Police pipleline

Thinking back to the beginning of this year and all of the problems facing this city with an election season looming.  A pandemic, a budget crisis, a housing crisis, poverty, general corruption... rascalism, etc. And here we are at the end of democratic process, through which we are supposed to resolve these issues and all our prospective representatives can talk about is how much they want to lock people up and hire more cops.  

Okay that's not all they can talk about. Sometimes they can argue about casserole recipes. But mainly the District B candidates are arguing about who can be the biggest cop. 

Much of the city's crime problem can be traced to repeat offenders who receive what amounts to a slap on the wrist by the district attorney before they are let back out on the street, Banks said. Instead of boosting the New Orleans Police Department's budget to fight crime, as Harris advocates, he would work to create criteria that every lawbreaker must meet before they are released from jail, he said.   

However, Harris, 46, said she wouldn't pull from other departments to better fund the cops. Instead, she'd push NOPD to apply for federal grants that could help employ more officers.

The department could also boost recruitment by partnering with universities to offer free or low-cost tuition for new officers, and by providing tax credits to first responders who live in the city, she said. She'd also tap a task force to identify crime prevention strategies.  

None of that is especially coherent.  Banks should and probably does know that a city councilman doesn't have a whole lot to say about sentencing. A councilperson does have something to say about the police budget, though, which makes Harris's threat to give the more money at least credible.  But.. "tax credits" for cops too?  We may have reached a new level of neoliberal brain poisoning. 

Meanwhile in District E, Oliver Thomas has dispensed with the complexities of tax incentives or dubious notions about deterrence and taken a more direct approach to producing more cops.  OT is going to build a "pipeline" directly from the schools.

To prevent crime, Thomas wants to create a "youth-to-law-enforcement pipeline" that would see NOPD partner with local schools to recruit new officers. The department could also rely on the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office and other entities to issue misdemeanors for low-level offenses, so that more of the force's time is freed to focus on violent offenses.  

Dream big, kids.  Just like your inspiring political leaders do.

Try zero circumstances

There is no justification for any city to ever authorize its police to deploy internationally banned chemical weapons against its citizens.  None.  You can play around with the language like this all day but you're never going to arrive at a just solution until your law says just don't do that. 

The ordinance is designed to prevent the police from using chemical irritants in all but the “absolute most dire circumstances,” according to Banks. However, the current version of the proposal allows police to use tear gas and other “riot control” chemicals to prevent crimes of violence.

Williams said that in response to concerns that the legislation might give too much leeway, he hopes to amend the ordinance so that the only exception is in situations involving an “imminent” threat of loss of life or bodily injury. He also intends to amend the ordinance at a full City Council vote to require police to issue a warning before using gas.

Writing those bullshit qualifiers into the ordinance guarantees that 1) the cops will definitely use tear gas on more people and 2) Williams and Banks will yell at anyone who  complains that they've fixed the problem already. 

Danger! Exploding real estate

It looks like the on again, off again, proposal to move City Hall over to the Municpal Auditorium site is trying to be on again.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell is taking the first steps toward perhaps converting Municipal Auditorium into New Orleans’ next City Hall.

Several previous mayors have talked about moving city government out of the building on Perdido Street that it has occupied since the late 1950s. The possibility of a move was given new support last fall, when a study commissioned by the Cantrell administration found the current building was in serious disrepair and not well configured for the current and future needs of the city’s government.

And with $41 million in FEMA funds on the table for renovating Municipal Auditorium, administration officials are homing in on it as their future home.

As far as I can tell that $41 million in FEMA funds has been and continues to be the main motivation for keeping the Auditorium on the list of potential sites. By all accounts, the difficulty of renovating the building, the lack of space, and probable opposition from the surrounding neighborhood all seem to be factors working against it.  The only positive argument for it in my mind is the old line Carnival Krewes who used to stage their balls in the Auditorium still view it as a kind of holy ground. Permanently desecrating their monument with city offices does hold a certain symbolic appeal.

The other thing that's happening is they are running out of options. The long rumored Charity Hospital option favored by Mitch Landrieu came off the board late last year when we handed most of that over to Sonder.  Also I see the VA building mentioned as one alternative in that T-P article. I may be misremembering this but I believe I heard that suggested as one possible desitnation for the soon-to-be-displaced Ozanam Inn.* The defunct Naval Support Station property has also been mentioned in the past but there are multiple problems with that including the fact that it's so out of the way for most people.  Generally one would think that a City Hall should be centrally located and accessible to transit.

I say "would think" that because Jay Banks has other ideas.

Banks said his first choice would be to move City Hall — along with the Sewerage  Water Board offices and Civil District Court — to a campus in New Orleans East, where their employees could provide an economic shot in the arm for the area.

Would it "provide an economic shot in the arm," though?  How? This seems highly doubtful.  Maybe Jay can produce some research.  Or, more likely, he's just making stuff up. Worse than that, he is making stuff up from out of a brain conditioned to make decisions about public services and land use based primarily on speculative ideas about real estate values.

For example,

Then there’s the possibility the city could recoup some of its costs by selling the property that now houses City Hall and Civil District Court, taking advantage of a real estate boom in the Central Business District.

Have we not heard enough about things going "boom" downtown lately? Maybe it's time to back off of that for a while.

* Update: Well now we know where Ozanam Inn is going so that's something.  Still no word on what's supposed to happen to the building they're vacating, though.

The dorm rooms will be well branded

The City Council approved Wisznia's bowling alley barracks thing. That's bad enough. What's worse is we find Councilman Jay Banks, as well as one housing advocacy group willing to go along with the pretense that $1400 for a dorm room* is anything other than an insult. 

Andreanecia Morris, executive director of the advocacy group HousingNola, has supported the project since its inception. She said that while the housing need in New Orleans is most acute among its poorest residents, rising housing costs also have hit professions such as teachers, hospitality workers and paralegals.

"We need those people's needs met, too," she said, noting that her support for Two Saints is contingent on it actually serving those people.

Ha ha, no. No this isn't going to help any of those people. But hey thanks for your "contingent" support.  I'm sure they'll feel real bad if you have to withdraw it. 

*A last minute proviso "sets aside" 20 of the 218 dorm rooms at $700. But as Cashauna Hill implies here, we all know that doesn't serve any purpose beyond tokenism.

The Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center had opposed the development, with Executive Director Cashauna Hill writing to City Council members to say projects like Two Saints risked being empty gestures by developers while doing little to address the city's lack of affordable housing.

"In a moment when nearly everyone agrees that New Orleans is in the midst of an affordability crisis, it is important to be precise about 'affordability,' so that the word doesn't become a branding tool devoid of meaning," Hill wrote.

Municipocalypse 2019: The final STR shitshow

Well it is early August now and the first thing I gotta say is it looks like we may have picked the wrong week to stop taking kratom.  There's so much going on all of a sudden! For those of us accustomed to a long summer's nap this is very jarring. Seriously, how is it football season again already? We haven't even gotten to see the Commissioner's deposition over the NFC Championship debacle and somehow we're already doing the 2019 fake games and everything.

That is to say we will be doing that  Friday if we first survive what could be the most intense City Council meeting of the year on Thursday. Expect a full day shout-a-thon. Public commenters may, in fact, be lining up even as I type this. The reason for that, in a word, is gentrification.

Property values across New Orleans jumped by more than 18% in the last four years, an increase that is expected to result in a sharp rise in property taxes for many residents, according to preliminary estimates from the city's assessor.

The jump is far larger than has been seen in years in New Orleans as the spread of gentrification has caused prices to rise both in the already expensive historic core of the city and in more outlying areas that had remained relatively affordable until recently.

Mayor Cantrell took care this month to make sure nobody blames her for the rise in assessments. For example, during this video session, Cantrell urged us to complain to assessor Erroll Williams's office and not hers.  "It’s not us doing something to you,” she says. But that isn't really true.  In fact, her office is expected to ask City Council to for a millage roll forward in order to maximize revenue windfalls from the new assessments. That is apparently on top of a proposed new tax of 3 mils.

Chief Administration Office Gilbert Montaño has suggested the city would be looking to roll its property tax rates forward, arguing that New Orleans’ budget is about $100 million short of what it should be to meet the city’s needs.

In addition, the mayor’s office and council are currently sparring over a 3-mill tax proposed by the administration. Council members, in part responding to complaints from residents who have already received their notices of higher assessments, have sought restrictions on how that money could be spent, arguing that they could not ask residents to pay even more unless the money was specifically dedicated to infrastructure.

Administration officials argue they need to have flexibility to deal with unforeseen future needs.

Now before we get too far with this, we should probably emphasize that we here at the Yellow Blog are sufficiently orthodox in our socialism to understand the importance of funding essential government services. We also recognize the relatively progressive approach of a property tax as compared to, say, fines and fees generated by hyper-aggressive policing.  But the tax burden in New Orleans still falls disproportionately on poor and working class people and jacking up the millage is not going to repair that discrepancy.  The higher assessments combined with higher tax rates are almost certain to push poorer homeowners to cash out and move likely leading to further concentration of wealth in the city overall. Renters are also likely to suffer as higher taxes are passed on to them by landlords and fewer rental properties are available at affordable prices. This is what the mayor's 3 mil tax is doing to you.

Meanwhile, the mayor isn't exactly doing anything  for you either. LaToya swears assessments are "not her job." But she does consider it her job to push for millions of dollars in tax breaks and "incentives" to hand out to wealthy real estate developers who build more nice things for rich people.  All of which ultimately leads, again, to higher assessments, higher rents, higher taxes. The cycle (vicious or virtuous depending on which side of the wealth divide you find yourself on) keeps driving property values higher until you've got block after block of attractive speculative assets where nobody actually lives.

NEW ORLEANS — Tandra Smith has been living in her Fairgrounds neighborhood home since 2008.

"A lot of my neighbors have been here longer than I have," Smith said. She said she likes the area, mainly for its affordability, but after seeing her recent property assessment skyrocket she fears she won't be able to live here much longer.

She said her assessment last year valued her property and home at $167,000, which she said was reasonable because she purchased her home at $135,000. This year's assessment, which by law has to happen at least once every four years, put her house value at $416,000.

“I wanted to cry,” Smith said. do  

There are several factors pumping gas into this speculative bubble. But the one thing New Orleanians have been most loudly asking their elected representatives to do that could take some of the air out is get a handle on the explosive growth of short term rentals.

Robinson says it's something that's effected everyone on her street.

“So last year I paid one rate, and this year it’s a full 100% higher," she said. "The remaining six neighbors on this block, yes, there are only six of us left, theirs have gone up 300-450% higher.”

Ask her why, and she has one answer

"I believe 45% of the homes here in Treme are AirBnBs or Short Term Houses," she said. “That’s a business, but technically that’s a residence. So now we’re comparing their property taxes to my property taxes.”

City Council is planning to take up the short term rental ordinances this Thursday.  As a courtesy to all of us who enjoy a long and rancorous meeting, they have also wisely punted the property millage question that very same date. Expect a total shitshow of confused rhetoric. No doubt there will be landlords arguing in favor of more STRs in order to compensate for the rising taxes.  Also expect to hear that we need to hold the property taxes down specifically so that we can impose more fees on STRs. But these are false choices. Councilmembers can choose to protect people from rising housing costs without playing the drivers of those costs off against one another.  It's not at all clear that they understand this, unfortunately.

For example, here is Jay Banks saying some troubling things to WWLTV just a couple weeks ago. Talking about STRs, in particular, Banks says they "allow regular people to participate in this tourism economy."  By regular people, we have to assume he means individual landlords holding single properties.  But that is a gross misapprehension of the STR landscape in New Orleans. A report published by Jane Place last year showed that the bulk of the business is controlled by a handful of international corporations.

JPNSI found that 18 percent of all operators control roughly half of all STRs in New Orleans. Gambit’s recent review of licenses issued by the city found the top 10 operators - including Sonder, Hosteeva and Stay Alfred - hold more than 400 licenses, with several operators holding several listings per license; JPNSI says those top 10 operators have 568 listings.

Since then, that situation has almost certainly gotten worse. More to the point, though, there's no way Jay Banks wouldn't have been made aware of the data by now. But here he is pretending otherwise and saying defeatist things like, "we can't put this genie back in the bottle" and  "we've got to come to a happy median somewhere." Uh oh.

