You won't believe who is trying to defund the police now

Amazingly, it is New Orleans and Co. 

Facing a collapsed tourism industry due to the coronavirus pandemic, two publicly-funded tourism agencies in New Orleans have cut funding for supplemental security and infrastructure improvements in the French Quarter. And one of them is trying to take back millions of unspent funds it’s contributed in years past.

The agencies in question are the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Convention Center — a public body — and New Orleans and Company, a private nonprofit group that serves as the marketing agency for the city’s tourism industry. Both organizations had signed agreements with the city that will expire in a few months.

New Orleans and Company, however, has already cancelled one of its contracts with the city. 

With the end of the agreements, the city stands to lose roughly $5.7 million that it had in 2019 for French Quarter security and improvements. The biggest chunk of that money, $2.5 million per year, has gone to pay for Louisiana State Police patrols in the French Quarter. Another $1.2 million per year went to the French Quarter Task Force — an initiative originally created by entrepreneur Sidney Torres that pays off-duty NOPD officers to patrol the quarter in blue-light Smart Cars.

Okay so it is the Convention Center and NO & Co. For its part, the Convention Center says they are all paid up and the deal that created this fund is expiring, all of which seems to be true. But also they have to decide how much money they want to give away to Ron Forman so you can see why that might be a priority. 

But NO & Co. is the agency that is actually trying to take some of the money back... although it will surprise no one to know that the city disputes the amount they've actually paid and says also that they may in fact be behind on these obligations.

While New Orleans and Company believes that the money should be returned, the city has recently argued that New Orleans and Company actually owes additional money to the improvement fund. At a June FQMD board meeting, Smith stated that “the City is still missing the New Orleans & Co. 2019 remittances that came to about $2,000,000.00 and they have been attempting to collect these since February,” according to meeting notes.

Disputed U-O-MEs notwithstanding, why not just let the thing drop?   It's time to start de-funding the police/surveillance state and the French Quarter is the most overly-policed and heavily surveiled neighborhood in our city.  Sounds like a great place to start. 

Not sure that's the city's plan, though. A .25 cent sales tax renewal on the ballot in December would continue supplemental patrols there. The only question, it seems, is who will be doing the patrolling. 

One of the two plans comes from Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who wants to use the money to fund a new security team made up of a mix of police officers and civilians. The other is being championed by the French Quarter Management District — a state created body whose board is largely made up of appointees from tourism industry groups and French Quarter business and neighborhood groups. It hopes to use the money to expand an existing security detail made up of off-duty New Orleans Police Department officers.

It seems like the dispute here is really about control over turf.  While FQMD's plan is to keep paying the task force (famously founded by Sidney Torres) the mayor wants to give it to something called a "Grounds Patrol" operated by the city's Homeland Security department.  The key difference is that the Grounds Patrol would deputize civilian "quality of life" officers relegated to code enforcement which, the claim is, would free up NOPD to focus on real police work.  This sounds dubious.  In fact, The Lens points out in that article that model is very much along the lines of a failed Landrieu Administration experiment known as NOLA Patrol which had to be discontinued after the citizen deputies were found out to have been issuing traffic tickets.  

Again, it would appear that this dispute isn't so much about how best to spend a shrinking pot of policing money.  It's about who controls the pot and how much extra patronage they can wring from it. 

But even if the tax is renewed, the city is projecting that collections will be significantly lower than in years past due to a shrinking tourism industry brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Current projections for 2021 are $1.8 million, compared to $3 million last year. 

But that level of funding would expand the current size of the French Quarter Task force if all the revenue is dedicated to FQMD, even if New Orleans and Company ceased their $1.2 million contribution to the French Quarter Task Force.

Under Cantrell’s plan, the first $1.3 million raised by the sales tax would go to the Unified French Quarter Patrol along with an additional $1.5 million in funding from the French Market Corporation. 

The remainder of the sales tax, estimated to be $500,000 in 2021, would be administered by a newly created French Quarter Economic Development Oversight Committee. That extra money would be used for other public safety and quality of life initiatives within the French Quarter.

"Other public safety and quality of life initiatives" = what, exactly?  Well, that's for you to find out.  Suffice to say anytime you see something disbursed in the name of "economic development" in this city, you can begin looking for the crony capitalists right then and there.

More to the point, though, all of this petty squabbling and attendant corruption could be avoided (and patrons of French Quarter businesses could get a sales tax break) if we would just agree to de-fund the wholly unnecessary police-surveillance apparatus altogether.   But for some reason nobody is talking about doing that except the tourism agencies.  Never thought we'd see the day.

