New Orleans Library Foundation Board Members Resign in Funding Scandal; Library Journal, 5/26/15

Lisa Peet, Library Journal; New Orleans Library Foundation Board Members Resign in Funding Scandal:

"Only days after a definitive victory at the polls, the New Orleans library landscape was making news again—but this time it was the Foundation, not the library itself, and the news was not good. On May 5, an investigative report by correspondent David Hammer for local New Orleans station WWL-TV revealed that between 2012 and 2013 Irvin Mayfield and Ronald Markham, who then served on the board of the New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) Foundation as chair and president, respectively, gave the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO) at least $863,000 in funding originally given to the NOPL Foundation. At that time both Mayfield and Markham were also drawing annual salaries of $100,000 apiece from the nonprofit NOJO, Mayfield as its founder and artistic director and Markham as president and CEO.

The money was redirected to NOJO as an investment in the Peoples Health New Orleans Jazz Market, a renovated retail building in New Orleans’s Central City neighborhood that opened in April. The space currently serves as NOJO’s headquarters, a learning center, and a performance venue. The funds, Markham told Hammer, were earmarked for a satellite library installation within the Jazz Market."