Similarly confused, or at least saying similarly confusing things is Mayor Cantrell. It's been difficult to pin her down on the specific ordinances being considered this week. But the comments she has made lead us to suspect she's not especially sympathetic. Just last Tuesday, councilmembers expressed frustration with the mayor's lack of commitment to enforcement. Even under the current overly liberal rules, there are an estimated 5,000 or so STRs operating illegally. But the mayor's staff are reluctant to do anything about that because of a circular argument I'm not even sure they understand.

The mayor’s representatives, however, said they could not bring on new staff until they figure out how stricter rules on Airbnb and HomeAway rentals would affect the amount the city now brings in from taxes on short-term rentals, whether they’re operating legally or not.

“We have to be careful about what we’re greenlighting to see how the market reacts to these issues,” said Gilbert Montaño, Cantrell’s chief administrative officer. He said uncertainty about how much will be brought in once short-term rentals are curtailed makes it “vitally prudent to hold off on hiring $2 million” worth of new staffers.

I think what  Montaño is saying is they are waiting for "the market" to decide what the law actually is. So that's encouraging.

That same day, LaToya was interviewed by Norman Robinson for a WLAE show called "Housing Matters"  primarily to promote the city's having landed $28 million in new grants and tax credits with which to "incentivize" the creation of new housing.  Cantrell doesn't always do a great job of explaining things. She mentions various applications for the grant money; soft second mortgage programs, home repair grants (probably distributed via non-profit partners) and, of course developer incentives. To the extent that money trickling down through those infamously sticky pipes is helpful, it's still mostly about chipping away at the symptoms of the housing crisis without really getting at the causes. Of course, there's only so much $28 million can do.  But for the sake of perspective, it's estimated that at best we're talking about 620-640 added "affordable units."  Currently the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance estimates we need upwards of 30,000 to adequately address the need.

Norman also asked Cantrell to speak about East New Orleans in particular which led to some more confusing double talk.  The mayor was naturally eager to show that she wants the often neglected East to benefit from the new pile of money. But her choice of phrase, "New Orleans East is somewhere we want to push people towards" with regard to housing is ominous.

Generally speaking, the mayor's philosophy with regard to housing policy is neoliberal in the extreme.She even ducks a question about the demolition of the Big Four housing projects after Katrina choosing instead to fixate on a right wing policy paper about the 2008 financial collapse which she connects to a drying up of the state and federal "incentive" pipeline she prefers to just about any other possible solution.  What's worse, Cantrell is not at all convinced that STRs are a serious problem.  She sort of admits that they "don't help," but continually brings the conversation back to the need to find "balance" with the tourism industry in light of the fact that New Orleans is "a destination city."

So LaToya doesn't want to talk about it. But we should probably take a moment to explain what the City Council will actually be debating at this meeting.  We'll try to keep it simple.

Kristin Palmer has introduced a set of ordinances based on the most recent round of Planning Commission recommendations which would create two basic sets of rules. In residential zones STRs will be restricted only to properties whose owner also claims a homestead exemption there. The intent is to effectively outlaw the so-called "whole home" short term rental on any residentially zoned property.  In commercial or mixed-use zones, the ordinance would limit owners of large apartment buildings to convert only 25 percent of available units to STR while also requiring a 1-1 affordable unit match.

But that was before a consultant's report came back at the end of July and argued against the affordable match and 25 percent cap.  Essentially, their recommendation was for no restrictions on commercial STRs whatsoever. That seemed pretty shocking at first. But after The Lens pointed out the consulting firm, HR&A had some pretty glaring conflicts of interest, it started to make more sense.

The real estate consulting company that wrote the report, HR&A Associates, has worked for Airbnb at least four times since 2012, producing glowing reports about its local economic benefits and job creation bonafides. Most recently in 2017, the company produced “Sharing for a Stronger New York” on behalf of Airbnb.

HR&A responded a few days later but even if we take their argument in good faith, it doesn't add up. The problem begins with the treatment of the commercial and mixed use zoned properties as though it occurs in a wholly separate universe what happens in "residential areas."

HR&A says the scope of their report was to focus on the commercial zones only. But this is really a warping of perspective.  In practice, commercially zoned properties are a necessary component of any residential area. The corner grocery, the neighborhood bar, the hardware store, the gas station, laundromat, etc. these are all part of what makes a neighborhood a neighborhood. Here is the city's land use map.  If you look around at the zoning, you can see commercial properties running through the city along transit corridors or highly trafficked areas, or just occasionally on a corner lot maybe. So allowing unlimited STRs  to proliferate in commercial or "mixed use" zones doesn't protect these neighborhoods at all. It aggressively disrupts them.

We could see every affordable housing unit along a major transit line turned into an STR. This, in turn, will cause businesses along these commercial corridors; Magazine Street, St. Bernard Ave., Oretha Castle Haley, etc., to cater primarily to visitors rather than residents with further negative ramifications for the surrounding areas. Land use policy is supposed to be about managing an interdependent urban system. HR&A is structuring an argument that treats the different zones as if they exist as completely independent municipalities.   It's a deliberate obfuscation to tell us a tale of two cities where in fact there is only one.


The second thing HR&A wants to tell us is that we need to maximize STR proliferation in the commercial zones because that will, through a series of bank shots and hypothetical fees and plans that do not exist yet, generate money for "affordable housing" at some point.

But Phillip Kash, the lead author on the study, said the study’s recommendation to promote affordable housing primarily by imposing fees on such commercial short-term rentals would give the city the most bang for the buck.

“We came at it with the (idea) that the goal was to generate the most subsidized units or the most money for affordable housing,” Kash said this week. “We thought there was consensus on that point; now I hear there is less consensus on that point.”

But what that means in practice is sacrificing every commercial and mixed use corridor to tourist hosting and services. It means we are leaving the entire "historic" or "high ground" portions of the city (and then some) vulnerable to accelerated gentrification.

Meanwhile, the affordable housing hasn't been built yet. Remember, LaToya wants to filter the funds HR&A says we're going to generate back down through a series of developer incentives and bank loans in order to build a number of housing units woefully insufficient to meet the city's need.  Plus, once that even happens, because we have willingly failed to protect our core neighborhoods, whatever newly affordable housing we create will inevitably be cited in further flung and lower elevated neighborhoods. In other words, residents are displaced to less desirable areas. Perhaps New Orleans East where the mayor has already said she wants to "push people."

