Austerity isn't just an accident of nature

It is city budget season.  Happy Holidays. There will be quite a few of those in the future for these folks.  Unpaid, of course. 

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño told City Council members in a special meeting Monday that under the budget plan set out by Mayor LaToya Cantrell and her administration, furloughs that took effect this month for employees should continue through next year. 

Employees would be furloughed for one day per pay period, or 26 furlough days over the course of the year, Montaño said. People who earn less than $30,000 a year would be excluded from the pay cut. 

The city's public safety departments, such as police and fire, will also take a 6% and 8% cut to their overall budgets, while other departments could see up to a 40% cut, he said.

Wow. Especially sucks to be the "other departments".  

The hardest hit departments include Public Works, which will see its funding drop more than 40% to $34 million. That decrease includes cutting about 10% of its total positions.

The City Planning Commission, which is responsible for reviewing development proposals, is also slated for a 40% cut, will lose 6 of its 26 positions. The Vieux Carre Commission, the small agency that enforces the historic preservation rules in the French Quarter, is facing the deepest cut in the city at 42%, will lose two of its six spots.

To explain itself, the administration cites the obvious.  A compounding crisis of pandemic-induced depression has caused a sudden drop in expected revenues.  The federal government has failed to respond adequately and what aid it has made available has been watered down and diverted at the state level.  

All of this is, regrettably, true. But it's important to also keep in mind that many of the consequences of that disaster are still left to our local lords to decide. There are individuals in charge right now who impose their values on the question of who suffers the most during the disaster.   The above mentioned cuts in this budget are one example. The pandemic didn't decide the cut Public Works by one amount but NOPD by another.  Similarly, the pandemic didn't decide that businesses shouldn't have to pay the sales taxes they collected during Mardi Gras. Their lobbyists told the mayor that's what they wanted and she agreed to it.   The pandemic didn't decide it was time to give corporate landlords a big tax break paid for by residents and through layoffs. The assessor made that call.  

And, of course, we know the pandemic can't read the city ordinances but we are pretty sure that wasn't who decided to ignore this (admittedly toothless) city council decree that we would no longer stiff the Public Defender's office.  A person did that. On purpose.

Time to start finding candidates for DA

I think we have our first contender.

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said Crawford has "falsely" portrayed herself as a licensed lawyer, and Chief District Defender Derwyn Bunton said he has sidelined her while his office looks into whether she should have been handling cases.

“We're gathering information and working to resolve it. Until we get more information, she is not authorized to appear on our behalf or on any client's behalf in court,” Bunton said.

Attempts to contact Crawford were not immediately successful.

I'm not even really joking.  I mean, since when has Cannizzaro cared about what's real and what's fake, anyway? Besides, look, a bunch of people might get their convictions overturned now.

Defendants who entered guilty pleas with Crawford at their side could challenge their conviction. Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino said those cases would have to be considered on an individual basis, if it's confirmed that Crawford was ineligible.

"Each case is still going to be looked at on a case-by-case basis to see whether she provided substandard legal advice and whether that advice caused prejudice to a client," Ciolino said. "It doesn’t turn into an automatic get out of jail free card."

An excellent start, as the saying goes. 

Habenus Budgetum

City council approved most of the mayor's budget yesterday. The most important tweak introduced involved shifting another $600,000 over to the Public Defender's office. That's good news overall even though the revenue is expected to come from doubling the number of traffic cameras stationed around town. It's a very Mitch type of solution and it's something we'll have to try and beat back in the future. But for now, we prefer to revel in the DA's sour grapes.

At the same time, the District Attorney’s Office will see its $6.68 million budget from the city cut by $600,000. That will leave the office with a total budget of about $10 million when state funding is included.

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said the cut would have “a dramatic impact on public safety.”

“I question the wisdom of a City Council that would slash the budget of a law enforcement agency that is not only systemically underfunded but is also the only agency not operating under threat of federal intervention,” Cannizarro said, referring to federally mandated reform agreements at the NOPD and the local jail.

Ha ha. As Cannizarro points out, most of our criminal justice apparatus is under mandatory federal supervision due to extended patterns of heinous civil rights abuses. But he "questions the wisdom" of providing even the bare minimum level of resources necessary to support constitutionally sound indigent defense.  That's great.

Whatever we think of the rest of the 2017 budget, we do know it pisses off Leon Cannizarro so let's consider it a step in the right direction. 

Normalized extortion

Probably not the best basis on which to operate a criminal justice system.

The reliance in some cities on the cycle of arrest, jail, bail, plea, fine and possibly jail again if you don’t pay up has caught the unflattering attention of the U.S. Justice Department.

Just how all that money is divvied up in New Orleans, and to what extent unfortunate arrestees get caught up in government agencies’ demand for it, is the subject of a study now underway by the Vera Institute of Justice.

The aim, Vera says, is to show which agencies take a cut of the money, see how much lands where and “tally the fistally the fiscal impact of these practices, including from increased jail time, on the city’s budget.”

In New Orleans, different types of fees are split differently among various agencies, and issues over collections from Traffic Court and Municipal Court once prompted a lawsuit by Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton’s office.

Ferguson is a few years in the past now. But it's worth remembering the whole context there was a municipal government funded through systemic victimization of the poor by law enforcement.  

A scathing report from the U.S. Justice Department last year concluded that the municipal court system in Ferguson, Missouri, “primarily uses its judicial authority as the means to compel the payment of fines and fees that advance the city’s financial interests.”

And this sort of thing is common all over the place.  It was the subject of one of John Oliver's more popular segments last year.


Has anything changed?  Well, not really. But, hey, we're gonna do some more studies now. So that's something.