Pretty late in the game to be asking questions now

Did Kristin Palmer express support for Mayor Cantrell's Fair Sham bargain while the push was on to pass its enabling bills through the legislature? At the time it seemed like area politicos were presenting a united front. If an elected person had any questions at the time, I'd like to think I would have noticed.  I had plenty. But it sure felt like I was alone in that.

Anyway all that stuff passed months ago and now we have to deal with the consequences.  Which is why it's frustrating to see that now we're hearing complaints that should have been raised way back when.

The merger will transfer $8 million in annual funding and all but one or two of NOTMC’s employees to New Orleans & Company, NOTMC CEO Mark Romig told the New Orleans City Council at a Friday meeting. In Romig’s proposed 2020 budget, $1.8 million would remain with NOTMC for some lingering responsibilities, while $3.9 million would go to the city for infrastructure funding.

But some council members expressed concerns about accountability for the public dollars and other remaining uncertainties with the merger.

Councilwoman Kristin Palmer, who sits on the board of NOTMC along with council members Jay Banks, Helena Moreno, and Jason Williams, complained earlier in the week that she had yet to see a written plan for the merger.

“There are three other council members who sit on NOTMC and we have repeatedly requested information on any type of transition in writing, which we have yet to receive,” she said at a Monday meeting. “And meanwhile, [New Orleans and Company] is like absorbing and hiring all the NOTMC employees and we don’t know what’s going on.”

What's going on is what was always in the plan since the deal was first announced. The public money that used to go to NOTMC (a public board) will now go to NO and Co. (a private entity) where there will be far less public oversight. This is in no way surprising to anyone.

Of course city council wouldn't really have much reason to speak up until it came time to start hashing out the budgetary implications of all of this. Which is why we're seeing this discussion now. In the same article we see there are also concerns about NO and Co.'s share of the short term rental tax passed over the weekend. Interestingly, the city still has a bit of leverage to play.

In July, the council voted to put the tax on the November ballot. But before it did, council members raised similar concerns about accountability and public input.

“The accountability and transparency question, the mayor recognizes that’s a concern for the council,” Cantrell’s Chief of Staff John Porciau said at the July meeting. “It’s a concern for her.”

If the ballot measure is approved on Saturday, it wouldn’t institute the tax right away. It would simply give the council the ability to levy a 6.75 percent tax. The council would have to vote again to actually put it into effect. It would also have to approve a cooperative endeavor agreement that would funnel the 25 percent from the city to New Orleans & Company.

“That is where we have our say regarding the transparency piece,” said Councilwoman Helena Moreno. “It’s on the CEA for that 25 percent that we’re going to have some control in making sure those tax dollars are used properly.”

She also said that the council has the option to refuse to approve the agreement until they find it to be acceptable. Until then, she said, the money would go into an escrow account that’s out of reach of New Orleans & Company.

It's a bit of a cop-out, though, for City Council members to wait until there's nothing they can do about these issues until they have to deal with the fall-out. The "accountability and transparency question" isn't new.  It was well understood even at the time that the mayor was negotiating the deal. Council is dealing with it now because she conceded on points her predecessor would not.

A push to merge the two groups in 2010 floundered over many of the same issues. Then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu objected because he wanted the organization that resulted from the merger to be a public body, not a private one like New Orleans & Company, according to the Times-Picayune. The NOTMC board ultimately voted against the merger in 2010.

Having given up the fundamental issue of whether or not public money should fall under public governance, we've backed ourselves into a position where we're hoping to negotiate over a small portion of what we still sort of control.  Maybe someone could have asked about that sooner.

Fair Sham

During last week's CNN climate forum, Elizabeth Warren hit a home run. Warren was asked about the Trump administration's decision to reverse Obama era efficiency standards for light bulbs. Her answer brought out a point that Democrats, even the "good Democrats" often fail to make about where the true onus for effective climate action lies.

“Oh, come on, give me a break,” Warren, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said during CNN’s Town Hall forum on climate change. “Look, there are a lot of ways that we try to change our energy consumption and our pollution, and God bless all of those ways. Some of it is with lightbulbs, some of it is on straws, some of it, dang, is on cheeseburgers.”

“That’s what they want us to talk about,” Warren said, before noting that, in her estimation, the fossil fuel industry wanted to cast the climate fight as “your problem.” She continued: “They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws and around your cheeseburgers, when 70% of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries.”

The industries Warren mentioned are the oil industry, the electric power industry and the building industry, according to The New York Times.

In other words we aren't going to solve a problem caused by institutional corruption and  mismanagement by shaming the individual victims of that mismanagement into submission.  We're not going to reduce carbon emissions by drinking out of paper straws. Anyone who tells you differently is not really on your side. 

