A multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract between the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans and a Maryland PR firm is drawing the ire of citizens and the scrutiny of national media.
The website Levees.org has been the key critic of the nearly $5M contract with Outreach Process Partners, an Annapolis, Md.-based firm headed by a veteran of public works public affairs which has also worked at FEMA.
The Levees group has leveraged its 23K-plus mailing list to blast the contract as wasteful as well as the firm’s claims on its website to have “transitioned” news coverage of the Corps from negative to positive. The page on OPP’s website was taken down after that claim was highlighted by the advocacy group.
OPP’s president Janice Roper-Graham told CBS News her firm is in a “support role” with public education efforts for Corps and said the firm is “proud of our contribution.” She said “we didn’t think through” the criticism from the Levees.org group on how its website would be viewed.
"What they're supposed to do is not turn negative media around. That's not their job, it's not any government employee's job," Army Corp New Orleans PA chief Ken Holder told the Associated Press.
Holder told CBS News that the firm was not hired to directly handle media inquiries but to develop educational material and set up public meetings. |