The Year of Cloying and Sniveling

Here's a story on reaction from local political leaders on their deliberate exclusion from the Governor's Sewerage and Water Board "task force." The councilmembers all correctly perceive that they and their constituents are being ignored in favor of interests from either out of town altogether, or at least from the very top rung of the class pecking order. Landry's appointments, for example, include a Trump administration hand-me-down,  Darryl Berger's nepo baby, the owner of a fracking company charged with hazardous waste violations, and a former Rex. Also Paul Rainwater is here because his name dictates it.

Landry announced his four picks on Wednesday. Chairing the task force will be Paul Rainwater, who once briefly ran the S&WB under former Mayor Mitch Landrieu and currently works as a lobbyist for Cornerstone Government Affairs. That firm represents the S&WB and the city. 

Landry also appointed Lynes "Poco" Sloss, who currently holds a seat on the S&WB, as well as real estate developer Ryan Berger and William Vanderbrook, a Metairie accountant who served as a campaign treasurer for former U.S. Sen. David Vitter.

Three other task force members hold important state jobs under Landry: Joe Donahue leads the Department of Transportation of Development; Gordon Dove chairs of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority; and Aurelia Giacometto is secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality.

Paul Flower, chair of the New Orleans Business Council, said he will be that organization’s representative. The other six members have not been announced.

And, as we mentioned the other day, the remaining seats are appointed by organizations with no democratic accountability to the city and little to no interest in representing poor or working class people in any way.  The City Council is at least somewhat expected to do some of that, at least in theory. Which is one reason they've been cut out. They aren't happy about that. There are other more cynical reasons they've been excluded and there are other more cynical reasons they are complaining, but let's not focus on that right now. 

Instead, take a look at their comments, which are quite strong. In particular, see JP Morrell's thread here referencing the Council's ongoing efforts to exercise some oversight of its own. 

Council Vice President JP Morrell said in a series of social media posts that many of the organizations represented on the task force “hid” during the council’s sometimes-tense debates with the S&WB over recent reforms.

“The fact that SWB had a press release lauding this creation means the likelihood the task force will actually suggest fundamental changes in favor of ratepayers or legitimate critical review of S&WB’s performance is 0.0%,” Morrell said.

He's probably onto something there. Otherwise, why would the SWB leadership be so welcoming of the Governor's initiative? 

Some City Council members also lambasted the water board's lackluster response to Landry’s order Tuesday creating the task force, which skewered the utility for corruption, incompetence and dishonesty. The S&WB simply said it “welcomes the attention to our utility and our city’s critical needs.”

Council member Joe Giarrusso called that response “cloying and sniveling.”

“I was candidly surprised by the fact that the executive order is so over the top... and the Sewerage and Water Board seemed to say thank you, we'll take another lashing,” he said.

This isn't the first case of the city's administrative wing falling over itself to announce that it is "in alignment" with the new Governor's reactionary policies.  Expect the cloying and sniveling to continue apace.

Everybody gets a charter

It's very difficult for me to imagine anything good coming out of a structure and process set up like this. 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell signed an executive order Wednesday that called for a comprehensive study of the city charter, kicking off a process that could eventually revise the bedrock document that dictates how New Orleans city government functions.

The 15-member Home Rule Charter Advisory Review Committee will be made up of eight representatives or appointees of local universities, three City Council appointees and four mayoral appointees, including a retired judge.

I have no idea why the university presidents have so much appointing authority in New Orleans. In their daily lives, university presidents are fundraisers. Their main job is to flatter donors, do corrupt real estate deals, and contrive ways to fire people.  I don't see why they have this unelected responsibility to determine the future of the city.  Beyond that, just giving the council and mayor some seats to appoint doesn't feel nearly inclusive enough.  Their should be bonafide workers' voices on a committee like this. Not just "experts" who claim to speak for them.

Also remember, this charter review is one of the many things that happen now solely as an expression of mayoral spite.

Cantrell first called for the creation of the new panel in May of 2022. The proposal followed her veto of a proposal by the City Council to change the charter to subject mayoral appointees to council confirmation.

That veto squashed by the City Council and the proposal went in front of voters. The new council oversight was approved by voters in last November's election.

After she "called for the creation" of the panel, City Council got right to work creating one. They were still working on that when Cantrell dropped this on them today. 

City Council President JP Morrell was unaware of the mayor's executive order until she signed it today, according to his spokesperson, Monet Brignac-Sullivan.

The council has also been in the process of creating a Charter Review Committee, Brignac-Sullivan wrote in an email.

"The process has taken longer than expected as we are responding to community input regarding the structure of the committee," she said. "We look forward to reviewing the executive order, and have no further comment at this time of the merits of the mayor's committee."

It isn't clear what will come of the council's process.

Why not just keep it going?  I have no idea what they're actually up to but it at least sounds like the council is taking the gravity of a charter review process seriously enough to gesture toward a more democratic guiding principle. Besides, who even knows if one charter is enough.  Might be good to have at least one spare laying around just in case.  Maybe one can be the Night Charter. 

 

That thing where all the investigations cancel each other out

Oh boy, we've reached the going around and confiscating everyone's computer phase of the game. 