Similarly, in New Orleans, we aren't going to relieve decades worth of decay and negligence visited on our drainage system by shaming people into picking up their trash. But for some reason, LaToya Cantrell can't help but to do just that at every opportunity. Even, here, where the topic is really more about expanding the Department of Public Works, she can't help but get in a dig.

Officials outlined more on how they plan to spend money from the "fair share" deal. The money will help the Department of Public Works hire 42 extra employees and fund more tasks being brought in house. They'll bring in five more maintenance inspectors and 28 new pieces of equipment, including vac trucks, pothole patchers, dump trucks, excavators, pickup trucks and trailers.

"We are owning our responsibilities and seamlessly working together," Cantrell said. "It's a shared responsibility. We're not being reactive because we're doing the work every single day and have been doing it every single day since I've been in office."

Cantrell ask citizens to do their part by cleaning up the city and dumping trash appropriately. Someone recently dumped three boats on Martin Luther King Avenue.

"You can't make it up," Cantrell said. "It's present. It's there."

What does a boat left in the street have to do with causing people to need... boats in the street every time it rains?  I really have no idea.  But it's obviously evidence that we've done something wrong.

It's notable, also, that Cantrell's hostility toward the citizenry appears here in a story about her so-called "fair share" deal with the hospitality industry.  She's very proud of her grand bargain. She's so proud, in fact, that #FairShare has already transcended its original meaning to become a catch-all mantra applicable to whatever the mayor happens to be talking about at the time.  A new gambit at extracting patronage dollars out of the French Market is about “...getting our fair share, based on what’s coming back to the city, and these are assets we control.” A scheme to skim fees off of other governmental agencies for tax collection services is apparently about getting a "fair share."  The city raised the fees it charges to Bayou Boogaloo saying they also need to pay a "fair share."  LaToya's PAC is using it as the title of a fundraising campaign.  The city's and the mayor's official Twitter feeds frequently tag random messages about anything and nothing with #FairShare.  It's basically LaToya's #MAGA now.  More to the point, Cantrell's muddled, scattershot use of the phrase now indicates she never grasped its value in the first place.

The original context was the structural inequality of the tourism industry in New Orleans. An obscene portion of the wealth generated by tourism accrues to a cohort of owners and oligarchs while the majority of workers who make that wealth possible struggle for low wages, poor benefits and minimal job security. Moreover, the tax revenue collected off the backs of these workers feeds directly back into systems and institutions meant to further line the pockets of the very same oligarchs. A "fair share" of that revenue should be used to support the city's working class. It should build affordable housing. It should fund better schools, better transit, better city services. It should help the city build and maintain the basic infrastructure that makes life possible here without further burdening its poorest and most vulnerable people. 

So does Cantrell's "fair share" deal actually do any of that?  Not really. The city does receive the temporary windfall of a one-time payment plus a share of one or two new revenue streams (depending on future developments.) But the new money is grossly insufficient to the need.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s hard-fought “fair share” infrastructure deal could provide more than $20 million a year for the struggling Sewerage and Water Board over the next decade. But that doesn’t come close to meeting the $3 billion in funding required by the Sewerage and Water Board’s 10-Year Capital Improvement Plan.

That was revealed by Cantrell administration officials on Monday at the first meeting of the City Council’s Ad Valorem and Special Dedicated Revenue Committee. The committee aims to take a bird’s eye view of the city’s finances and release a public report in early 2020. 

“Oh wow, so every year, you’re hundreds of millions of dollars short leading up to 2028?” Councilwoman Helena Moreno asked at the meeting.

Sure, $3 billion over 10 years is a tall order. In a better world, every city in America would have ample support from a federally funded and guided Green New Deal initiative to repair crumbling infrastructure and stem the tide against the threat of climate change.  But until we get there we have to depend on our local leadership to do the best they can. The #FairShare isn't the best we can do in New Orleans.

In fact, it was never intended to be. The closest description of what it actually was intended to do came from Stephanie Grace all the way back in June. Her key observation at that time was that all of the recurring revenues generated by the deal do not come from the tourism industry giving up any of its accustomed share. Instead they come from new taxes on the "man behind the tree." 

The latest evidence that it always helps to have some metaphorical man behind some imagined tree is the deal to send more money to New Orleans to help rebuild its aging infrastructure, which has apparently cleared all remaining hurdles in the state Legislature. Despite a period of tense, on-again, off-again negotiations among New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, Gov. John Bel Edwards, legislative leaders and representatives of the tourism industry, all sides emerged with much of what they wanted.

"All sides" got what they wanted.  True! But that requires some explanation of which "sides" wanted what. Let's look at how the spoils are divided.

