"The buck slipped right past him"

Well, it appears one unanswered question from Hurricane Katrina is being answered finally: Why Did The Pumps Fail?

Because this idiot evacuated the Pump Operators!

La. parish president still facing lawsuits over Katrina
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 44 minutes ago

METAIRIE, La. - On the eve of Hurricane Katrina, massive pumps that keep water out of this New Orleans suburb went silent when the roughly 100 workers who run them were allowed to flee under a "doomsday" evacuation plan. With the storm raging, backflow from levee breaks in New Orleans had nowhere to go, damaging thousands of homes, shopping malls and businesses between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish.

For parish President Aaron Broussard, a populist Democrat who rose to power over three decades, the evacuation of the workers could be make-or-break politically and legally.

After the storm, parish residents along the lake's east bank dried out and scraped the muck from their middle class and upscale homes. Then they went to court against Broussard, with a judge recently refusing to dismiss him from lawsuits that hold him personally responsible.

At first, Broussard publicly accepted responsibility for the evacuation decision in August 2005. But about a month after the election, he swore under oath in lawsuit depositions that he didn't know of the doomsday evacuation plan before Katrina, saying he learned the pump operators had gone only after the fact. "He's changing his story to fit the legal situation," said Debbie Settoon, a civil engineer and president of the civic group Citizens for a Safer Jefferson.

In refusing to dismiss Broussard, state District Judge John Peytavin cited "unanswered" questions posed by storm victims' lawyers during a November deposition.

"Would you have agreed with that decision?" attorney Darleen Jacobs asked Broussard at that session.

"I don't know," he answered.

"Could you, as parish president, have vetoed the decision to remove the pump operators?" Jacobs asked.

"I don't know the answer to that," Broussard said.

Reading accounts of Broussard's sworn statements reminded Settoon of a placard in Broussard's office: "The Buck Stops Here." "The buck slipped right past him," she said.

~~JD~~