New Orleans Inspector General Ed Michel’s office has seized the computer of a city IT worker involved in the “smart city” contracting process, an indication that the canceled project has spawned an investigation from the city’s top watchdog.

The IG seizure of a city computer assigned to Christopher Wolff occurred on Wednesday, according to Wolff's attorney and City Council President Helena Moreno.

Wolff’s lawyer, Michael Kennedy, told Moreno’s office that the seizure would complicate his ability to comply with an subpoena request from the City Council for reams of documents related to the smart city project.

Thinking back to the Hard Rock aftermath, recall that there were at least three or four independent investigations into the Safety and Permits department operated by the feds, by the City Council, by the Inspector General, and I don't remember who Ken Polite was working for at the time but he was there too.  Anyway it seemed at times that the various probes hired by various entities with different interests may have worked at cross purposes a little bit.  

That might be what's about to happen with the "Smart Cities" mess. We can't give you any evidence because somebody else already came and took it, etc. 

Also it's worth remembering what happened the last time city officials had to turn over digital evidence during an investigation of a tech corruption scandal. 

After a public solicitation, Nagin hired the Louisiana Technology Council to conduct a forensic search. He fired the group in July after its president, Mark Lewis, and a colleague held a news conference to say they failed to find any of the information. They also said they suspected a tech-savvy person had intentionally removed the mayor's e-mail inbox from the server months earlier.

Nagin then hired SunBlock to resume searching for the missing data. He also asked the new firm to review and report on LTC's efforts.

In its report, SunBlock dismisses LTC's claim that Nagin's files were deliberately erased, saying LTC misinterpreted a technical analysis used to detect whether data were deleted.

I guess we're about to find out how far the science of email deletion/undeletion has advanced over the course of the last decade. 

What is going on in Algiers?

The city councilmembers are in a bind this week as they have to scramble to complete their decennial redistricting process during the thick of the Mardi Gras season.  If they don't finish by March 16, they forfeit the whole gambit to the university presidents and nobody wants that. 

The council's website has information about the compressed timeline and links to an "engagement portal" where you can submit comments and even draw up your own maps if you want to get super geeky about it. You can watch their consultants run through a training on the software in this video. But hurry. The "draft" maps are supposed to be up and ready by the middle of this week. Presumably the debate from that point on will be about picking which of those to approve. (Although maybe not. This stuff can get super improvisational toward the deadline.) 

Today, the T-P explains the preeminent issue in play.  Basically, over the past 10 years District D (currently held by Eugene Green) has gained significant population while District C (Freddie King) has lost a lot. Like a whole lot of people, actually.

District C lost more than 3,000 residents, with about 70% of those losses coming in Algiers, while District D grew almost everywhere; St. Bernard, Filmore, Dillard and several other neighborhoods gained more than 1,000 residents.

Wow what has been going on in Algiers? When I first saw these census numbers, I thought they might be due to the hollowing out of Bywater and Marigny by short term rentals. But, no, people are getting the heck out of Algiers for some reason. Curious to know more about that.

Nobody wants this big pile of money

Last week, City Council passed a non-binding resolution instructing the Criminal District Court to stop collecting conviction and bail fees from defendants and to return money to people from whom they've already collected these fees.  Supposedly, the idea is to discourage the courts from hoovering up unnecessary money from the poor and indigent who make up the vast majority of people wrung through our brutal criminal justice system. But there are problems.

To begin with, at least some of these fees (the bail fees) are mandated by state law which supersedes the council's authority so at least some of this money has to be collected. The courts are already in a state of limbo regarding that money since a different state law passed this year instructs them to hand it over to the city.  The new law is intended to eliminate a perverse incentive whereby the courts use these fees to fund their own operations. As a result of a 2018 lawsuit ruling that forbids the judges from keeping the funds, they've been collecting in a separate escrow account. 

Anyway that's as good a job as I can do summarizing the Lens's article.  The point is, because we haven't yet managed to ban cash bail altogether, there is a tub full of money that the courts aren't allowed to keep but the city council asserts that it does not want.  

OR maybe they do want it. 

At a City Council Criminal Justice Committee meeting last week, prior to the passage of the resolution, Councilwoman Helena Moreno wondered what would happen with the money judges do not have discretion over collecting. 

“So let’s say that the judges say, OK, the city isn’t going to collect, so it’s not worth imposing some of these additional fines and fees,” Moreno said. “But for those that through state law — statutorily — they have to, and it ends up in the escrow account, what do we do with the money in the escrow account?”

Will Snowden, executive director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office, said that money from mandatory fees would go to the city, as is prescribed by state law. 

“This resolution can’t address those mandatory fines that the judges are required to assess on an individual. I know specifically, the bail fee is not something they have discretion in not imposing. That’s a fee that is assigned to every bail that is already set. So my understanding is those funds going into the escrow account — those bail fees — that escrow account will go on to the city as it is currently prescribed.”

“So then it would be up to [the annual city budget passed by the council] on how we use the escrow account, is that right?” Moreno asked.

The subsequent discussion between Moreno and Kristin Palmer there suggests the council could return the money to individuals themselves.  Something tells me that's going to be more easily said than done. 

Something else tells me, it won't be what they choose anyway.