Number one on the list was the Convention Center wanted to build their publicly funded but privately profitable hotel. Check. Walt Leger got that for them.

House Bill 617, passed by the Senate on a 33-0 vote on Sunday, authorizes the Convention Center to build and own the $550 million, 1,200-room hotel proposed for the upriver end of the giant exhibition hall. The bill also clears the way for the Convention Center to develop other vacant land it owns next to the site.

Number two was the tourism cabal wanted less public scrutiny over the marketing and convention brokering agencies they control.  Check.  The technically public New Orleans Tourism Marking Corp will be folded into the technically private (but publicly funded) New Orleans and Company.  The city's "infrastructure fund" gets a cut NOTMC's corpse.  But the lion's #FairShare of that still goes to the NO and Co.

About $5.5 million of the Marketing Corp.’s budget, which comes from a nightly fee charged on hotel rooms, would be redirected to the city’s infrastructure fund as part of the overall deal. Other money the group receives, including $2 million a year from Harrah’s Casino and its hotel and $7.8 million from a self-assessment by hotels in the city, would go to New Orleans and Co.

The key difference, though, is that these operations will be more fully privatized under the new regime.  The city had a direct oversight role with NOTMC.  The new entity says it will "invite" them to sit in on the back bench at some of their meetings.

Oversight of the combined organizations is another detail being worked out. In an internal company email sent Wednesday and shared with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, Perry said New Orleans and Co. intends to invite the two City Council district members and a rotating at-large member to serve on an “ex-office” basis with New Orleans & Co. Perry later clarified that his group is still working out the details for a formal City Council presence on the board, but his plan is to invite council members to serve on a leisure marketing committee run by Romig.

Number three was the city wanted to pull in more recurring revenue from local hotel/motel taxes. This, more than anything, was the core of the "fair share" argument. And they did sort of get what they wanted.  But the trick is in how they got it. What the city is getting is a completely new tax based on a revival of a so-called "lost penny" that hadn't been collected since 1966.  In other words, the tourism agencies aren't "sharing" their previous take at all.  The "man behind the tree" is.

Number four was various parties for various reasons wanted a new tax on Short Term Rentals.  The hotel industry wanted it in order to equalize the tax paid on STRs with that applied to hotel rooms.  The STR industry, while not happy about being taxed, is happier on balance with becoming a critical revenue generating industry the city will be reluctant to crack down on in the future. The city, again, just wants to get paid.  And they will. Maybe. The new tax still has to be approved by voters on the November ballot this year.  Also the city is having difficulty projecting just how much revenue it's going to actually see from it.  One thing we do know is whatever amount the tax does eventually produce, we still have to "fair share" 25 percent of it back to NO and Co. So, congratulations on that as well. 

Number five on the wish list was the Convention Center wanted to ret-con its legally questionable collection of a tax originally intended to pay for its Phase IV construction. Over the years, that money has become a kind of slush fund the city's elite have used to pass money around among themselves for their own pet projects and those of their cronies.  So, yeah, in exchange for a paltry $50 million one time payment, they get to keep doing that now.   Already, they've got big plans. 

New Orleans tourism officials' plans for a massive entertainment district on empty land upriver from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center are back on the table.

The Convention Center's board, which finally won approval in June to build a 1,200-room hotel on part of the land after lengthy political wrangling, has asked interested firms to submit ideas by Oct. 4 for how to develop the 20 acres adjacent to the hotel site.

In its request for new master plan proposals, the Convention Center said it "expects the development to be reflective of the unique culture and history of New Orleans and include elements not commonly found in other parts of the nation."

They're putting out for bids on a shiny new entertainment district to go with their hotel. It will be built on some of the highest ground in the city convenient to downtown. Ideal for building affordable housing, maybe.  But that would only happen if the city were serious about giving its workers a "fair share" of the benefit their labor actually produces. LaToya Cantrell's fair sham deal was never really supposed to do that.


The mayor herself even admitted the fair sham isn't going to be enough last week when city officials laid out their plans for some of the money they know they will have on hand.  The deal left far too much money and power in the hands of the tourism cabal. So, naturally, she is asking you to make up the difference.

But she said it will take far more than the "fair share" deal’s millions to fix all the roads, canals and pipes that have crumbled during years of deferred maintenance and that are being further battered by the effects of climate change. She said that’s precisely why voters should pull the lever for a trio of infrastructure funding initiatives on Nov. 16. 

Part of what voters will consider is tied in with the fair share deal: a tax on short-term rentals whose proceeds will help to fund city infrastructure.  The other initiatives include a 3-mill tax to pay for repairs and maintenance of infrastructure, a $500 million package of infrastructure bonds and another $10 million in bonds for maintenance work.