Unfortunately the study, flawed and corrupt as it may be, appears to have had some impact on the policy direction. On Wednesday evening even Palmer appeared to have given up on the one-to-one affordable match for commercial properties.  And the 25% cap also could be in serious trouble if Jason Williams decides to move on it.

Gisleson Palmer’s team said there will likely be several amendments, mostly technical updates, but they don’t expect a lot of push back. Except for one: A proposal to remove the 25 percent cap on short-term rentals in large scale commercial buildings in the CBD.

“That basically means you could take an entire apartment complex building and turn it into a short-term rental, a de facto hotel, which would basically kill the residential life within the CBD,” Gisleson Palmer said.

Council members said Jason Williams is the main author behind the amendment, but his staff told FOX 8 he’s still debating on whether to propose it.

He very well may do it. Remember Jason already has a handshake agreement with Sonder and Mike Motwani to convert a building near the foot of Canal Street into a de-facto STR hotel.  Because God forbid our tourist facing downtown corridor ever go "under-retailed." Not when Pottery Barn is right there waiting.

Peter Bowen, Sonder New Orleans’ general manager, said he hopes to have the three projects up and operating within three years.

On Monday, City Council President Jason Williams expressed optimism that Sonder’s approach would help efforts to bring more big-box retailers, such as an Apple store or Pottery Barn, to Canal.

“New Orleans is significantly under-retailed, but it’s not because we don’t have people with resources who want to spend money,” he said. “It’s because of our lack of investment over a period of time.”

On the other hand, maybe he will back down. If so, the result might not be too bad.  The match can be revisited later and the cap is a good enough imperfect place to start.  One thing is for sure. There will be a lot of yelling and speechifying between now and the time that we arrive at that place.

Save our city! New Orleans has become an increasingly unaffordable place to live as housing gets turned into Short Term Rentals by greedy, primarily out-of-state hypercapitalists. Make your voice heard at City Hall during the hearing on potential STR laws Thursday morning! pic.twitter.com/z5sZJCQW8x

— New Orleans DSA (@NewOrleansDSA) August 7, 2019

And now we do the real politics

This is the part of the short term rental regulation saga where the rubber really meets the road. All the landlords who have been profiting from the practice the new regs are intended to put a stop to are going to ask if they can all keep doing it anyway. 

New Orleans city planners are warning against proposals to allow all residential short-term rentals that have previously had licenses to operate to remain open even if new, more restrictive regulations are adopted this summer.

In a study released this week, the planners also poured cold water on suggestions to create areas of the city with laxer regulations so as to spur economic development there — at least until there’s a chance to see the impact of the new rules.

The Planning Commission says it's a bad idea. But they aren't the decision makers. The City Councilmembers are. And several councilmembers have stated at several points during this process that they are interested in either grandfathering in some existing uses or making use of special overlay districts and "opportunity zones" to do precisely what CPC is saying they shouldn't.

So far this year the council has been pretty good about following CPC recommendations but this question of grandfathering in or creating special exceptions is the tricky part. This is when the wealthy people who actually fund the elected people start to call in the favors they are owed. And in doing so they could undermine the entire effort.

Update:  This is being passed around town and it seems like an appropriate thing to include in an STR post.

Information on how to report, and hopefully destroy, an illegal Airbnb. Included in our most recent issue. Have fun 🏴🏴 pic.twitter.com/BKgciQUNA9

— The Shotgun (@shotgunpaper) June 14, 2019

 

Consultantocracy

When it comes to disentangling this knot, who even knows where to begin?

The New Orleans City Council has relied almost exclusively on outside consultants to regulate Entergy New Orleans for over 30 years. And it is those consultants that have largely decided what direction the city takes on a wide number of energy-related issues: How much can Entergy charge customers? How should the city generate or source electricity? How should the city prepare for hurricanes and deal with Entergy’s frequent outages?

But Councilwoman Helena Moreno — who chairs the council’s utility committee, which regulates Entergy — told The Lens she wants to break that structure. Specifically, she wants to expand the council’s in-house staff and expertise in order to become less reliant on contractors

That's going to be much more easily said than done. And, frankly, it's not even that easy to say.  Moreno isn't even entirely sure what she is asking for.

It remains unclear what the document will recommend, how fast Moreno will be able to move, or whether she will remain at the helm of the utility committee long enough to see the changes through.

“No one’s ever done this,” said Moreno’s Chief of Staff Andrew Tuozzolo. “New Orleans has never had this, really.”

We want to have some confidence that City Council can regulate Entergy competently and independently.  For decades they've mostly outsourced this function to consulting law firms.  During this time, the consultants have had longstanding relationships with prominent political organizations frequently cycling employees in and out of political office and/or in and out of employment by the utility itself.  So the public might be forgiven for wondering which side of the three way revolving door Jay Banks or Karen Carter Peterson is on at any given moment.  They promise they know how to keep it all straight but it can be difficult to parse as KCP demonstrates here.

Clint Vince’s law firm, Dentons, also gave $25,000 to the Louisiana Democratic Party’s political action committee between 2013 and 2018, according to state campaign finance records. State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, the chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party since 2012, was hired by Dentons in 2014.

“Dentons does not have a relationship with the Louisiana Democratic Party,” Peterson said in an email to The Lens. “Separate and apart from my role with Dentons, I serve as chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party.”

It's kind of like trying to pull apart a dozen mardi gras beads that have gotten twisted together. They're all really just the same strings of the same lawyers, lobbyists, and political hangers on. Who knows where one begins and the other one ends?

Moreover, how do we even know who to trust with the task of sorting it all out? My favorite bit from the Lens feature article explaining this stuff comes where we learn about a critical Inspector General's report put together by.... yet another opportunistic third party consultant soliciting a job.

Vince questioned the conclusions in the Inspector General report.

He noted that the report was funded through a third-party grant. And its author — an outside consultant hired by the Office of Inspector General — later used his own findings to try and solicit a city job. According to a 2015 story by Fox 8 News, shortly after the report was released, the consultant wrote a letter to the city that said, in part, “I suggest you retain me immediately to address those issues.”

So, yeah, good luck figuring this out.  Moreno wants council staff to outline a plan by June. In order to put that together, I guess they're going to need to hire some consultants. Probably there will be lot of expertise at Dentons and Legend they could put to use... for a fee, of course.

