The metastasizing revenue error

Lost in all the back and forth negotiations and legal maneuvering  between the New Orleans Public School District and the City over finances, no one has yet adequately explained the "accounting error" that led to the schools' budget deficit in the first place. Now it turns out that the errors are not necessarily limited to NOPS only.

This story says the city may have overestimated revenue projections for this year by some $18 million. 

New Orleans officials overestimated 2024 property tax collections by $18 million, further complicating what has become a fraught year for city budgeting. 

The revelation came during the quarterly Revenue Estimating Conference, when the city’s chief economist, Matthew Cooper, said he misjudged how much of the city's assessed property taxes would actually be paid.

The error could have implications for other taxing bodies that rely on City Hall revenue estimates. The Orleans Parish School Board last year discovered a $50 million deficit, which school officials have partially blamed on bad revenue forecasting by the city.

City finances are incredibly complicated and the shortfall could be the result of multiple types of errors and shenanigans. The article emphasizes the lag effect from appeals after a reassessment year for one rather benign example. But note also, in this passage, the effect of a rapidly sickening economy.

But the overall property tax compliance rate is a combination of both real estate and business inventory taxes, and inventory compliance sagged to 78%. Inventory taxes are assessed every year, but Cooper said he didn’t know if the 2024 compliance rate is typical. He attributed it to businesses that closed and didn’t pay inventory taxes, but didn’t say if that occurred more frequently last year than other years.

“They don't want to pay their inventory if they’re out of business. They can't pay their bills in the first place,” Cooper said in a brief interview.

I'm sure the next mayor and council will figure a way out of it though.  Probably the plan will involve bigger and better tax breaks for hotel developers. 

NEW ORLEANS - After months of work with numerous stakeholders, Council Vice President Helena Moreno is introducing a proposal to create clear and concise regulations for developers to receive a Restoration Tax Abatement (RTA). For far too long, existing guidelines have been confusing to applicants, appeared inconsistent, and contained some outdated policies that do not support good development projects, nor do they ensure accountability on behalf of RTA recipients. Plus, approvals for RTAs appeared to be subjective. Moreno now wants to ensure that the determination is based on meeting criteria along with providing clarity and accountability to the program.

The Restoration Tax Abatement (RTA) Program provided by state law allows the City Council the ability to approve a tax abatement for commercial property owners and homeowners who expand, restore, improve, or develop an existing structure in a downtown development district, opportunity zone, economic development district, or historic district. If approved, the owner has the right to pay ad valorem taxes based on the assessed valuation of the property for the year prior to the commencement of the project for five years after completion of the work. 

Gangster state

David Dayen writes here that the tariffs are really sanctions, in once sense against the entire rest of the world, but most critically against every business and ngo in the country. And, in that way also, they are a demand for ransom. 

I’ve really only seen Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) understand this, that this is just a loyalty test for virtually every business in the nation, a universal attempt to gather protection money. It’s no different than using the leverage of government funding to force universities and law firms into submission. These economic sanctions force businesses to supplicate. “One by one, every industry or company will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief,” Murphy writes. That’s correct, and it could come in the form of campaign support, corporate governance changes, or just raw cash. Anything is possible.

So this policy is an open invitation for corruption, yes. Where you sit in relationship to Trump, what donations you gave and what endorsements you’ve made, will dictate your level of success. America is now a country where proximity to the king matters above any other business strategy. As Tim Wu writes, companies so dependent on government treatment don’t innovate because they don’t have to. Their government relations departments rise well beyond their research and development departments. And as there are only so many favors to dish out, they trend the country toward oligarchy.

Not too different from the crude demand for patronage you find in any given local municipal budget dispute, really.

Similarly, the tariff gambit can be seen as a version of what Republicans have been doing in red states (and repeatedly in Louisiana) where they try to raise sales taxes in order to "pay for" big cuts to (or outright elimination of) progressive income taxes.  And, you know, sometimes, if the person running that scam is particularly clumsy about it, they might fail... at first.  

But the beauty of being the party that holds all the power is you can always try again. 

Louisiana legislators might put portions of a constitutional amendment overhauling state budget and tax policies back on the ballot, even after voters overwhelmingly rejected the wide-ranging proposal in Saturday’s election. 

On Monday, Rep. Julie Emerson, R-Carencro, said she was already working on drafts of new constitutional amendments that would make some of the same budget and tax changes in the failed Amendment 2 from Saturday. 

“I think you will definitely see some of this reborn in the session,” Emerson said in an interview, later adding, “I think it is just how we package it, and how many instruments we have with it.”

And if you follow the Trump plan for this, you try again while applying pressure. 

Gov. Jeff Landry has enacted a hiring freeze for the executive branch of state government in an effort to save $20 million ahead of a projected state budget shortfall. 

The governor signed an executive order Wednesday that pauses hiring for state government departments and agencies under the governor’s control. The order does not apply to Louisiana’s judicial or legislative branches, according to Landry’s press secretary Elizabeth Crochet.

“To ensure the long-term fiscal health of Louisiana and protect essential services for our most vulnerable citizens, we must take decisive action now to address revenue shortfalls,” Landry said in a written statement. “By implementing a temporary hiring freeze, we will reign in spending, saving an annualized $20 million. This is a necessary step to give the Legislature more options, to prevent deeper cuts to health care and education, and to safeguard the future of our state.”

The "children and families" mayor

It says something that, in a moment of crisis like this one, when people are trying to figure out if they have to march or if they have to strike, and their elected representatives are clumsily grasping at ways to respond to an apparent coup, LaToya Cantrell's instinct in a moment like this is... to cut funding to public schools.

On Monday morning, a crowd of 30 officials – including state legislators, City Councilmembers, Orleans Parish School Board members, District Attorney Jason Williams, and school leaders  –  condemned Mayor LaToya Cantrell for trying to torpedo a $20 million settlement with the school district, which is trying to plug a deficit of at least $36 million, maybe significantly more.

The settlement would have resolved a six-year-old lawsuit by OPSB, which had discovered that the city was skimming a portion off of the top of its OPSB tax payments.

Cantrell cannot now take the position that “the city cannot afford to stop stealing money from schoolchildren,” said OPSB member Carlos Zervigon, noting that the city has skimmed at least $100 million due to the district. “We need the mayor to get out of the way.”

We all thought the mayor had gotten out of the way.  A few months ago, she and members of her administration all got up and played hero. Their settlement announcement came to the rescue of a school district budget crisis precipitated by a still unexplained "accounting error."  

It's hard to tell what's changed since then besides the federal government's payment systems having been taken over by an unpredictable corrupt junta. Everyone is at least a little bit worried about that situation.  But one can't help but wonder if the mayor has special insight into the Trump administration's M.O. It does take one to know one, after all. 

In any case, it is remarkable to consider that a mayor who came into office branding herself around concern for "children and families" will be remembered for her efforts at de-funding public schools and libraries.

The error that keeps on erring

They're going to have to tell us what this NOLA Public Schools "accouting error" actually is eventually, right?  Last month they tried to say an accountant forgot what a fiscal year is.  But that story didn't stick.  Now we're nowhere nearer to understanding what happened. But we do know that whatever it is, it's worse now.  

Because of the city’s all-charter school system, school closures have become one of the city’s ongoing winter traditions. This week, students, families and staff at four New Orleans charters were anxiously awaiting word on whether their schools will remain open beyond May.

This year’s closures are complicated by a surprise budget shortfall and declining enrollment.

Enrollment has steadily fallen over the last decade, leaving empty seats and strained budgets at under-enrolled schools across the city. There’s no way to resolve this problem without shuttering or merging some city schools, school officials have said.

The growing budget shortfall for the district is also at the top of officials’ minds.

The projected budget gap started at $20 million and rose last month to $36 million. This week, officials warned it could top $49 million.