When they do get down to fixing the canals and pipes, however they pay for it, let's hope they get it right this time.  The last big drainage project only just recently wrapped up. And already people are raising questions about that one.

The SELA improvements all stem from widespread flooding on May 8, 1995. The resulting $3.1 billion in insurance claims set a record at the time for an unnamed storm event, and the federal flood insurance program had to foot the bill for repairs.

So, Congress responded by authorizing $1.5 billion in drainage improvements over the next 20 years, with the idea that improving the infrastructure would prevent rising flood-repair costs in the future. The Uptown culverts were among the last pieces of that puzzle.

But after this summer’s floods, there are questions about whether those improvements have had unintended consequences for New Orleans’ antiquated drainage system.

When the Corps completed the SELA culverts, they were turned over to the Sewerage & Water Board. The board’s executive director, Ghassan Korban, doesn’t believe the increased capacity in the SELA culverts would have any negative impact on surrounding drainage, but he said he’s hired an outside engineering firm to analyze the flow and determine if it’s causing any bottlenecks.

A couple of independent engineers quoted in that story think maybe the SELA work is making the flooding worse. Sewerage and Water Board is skeptical but they say they'll check it out.  Last year we read in The Lens that the new culverts are "large enough to accommodate three city buses side-by-side."At the time that seemed like a colorful description but, really, who knows what might be down there. 

Whatever they find, though, it's important to understand, the mayor is not going to ask the city's ruling classes to pay to dig it out.  According to her version of events, they are paying their fair share.  So, obviously, we must be the problem now.

Joey Wagner, the Corps’ senior project manager for the SELA projects, bristled when WWL-TV asked what he would tell Bossier and others who think the construction has contributed to recent flooding.

“Like the mayor says, move your cars to the neutral ground," he said. "We all know there are certain areas of the city that are going to flood. And it’s going to continue to flood until the system is totally overhauled.”

And Mayor LaToya Cantrell backed up Wagner at a news conference last week: “Until the city, until we start dealing with our local issues relative to infrastructure, then we will not see the system working as intended.”

She focused her ire on the large amounts of debris New Orleanians regularly dump into the drainage system, and then blamed the intensifying rainfall.

To quote Senator Warren again, come on, give me a break.

LaToya Levels at peak

This is really more in the category of what happens when you ask a stupid question than anything else.  In this interview, Essence Magazine asked the mayor about the recently finalized infrastructure "deal" with the tourism cabal. As we know, this refers to a series of bills passed out of the legislature this year which does the following.

1) Allows the the Convention Center to build a publicly subsidized hotel.

2) Legitimizes the Convention Center's previously legally questionable and still morally indefensible publicly subsidized slush fund.

3) Creates a new tax on hotel rooms based on the formerly "lost penny" which the city only gets three fourths of in order to pay for Sewerage and Water Board improvements. This is supposed to be the "fair share" tax despite the fact that the tourism cabal still gets an unearned piece of it AND gets to keep all of its prior revenue streams.

4) Creates a new tax on Short Term Rentals which the city can dedicate its portion of toward infrastructure... although, yes, we still have to "fair share" part of that with the cabal too for some reason. Also, apparently we are married to the proliferation of STRs now.

5) Folds the technically public New Orleans Tourism Marketing Company into the less public New Orleans and Company in such a way that shields their meetings from public records even though both entities continue to receive public funds.

Anyway the deal sucks. But Essence Magazine could have asked  the mayor about any of the above problems. Instead they asked her, "In what ways do you feel the deal will aid in further diversifying the corporate and entrepreneurial workforce in New Orleans to increase the presence of women of color in leadership roles?" Which.. what?

A diverse workforce with plenty of opportunities for women of color sounds like a terrific goal. But how or why would this infrastructure deal have anything to do with that? I can't answer that. And neither can LaToya but boy does she give it a try.

“Fair Share” ensures that improvements to our infrastructure affects everyone in this city – for everyone who is trying to make their way up and forward, and that includes a corporate and entrepreneurial workforce that looks more like this city. “Fair Share” doesn’t single out any particular entity or industry. None of our many thriving industries would be successful if not for the hard-working men and women of this city. In that vein, “Fair Share” ensures inclusivity and intentionality for everyone who puts skin in the game. It’s about meeting people where they are and giving them a real way to level up and that’s what’s been missing in our city.

Whether they're moving forward or making their way up, we're gonna meet them where they are and level up their skin in the game. We will do this intentionally.   Got it?  Okay.

