Neil's briefing book

It may be that LaToya has too much to do right now to be too involved in the legislative session. None of the articles citing her "defensive" strategy with regard to the city's agenda in Baton Rouge this year say that explicitly. But the implication is that she's choosing not to focus too much on it. She definitely still wants to boot your car, though.

For the most part, Cantrell has avoided getting deeply involved in Baton Rouge this year. She has, however, worked with state Sen. JP Morrell, D-New Orleans, on modifications to his bid to change the Sewerage & Water Board’s governing board, and separately she asked him to withdraw a bill that would have made it harder for the city to boot residents’ cars.

Cantrell made a lot of noise during the campaign about taking down traffic cameras. I don't think anyone has asked her about that lately. The cameras are definitely still causing problems.  The boot bill isn't exactly the same thing. But it's worth noting that the new mayor is already taking a more favorable stance toward fee generation through petty enforcement.

Also it's worth noting that she isn't taking her cues from JP.  Instead, she has repeatedly singled out Neil Abramson as her legislative lead. She reiterated this in a recent interview with Gambit, in fact. 

Who will be your point people in the state Legislature?

Right now, I'm looking to Rep. Neil Abramson, who has been very helpful in this transition period. He loaned me his legislative aide, who has created a briefing book for me with every piece of legislation that has an impact on Orleans Parish. But it's the entire delegation, both on the House and Senate side. I lean very heavily on Sen. Karen Carter Peterson as well on the Senate side.

Wonder what's in that briefing book.  Does it say anything about sales taxes?

The phone conference was abruptly ended by Cantrell’s staff during follow-up questions by FOX 8 News about whether Cantrell had a position on whether the soon-to-expire 5th penny of the state sales tax should be extended.

"Well, I think if we're going to look at the, I know the caucus is looking at that closely about that penny. You know, we have to remain focused on how we can seal the gap of that piece and burdens on people, so I think right now it is still an open issue that we'll work through, and of course that's one of the things on my plate to discuss in detail in governor,” said Cantrell before the additional questions on the issue.

After the call ended, reporters were told the Mayor-Elect had to be taken down for rebooting.  If you want to know more about about how closely they are going to look at that penny once they remain focused, you are just going to have to wait until the gap of that piece is sealed.

Anyway, I thought Neil's big thing was to push all the budgetary stuff off onto a constitutional convention. Maybe that's where the glitch happened.

Update:  Yeah so they re-booted LaToya.  This answer about the, well, the booting issue makes a little more sense.

New Orleans Mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell said Friday (April 6) she won't oppose City Councilman Jared Brossett's efforts to protect drivers from having their vehicles booted if they have fewer than three unpaid parking tickets.

Her comments came during a briefing with reporters about legislative priorities. During the conference call, Cantrell initially said she opposes a bill state Sen. J.P. Morrell introduced in Baton Rouge that would ban local government from booting vehicles that have fewer than three unpaid parking tickets. His bill is a reaction to Mayor Mitch Landrieu's policy of booting cars after a single parking ticket goes unpaid.

Cantrell said she opposes Morrell's bill because local governments should be able to set their own policy for unpaid fines. She didn't address the fact that Morrell's bill is, in effect, a local bill because he amended it at the urging of other legislators to only apply to New Orleans.

The issue of state preemption was a topic of discussion at this "5 4 Mayors" forum at Loyola this week.  I was there and it was pretty interesting. Might have more to say about it later.