Hat Trick

Eddie "the Hat" Jordan has be found to have violated the civil rights of 36 former employees of the Orleans Parish District Attorneys office when he fired them immediately after being elected. This mass firing of long time low level and administrative employees included the switchboard operator who reportedly kept track of all of the ADAs so they could be found in court quickly when necessary. This firing was not only unfair to the long time employees it was unfair to the people on New Orleans as it directly contributed to the chaos that is the DA's office. It is unfair to the hundreds of lives that have been devastated by the murder epidemic the ineffective DA has been unable to stop.

It also demonstrated the Eddie has little grasp of the Constitution he had sworn to protect and defend as a U. S. Attorney.
I have an Idea.

The city should refuse to pay unless Eddie resigns. Any private sector executive would surely be forced to resign for something so patently unfair. After Shelly Medura called for Jordans resignation she was criticized for making the issue about race, that was grossly unfair to her. It was gutless of everyone else, especially the politicians who later said they were going to ask Eddie to resign, but couldn't because of Medura's remarks. But that's way politics has played out in the city. It was also widely reported at the time that there was no leverage on Jordan who is an independently elected official. $3.6 million (and climbing at $20,000 a month) is a pretty long lever. It seem like Mr. Rogers aka Arnie Fielko, agrees with me. He says he's not inclined to pay for Eddie's screwups, after all the City's broke too. Anyway, if I recall correctly the City owes millions in unpaid judgments accumulated over the years itself. Whats a few more million to the City.

Or they could delay payment until we get a new Governor and Attorney General. The AG can remove Eddie for malfeasance. Surely a District Attorney violating the civil rights of so many people and costing the taxpayers millions would qualify. The state could easily pay the money from the State's $1,000,000,000.00 surplus. That would leave only $996,400,000 for such things as a reopening the Mansfield Female College Museum, dedicated to the history of women's education in northwest Louisiana and DeSoto Parish which , along with several other local boondoggles museums, is currently closed due to lack of funds.

That fits Jindal's ethics agenda, the government pays what it owes and removes an incompetent official.

UPDATE: I see I'm not alone in thinking of this. The idea has been knocking around in my head for some time, and Jordan's recent stupidity brought it out. NOLA Bloggers Oyster, Schroeder, Dangerblond and Celcus have all more or less come up with the same idea, more or less independantly. Others have chimed in in the comments.