"Third Fortune 500 Company"

Here's a report from NOLA.com on the salaries of New Orleans's leading non-profit CEOs.

A look at tax records for more than 230 nonprofits in New Orleans shows compensation for CEOs and other top-paid employees varies widely depending on the sector and size of the organization. In general, the larger the organization is and the more national in scope its peer group, the bigger its paychecks are.

At least 17 nonprofit executives in New Orleans make more than $300,000 a year, including three who were paid more than $500,000 for the year, according to a NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune analysis of the latest IRS filings available and Guidestar.org reports.

The report comes with a handy search tool in case you're looking for something that isn't in the slideshow.  Here are the top "earners."



What really jumps out at you here is the money thrown around by organizations in direct receipt of public money like Audubon or the Convention and Visitors Bureau. Also the Sugar Bowl seems to do pretty well thanks to its partnership with NOCVB and the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District where we find the great bulk of our hotel/motel tax revenue directed. Add to that the fact that the Sugar Bowl exists at all thanks to the unpaid labor of college athletes risking their health for these ghouls and you start to wonder how some people sleep at night. (On stacks of cash, yes, I know.)

And then there is the NOCVB itself. Look how modest they are. 

In emailed statements, board members for the Convention and Visitors Bureau, said CEO Stephen Perry and his team manage a giant economic engine that markets the city through three domestic travel offices and five overseas, amounting to, as businessman and board member Greg Rusovich put it, "what is virtually Louisiana's third Fortune 500 company."

The board reached Perry's $439,840 compensation in 2014 by looking at what his peers were paid in 10 competing U.S. cities. The board then took the average of the five lowest paid executives.

See? Perry's half a million dollars a year is actually "low" by their definition. And for all that great work he does non-profiting off of our low wage economy (Minus 2,400 hospitality jobs over the past twelve months!)  you have to admit we're getting a real bargain there.

The hilarious thing is NOLA.com spends hardly any space in this report talking about the public investment in building these individual fortunes. All we get, really, is this one paragraph about Perry's compensation.

Where the money comes from is also a concern. New Orleans' hotel tax is a key source of funding for the board. Steve Pettus, board treasurer and managing partner at Dickie Brennan & Co., said board rules specifically stipulate CEO pay must be funded by private sector dollars.

Money being fungible and all, though, this is pretty meaningless.What it means, in practice, is that once NOCVB has finished leveraging public money away from public service and into the pockets of hoteliers, marketers, developers, etc., they can pay the CEO out of the kickbacks they receive in donations.

Disney theory

Back in March, some of us were a bit surprised to learn that the selection committee in charge of deciding who would redevelop the World Trade Center site had picked the Carpenter & Woodward Four Seasons team rather than Daryl Berger's Conrad proposal which.. according to my sloppy attempt at handicapping.. looked like the best bet.

A different losing team than the one I would have bet on was upset too. They're suing although it doesn't look like their suit has much of a chance. We'll worry about that later.. or not at all as the case may be.

Anyway, a big part of the reason the "Conrad" team seemed like a shoo-in to me was that it was loaded up with insider big-whigs like Berger and several others.

The proposal also contemplates the larger redevelopment of nearby riverfront property, including connecting both the Morial Convention Center and the former WTC building to the Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel, connecting the Outlet Collection at Riverwalk to Convention Center Boulevard and making “significant aesthetic and practical enhancement” to Poydras Street.

The development partnership behind the plan is led by local developers Joe Jaeger, Darryl Berger and Roger Ogden plus Xavier University President Norman Francis.

Many of those names also were involved in the earlier "Tricentennial Consortium" bid to redevelop the WTC and erect an "iconic structure" at the site. That bid was unsuccessful. But, because the city decided to re-open the process this year, it seemed reasonable that they were getting a do-over.

As it turns out, they were. Sort of.  They aren't doing the WTC redevelopment.  Instead they get everything else in the area.

The Central Business District. The Warehouse District. The Lower Garden District.

And now, introducing, the Trade District.

A group of developers have presented an ambitious vision for a shiny new neighborhood on the riverfront with an MGM Grand hotel, more than 1,400 residences, blocks of retail and restaurants, and a towering needle-like sculpture for lofty views of the Mississippi River.

The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, which owns the vacant land, is in talks with the Howard Hughes Corp., owner of the Outlet Collection at the Riverwalk, and local real estate moguls Darryl Berger and Joe Jaeger on becoming master developer for the site.

If everything goes according to plan, the "moguls" will begin the massive nice-things-for-rich-people project with $175 million in public money, at least. 

For some reason, there's just not as much momentum in the  building things for not-so-rich people department.