While hired accountants are scouring the district’s books to get to the bottom of the budget shortfall, top district staff is focused on charter contracts — with renewals for schools with passing grades and closures for those with failing grades.

Meanwhile, about those charter contracts, they're closing schools again.  Here is how that is going to work this time.  

Separately, district officials want Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School for Sci Tech to close its high school grades at the end of the school year due to chronically low enrollment and poor academic performance. The district would allow the school to continue operating kindergarten through eighth grade.

If the high school closes, it will leave the Lower 9th Ward without any high schools.

There is an alternate history where we rebuilt stable communities after Katrina by investing in the social infrastructure that supports families and children instead of the chaotic "experiment" in privatization we have now.  That project has all but ensured the destruction of the neighborhoods.  Two decades after the floods, New Orleans feels like a poor shadow of what it once was. In addition to the mass displacement of people from the city, those who do live here now experience a disorienting alienation. The rooted sense of space felt by previous generations is gone. That's not all because of the annual school shuffling but certainly this does not help. 

This year, only 185 students were enrolled in the high school, reflecting a steep drop-off over the last five years.

More than 85% of its students live outside the Lower 9th Ward. Most high-school age students in the neighborhood attend other high schools, largely Frederick Douglass, Warren Easton, G. W. Carver and McDonogh 35.

Maybe the system shouldn't be set up this way. Maybe a more holistic and supportive investment in all of the city's schoolchildren is a better way to do things than playing an "accountability" Squid Game with everyone every year. Maybe someone in position to make policy should do something about that.  

Or they could just shrug their shoulders. They do like to do that too. 

Dale Simeon, the high school's counselor, warned against closing the school.

"When children are a part of the community and they are disrupted," she said. "Sometimes they never recover."

She argued King isn't "failing" and that data used to assess the school, including graduation rates and the rigor of classes, isn't accurate. She made the same claims at the school's renewal hearing but didn't present any evidence.

Other community members criticized the fidelity of the renewal process. They said they believed that no matter what the high school did, the board would close it, reflecting a lingering mistrust between some New Orleanians and the school district since Hurricane Katrina.

Parents from King and The Arthur School said they wished the board would intervene to help schools get back on track rather than shut them down.

(Olin) Parker, the board member, reminded them that's not how a charter model works.

"Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the way our system is set up is schools are granted additional autonomy in exchange for accountability," he said.

"Unfortunately or fortunately."  It could be bad or good. We aren't really here to say. We're just the school board.  Stop asking us. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting accountants who can resolve a budget too.

UPDATE: I guess there's no way to know whether the accounting errors have anything to do secret payouts to departing executives.  

Both parties agreed not to tell the public about the settlement, unless legally required to do so.

"Unless required by law, the Employee and School Board agree not to disclose the terms, amount, or existence of this Agreement to anyone other than the Employee's attorney or financial advisor," according to the settlement, which Fox8 posted online. The news outlet said it obtained the agreement through a public records request.

The agreement was signed by Williams and board President Katie Baudouin. It was dated Nov. 14, the day the district announced Williams' departure. The agreement says both parties signed off on the language of the press release announcing her resignation, a copy of which is included in the agreement.

There's always money in the litigation stand (also some notes on the school board race)

They say you can't fight City Hall. In New Orleans, that has been especially true. For a long time, the city was notorious for refusing to pay up on court judgments against it. This year, the city council has begun to rectify that. Though, not all at once. 

Last month, the New Orleans City Council approved legislation requiring the city to almost immediately start paying out the oldest state court judgments on its books, those dating from the late 1990s until 2006. All remaining judgments must be paid off by 2027.

The payments will consist of only the original judgment amounts without interest — a caveat that has frustrated plaintiffs in some of the oldest cases, whose claims have accrued decades’ worth of additional interest fees.

Still, if you are in a hurry, there are some tricks to getting the city to cough up. For example, if you are the Orleans Parish school system, you can... commit an "accounting error" that blows a $36 million hole in your own budget.  Suddenly, the checkbook opens! 

Amid a massive financial crisis spurred by an accounting error, the Orleans Parish School Board has agreed to dismiss a years-old lawsuit against the city of New Orleans for $20 million in cash and $70 million in funding guarantees. 

While school leaders across the city may be reassured by the quick $20 million payment, which will help plug budget holes for the 2024-25 school year, charter officials are still anxiously awaiting final details on the district’s promise to directly support their school budgets and students in the face of the shortfall that remains, which is estimated at $16 million – but may be more, depending on what financial advisors find as they look through district ledgers.

This settlement has both short-term and long-term implications. By the end of this calendar year, the city will pay the school board $10 million, with another $10 million to follow by April 1; the agreement also directs the City Council to pay an additional $70 million through education-program funding over the next 10 years. A promise education advocates are happy to have in place with council and mayoral elections coming up.

The $20 million comes in concert with a series of last minute City Council additions to the municipal budget touching on a number of needs including homeless services, staffing needs in certain departments, and the Algiers Ferry. They also added some questionable items, like $5 million for Troy Henry's Six Flags grift and $12 million for.. whatever is going on at Charity Hospital now. (Or maybe not, actually! More on both of those topics in another post later.)  

There's a bit in the Verite article where members of the council and administration pat each other on the back for cooperating to solve these problems. But the reason they were able to be somewhat generous now is because the austerity cup and ball game the Cantrell administration has played in recent years has left an outsized reserve of unspent revenues. We've written about this quite a few times, actually. Even during the pandemic, the sales tax receipts weren't as bad as Gilbert Montano's budgets projected. But the imaginary projected deficit just around the corner kept us from even spending COVID relief funds in a timely and effective manner. I've argued, and continue to believe, this was an intentional manifestation of the Cantrell administration's conservative ideology. Anyway, the city has these funds available and the council is right to use them. The fact that they weren't included in the mayor's proposal is evidence that the council had to force it to happen.  Just imagine what they could have done if the school system hadn't set itself on fire. 

Speaking of which, did you know, there is one open seat on the Orleans Parish School Board waiting to be filled?  It's on your December 7 ballot. 

The only competitive New Orleans race in the Dec. 7 runoff election will pit a political newcomer against a long-time fixture in the city’s education sector for a seat on the Orleans Parish School Board. 

Gabriela Biro, a Gentilly hairstylist and first-time political candidate, said she decided to run for the 2nd District seat because she didn’t feel comfortable voting for the other candidates running in her district. The 2nd district includes New Orleans East, Gentilly, Pontchartrain Park and the Upper 9th Ward. 

“I had been tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils in many voting instances,” Biro said. “And I was like, I’ll just do this.”

Biro came in second in the Nov. 5 primary election, where none of the three candidates for the seat cleared the 50%-plus one threshold to avoid a runoff.

Biro’s opponent, Eric “Doc” Jones, came in first in November. Jones, who previously ran for a seat on OPSB and the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, has worked in education for decades — first as a teacher and later as a charter school board member and education consultant.

It was a little bit surprising to me that the odd man out of the runoff, Entergy executive Chan Tucker, was the most heavily funded by the national charter school lobbying Death Star that has been placing candidates on school boards with relative ease for years now. Notice also that this article quotes BOTH candidates statements that suggest openness to taking more schools back from the chartering organizations.  Looks like twenty years of New Orleans's "experiment" with an all-charter school system hasn't been a fantastic experience for voters. 

Of course, anti-charter rhetoric in the runoff is a lot more believable coming from the union-endorsed newcomer than it does coming from the former charter school board member and "education consultant" who once worked as a recruiter for Teach for America. Especially now that he's adding equivocations. 

In an interview last week, Jones called the school district’s structure “dysfunctional.” He ran his initial campaign this year as a pro-district school candidate, saying that he would like the district to take over failing charter schools. His stance drew the attention of pro-charter groups, which spent over $200,000 against Jones and another pro-district candidate as they campaigned for the Nov. 5 election. Last week, Jones said the district should avoid taking over failing schools and should instead partner with them to avoid closures. Jones said he would adjust the accountability framework for schools.

