Maybe yelling at the press actually works

A few weeks ago the Advocate reported on a controversy at Sewerage and Water Board where it appeared to some observers that the agency could be owed as much as $134 million in unpaid bills.  That number was probably wrong bunch of reasons, not the least of which being S&WB still can't produce accurate bills for many of its customers in the first place.  But City Councilmembers were asking about it anyway, as well they should have been. And the Advocate reported on this because... well, that's their job isn't it?

The mayor disagreed.  She didn't disagree with the facts of the story as reported. Instead she worried that publicizing them might jeopardize the grand bargain negotiations going on at the time between the city and tourism agencies over redirecting some of their revenue toward S&WB. That afternoon she called the Advocate to yell at the newspaper for reporting the news, an activity she interpreted as "trying to screw the city."

After the paper burned her back by publishing her comments to them, the two sides could have called it even.  But neither is likely to forget about it just yet.  In fact, as of Friday afternoon, it appears as though the grand bargain negotiations are still unsuccessful.  I wonder if LaToya will blame the Advocate for that. 

It's worth remembering that episode because this week it was the other newspaper that got out in front of a story the mayor might consider a bit sensitive asking direct questions about an unannounced trip to Cuba taken by a delegation of city politicians and businesspeople. 

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s trip to Cuba continues Friday (April 5), and her administration is starting to provide more detail about the visit.

Press secretary LaTonya Norton said Thursday the trip for the mayor and her staffers will cost $15,461. The mayor told WPLG-TV, a Miami station with a Cuba bureau, that the trip "is both publicly and privately funded.” Cantrell and her office have not specified how the cost is being split.

The administration also released a list of 35 people, many of them private citizens, who are traveling with the mayor. City Councilman Jay H. Banks is part of the trip, his office confirmed Wednesday. The New Orleans Advocate reported that the councilman’s wife, Artelia Banks, is paying her own way.

Now, there's nothing especially irregular about the trip itself.  Mayors do this sort of thing all the time.  And when they do, it only makes sense for the press to ask about the details. Who is on the trip? Who paid for it? What are they hoping to accomplish? People might want to know these things.  People might want to look at the mayor's answer to one question. She says they're there "to learn more about health care issues and education." And they might want to compare it to the list of people she brought with her to see how that matches up.

While the roster does include some of the legislators, councilmembers, and city policymakers you might expect to see, it's also heavy on lawyers, lobbyists, and real estate vultures. Calvin Fayard is there. Cesar Burgos, Ronald Sholes.  Not a lot of "health care and education" expertise there.  The mayor's press secretary also mentioned the words, "economic development" which can mean pretty much anything. But mostly it means some well connected rich folks get to go scope out some possible contacts and opportunities.

We know that because, as the Advocate pointed out Friday, this trip has been made before and for very much the same purpose.

Cantrell is just the latest in a string of New Orleans mayors and Louisiana politicians to visit the island nation. Louisiana leads the U.S. in exports to Cuba, and many of its citizens have immigrated here over the decades.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who in 2005 became the first Louisiana governor to travel to Cuba since the Castro revolution, signed an agreement for Cubans to spend $15 million on Louisiana products. In 2016, Gov. John Bel Edwards traveled there to sign mostly ceremonial agreements for increased trade if and when the U.S. embargo should be lifted entirely.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu and a delegation from the U.S. Conference of Mayors went later that year to talk trade. Even Mayor Ray Nagin went to Cuba at the end of his term, though that trip supposedly focused on hurricane preparedness, not trade relations, and was criticized by the Office of the Inspector General as a junket with no obvious purpose.

Why is Nagin's visit the only one anybody was suspicious of?  Not that they shouldn't have been suspicious. I'm asking more why we aren't more suspicious of all of them.  I remember reading about this 2015 trip well enough. But only because I remember being the only person suspicious of that at the time.  See I made little stupid jokes about it. That's really the only way I can remember anything that happens anymore... thus the reason I still type on this website... but that's beside the point.  Anyway, here's what that was all about. 

Shelton, with the assistance of others on the trip, went to Old Havana’s Parque Central on Wednesday to spread the word about Popeyes, in the hopes of opening a restaurant in Cuba one day. Shelton’s group began to hand out 25 orange Popeyes T-shirts with white lettering and 25 Popeyes baseball caps.

That attracted the attention of the men who argue about baseball every day in the park. They swarmed Shelton, his attorney Michael Tudor and New Orleans hotel broker Lenny Wormser. Less than two minutes later, they had given everything away.

“Next time, I’ll bring 1,000 shirts,” Shelton said, as he walked down an Old Havana street thronged with tourists. “I hope to be in business here one day.”

I don't think Popeyes ever made it to Havana. They got as far as Key West, it looks like.  I don't think Lenny Wormser owns any hotels there yet either. But someday, maybe.

Anyway, this whole post has gotten off track. The thing I really wanted to point out was the striking difference in tone between the T-P and Advocate coverage of LaToya's trip this week. The T-P's Kevin Litten began aggressively this week, going directly to the relevant questions readers might have about the trip as soon as we learned about it.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is taking an unannounced trip to Cuba on official business, but her office is releasing few details about the trip, including its cost.

Contrast that with Friday's report in the Advocate. If we didn't know better, we might have mistaken Jessica Williams's opening line for a Cantrell response to the question raised by the opening of the T-P article. 

A long-planned trip aimed at strengthening the city's ties with Cuba has pulled New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell out of town this week.

Surely a "long-planned trip" should come as no surprise. Did you not know about the "long-planned trip"? That seems like it's on you. The article also takes pains to answer some questions that I didn't know anyone was asking.  Will the trip distract from the (now failed anyway) grand bargain negotiations?  Nope.

Cantrell spokesman Beau Tidwell dismissed any notion that the mayor’s absence would affect delicate discussions with the tourism industry over the distribution of tax dollars and greater funding for the Sewerage & Water Board.

He said Cantrell is in “active, daily communication” with her chief of staff, John Pourciau, who is representing the administration in those talks.

Honestly, anything that keeps Mayor Cantrell and the similarly hot-headed Stephen Perry from being in the room at the same time is more likely to help than not. But okay, fine. What about this, though?

The trip was planned well before officials moved in February to lower the speeds that trigger camera tickets in the city, which has sparked controversy in recent days. That change occurred Feb. 4 but was not announced until this week, after unsuspecting drivers slapped with tickets complained.

Did anybody honestly and unironically suggest the mayor had skipped the country in order to avoid fallout from the traffic camera news?  That seems doubtful.  The closest thing I can find to that is Clancy Dubos linking the two issues in this column. But his only point there is that mayor should probably have told people about both of those things ahead of time.  I don't think any reasonable person would argue with that.

The mayor might, though. As we've seen she does sometimes get mad at the press for asking her questions about stuff. Last month she yelled at the Advocate for asking about Sewerage and Water Board issues.  This month, it almost looks like they're answering questions on her behalf. Did yelling at them actually work?   Maybe she's onto something.