Whose side is who on and when

One interesting thing about the Entergy situation is how slippery the councilmembers can be when pressure is applied. It was just a few days ago that Moreno helped introduce this resolution. Yesterday, she was among the suddenly SHOCKED SHOCKED at the utility's behavior. 

Perhaps banking too much on the City Council's goodwill, Entergy New Orleans pushed its luck Thursday, and lost out.

Its deal with a City Council committee to pay $5 million from its profits in exchange for the right to build a $210 million power plant in New Orleans East will still be considered by the full council.

But when Entergy officials tried to convince the committee to call the $5 million a "payment" instead of a fine, members balked.

"Marcus, you gotta be kidding me here," said Helena Moreno, the head of the utility committee, after Entergy counsel Marcus Brown requested the change.

Granted, that was a weasely maneuver.  But it can't have come as the kind of surprise Moreno played it up to be in the moment. The gas plant saga has gotten a ton of attention. Probably more than it really deserves. But it has opened the door for the public to vent frustrations with Entergy. That's always welcome under any circumstances.  It's also made for some entertaining theater.  Even though so much of that is Kabuki.

For example, here is Jay Banks trying to make sure everyone understands which side he's on now. Even though he has been on several.

But he shifted to defending his résumé after Monique Harden of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice questioned his silence on his one-time lobbying job with Legend Consulting Group, one of the groups that has long helped the council regulate Entergy.

From 2005 to 2008, he worked in a similar capacity for Entergy New Orleans.

"You’ve never disclosed it," Harden accused, claiming he worked for Legend in 2016, around the same time the group began to pitch the council on the plant. 

"Ma’am, I’ve never met you to tell you anything," he replied. "I don’t know you from a can of paint."

He then said that he did work for both Legend and Entergy because he was "good at what I do, just like Shaquille O'Neal."

See, Jay is very good at saying and doing whatever it is the sponsor paying him at that moment would like him to say or do.  Just like Shaquille O'Neal. 

Shaquille O'Neal may be one of the greatest big men to play in the NBA, but for all the success he had as a player, his career has become even more profitable since his retirement thanks to his turn in advertising. 

In an interview with reporter Bernard Goldberg for "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" on HBO, Shaq revealed through endorsement appearances with brands including Gold Bond, The General, and Carnival cruises; he's turned his post-playing career into a profitable enterprise of personal branding.

Today, The Lens published a report on a 2015 City Council resolution directing Entergy to “pursue the development of at least 120 megawatts of new-build peaking generation capacity within the City of New Orleans."  We could reasonably interpret that to mean that the Council, its consultants, and Entergy have always been on the same page regarding the gas plant proposal. Maybe there's no harm in that.

There are further complications.  The impetus for this begins with a federal regulatory settlement determining Entergy's overall reorganization.  Part of that settlement required Entergy to look at new ways to generate power in New Orleans. That directive is now being interpreted in various ways by Entergy and by the "environmental justice" groups filing lawsuits. Did the settlement dictate the new gas plant? Did Entergy inappropriately apply it to that purpose? Did the consultants push these interpretations in one way or the other?

These are not easy questions for us layfolk to answer. But we are pretty sure that the interests of a utility and its regulator and any consulting firms involved in the process are naturally going to conflict every now and again, right?  Which is why it's important to make sure we know who is on which side and when.

Banks clarified after the meeting that he quit his job at Legend on June 30, 2017, weeks before qualifying for the Oct. 14, 2017 municipal elections. 

"Please note that my most recent involvement in this process is on the side of the City Council, the regulator, which is the side I am on now as a City Council member," Banks said in a statement. "At no point have I ever attempted to, nor have I ever felt a need to hide this fact."

Okay but he's been on all three sides and has passed among them throughout the course of this one issue in progress. Seems a little off.  But let's not pick on Banks too much.  It's clear enough that under normal circumstances, when the atmosphere is less of a public circus, that this is the way it always works. 

There's a lot of opportunities

If you know where to take them 

A new federal program pitched as a way to aid low-income communities is ramping up across Louisiana, but after a political scramble to make various struggling areas eligible for the tax break, it's investors and real estate developers who are starting to reap the benefits.

Last year, more than 150 census tracts in Louisiana were designated as Opportunity Zones under a provision in the 2017 tax-cut bill designed to encourage investment in economically hard-hit areas.

Basically what this says is the Trump tax cut bill was turbocharged with "opportunity zone" breaks for your local electeds to hand out as patronage to real estate developers who will be rewarded for building more nice things for rich people. 

Another potential hiccup, according to tax-law analyst Samantha Jacoby of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is that the program does not include any requirements that local residents benefit from the investments.

Wealthy people, not poor people, are the ones who have capital gains, she noted. And areas that are already attractive to investors are getting the benefit, such as the New York City neighborhood where Amazon has announced its intention to build a new headquarters.

"While the new tax break enables investors to accumulate more wealth, it includes no requirements to ensure that local residents benefit," said Chuck Marr, a colleague of Jacoby at the CBPP, where he focuses on federal tax policy.

When the law was being crafted, Tulane’s Lalka said it was pitched as a way of enticing people to invest in start-ups and small businesses. But since it’s been enacted, real estate has dominated the activity surrounding the program.

The "zones" are determined at the state level which means that John Bel Edwards's LED got to cut hundreds of deals for Cedric Richmond and countless local officials. The bankers and developers connected to Cedric or to this or that city councilperson or mayor swarmed in to take advantage. Joe Jaeger is here. So is Sidney Torres. And.. well... here we go with another one of these stories.

Let's make lots of money.

I know this isn't exactly shocking or anything but I do like to remind people just how little incentive any elected person has to do anything except enact special favors for the wealthy.  It's one reason, even the feints they make at providing relief for people being squeezed by rapacious capital are careful to treat only the symptoms and not the disease.

Specifically, the council's resolution asks the Legislature to consider a constitutional amendment to help residents whose tax bills have doubled in one year, who have lived in the city since 2004 and who have low to moderate incomes.    Council members said the idea is to help people who have seen their home values and resulting property taxes skyrocket due to pricey renovations on nearby homes.

Often, investors will buy an old property, pour in tens of thousands of dollars of renovations and quickly sell it for a profit, a practice commonly known as house flipping. The proliferation of short-term rentals in the city has made such flipping more common.