Jones said he favors district oversight, but only to a point: “As long as the oversight doesn’t interfere with their day-to-day operations, it doesn’t interfere with hiring practices, it doesn’t interfere with their curriculum selection, it doesn’t interfere with their mutual contracts they have in their building.”

The district should do "oversight" that doesn't actually have anything to say about how a charter school operates.  Okay, got it. 

That article also features an amusing dialog between Jones and the reporter asking about a grade inflation scandal that got him kicked off of the Coghill Charter board as well as a series of ethics violations and resume discrepancies. To me, the funniest one was the part where we learn "pro bono" is the Latin for "give me $5000." 

Verite News confirmed that he has worked at the school, albeit in a pro bono position. In 2015, the Louisiana Board of Ethics filed charges against Jones over his employment at the school. According to the complaint, Jones worked as the school’s chief academic officer, a position for which he received no compensation. 

The ethics charge stemmed from $5,000 he invoiced the school for staff training, even though such training was part of his normal duties in the job for which he agreed to work for free. The ethics board later voted to issue a “letter of caution” to Jones, dismissing the charges.

But there's more in there I wouldn't want to spoil. Just know that Verite's questions to Jones definitely do not make him mad at all. 

Anyway, one of those candidates will be working on solutions to the school system's ongoing fiscal crisis next year.  Which one should that be?

I can't believe Taylor Swift didn't fix it

Just yesterday, we were speculating about this "accounting error" committed by someone in the Orleans Parish School District. The original T-P report we cited there claimed that staff overshot their sales tax revenue projection by $36 million "because district staffers calculated tax revenue based on a full calendar year, rather than aligning it to the fiscal year, which begins in July." * That might be exactly what happened. But it feels unlikely. At the very least, it's got to be embarrassing for professional accountants to not understand when the fiscal year begins. Let alone, that they would look at a jump in revenue of that size and not suspect something was off. 

On the other hand, lay readers of the Times-Picayune might be forgiven for their confusion. Last week,  when we read that the board had announced a damage control plan to gradually pay back the deficit out of its (fortunately robust) fund balance, this item suggested that maybe the problem was already solved.

Schools would repay the $15 million over the next few years, hopefully bolstered by increased sales tax revenue from major events in New Orleans like Taylor Swift’s recent concert series, which generated an estimated $500 million for the city, and next year’s Super Bowl, Parker said.

Oh dear, here we go again trying to shoehorn an "economic impact of tourism" promo into a serious news story. Look, by all accounts, Swiftie weekend in New Orleans was a much welcomed success for the city's service industry and tourism facing retail.  Anecdotally, we've all heard the crowd was nice. They tipped well. And unlike some of the mega-corporate events, like the Superbowl, they spent money with local small businesses.  But mentioning the $500 number in a throwaway line about the school system's budget problems creates a false impression of whatever eventual benefit may occur.

The article doesn't link to it but they're referring to GNO Inc's estimate of how much money was spent overall by visitors during the weekend. The number is likely exaggerated to begin with, because that's what GNO Inc. does. But also it appears to include the money spent on airfare, lodging, and the concert tickets themselves. The schools do realize a portion of the sales tax on hotel rooms, but they split that money with several other entities. But we're already talking there about a fraction of a fraction of that marquee $500 million number which, again, isn't even itself a figure that reflects actual sales tax revenue.  It's fun to write "Taylor Swift might help with the budget problem" but it's important to be more specific than this. 

Anyway, as of today, none of this is Avis Williams's problem anymore. She is resigning effective December 1. Frankly, who can blame her.  The $300,000 salary must have been nice for a couple of years. But, ultimately, who wants to have to deal with this job?

After a national search to replace Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr., the board hired Williams in April of 2022. This fall, Williams opened the district’s first intentional direct-run school in the modern charter era — The Leah Chase School, a win for traditional-education advocates in the city. But the decision to create the new school within the Lafayette Academy building came amid a chaotic charter renewal process. Lafayette Academy families were first promised their school would remain open, then told it would close, then received a third message, one week later, that the school would remain open, but would be managed by the district.

But critics say that Williams has made little progress in one of the key assignments she was given when she arrived. When she arrived, she was charged with downsizing the all-charter district because local schools, mirroring national trends, face shrinking enrollment. The district asked her to create a “right-sizing” plan.  

Other district superintendents, facing similar declines, have closed schools. But in New Orleans, Williams faced a particularly unique challenge, because the city’s charter schools operate on multi-year contracts and revoking them — to close schools — is only done in serious situations. Schools only come under high-stakes scrutiny at the end of their contracts.

One could argue that a cascading budget crisis is one way to cut through all the piecemeal charter renewals and force more closures and consolidations on an accelerated timeline.   But whatever the excuse, it's no fun when you are the one swinging the ax.  

Meanwhile, there's also an open seat on the School Board that needs to be resolved by a runoff election December 7.  One of the candidates there has articulated support for having the district take more schools back from under-performing charters and run them directly. The other was once on a charter board involved in a grade inflation scandal.  Those sound like serious issues for voters to consider. Unfortunately it may all be overshadowed by the accounting issue. That is, unless we can get another 10 or 20 Eras Tours to swing through the city by the time the next tax receipts are in. 

*Additional note: Today's Lens article about the Williams resignation says the "accounting error" is still unexplained. So the, "whoops we forgot what year it is" bit from the initial reports, seems to have gone away.  According to today's article, 

Some sources say the city, which is responsible for collecting taxes and remitting them to the district, contributed to the district’s poor forecasting. It’s unclear how often the city communicates tax collection estimates with the district.

So we're moving from shady and/or incompetent accounting at the School District to shady and/or incompetent accounting at City Hall.  That's more credible, I guess, given.. (gestures broadly).. but still a mystery.

Maybe don't run your schools through a nesting doll of scam bureaucracies

You have to read past this headline about layoffs at the Rooted School. It just conveys management's side of the dispute, saying they're just forced to downsize due to a school board accounting error. Read several paragraphs into the story until you arrive at something closer to the actual issue. 

Teachers and staff at The Rooted School have been bargaining for a contract since forming a union in 2022. The four staff members who were let go were union members and UTNO has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board related to their firings.

The charge accused Karpinski of letting the employees go before bargaining with them and offering them a severance agreement directly rather than going through the union. The complaint also says that the school violated employees' rights because the severance agreement includes a confidentiality clause and a non-disparagement clause.

And, of course, due to recent events in national politics, the Biden NLRB is in lame duck status now.  (Senate Democrats still have a chance to do something about that!  But, rest assured, they simply do not care enough to try.) So, in all likelihood, the laid off workers are at the mercy of dueling bureaucracies and their suspect administrators. Today's update in that dispute finds the School Board firing back, (mostly) on the correct side for now. 

The Orleans Parish School Board on Tuesday pushed back on claims by a New Orleans charter school that it was forced to lay off teachers due to an accounting error by the district.

Board members said Rooted School used the district’s miscalculation as an excuse to lay off four employees when in fact the school is grappling with its own financial problems. The main source of the school’s troubles is that it erroneously collected $600,000 over three years by keeping students on their rolls who had left, and now the school must pay back that money, the board members said.

Which brings us to that "accounting error."  Are we sure that's what this is? 

New Orleans public schools are getting millions of dollars less in local tax revenue this year than district officials projected, and schools across the city are bracing for the fallout from the apparent accounting gaffe. 

Typically, the district tells schools in March how much money they will have to spend for the upcoming school year, based on property and sales taxes it expects schools will receive. Schools then budget accordingly, and receive payment in piecemeal from the school district each month.

But three months into the school year, district officials said their projections were likely inflated. That was because district staffers calculated tax revenue based on a full calendar year, rather than aligning it to the fiscal year, which begins in July.

