New Orleans City Council leaders sharply criticized Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration after a WWL Investigation revealed the city quietly drained more than $120 million from its cash-strapped general fund to cover street repair costs that could have been reimbursed by FEMA.

Council President JP Morrell said our exclusive investigation finally shed light on a financial mystery that had baffled the council for months.

“Until your story, no one owed up to it,” Morrell said. “No one came forward until you asked the questions to say specifically, ‘Yeah, we did spend that money and it did cause a cash crunch.’”

The undisclosed spending involved the Joint Infrastructure Recovery Request program, or JIRR — a $1.7 billion post-Katrina effort to reconstruct 10,000 blocks of roadways and subt

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