The resignation late Thursday of Al Herrera, a New Orleans Regional Transit Authority board member, followed an internal probe that found he had sought business with one RTA contractor, secured work with another and tried to steer a transit agency contract to a third, hand-picked vendor, according to emails provided to ถถา๕h.
Al Herrera, a New Orleans Regional Transit Authority board member who solicited one RTA contractor last year for work with his private firm an…
The release of those emails and other records came as RTA leaders took aim at an allegation Herrera lobbed abruptly in his resignation letter, claiming he was targeted for attack and resigned only because of his "strong suspicions" of misconduct by other transit agency officials.
Though vague, Herrera's claim put RTA leaders on the defensive. In a statement Friday, RTA Chairman Flozell Daniels Jr. insisted that Herrera โnever voiced concerns of misconduct despite multiple opportunities in Finance Committee meetings and board meetingsโ over the two years Herrera sat on the board.
Daniels also said numerous audits of the transit agency, including one completed in July by the Federal Transit Administration, โhave yielded no findings of wrongdoing.โ
The release of documents by the agency, under a public records request, added a previously unreported allegation of "unlawful solicitation" of RTA vendors by Herrera.
Emails from earlier this year appear to show Herrera greasing the wheels to help MetalCraft Manufacturing of Lafayette and Shreveport win a contract to build streetcar wheels โย though what Herrera stood to gain from that move remains uncertain.
The documents also include copies of $8,500 in invoices that Herreraโs private company, Best Bolt & Nut Supply, submitted late last year to Metal Shark, the Jeanerette shipbuilder that the RTA had hired to design and build two new Canal Street ferry boats.
And they show that Herrera had been alerted previously by the ถถา๕h Board of Ethics that doing business with another RTA contractor, Laurel Outdoor Advertising, would be illegal under state law.
Such deals typically run afoul of state ethics laws that prohibit public servants from personally profiting off of companies that do business with their agencies.
Laurelโs owner, Dana Pecoraro, sought the ethics board opinion after Herrera had solicited her company for orders on fasteners and other supplies. At the time, Laurel was two months into an RTA contract.
Evidence suggesting that Herrera later flouted that ethics opinion prompted Jared Munster, the agency's interim executive director, to accuse Herrera of โa clear pattern of abuse of office that canโt be ignored,โ in an email last week to Jefferson Parish President Mike Yenni.
Herrera was one of three Jefferson Parish appointees to the RTA board. The five other board members are appointed by the mayor of New Orleans.
After Herrera was confronted with the apparent conflicts, he told officials in Yenniโs administration that he would resign, Yenni said Wednesday.
But Herrera told a different story in his resignation letter. He claimed he was stepping down as a whistleblower who harbors โstrong suspicions that some RTA leaders and the general counsel have engaged in improper billing, bid rigging and other questionable practices.โ
Herrera was not specific, though he claimed that his questioning of those practices left him โa target of misguided and malicious attacks.โ
He also pledged to deliver dirt on those other officials to โinvestigative reporters and federal authorities,โ saying he โwonโt allow my reputation, family and business to become targets of vindictive retaliation.โ
When Al Herrera, a board member for the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority, asked a contractor last year to do business with his company, …
Yenni, who had the power to fire Herrera, had voiced support for him as recently as this week, hours before the invoices with the ferry boat builder were revealed.
More recent emails suggest that Herrera followed his deal with the ferry builder by trying to tinker with the agencyโs bidding process for the streetcar wheels.
On March 7, Herrera sent an email to MetalCraft co-owner Todd Leleux, asking if the firm wanted to manufacture 248 wheels for some of the RTAโs streetcars. Herrera then put Leleux in touch with staffers of Transdev, the private contractor that runs the RTA's buses and streetcars.
Transdev's procurement director, Caroline Register, responded by telling Leleux that he'd missed the bidding deadline by a month for the streetcar wheels, but that the agency would add his company to its notification system for prospective bidders.
A month later, Herrera proposed cutting the number of wheels to be produced under the earlier bid in half and then rebidding the remaining work. According to Munster, Herreraโs maneuvering was meant to โbenefit a business associate.โย
State records do not indicate a business relationship between Herrera and Leleux, who did not immediately return a call Friday seeking comment.
New Orleans Regional Transit Authority board member Al Herrera asked an RTA contractor last year to do business with his private Kenner indust…