What sort of accountant actually does this?  On accident?  Maybe that's really what is going on there. But, remember, the district, under this superintendent, is under various pressures to downsize schools and divest from its facilities.  

Overall, the 2024 premium increased from $7.9 million to $12.3 million. The district’s total insured value (TIV) also increased from $1.9 billion to $2.4 billion, due to building upgrades and the increased costs of repairs, Story wrote in an email.

The exact per-pupil costs are still being finalized, Story wrote. “But based on the premium increase amount you can estimate it to be near $280, he said. This of course depends on system-wide enrollment,” Story wrote, noting the current market is “a mess.”

The district’s Total Insured Value cited by Story in his email appears to include vacant buildings in the total policy cost. To save money, the district is already looking at ways to reduce total value for vacant buildings and to shed vacant swing space that won’t be utilized.

“We are already looking at ways to modify our program for FY25 to reduce TIV for vacant buildings, swing space that won’t be utilized and other opportunities in an effort to mitigate large increases in premiums,” Story wrote.

As of the beginning of this month, only one school appeared to be on a path toward closure this year. But that was before the "error" was discovered. 

The last thing our public schools need now is another hole in the money bucket. But it does appear as though leaks are starting to spurt out from all sides.

Just get used to it

Apparently that was always the plan.   

On Friday, the carriageway doors to Pat O’Brien’s will swing open again, and staff wearing the bar's traditional emerald green jackets and new face masks will welcome people back to its famous French Quarter courtyard.

Three blocks away at Bayona, chef Susan Spicer and her crew will soon start cooking sherry mustard sweetbreads and smoked duck sandwiches, firing up a culinary gem that's been closed since March.

The two businesses usually have little more in common than proximity in the city's oldest neighborhood. But now they share one compulsion: the need to get open again, somehow. 

“At this point, we just feel like we have to do something,” said Shelly Oechsner Waguespack, president of Pat O’Brien’s.

It's not safer to do any of this now than it was back in March. The virus is still active and as dangerous as ever.  It isn't spreading quite as rapidly because more people are at home by default and when they do go out they are careful about distance and mask wearing.  But distance and mask wearing isn't a solution. It's a way to limit exposure when people have to be out for "essential" purposes.  Going out to have drinks at Pat O's isn't essential. 

It only begins to feel necessary because, despite the federal government's capacity to do so, it has refused to reimburse businesses for their losses or pay workers to stay home.  Although there is no vaccine yet, we could have this thing safely contained by now if the will to take the necessary action had been there. Instead we've chosen to test how much stress the system will bear if we deny people any option but to just go out there and get used to it. 

Now though, Waguespack said a limited return is better than staying closed altogether. With no end to the coronavirus crisis in sight, the business has to find a way to carry on, she said.

That’s a sentiment shared by many across the New Orleans hospitality sector now, especially around the French Quarter, where the shriveled travel business has had a staggering impact.

Who knows how many small businesses will survive the pandemic now?  Back in May a reported 100,000 or more had already been permanently closed nationwide.  It's no surprise that business would slow with customers staying at home. But relief, most notably through the convoluted Paycheck Protection Program, has been elusive. And commercial landlords continue to demand rent. So the squeeze is definitely on.  But since this is a situation that so easily could have been avoided, we have to ask if it is intentional. 

It may be true that a lot of independent businesses are going under now. But consider that also means the economy that emerges at the end of the crisis will be dominated by fewer but much larger firms with deeper pockets. 

The Covid-19 pandemic will likely leave us with an economy in which larger companies play an expanded role, representing a higher share of both employment and revenue. The stock market illustrates the phenomenon: the biggest firms have seen smaller stock market declines, on average, than smaller ones have. It’s the corporate version of the Matthew effect: the strong get stronger.

This shift began before the pandemic came along. From 1995 to 2013, the share of U.S. workers employed by firms with 10,000 or more employees increased to about 28%, from 24%. McKinsey has found that “superstar” firms (whose average revenue is seven times the median) raised their employment share to 30% in 2014-16, from 28% in 1995-97. There’s been much debate over why this is happening, especially the role that higher productivity plays. The International Monetary Fund recently concluded that “technology-driven changes in the structure of many product markets” have made a bigger difference than have individual countries’ regulations or antitrust policies.

The real plum for the oligarchs left standing after the mass burn off of mom-and-pops is the most desperate and compliant workforce in generations. I believe this is by design. I'm running out of ways to say this by now so I'll just repeat the mantra I've been on since March when it became apparent that Congress would refuse to help.  The bosses have won the pandemic.  

It's not just me saying it anymore. A couple of weeks ago, Libby Watson made the case plain in The New Republic.

We’re left to wonder why Washington isn’t doing anything. But why aren’t we doing anything, either? How is it that Mitch McConnell leaves his house without being pelted with rotten tomatoes? How can our leaders, and the people who work for them, continue to show their faces in public? When is the fire going to reach them? What has to give? And why hasn’t it happened yet? One answer may be that the rich, including not just billionaires but the ordinary affluent of America, are not in anywhere near as much peril. And our politics is tuned to their frequency, whatever’s happening to the poor.

She puts an even finer point on it, though. It's not just The Bosses... as in, like, people at the Bezos level... who are coming out on top here, but probably your boss in particular is doing much better than you are by comparison. 

But there’s a divide that’s been more difficult to talk about: The one between Americans earning about the median income or less and Americans who earn two or three times that wage. Life is vastly different for people who earn $30,000 and people who earn $300,000—not on the same scale as the distance between the average American and Jeff Bezos but distinct nonetheless. Life is also significantly different between people who earn $30,000 and people who earn $130,000.

These people are likely to have a good, if not perfect, situation going: They have decent jobs and are probably able to work from home. They have health insurance through their job, which also gives them paid vacation and sick leave. They have retirement accounts, though these might fail the CNBC test. They don’t know what it’s like to apply for Medicaid or low-income housing. They don’t live in food deserts. They can make frequent use of the services provided by our app underclass, getting food, groceries, or whatever they like delivered to their door.

It's been a rough year. But, really, it's only been rough for most of us. Relatively speaking, it's been less rough for a fortunate minority with access to the levers of power. And it's setting up such that the post-pandemic world will be a net plus for that small but politically dominant group. Insofar as it can be said that there has even been a coherent policy response to the pandemic, the purpose of that response has been to protect the position and wealth of the ruling class. Whatever conditions that policy imposes on the rest of us, our only option is to just get used to it.

All of this scales down from the national to the local level.  Maybe your neighborhood bar isn't going to make it through the crisis. But the odds are pretty good that Brennan's will be okay. And, in the same way that the political class in Washington only responds to the needs of the billionaires, so too does the local leadership only care about the local gentry.  Which is why our first reaction to the crisis was deferring Mardi Gras sales tax collections.  It's why we've chosen this moment to turn over land use policy to short term rental executives but hardly lift a finger to stop anyone being evicted from their home. (Besides raising money through a private non-profit scheme to pay landlords, anyway.)   It's why we're going to look the other way as a politically influential private university accelerates the spread of the virus through its own selfish and irresponsible decisions...  Jeff Asher's attempt to cover for those decisions, notwithstanding.

It's why we're sending everyone's kids back to school now too. That's the general reason, anyway.  Specifically, the private schools are open for in-person instruction because they have to demonstrate to tuition-paying parents that they can deliver the exclusive value and sense of social superiority implied in that price tag.  The public schools are motivated by a different version of that prove-your-worth mentality too. But, also, if we're going to force parents to work under dangerous conditions, then we have to tell them they can put their kids somewhere.  

And so there are elaborate plans to make everyone feel like what is happening is normal. Last month OPSB announced the return to in-person learning would be phased in according to grade level. How that makes it any safer is unknown.  But that, plus a number of hygiene theater type measures create just enough of an impression that caution is being exercised. Of course, any of these safety guidelines can be discarded the moment we think they may become inconvenient.  