NEW ORLEANS —A high-profile $30 million project to redevelop one of the city's major housing developments has stalled, frustrating people who live there and prompting one member of the New Orleans City Council to demand action.

It can be seen from the Pontchartrain Expressway, driving into downtown New Orleans. Construction at the Guste Homes site in Central City has stopped.

But, hey, priorities, right? As Bob Johnson explained a few years ago, there's a tight investment schedule to stick to if you want to keep up with the Disneys.

“What we want to do with this is make it a new experience in New Orleans,” said convention center general manager Bob Johnson. “It’s the old Disney theory: Every two or three years, Disney opens a new attraction and people that are familiar with Disney will go back.

Give us more bribe money

The racket has gotten too big.  We need more taxpayer support to keep up.

“The governing bodies that award these games are pushing the envelope on the cash bids they are expecting from cities,” said Steve Perry, president of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. “This is not unlike a similar trend we’re seeing in conventions and meetings. More incentives are needed in virtually every sector we work in now, and it’s really gotten to the point where you start sorting out the men from the boys.”

The obvious and only response that occurs to them is to just keep ponying up. Is it that they can't possibly imagine any other course of action?  Or is it that these kickbacks are their livelihood as well?

Grass roots

Seems legit

The campaign’s origin and purpose were unveiled about a month later in a Twitter post that read: “#NEWORLEANSWILL is a tourism industry initiative led by the NOCVB aimed at smart, sustainable growth for our city.”

Although it was corporately created, the visitors bureau said it hopes the campaign will turn into a “powerful grass-roots movement.”

"Urban Myth"

New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp president Mark Romig presents an interesting word choice here.

Romig sought to clear up notions that tourism officials are actively trying to bring more college kids, armed with hand-grenades, into the city.

“There’s been an urban myth that a large portion of our marketing message is geared towards this girls and boys gone wild type of audience,” Romig said. “Less than 10 percent of our media mix, Buzzfeed, Flavor Pill, hits an age group of 18-24 years,” Romig explained.

In fact, the “sweet spot” for tourism is 35-65, Romig said. Mature visitors generally have more money and more “discretionary time.”  

I'm not sure the age demos you are targeting via your "media mix" necessarily says anything at all as to the content of the message you're sending.  Seems to me the "sweet spot" is grabbing visitors who have the "discretionary time" and money you're looking for but who also respond to the branding you've chosen to emphasize.  For example, it is possible to market a "girls and boys gone wild" atmosphere to dirty old men with money.

More importantly, the notion that our tourism mullahs are pursuing this angle is in no way an "urban myth."  It is the recommendation of a consultant's report the New Orleans Conventions and Visitors Bureau commissioned and then tried to keep out of the public record.  So Romig is not only being disingenuous about the overall marketing strategy, he's also insinuating that its critics are conspiracy nuts of some sort.  

This kind of snide dismissal is becoming more common among the wealth in this city and its defenders in the media, by the way.  Expect more "conspiracy theories" to proliferate in 2014.

Pick your monster

Louisiana politics is full of  Godzilla vs Mothra moments where it's best to just root for both sides to fall into a pit of lava or at least the nearest sinkhole or something. But even while we're waiting for that to happen, we can't help but find small moments of catharsis when one of the creatures lands a particularly satisfying blow on the other.

Take the Governor and the Mayor, for example. Jindal and Mitch are obviously both monsters.  There are subtle distinctions between the exact sorts of monsters they are which come into play in interesting ways from time to time.  Such as when they're arguing over whose friends will best benefit from a misappropriated trough of money.

"House Bill No. 516 by Representative Walt Leger grants additional powers to the Ernest N. Morial-New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority," Jindal wrote. "The bill also would allow for the first time the Authority to use non-traditional tax free bonds that would benefit any properties being developed by commercial, private entities and the bonded debt could count against the state debt limit. In addition, this project could be funded through the capital outlay bill. For these reasons, I have vetoed House Bill No. 516 and hereby return it to the House of Representatives."

Of course, since the Governor has put so much work into privatizing the state's education and health care apparatuses, we have to chuckle a bit at his concern over this misdirection of public money into private hands.  But hey at least someone with some power has chosen to articulate this for once so why complain?

To be fair, it isn't clear that the convention center debt actually counts against "the state debt limit" as Jindal claims.

Bill sponsor House Speaker Pro tem Walt Leger III reacted angrily. “I’m livid. I’m upset. The convention center thing is out of left field. I cannot be more shocked. It’s a real setback for the hospitality and tourism industry.”

Leger said the Convention Center is a political subdivision of the state and has its own revenue stream. “It does not impact the debt limit of the state,” he said.