The council's proposal "doesn’t hurt anyone who has paid half a million dollars for a house," said Councilman Jay H. Banks. "But it also does not penalize people who have been living in neighborhoods their whole lives, who haven’t ever seen half a million dollars."

Maybe if Jay Banks weren't so careful not to hurt the house flippers, we wouldn't be stuck in a cycle of figuring out what tax credit we have to grant to middle class homeowners in order to mask the damage done by the massive privileges granted to the plutocrats.

It's a cycle that's about to start again, by the way.  I'm not sure how many people caught Banks's comments during the last round of bickering over short term rentals.  Neither paper quoted him on this point but, at the January 10th Council meeting,  Banks said he no longer believes STRs are killing affordable housing.  He even suggested creating... yep...  "opportunity zones" ...where they would be more liberally permitted in residential areas he, or whichever developers have his ear, might deem in need of a little investment.

Rearranging the Board chairs on a sinking utility

It says here that a task force appointed by the legislature to come up with options for reforming Sewerage and Water Board is moving away from the idea of privatization.  It says that loudly in the headline so that everybody can relax and not worry about what they're actually suggesting. That would be a mistake, though, since what they are suggesting is not necessarily better.

One option Antrup said the task force may recommend is forming a drainage-specific agency to oversee all drainage operations in the city, either via a newly created agency or an oversight body similar to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services in North Carolina. Antrup said the option could involve implementing a new stormwater fee for impervious surfaces on properties, which the Sewerage & Water Board has already been analyzing in recent years as a way to harness additional drainage system revenues beyond property taxes. That fee would also allow for the utility to offer grant programs to assist low-income residents with reducing impervious surfaces on their properties, Antrup said.

Another option on the table for the task force, Antrup said, is reforming the Sewerage & Water Board’s management structure into a public benefit corporation, whose profits would be directed into the agency’s operations. The task force has taken a look at how Citizens Energy Group in Indianapolis works as a model, Antrup said. The city struck a $1.9 billion deal in 2011 to transfer the city’s water and sewer utilities to Citizens, which an Indianapolis news release at the time described as “a public charitable trust that operates like a not-for-profit.”

Ah see that's probably the preferred option.  A public benefit corporation offers all the opportunities for piracy that outright privatization would while also building in the means of keeping the graft inside the usual circle of quasi-governmental non-profit operators who run everything in this city anyway.

On that note, I thought this recent episode of the The Lens podcast could have been improved if the segment about the web of kickbacks and favor trading that comprise the local non-profit industrial complex had been connected to the segment about the now 14 year old Taylor Energy oil spill. Phyllis Taylor is, after all, kind of the matriarch of that whole scene. It would make more sense if people got some perspective on how dirty all the dirty money that gets passed around really is. 

Whatever they end up doing at S&WB is likely to be just the latest rearrangement of the same old deck chairs. Every now and then they need to refresh the order. But it's still the same game of determining a more frictionless system for distributing the money.


Which is why the ballot measure passed in last week's election isn't likely to be of much consequence. What it does is put a City Councilmember back on the Board.  Mitch Landrieu's reforms removed two Council seats just a few years ago in favor of seats appointed by the mayor with input from a collection of community luminaries such as the University Presidents and others with heavy ties to our friends in the familiar NOLA fundraiser's cabal.  I voted for this year's amendment figuring it at least looks like a move toward a more democratic spirit of oversight. But I don't have any illusions it will actually achieve that.

Anyway, after the measure passed, the Council decided to appoint Jay Banks as their SWB representative. What's most interesting about that is, prior to his election to City Council, Banks had been a John Bel Edwards appointee to the Convention Center Board.  Currently the Governor and the Mayor are having a disagreement over whether hotel/motel tax revenue currently controlled by the Convention Center should go to SWB instead.  Banks seems to have a foot in each of those camps now.  Will his role on the Board find him furthering the Mayor's plan? Or will he be more involved in walking it back?  Either way, I'm sure the key will be in making sure the important people who pass all the money among themselves under the current system continue to do that under whatever new plan is devised.

Mutant ninja squirrels

They had one of those Everybody Yell At Entergy days today at City Council which I am always here for.

Councilman Jay Banks told the Entergy group he has received nine automated text messages since April 2017 telling him the power was out at his home. He questioned why the recurring problem had not been identified or solved in that time.

"If it's a transformer, if it's a line, if it's mutant ninja squirrels -- whatever it is in that area -- there is clearly a problem there," Banks said.

That sounds pretty scary. But maybe they should worry about threats to the infrastructure from the real world animal kingdom such as escaped jaguars who can chew through steel cables. 

"Vocal minority"

Eric Bay is getting real close to saying anti-STR activists are "paid actors" here.

Eric Bay, president of the Alliance for Neighborhood Prosperity, a local group short-term rental supporters, said in an interview Wednesday that he's concerned the council is acting at the behest of a small group of New Orleans residents opposed to short-term rentals. He estimates that as many as 1,000 permits renewals will be denied when they expire between May and August.

"To have this knee-jerk reaction without properly studying real-time, independent data and statistics is simply bad policy, and a blatant attempt to appease a vocal minority," Bay said. He also said he's concerned the city hasn't properly warned short-term rental operators, saying, "the city is not informing license-holders that actions are being taken against their right and privilege."

Don't worry, I'm sure he'll get there eventually.

Anyway, we're coming off a municipal election where voters consistently said affordable housing was at or near the top of their list of concerns. A majority of the new council believes, at least for now, that the impetus to tighten STR regulations was part of the mandate that won them their seats. But maybe if ANP continues to hammer at this "vocal minority" characterization all summer, eventually some of these elected people will start to buy it.

Also, Jared Brossett has been a reliable anti-STR vote in the past.  Seems like his addition would cement the "veto-proof majority" brought up here.  Where is he on this motion?

According to a City Council agenda released ahead of their Thursday (May 24) meeting, Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer has already convinced three of her fellow council members to co-author the proposal, indicating their support. Those four council members -- Palmer, Jason Williams, Joe Giarrusso and Jay Banks -- constitute the majority needed for approval of the ordinance.

One additional vote will make a veto-proof majority, though Mayor LaToya Cantrell hasn't weighed in on the matter.

Coffee klatch Avengers assemble

You can still do this sort of thing in Orleans Parish.  In Jefferson, you are likely to be filmed by a P.I. and/or Sheriff's deputy.