The NOLA Public Schools district will no longer require a sustained decrease in daily new COVID-19 positive cases to determine how it will reopen for in-person classes. The change is due to expanded testing in local universities, which is expected to lead to a higher daily case count, the district stated in a Thursday afternoon release. 

Up until now, district officials have said they would need to see two or more weeks of fewer than 50 new cases per day and a test positivity rate below five percent to reopen school buildings, a metric that was endorsed by city of New Orleans Health Director Jennifer Avegno.

Now, as schools approach a phased in-person opening beginning Sept. 14, district officials say that has changed. The plan calls for the youngest students to begin first, with older students starting in October. But when officials announced those plans, they said both would be dependent on the data on infections in the city. 

“With large increases in testing it is expected that the number of new cases may increase,” the statement said. “Our focus will remain on the city’s positive test rate and ensuring that it is at or below 5 percent, regardless of the volume of new tests.”

Since the mid-summer spike, the rate of new cases in Louisiana has been in decline.  But that's not the same as saying the thing is under control.  In Orleans, there has even been a bump up over the past week or so.  Still the schools and colleges are set on returning students to class. And with the state preparing to go to Phase 3 of its "reopening" protocol this month, the number of cases is almost certain to rise again. But we're well past the point where anyone is going to make a good faith effort to stop that.  Just be ready to keep getting used to it.

Dire consequences

A couple months ago, New Orleans Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño told a City Council budget committee there would be "dire consequences" if the council did not agree to "roll forward" its property tax millages this year.

Perhaps the biggest criticism was around what Montaño said the consequences would be if they failed to roll forward. One potential budget cut, according to the presentation, would be laying off 500-plus city employees. Another was a 10 percent budget cut for all city departments. The options also included pay cuts across the city and cutting personnel in the police department, fire department and EMS.

After it became clear that councilmembers were unconvinced by what Helena Moreno correctly identified as a "scare tactic,"  the mayor's office lowered its demand by 50 percent. "I don't make idle threats," Cantrell warned.

Her administration has warned of things such as slower response times from police and fire, cuts to recycling, closing down rec centers or libraries -- or even longer waits to fill potholes if they can't get the extra money.

“I don’t make idle threats,” Cantrell said. “I’m telling you if we don’t see a modest roll forward -- $6.9 million? Come on. Yes, we will have to look at how we can make cuts.”

The possibility of a half-roll was still on the table come November when the mayor took a new scare tactic to the public as she argued for a 3 mill tax increase which was on the local ballot during the state election runoffs this past Saturday.

Voters were unmoved by the idle threats, however, and the property tax ballot measure failed by almost 9,000 votes. It's particularly telling that it did, too. Because all of the rest of Cantrell's "Ballot of Yes" items she campaigned for passed and all of the legislative candidates she endorsed won their races as well, this result didn't mean voters were rejecting her, specifically. It just meant they didn't buy her pitch on this particular issue.

Maybe they read the DSA voter guide.  There they would have found one of the more cogent arguments against the new tax. Maybe it's authors won't mind if we share a couple paragraphs of that here.

The new taxes would have serious impacts on the city’s cost-burdened renters and homeowners. Typically landlords pass on all or most of the cost of such increases to tenants. According to HousingNOLA, 41 percent of New Orleans homeowners are cost burdened and one third of all owner-occupied homes earn below the median income. Meanwhile, our property tax system remains riddled with exemptions handed out to developers, manufacturers, and non-profits that need to be revisited or eliminated.

The mayor claims there is no other way to raise the $10.2 million the new tax is estimated to bring in but her 2020 budget proposal includes $4.7 million in highly questionable appropriations to police and surveillance and has left the door open to funding Sheriff Gusman’s proposed jail expansion. We recognize the city’s fiscal situation is tenuous. But we also question why proposed remedies favor the privileges of wealth and bolster the police-surveillance state while heaping even more excessive burdens on poor people. We can do better.

That part about landlords passing property tax hikes on to renters, by the way, is definitely not an idle threat. My rent just went up 50 bucks this month based on the recent reassessments alone. I expect it may have been more had the millage gone up too.

Anyway nobody has to worry about that now because the final budget approved by the City Council this week is based on a deal among the council and various taxing authorities that amounts to a net cut in the overall city controlled property tax rate.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the City Council, which has the final say on the lion’s share of taxes in the parish, are close to finalizing an agreement that would cut the city's overall tax rate by about 5%, juggling about a dozen individual millages to come up with a deal that would, in effect, give up any revenue the city stood to gain from this year’s reassessment.

This is actually even more complicated than it already looks. So, apologies to everyone whose eyes are already glazed over. To begin with,thanks to the assessments, a lot of people's taxes are going to go up regardless of what the rate is. 

Exactly what that means for a property’s tax bill depends on the details of the city’s deal and where the property is located, since some taxing bodies cover only portions of the city.

And how well a taxpayer makes out also depends on what happened during this year’s reassessment.

Owners whose property values stayed the same will pay less. Those who saw only a slight increase will pay around the same amount as they did in 2019. But the tens of thousands of homeowners who saw substantial jumps in their property values will face significantly higher tax bills.

There's also the matter of the school board which is one of the independent authorities who voted to roll its millage forward thus capturing the reassessment windfall. Not only will this contribute to an overall tax hike for many residents, it also constitutes a shift in costs formerly assumed by the state onto local taxpayers.

The School Board on Tuesday voted unanimously to roll its tax rate forward all the way to its current level, in part because the higher assessments will trigger a $9.1 million automatic cut in state funding for the city's schools.

The roll forward will fill the gap left by that cut and provide an additional $15.1 million for New Orleans schools on top of that.

But leaving that aside, the crux of the deal that's been struck, is the library and the Audubon Commission have agreed to reductions this year in order that S&WB, the Fire Department, and NOPD can "roll forward" to pull in new revenue. That's not an ideal solution. But it's also not a disaster.  The actual numbers aren't available but this article strongly suggests that departments taking cuts can cover their expenses with reserve funds or other revenues.

For now, this will have to do. Streets and drainage improvements need funding. We'd prefer the city find the money it needs by reducing the amount we spend on police, not boosting it. Ideally, cities like New Orleans with critical infrastructure needs would have access to billions of dollars in Federal aid as part of a Green New Deal program.  But that's all in the future. Or at least we hope it is. Otherwise, the consequences could be dire, indeed.

Some questions about these school property sales

The administrators of what used be a public school system in New Orleans unveiled a new facilities plan this week. A big part of that plan involves leaving the system fewer facilities to manage. As most of us know, New Orleans's schools were quasi-privatized after Katrina. That process culminated this year leaving all 78 schools currently operating under the control of charter organizations.  But the system owns more property than that.  There are 26 properties belonging to the school system that are unused and which sit in various states of disrepair. In fact, some of them are now just empty lots where schools used to be.  The plan right now is to sell 12 of them off.  There's a specific order of operations they have to follow for that to happen, though.

To divest itself of unused properties, the OPSB first has to vote to put them on the surplus list, a legal designation. Then the buildings or lots are offered to charter school operators and next to other government agencies for possible property trades. If no charter or agency wants a property, it can be sold through public auction.

We've seen an example of OPSB trading properties with other agencies just this year.  The school board approved a swap that turns the McDonogh 7 building over to HANO to be redeveloped as affordable housing.  Or at least it would do that if the Touro-Bouligny Neighborhood Association loses (or drops) its lawsuit. For its story about the School Board plans, the Advocate obtains and rather credulously presents a quote from the neighborhood association's spokesperson. 

"The (association) is primarily concerned over losing a landmark building that has served as a school to its neighborhood and children for over 140 years," said Zepletal, president of the Touro-Bouligny Neighborhood Association. The group is also worried the building will become "vacant, blighted, and a victim of demolition by neglect, given the current lack of development plans (for it) by HANO," she said.

