Can city pay bills on time? Council receives update today

Members of the New Orleans City Council today get an update on efforts to get the city to pay its bills on time.

A recent Louisiana Legislative Auditor's report found the city was making progress in paying vendors within 30 days of receiving an invoice, but also found problems with the invoice submission process were still delaying payouts. The auditor found that some invoices were even deleted.

Freda Richardson-Taylor, the city's deputy director of finance, says they've changed the system so that can't happen again.

"We have removed the deletion capability from our (accounts payable) processors," she told a meeting of the New Orleans City Council last week.

Councilmember Joe Giarrusso says recent efforts to pick up the pace have worked.

"Last meeting, we were at 80 total invoices, and we whittled that down. This time, we started at 122, and we're at 13," he said. "The whole hope is to work collaboratively to make this a better process, and I know that you're working at it."

The presentation will be made to the Economic Development & Special Development Projects committee meeting this morning at ten.