For the past three months, a CC’s Coffee House on Esplanade Avenue has served as a sort of satellite City Hall office for an hour or so every Tuesday morning.

It started out as a way for newly elected members of the New Orleans City Council to get to know one another and to swap advice as they built up their staffs and prepared to take office.

As the weeks passed, the coffee klatch evolved into a series of sessions to develop policies and sketch out strategies.

Maybe the JP approach is better. Looks like a lot of business got done at these meetings. Should there be a public record? 

They’ve even divvied up areas of emphasis, based on the special needs of their districts or their areas of expertise.

Moreno, who is taking over the at-large seat long held by Councilwoman Stacy Head, is taking the lead on criminal justice initiatives, along with issues related to the budget and ensuring that City Hall departments and revenue collection are run efficiently.

Nguyen, whose District E includes large swaths of undeveloped and underdeveloped land in New Orleans East and the Lower 9th Ward, will focus on economic development.

Banks, who will represent Central City and the Central Business, Warehouse and Lower Garden districts as the District B member, will spearhead efforts on community development.

Giarrusso, whose District A includes Lakeview, Carrollton and some Mid-City neighborhoods hit hard by last year’s flooding, will be the point man on public works, including the Sewerage & Water Board.

Palmer, the District C member who represents Algiers, the French Quarter, Treme and Marigny as she returns to the council after four years away, will focus on transportation issues.

Each character has his or her own special abilities. Just like in the comics. Or maybe Jason Williams had the better analogy.

Councilman Jason Williams: I truly feel honored to work with this group. I think it’s an A team.

— Jessica Williams (@jwilliamsNOLA) May 7, 2018

Well, okay, maybe not THE A Team but they do sound like a team.  But don't let that fool you. We're not going in for that One City One Voice business anymore.  This time it's more like two voices at the most. 

Though the two councils that served alongside Mayor Mitch Landrieu had their own initiatives and successes, they tended to follow the administration’s lead on many issues.

By contrast, the incoming council members said they expect to be, as Banks put it, “an equal participant in governance” with new Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

“We obviously want the administration to be successful,” Giarrusso said. “But at the same time, we realize we are a co-equal branch of government, and we are going to operate that way.”

Banks added: “I think we will have the kind of council where the lines in the sand won’t be about individual (personalities), they’ll be issue-oriented. We will not be adversarial, but it will also not be a rubber stamp. I think this council is going to take its responsibility very seriously as one of the three branches of government.”

That's all well and good until Mayor Thanos collects all the stones. Then maybe we won't feel so good.  Until then, though, say hi to the new team. Action figures are still being manufactured. They're trying to get Joe Giarrusso's socks just right.

sock game pic.twitter.com/TjayNksGha

— skooks (@skooks) May 7, 2018

So much winning

Today Jay Banks won a recount of the District B council votes requested by Seth Bloom. This comes a week after Banks won the recount of early and absentee votes performed last Tuesday. And, of course, all of it comes after Banks won the election on November 18.  Will Bloom make him have to win a fourth time in court?  Maybe.

Update: Or maybe not. This says Bloom conceded finally. Let's assume that's gonna stick.

Election Day

Get on out there and capture the magic. Here are some tips for those placing wagers on things.

Cantrell 62% Charbonnet 38%  Spread could actually go higher so watch for that

Banks 50% plus just a little itty bit over Bloom The Cantrell wave in the turnout would ordinarily favor Bloom but a lot of people also seem to hate him so.. it will be close

Gray 54% Nguyen 46% Tthis is just based on the primary numbers plus some educated guesses but if it goes differently don't come yell at me

Schroder 60% Edwards 40% The Democrats could have gotten their shit together and actually try to elect a Treasurer. They didn't.


More to say later in the day.  Have fun. 

Welcome to the runoff, everybody

District B third place finisher Timothy David Ray has some things to say which you may find interesting.

I have recently reached a decision and have decided to offer my endorsement to a candidate in the run-off. I reached my decision after deep consideration of both candidates; their policies and their characters

He then goes on to.. um.. very deeply consider the character, in particular, of Seth Bloom. He finds it lacking.

Seth Bloom has habitually displayed a lack of self-restraint, professionalism, respect, and sincerity as he has campaigned for another public office. I am convinced that Seth Bloom is volatile, hostile, and vindictive - the residents of District B deserve better. The City of New Orleans deserves better.

It goes on like this for quite a while. The first (of the very many times) I read Ray's treatise I had to stop and count how many paragraphs we were already into it when we get to, "There is much more I can say about the complete lack of respect and smugness of Seth Bloom." The answer is 17.

Anyway, so, enjoy that. Early voting begins today, by the way. Here is where you can do that.

Will the new hotels be unionized?

I wonder which "vast new hotel development nearby" the Unite Here organizers were talking about here.

Lila Zucker, a bartender at Loews New Orleans Hotel, said her chronic health issues would prevent her from working without the $10 a month health insurance she's able to purchase through the hotel's union contract. Odell Brown, who works as a banquet steward at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, called for workers to receive a larger piece of the company's more than $10 billion in annual revenue. Gabby Bolden, a banquet server at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, mentioned rumors of a vast new hotel in development nearby.

"It is our business to make sure that [any new hotel] jobs are union jobs with decent wages and benefits," she said. "We all deserve a fair wage."

It says, "rumors" so I thought first of the so-called Trade District development expansion of the upriver Convention Center property. On our NOligarchs map (which needs some updating, btw) we were calling this area "Jaegertown" because Joe Jaeger and Darryl Berger appeared to have an inside track as developers there.   But just this month, we read that project has been "mothballed" for the time being. So what's the big thing in the works now?

There's Four Seasons moving into WTC (eventually) but that's much more than a "rumor" at this point. Heck, its projected revenue is already part of mayoral candidate Desiree Charbonnet's budget plans.  Speaking of which, I guess neither candidate made it out to the Unite Here rally. That's kind of a shame given that organizing hospitality is going to have to be a top priority for anyone committed to battling economic inequality in New Orleans under the next administration. (We're still not sure LaToya Cantrell even believes inequality is a problem.)  There were a couple of council candidates out there, though.

Bolden also urged elected officials to support local organizing efforts, but two City Council candidates who attended the rally already had pledged their support. James Gray, the incumbent District E councilman currently in a  Nov. 18 runoff election against opponent Cyndi Nguyen, donned a red UNITE HERE shirt and vowed to assist to the union in contract negotiations if he is re-elected.