That's not really what they're worried about, though.  What they actually want is to keep anyone from building any affordable housing near them. That's what they told HANO board members over the summer, anyway. 

In its May suit, the neighborhood group argued that the land ought to remain a school and criticized the OPSB for not giving other charter school operators more time to decide if they want McDonogh No. 7 before offering it to HANO.

(HANO Board VP Lisa) Wheeler also highlighted a swell of neighborhood opposition to HANO’s separate plan to redevelop vacant land as affordable housing in Bywater, another neighborhood with high property values.

“The people in Bywater and in Uptown... are not going to sit idly by, when they say they don’t want to (see something turned into affordable) housing,” Wheeler said. “I would rather see us have housing that’s not necessarily Uptown, but still have housing.”

We saw those sentiments borne out again during the October 12th election where there was a housing question on the ballot in the form of Amendment 4.  This was the measure that would have granted the city special powers to create tax breaks for landlords and developers under the assumption that these would become incentives for the creation of "affordable housing."  It was a constitutional amendment so it needed to pass statewide. It did not.  But it passed in Orleans Parish by a wide margin.

Last week, we expressed our own quibbles with the amendment so we don't doubt that some of the "NO" vote came from people who, like us, favor affordable housing but didn't trust that specific policy approach to achieving it. But that kind of nuanced NO is probably an insignificant minority. Given the media (and the mayor and her PAC) tended to frame the message, by and large, it is safe to assume most voters looked at this measure as more of a simple, "Do you like affordable housing, Yes or No?"

Which is why, when we look at The Lens's map of the results we can see which precincts in Orleans Parish favor more affordable housing and which do not.   Predictably, those who do not are clustered in Lakeview and in the deepest parts of Uptown near Audubon Place.  But take a look, specifically, at these little slivers of NO in orange. Those are precincts 12-6 and 12-8. Right in the heart of Touro-Bouligny around where McDonogh 7 is located.

It's possible the school system could trade more properties to HANO.  But seeing as how that can be controversial, they're more likely to try and shoot on through to auctioning them off. In which case, we should look at this map provided by NOLA.com to guess which properties Sidney Torres might snap up at a discount.

Aside from the land speculation, here are a few other questions regarding this plan to consider.

Reading yesterday's NOLA.com story, we learn from Ken Ducote that selling off properties saves on maintenance and insurance and therefore "makes fiscal sense."

While the district's plan may be unpopular with some residents, it largely makes sense to Ken Ducote, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools. Ducote, who oversaw school properties for the district for more than 20 years, said that to keep a building properly maintained, the district must spend an average of 2.5 percent of its value each year. So selling some properties makes fiscal sense.

"When you eliminate property that you don’t need, then you save the operations cost, insurance cost, security and so on," he said. The district estimates it costs $350,000 per year for minimal maintenance on the 12 properties it wants to sell.

Later in the article we are reminded that prior to Katrina, school buildings in New Orleans were, to say the least, not very well maintained. We are also told that, in most cases nowadays, maintenance and insurance costs for schools in operation fall on the charter organizations. How well do charters maintain their facilities anyway? Because most of these buildings were recently repaired with federal recovery funds, it's not appropriate to credit charter operators for their current condition. Over the long haul will they be better stewards of these properties than a properly funded and managed OPSB?

We also learn from this article that the district has a facilities fund to help handle some of these costs but it turns out they're already raiding it.

Realizing this, the Legislature created the School Facility Preservation Program in 2014 to dedicate annual tax money for repairs to New Orleans school buildings. It generates an estimated $35 million a year. But Lewis removed $10 million from the fund last year, with the Legislature's approval, to pay for instructional needs, a move Ducote criticized.

The planned sale of a dozen properties would help supplement funds available for facility needs by paying for future construction, without restrictions that limit the preservation program.

Uh oh. That sounds a lot like a plan to cover recurring costs with "one-time money" raised by selling off assets. For a while, Bobby Jindal was able to cover up the damage he was doing to the state budget by engaging in similar practices.  We've just spent the entire John Bel Edwards administration dealing with the consequences of that. Is this sell-off a budgetary stop gap? And if so, will there be more?

Finally, we are told the 12 properties about to be dumped are too small to meet the needs of "modern schools."  Here is how the plan defines that.

To decide which buildings to keep and which to get rid of, the district created guidelines that said sites smaller than 3.5 acres generally are inadequate for modern schools, which ideally include areas for green space, physical education, the performing arts, and students' drop-off and pickup.

Of the properties for sale, only the 3.4 acre vacant lot that used to be the Lafon School in Central City comes close to qualifying.  But it does raise another question about the schools that continue in operation.  Do they all currently offer the arts and phys ed programs the plan demands space for? "Ideally," they should, right?

Anyway, the board approved the facilities plan at its meeting last night.  The Lens has that story along with a link to the plan itself here. Keep an eye on what happens to these properties next.

NIMBY neighborhood associations

There are a lot of different things to focus on with this OPSB and HANO land swap deal. But the important detail is the neighbors are suing now so they don't have to fight against an affordable housing project later.

Neighbors who want the building to remain a school, however, are upset about the prospect of a trade that would allow HANO to move forward with plans to build a mixed-income housing complex on the historic site.

That fight didn't go well for the NIMBYs in Bywater last week although they certainly made things more difficult than they should have been.  Maybe the Uptowners will have more clout with City Council if it come to that. But they'd rather not find out.

Will we ever sophisticate up the corruption?

I feel like we're never gonna live up to Robert Cerasoli's one time aspirations.  In fact, the rest of the country is doing stupider and stupider corruption to catch up with us. It was supposed to be the other way around. Anyway, our home grown grifters are as dumb as they ever were.

Auditors were also not given five requested contracts to see whether the nonprofit had followed the Louisiana Public Bid Law, nor did they receive board meeting minutes to show if the contracts were approved by the board.

The group’s board president, Rev. Charles Southall III spent $1,514 on meals at restaurants in New Orleans and Baton Rouge in six months starting in July 2016. This year, auditors wrote that the school’s accounting policies and procedures manual “does not contain any policies on credit card control, allowable business use, documentation requirements, required approvers or monitoring credit card usage.”

Southall did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

When it came to federal funding, auditors found the group “incurred significant operating losses” last school year. That wasn’t because those grants were cut but because the school wasn’t keeping up with its federal reimbursement paperwork.

“The school was not sending in budget revisions so their federal reimbursements were delayed,” Cryer said. “But because there is no 2019 year then that amount is going to be in question whether they’d get the reimbursement.”

The school was allowed to carry over approximately $164,000 in unused federal reimbursements from last year to this year, but it’s unclear how much of that was used.

Choices for some but no choice for most

Among the many positives to come out of the LA teachers' victory last week is it shows we're finally moving into a phase where the pushback against school privatization is organized, is able to articulate what's at stake, and is learning how to win even when all the money in the world is aligned in the other direction.

L.A. is the biggest U.S. school district with an elected school board. (The biggest district, New York City, and third-biggest, Chicago, are both governed by mayoral appointees.)

Year after year, its school board elections have broken spending records. Corporate education reformers spent $13 million in the last election, most of it coming from the foundations of the Walton family (the owners of Walmart) and Eli Broad, two of the biggest spenders nationally in support of charter schools, vouchers, and privatization.

That money was enough to win them a majority of the seats on the school board. And after the previous superintendent resigned early last year for health reasons, that majority handpicked a superintendent, Beutner.

But as it turned out, a bought and paid for board and superintendent weren’t as powerful as a good old-fashioned strike.

Right leaning capitalist megadonors have been pouring more money into local politics, and particularly into local school board races across the country at record levels.  And the money has had a tangible  impact on policy formation.

