Firm gets no-bid HANO work

Last month, two weeks after the director of the Housing Authority of New Orleans' Section 8 department, Dwayne Muhammad, left his job and its $114,400 annual salary amid reports that he'd used a voucher meant for poor people to pay his own rent, HANO turned over its entire voucher operation to a Houston firm, Mir Fox Rodriguez.

The firm had already landed emergency contracts worth about $13 million to run the authority's disaster housing aid program, instituted after Hurricane Katrina.

HANO sidestepped the public-bid process in these and other deals with Mir Fox by declaring an emergency. The authority has awarded the firm more than $17 million worth of work in less than a year, records show.

Recent letters of agreement promised not only an extension of work done for the Disaster Housing Assistance Program but also additional compensation for Mir Fox, including $1.45 million to review files, for work that normally would have been put out to bid.

With the Section 8 contract, the urgency was "due to an unforeseen circumstance" -- the sudden departure of Muhammad, who last week was charged with a federal crime -- said HUD spokeswoman Melanie Roussell. Similar situations existed with previous contracts, she said.

The Section 8 deal, an emergency $600,000 one-month agreement, has been criticized both for its cost and for its secrecy.

"On what basis and analysis was the decision made? Where was the public input and process?" asked Tamar McFarlane, whose organization, STAND -- a grass-roots citizens group that is part of the Workers' Center for Racial Justice -- requested that information from HANO nearly a month ago, without response.

On Friday, more than a month after The Times-Picayune made the first of five public-records requests, HANO officials allowed the newspaper to view two binders of Mir Fox invoices and five separate agreements made between HANO and the firm since December 2008....