Regardless, Leger's bill still authorized a public entity to issue bonds in order to finance private hotel and condo development. Where the debt is incurred specifically is a distinction irrelevant to the principle in question. A recent Lens op-ed by Roberta Brandes Gratz explains this pretty well. 

The Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Superdome and the Tourism and Marketing Corporation have no business being developers. This is always the problem in creating legally independent organizations or authorities that, once authorized, function outside the normal scope of democratic review. If, as it seems, these entities have an excess of earned income burning a hole in their pockets, they should help the city pay for other urgent needs — such as either or both of the two federal consent decrees, one with police, one with the city jail, that the Landrieu administration keeps saying it can’t afford.

I should add, though, I'm not endorsing Gratz's column as a whole.  She seems hung up on opposing any redevelopment of the WTC site regardless of how it is funded. Along the way she makes several questionable statements including this overreach:

Every attempt by an American city to “remake” itself has failed, leading to repeated efforts to redesign the redesigned city.

Every attempt! That's pretty serious. Although I guess it depends on what one means by an attempt by a city to "remake itself" if such at thing has ever actually even occurred.

Gratz appears to be following a popular vein in preservationist scholarship where one ceaselessly pursues any and every opportunity to  flog the ghost of Robert Moses. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But, as is often the case in this line of argument, Gratz has confused a legitimate complaint against unchecked and unaccountable power with the idea that any and every "big project" is an inherent evil. She lists a few of the favorite whipping boys in her article including the long ago defeated riverfront expressway and the new LSU/VA hospital. She concludes:

But while advocates of big projects focus on outsized, misguided visions, New Orleans is rebounding incrementally through innovative efforts all over town, proving once again that small and modest projects always exceed expectations while the big ones never fulfill theirs.

Again Gratz exhibits remarkable certainty in that final "always" and "never" statement.  It's a particularly alarming one too for anyone holding out hope that the very big expensive projects now protecting New Orleans from catastrophic flooding or the even bigger expensive projects proposed to save the Louisiana coast will come closet to fulfilling expectations in at least some minimal fashion.

It also displays a curious ignorance of the forces currently driving what we'll charitably agree to call the New Orleans "rebound."  I don't know what Gratz means by "innovative efforts all over town" exactly. I suppose she could mean anything given her apparent grasp on what goes on around here.  For example here's an article of hers published in The Nation where she states that Bayou St. John is located Uptown and that the grassroots driven effort to create a linear park along the Lafitte corridor was all preservationist and political insider David Waggoner's idea.

But I digress.  Whatever activity Gratz might be alluding to by "innovative efforts all over town" the odds are those efforts can be traced back to the massive influx of federal aid into New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans-based demographer and consultant with GCR Inc., calls the data good news but says New Orleans still has a way to go before hitting its pre-Katrina population.

The population of New Orleans in July 2005, a month before Katrina hit, was 454,000, he said.
Rigamer said the city could be back to pre-Katrina levels by 2020.

“What’s going on in New Orleans is you started out with decreased base from Katrina and you are also seeing a lot of federal money pumped into the city,” Rigamer said. “There is a lot of recovery spending occurring right now. A lot of FEMA projects under way.”

This includes, by the way, the major revitalization underway in Mid City evidenced in several concurrent retail and residential construction projects along Carrollton Avenue, Tulane Avenue, and Broad Street  which benefit directly from rebuilding funds and are catalyzed by the hospital project Gratz takes a shot at in her article.  So big projects are having impacts all over town, even if we choose to see them as something else.

The WTC redevelopment, though, is undoubtedly going to be a "big project" no matter how it ends up happening. The bill Jindal just vetoed would have allowed it to happen while private developers profit off of the bonded indebtedness of a public entity. So, for the moment, we can enjoy that particular swipe of one monster's tail.  This doesn't mean, though, that something "big" shouldn't happen at the site eventually.

I can't say for certain whether this means the trade mart building absolutely has to be demolished. But I do know that no private developer has been willing to invest in it for decades and that this reluctance only vanished the moment the tourism cabal proposed funneling free Convention Center money to bidders as an incentive.  Suddenly two of the three proposals involve "saving" the now "beloved" "iconic" building.

One of the bidders, Gatehouse Capital, has even slapped together an impressively funded "Save The WTC" campaign. You may have noticed their ubiquitous signage popping up in your Facebook feed or in various vacant lots and neutral grounds around town.



Normally you might expect to find an urban policy analyst like Gratz ... or anyone covering this issue in the New Orleans media for that matter... to be quick to note the obvious astroturfing at work here.  But then, I guess, everyone has to pick a monster to root for sometimes.