In 2016, the Orleans Parish School Board election was of major consequence.  This would be the board to take full control of the schools back from the state and choose a new superintendent.  Everyone was aware going in that major policy choices were on the table at this time.   It was the perfect moment to have a public debate about the effects of charterizaton and put it to voters to determine the philosophy going forward.

But, strangely, very few people stepped up to run for the board that year.  In fact, four of the seven seats were uncontested.   People in New Orleans care a great deal about the school system.  Why so little energy behind these crucial elections?  Well, huge piles  of money have a way of squashing grass roots campaigns.

But Karran Harper Royal, an education activist who ran against Usdin and lost in 2012, said critics of Usdin, at least, might have been scared off by her fundraising muscle. Along with Jacobs, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Netflix founder Reed Hastings and former Time magazine editor and author Walter Isaacson were among a lengthy list of contributors to Usdin’s unprecedented $150,000 campaign haul four years ago.

Royal raised close to $13,000.

“Those folks who were in power, the charter school movement, they have lined their ducks up in a row,” said Royal, who has been critical of charters. “For the everyday person, that’s an insurmountable hill to climb, particularly because of the amount of money in the race.”

This is how oligarchic systems run, unfortunately.  The billionaires just need to push a few buttons and they set the parameters of accepted policy debate in public forums all across the country.   It takes a lot of organizing and base building work to overcome that.  It has taken the teachers a very long time to get  to where they are now.  And, keep in mind, where they are is they're still badly outgunned.  But they're starting to make their case. The charter movement is an attack on the very notion of education as a public good. 

Latona teachers I spoke with described competition from surrounding charter schools as an existential threat to their school and an undermining influence on the public system.

“Charter schools are popping up everywhere and siphoning money and taking away students from our public school,” said King.

“I’ve had a lot of friends teach at charters,” said Linda Butala, an English language and Title I coordinator. “These schools often mean well. But charters have become another level of haves and have-nots in our system.”

The “haves” these teachers referred to are the “more savvy” parents who take advantage of what many charters offer, including smaller class sizes and newer resources and technology.

The disparity is especially acute when the charter is co-located on the same campus as an existing public school. Traci Rustin, a second-grade teacher, recalled that at a previous school where she worked, the charter co-located on the campus “had much fewer teachers and students of color.” The charter students had more abundant and newer technology, the school lunches were more nutritious, and the classroom supplies were up-to-date. And when students returned to the public school when the charter “didn’t work out,” the new technology and resources, along with the funding that had left her school, didn’t transfer back.

“In neighborhoods that are more racially homogeneous,” explained Rustin, “you see more well-abled children in the charter. You see a two-tier system going on.”

"School choice" is really about offering those with means to navigate the choices, a chance to opt into a higher tier all the while bleeding resources away from those left behind. It is an institutional reification of privileges a true public education system should be working to level out. The billionaires have spent a lot of money trying to convince people to buy in to a school system that is segregated by design.  

Teachers and parents in New Orleans may be starting to make their case against privatized education as well.  Here is a story about the Hynes Charter school's preferred enrollment "partnership" with UNO. The scheme would bake in a special privilege for families of UNO employees.

"We don't have enough well performing schools that don't have selective admission," Kevin Griffin-Clark said.

Kevn Griffin-Clark is a member of "Erase the Board," a group of parents and community members who want the Orleans Parish School Board to run schools directly and not as charters.

"It's a huge travesty where you say that kids-parents have 'school choice,' but there's no choice whatsoever when I'm choosing five failing schools and then there's politicians or someone that works for a University that can just say 'Hey I work here. Get my child in this school,'" Griffin-Clark said.

I keep hearing about this "Erase the Board" movement but I have no idea what kind of reach it has. Maybe we'll find out if they field any OPSB candidates next year.  

"The war to keep education public"

30,000 teachers in Los Angeles are trying to draw a line.

But here in the nation’s second-largest school district, where an incredible 98 percent of UTLA voting members voted to authorize a strike last August, the issues are not limited to wages and benefits, as they were in West Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma. “I feel like this is part of the war to keep public education public,” said Mize, a UTLA chapter chair at the NOW Academy, which is built on the former site of the Ambassador Hotel, where Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.

Many of the striking teachers see the battle in Los Angeles as a front-line action to put an end to starvation of public school funding on one end, and corporate-fueled privatization on the other. And while that debate has been playing out in Los Angeles and across the country for years, union leaders and teachers believe this could be a last stand. “If this doesn’t work there may not be a union left,” said Mize.

In New Orleans, we've already lost this war. But Mitch Landrieu and Walter Isaacson can take all the victory laps around the country they want to. It's not going to slow the resistance steadily building among teachers, parents and community activists as the devastating effects of the mass privatization become more and more apparent.

Karen Marshall, the Executive Director with Rethink New Orleans, a group that organizes black youth, says, “I think there is an entire system of privatization to undercut specifically poor black youth in our communities. It’s the practice of giving public spaces to private organizations…it’s how you undercut the power in the community. It’s specific and it’s targeted.”

Belden “Noonie Man” Batiste, who recently ran for Congress under the banner of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Poor People’s” campaign was blunter. “There’s a money thing, and I want to say the prisoner pipeline because if they don’t educate our children, our children can go into the world, and nine out of ten go to prison.” Adding that by sending them to prison, it’s, “…inexpensive labor, and they’re sending them to jail. To me, the charter system and the jail work together…” He added, “If you listen, the children are crying out, the community’s crying out, telling these school board members what they want. The school board is elected by them…they’re not concerned with what the kids want. They’re concerned with the contracts.”

A representative of the local branch of the New Orleans Chapter of the NAACP stated, “We’re asking the present school board to feel the pulse of the people. Just feel the pulse to understand, we’re just not happy with them at all in terms of the charter schools…first we allowed you guys to take our schools during Katrina to help out for a minute and then afterward, this was a failed education system, so now…it’s just a money grab…this money grab has got to stop.” Later adding, “We’re asking that the state put a moratorium on charter schools.”

This week the League of Women Voters added their voice to these criticisms saying they will call on the State Legislature to reevaluate the proliferation of charters this year.  There is also talk about the best way to bring about change at the Orleans Parish School Board. The old "Erase the Board" refrain has been making the rounds more frequently. But I don't think there's a formal effort to recall members afoot at the moment. 

Meanwhile the board is set to name a new President... that is if they can ever stop trying to decide if some of them are more homophobic than others are racist. So stay tuned for that.

Post-Christmas grab bag

It's been a long and exhausting holiday weekend. Here are a few items that may have slipped out of the Santa sack this week.

• The Sewerage and Water Board 2019 budgets are approved.  I'd like to know more about this item.
  

  The operating budget calls for the elimination of more than 130 positions, for a total of 1,581 positions, including 210 that are now vacant. But it includes 21 new jobs dealing with customer service issues.
  
  Korban has said that the positions being cut are ones that were never filled or are not necessary and that the reductions will not impact the utility's frontline operations. The S&WB has consistently struggled to hire the workers it needs to fill all its vacant positions, and staffing shortages have contributed to the problems that led to widespread flooding in August 2017.

  The staffing shortages are a chronic problem and a reason the utility does not function the way it should. But also the 130 unfilled positions are not necessary? Okay.
  
  Meanwhile millions of dollars worth of "critical" and "urgent" projects are going unfunded.
  

  Meanwhile, the S&WB has estimated it will need about $3 billion over the next 10 years to meet imminent and future capital needs. 
  
  Of that amount, 185 projects totaling $582 million were recommended for 2019, significantly higher than the $384 million the agency budgeted in 2018 and far more than it was actually able to spend.
  
  The board instead expects to fund 34 projects next year at a cost of $167 million, leaving dozens of projects labeled "critical," "urgent" and "necessary" on the table.