Jay Banks, who faces Seth Bloom in a runoff for the District B City Council seat, also spoke, saying he would be "a friend" to unions if elected. "Making sure that families can work and afford to live is crucial to the survival of this city," he said.

Banks has also served on the Convention Center board so it's significant that he's aware of the need for stronger unions in hospitality.  Bloom is the only candidate on the citywide slate I've seen actually oppose a $15 minimum wage. So that's a pretty stark contrast. 

Is Mitch still a kingmaker?

Here is Grace musing over whether Mitch will endorse a mayoral candidate and, I guess, when Cedric Richmond will endorse Charbonnet in the mayor's race. (He's already working on her behalf.) She throws in a mention of the governor's endorsement of Jay Banks in the District B race but that's a separate matter. Edwards isn't interested in being a kingmaker in New Orleans. Mitch and Cedric are, though.  And the test of their relative strength is an interesting sidebar to this election.

Mitch and Cedric command different power bases. But they also overlap and sometimes complement one another so you don't often see a direct contest between the two of them. This may become a bit of one if Mitch decides to endorse LaToya.  I don't think he's going to do that, though.  I'm sure Mitch likes Cantrell just fine, but it's not clear whether an explicit endorsement from him helps anybody right now.

The game right now is all about finessing the white vote.  In New Orleans that means two things. First, candidates appealing to younger more liberalish white voters should present as ostensibly progressive in a banal, "good government" "business friendly" sense of the word. Say "technology" and "innovation" a lot regardless of whether you actually mean anything by those words.  This sort of thing is Landrieu's bread and butter but there's a problem.  Because candidates also have to tell white voters they are "tough on crime."  And because the New Orleans white vote is shot through with latent, intractable racism, Mitch's role in helping take down Confederate monuments is somehow imagined to have caused the crime rate to worsen.  So if "Monuments Not Murders" Mitch openly gets on board with a mayoral candidate, it's not obvious how that might play.

Mitch has support with black voters too, of course. But given that Cedric Richmond is going to be able to deliver a significant portion of that to Charbonnet, Landrieu's value as a kingmaker should be his ability to deliver white voters. But it's not clear how he's going to do that without a fair amount of subtlety.

John Bel Backs Banks in B

It's a bit out of the ordinary for a governor to endorse a city council candidate or, really, anybody at the municipal level.  John Bel likes this guy, though.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards pledged Friday morning to help Jay H. Banks win the District B seat on the New Orleans City Council, but said he does not intend to make an endorsement in the hotly contested mayor’s race.

Edwards appeared with Banks at a prayer breakfast Friday morning at Delgado Community College. After an introduction by representatives of several different faiths, Edwards praised both Banks’ character and his decades of public service in city government.

“You may not think there’s much tie-in between the governor of the state of Louisiana and a district councilman in New Orleans,” Edwards said. “But the truth is, it takes teamwork at all levels.”

A moment later, however, Edwards said he would not be endorsing in any other city-level races.

“You won’t see me involved in any other race in New Orleans,” Edwards said. “But I felt the need to be here for Jay, just like he was there for me.”

This has to be good news for Banks that he has the backing of the state's highest ranking elected Democrat as well as the Chair of the state party. Unfortunately they allowed her to speak too. 

State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson was among the speakers, and she among her praise for Banks’ readiness to lead District B, she also took a thinly veiled jab at Seth Bloom’s disclosure of a past opioid addiction.

“It is important that you have people who can spend full time on this, and not have to be focused on recovery in other ways,” Peterson said. “We all have issues. We all have times when we have suffered, and our families have suffered. People have depression, people have other issues in their family, and those need to be tended to very carefully. I don’t take that lightly, but in this role, with what we are facing in this community, we need somebody who is competent and is of the community, and who has character.”

Come on, man, there are plenty of legitimate things to go after Bloom for and this personal (and frankly, humanizing) issue is what we're gonna fixate on?  Do better. When Michelle Obama told Democrats to "go high" this is not what she meant.

Also it's pretty funny that Derrick Edwards was in the room watching the party big wigs who haven't lifted a finger to help his statewide campaign spend their morning on this district level council race. That must have been fun for him. 

Suspiciously sleepy election

Here's a look at everything the Advocate can compile for us about the City Council races right now.

The most interesting ones so far:

District B is wide open now that Cantrell is running for mayor. Uptownmessenger reports today on Jay Banks' campaign launch party.  Notice that some candidates are at least talking about "displacement" this year... even if it is an afterthought.

“Every citizen — no matter their race, their religion, their disability or their sexual orientation, including those who just got here and those who have been here for generations — should have the opportunity to benefit from all this new explosion of interest in Uptown,” Banks said. “We have to make sure that all our residents benefit or, at a minimum, are not displaced by the progress.”

If Kristin Palmer really is going to try and make a comeback in this slot, it could make the District C election a microcosm of the mayor's race which I think.... actually let's save that for another post.

District E could also bear watching, if.. you know.. if it doesn't secede. Dawn Hebert has a catchy slogan, anyway.

In District E, Gray will have at least one challenger: Dawn Hebert, a retired U.S. Postal Service employee and community activist who said she’s entering the race to ensure that New Orleans East and the Lower 9th Ward are not forgotten as other city neighborhoods grow more prosperous.

“The time has come for District E to share in the wealth of New Orleans,” Hebert said.

Are there any Share The Wealth clubs active in New Orleans right now?

Also of interest are the races that might not happen at all for the At-Large seats. Jason Williams is still unopposed. And Helena Moreno is virtually unopposed with only Joseph Bouie considering a run apparently out of courtesy.

Another high-profile politician eyeing the at-large race is state Rep. Joe Bouie, who said Friday that calls for him to run for the Division 1 seat have been growing since Brossett decided against the idea. Head, who is term-limited, will vacate the seat next May.

“In order to afford an option to the citizens, I am seriously considering it,” Bouie said.

It's early but the field for every major municipal office is, not only thin, but also dominated by establishment insiders likely to run a quiet, close to the vest campaign. But voters in this city right now are facing dire uncertainties where basic necessities like housing, health, child and family services, transportation are less and less accessible/affordable. If our politics at such a moment become just another elitist yawn then something is not connecting.  We've got the summer to figure out what that is.