot-free since Jordan became DA, but it still seems unfair that he has no individual liability for the racist personnel policies he adopted on taking office five years ago.

A jury in 2005 awarded damages against him to the tune of $1.9 million, but only in his official capacity. The tab has since risen to $3.5 million, as fees and interest accumulated while Jordan pursued an appeal.

Jordan is said to be weighing his options now that the federal appeals court has rejected all his arguments. He can ask the appeals court for a rehearing, or seek writs from the Supreme Court, but he would clearly be wasting his time, and our money, either way. Don't rule it out.

When Jordan took office he brought in Stephanie Butler, an aide to his old mentor, Congressman William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, to head a "staff development and retention committee" to evaluate employees wishing to keep their jobs. They were required to submit a resume and appear for an interview.

The committee was merely a front, however, and Butler did not use the evaluations when whites were fired in droves and replaced by blacks. She testified, however, that her approach was not discriminatory. She called it "just random."

A statistician testified that there was less than one chance in a million that the overnight change in the racial make-up of the staff could have been achieved at random.