  The Advocate story refers here to the ongoing dispute between the mayor, the state, and "tourism leaders" over the prospect of using more tourism-generated revenue to fund infrastructure.  As it turns out, the Washington Post is covering that this week for some reason.
  

  Much of the money goes to major state-owned tourism draws: the Superdome and its neighboring arena as well as the massive Ernest N. Morial Convention Center beside the Mississippi River. Changing the flow of money would require legislative action. But so far the mayor’s call for a “fair share” for the city has gotten a cool reception from Gov. John Bel Edwards and the president of the state Senate — as well as from one of the top spokesmen for the tourism industry.

  
  

  “Over time, the city of New Orleans has not put one dollar into the building of the Superdome, the building of the convention center; has not put one dollar into the operations of the Superdome or the Convention Center; has not put one dollar into the average, every-year renewal and refurbishment that has to take place,” said Steve Perry, one tourism booster.

  "Not one dollar.." other than every single cent raised in New Orleans off the backs of chronically exploited tourism labor, I guess. It's our money.  Give us our money, Steve.
  
  
  
• Here is a can't-miss Katy Reckdahl article about the post-Katrina destruction of New Orleans's neighborhoods written for The Weather Channel, of all possible outlets. Because, as we are well aware here, gentrification in our city is, at least in part, a climate change story.




After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico last year, Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, saw the early stages of a housing grab and described it as “disaster gentrification.” Similar buyouts and land-flipping happened in New York after Hurricane Sandy and in Houston after Hurricane Harvey. 

In every city, storm damage and flooding initially displaced people of every ethnicity and income level, though in New Orleans, like elsewhere, communities of color were harder hit because of historically segregated housing patterns that pushed African American households to lower-lying areas. One analysis of black and white households found that black residents were more than twice as likely to live in flooded areas.  

In New Orleans, the disparities were exacerbated during rebuilding, as higher-income people moved into city cores, displacing lower-income families. Similar “back to the city” dynamics are playing out in every urban area across the country. But in disaster-ravaged cities like New Orleans, they’re playing out at fast-forward speed.


Watching this process happen on a daily basis for the past 13 years is why I always have headaches now. The animating ethic of our city's recovery has been about attracting investment and "putting properties back into commerce" with little or no regard for consequences. 


“There’s so much history here,” Bowman said, as he filed through the box. He is feeling worried about his future here on North Galvez. He was blindsided a few years ago when a suburban land investor bought the house from beneath him through a municipal tax sale. At first, Bowman paid rent to stay in his family home. Then, a second buyer appeared earlier this year, giving him a five-day eviction notice. That’s when he consulted a legal-aid lawyer. 

Bowman is hard on himself about the situation. He scraped the house so that it’s ready for painting and has made some repairs on his own, out of an obligation he feels to his great-grandfather’s work. But he doesn’t want to sink more money into the house until he’s certain it belongs to him. So he’s embarrassed that needed repairs have gone undone. He’s ashamed that he and his family didn’t figure out that no one was paying taxes. And he’s worried sick about what the future could bring.

His lawyer, Hannah Adams, of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, is concerned that other generational owners like Bowman may also have lost houses, because of new municipal ordinances and policies intended to move Katrina-damaged properties into the hands of new owners. 

In 2015, Bowman discovered that, in 1997, a city treasury official had adjudicated the property for back taxes of $577.91, sending certified mail notices to his grandmother, Marie Camille, who had been dead for nine years, and to DeDe Pierce, who had been dead for 23 years. There’s no record of whether certified mail notices were sent and no records of any notices being returned undeliverable.
Had he known, he would have simply paid the taxes, Bowman said.

A process that worked to push multi-generational New Orleanians out of their family homes has also greatly benefited "investors" who can pick up a properties at auction prices and turn them into cash cows on Airbnb. In January, the City Council will discuss a motion that may limit some of these abuses. Naturally, the investors are whining to the Advocate.  


My wife Andrea and I have operated a licensed “temporary” short-term rental in our 7th Ward New Orleans home since February of this year. Under New Orleans Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer’s proposed changes to the STR ordinance, we will lose this much-needed revenue, and likely be forced to sell our home and leave the area. We bought the double lot on Franklin Avenue at a NORA auction in December 2015 with the stipulation that we would build a new house on the previously blighted property within one year of the auction. Neither of us are professional builders, but over the course of the following year, we managed to complete a modest 900 square-foot home, fulfilling our obligations to NORA. Like many working people, we sought creative ways to finance our project, ultimately receiving the assistance of my in-laws, who obtained a mortgage on our behalf.

It kind of sounds like he's upset that he could lose his STR license because the house isn't technically in his name?  He doesn't say whether or not he and his wife actually live in the "home," though.  The signature on the letter gives his location as Metairie. Anyway, this is only one in a string of confused and/or disingenuous pro-STR letters and op-eds the Advocate has published since basically the day Palmer's motion was publicized.  The "pro" side seems like they were ready to roll.



• I haven't had a chance to watch this WDSU segment on the Orleans Parish school system yet. Is it any good?  Do they talk at all about the Board's decision to charter out McDonogh 35?  



The board heard about two hours’ worth of impassioned commentary before that vote at the evening meeting, mostly from parents and alumni who wanted the school to remain run directly by the OPSB, as nearly all public schools in the city once were.

As they spoke, protesters with the group Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children cheered them on, sang chants with biblical references and shouted, “Erase the board!”

“These are the alumni of McDonogh 35, these are the parents, these are the children. This is the community,” resident Walter Goodwin told the board. “We did not elect you to be a rubber stamp. Do not rubber-stamp this. We elected you to represent us.”

Several audience members began crying and screaming after the vote.

I watched this meeting on the live stream and, while this Advocate reporter's description is technically accurate, it reads a little cartoonish to me, like she is almost making light of the protest. But "Erase The Board" is likely the beginning of something.   It's something well overdue, of course. Remember all of this was still in front of us in 2016 when the Board was up for election.  Almost nobody ran.



• Are the 2018 Saints the "most complete" team in the history of the franchise? Probably.  Of course we'll have to wait and see how it all ends but, assuming they manage to at least advance a little in the playoffs,  it's really not going very far at all to ask if this is the greatest Saints team.  


The season has had a little bit of everything. It had spin moves. It had dance moves. It had a blowout win against a defending champ. It had a sweep of Atlanta. Drew Brees broke an NFL record. Mark Ingram and Wil Lutz broke team records. Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara set some early career benchmarks that indicate they'll break records of their own one day.

But the most impressive thing to me has been the way Saints have consistently won tough games against physical opponents at Baltimore, at Minnesota, and at home against Pittsburgh. The key here is the Saints aren't doing any of this with smoke and mirrors. They've gone toe to toe with every heavyweight this year and come out on top.  Anything can happen in the playoffs, but there's nothing we've seen this season to give us any cause not to be confident seeing them matched up with anybody.  That's not often how this goes, even in the better years.



• Finally, hey look, more things go boom on Monday night.



City and tourism leaders have revealed there will be not one, but four fireworks displays launched at different points around New Orleans on Tuesday (Jan. 1) for New Year’s Eve. The shows will start in New Orleans East and follow at City Park and then Uptown before culminating with the traditional downtown display.

Take the celebration out into the neighborhoods a little bit.  I like this idea.  I don't know how much I understand the timing, though.  


The fireworks are scheduled for:




· 8:30 p.m., at Read Boulevard near Interstate 10




· 9:30 p.m., at City Park’s Big Lake near the New Orleans Museum of Art




· 10:30 p.m., from barges on the Mississippi River between Napoleon and Jefferson avenues




· Midnight, downtown from river barges between the French Quarter and Algiers.

The whole point of the fireworks is to mark the coming of the new year, right?   And the point of having them in far flung locations is to bring them to people who probably aren't going to the Quarter anyway. So there's no reason to believe any of these displays conflicts with the others. Why not just do them all at midnight?