Unique... but not really

We've mentioned this before but every time it comes up, it's worth contemplating how truly stupid this is.

Louisiana funds its public defenders in a way that no other state in the country does. The bulk of the public defenders funding comes from court fees assessed on defendants when they plead guilty or lose a case.

Most of these fees come from people admitting to traffic violations. And far fewer traffic tickets are being written in Louisiana than just a few years ago.

Local law enforcement is also steering more people toward community service and drug rehabilitation programs, instead of going through the court system. Orleans Public Defender Derwyn Bunton said he supports these diversion programs, but it means less money for his office.

Fewer traffic violations. Small time drug offenses being steered away from the punitive criminal track.  These are desirable outcomes. They shouldn't doom the system.

Also, it may be a unique way for a state to fund its public defenders' offices. But similar perverse incentives show up in criminal justice throughout the country.  It was one of the key issues leading to the unrest in Ferguson, MO and, in turn, the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

As the report noted, from 2012 to 2014 African Americans accounted for “85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations, and 93 percent of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67 percent of Ferguson’s population.” Tickets mean money for the city — in 2013, municipal court fines were Ferguson’s second highest source, the bulk of which were leveled against African Americans.

“Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs,” the report stated. “This emphasis on revenue has compromised the institutional character of Ferguson’s police department, contributing to a pattern of unconstitutional policing, and has also shaped its municipal court, leading to procedures that raise due process concerns and inflict unnecessary harm on members of the Ferguson community.”

So.. not optimal there, or here, or in a lot of places, actually.  So, in a very narrow Louisiana specific sense, some offices have a budget problem. But, in a wider sense, the whole system has a moral corruption problem.

NOLA criminal justice update

NOPD:  Well, you've probably seen the Will Smith news, dot dot dot, so you've at least been tangentially reminded that the police here are liable to surround and shoot the mentally ill dead in the street on occasion.  Because the internet has instructed us not to speculate about the direct connections between that incident and the current one, we will only say that it's a serious thing when the police kill someone. It's the sort of serious thing that has repercussions on the lives of the people near it. 

On the same night as the Smith shooting, New Orleans voters turned down a millage proposal that would have, in part, shoveled more money into a department that people just don't trust.

The widespread public trust that is required to sign off on a $17 million annual tax increase just isn’t there among large numbers of voters. This trust can only be rebuilt over time, when NOPD consistently demonstrates to voters that resources they already have will be managed wisely to provide prompt public safety services. But right now, without that trust, even voters I know who were planning to support the millage were well-versed in reasons to vote no, and many were worried that they would simply be throwing good money after bad.

Gusmanland:  We were certain we would finally get all this unconstitutionally cruel treatment of inmates under control once the big new jail finally opened. The new jail opened. That hasn't gone so well.

The corrections expert monitoring conditions at the city’s new jail told a federal judge Thursday that parts of the facility should be closed — and the inmates relocated — until deputies can be properly trained to operate the $150 million building.

“It’s a hard recommendation to make, but if it were up to us, we would close the facility floor by floor until it can be successfully operated,” the expert, Susan McCampbell, told U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.

“We’re really regressing to what should have happened in September (when the building opened) to make this a safe and secure environment.”

McCampbell, who has been appointed to monitor the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office’s compliance with a series of court-ordered jail reforms, recommended that Sheriff Marlin Gusman implement “aggressive, well thought-out and evidence-based training on how to run a direct-supervision facility,” citing a level of jailhouse violence she described as unacceptable.

Inmates continue to attack one another — and deputies — in the Orleans Justice Center at an alarming rate, she said.

Sheriff Gusman maintains that his longstanding budget dispute with the city is at the root of the problem. 

Gusman wants an additional $7.1 million to give raises to his deputies and staff; another $500,000 to buy new equipment; $200,000 to recruit more deputies and whatever it might take to add 200 new employees to the Sheriff's Office ranks next year.

It's now up to the council to balance those differences.

Gusman said he presently has more than 700 employees on the payroll.

"We're hoping to get 1,450 inmates (in the new jail). How in the world could we need 900 employees?" Councilwoman Stacy Head asked.

"It's the staffing pattern in the facility," Gusman said.

And maybe he's right about that. At the same time, his "staffing pattern" itself might also be a problem. 

Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman appears to have misused more than $1 million in state funds by giving law-enforcement bonuses to employees who weren’t eligible, according to a report released Monday by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.

The report also found serious irregularities in off-duty work — allegations that echo a federal charge against a former deputy — and problems with a $230,000 renovation contract involving John Sens, Gusman’s former purchasing director. He was convicted for his role in a bribery scheme in 2013.

The state-funded Deputy Sheriff’s Supplemental Pay program provides up to $500 per month for commissioned deputies throughout Louisiana who are primarily involved in law enforcement.

Gusman is responsible for ensuring his employees’ eligibility, swearing to it on forms submitted to the state. The Legislative Auditor’s report says Gusman may have violated state law by requesting and receiving the pay on behalf of employees who didn’t primarily do law-enforcement work.

Either way we're a ways off from having a constitutionally sound facility into which anyone rounded up by our untrustworthy police force might be deposited.

Public Defender: The good news is we can't afford to send anyone to the unconstitutional jail anyway since we can't afford to provide the requisite semblance of a fair trial that might put them there. 

In a potentially blockbuster ruling, an Orleans Parish judge on Friday ordered seven indigent inmates released from jail because of a lack of state money for attorneys to represent them amid a squeeze on public defense funding in New Orleans and across Louisiana.

However, Criminal District Court Judge Arthur Hunter stayed his order, which also included a suspension of the men’s prosecutions, pending an appeal from District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office. Assistant District Attorney David Pipes told Hunter an appeal is coming, and Hunter gave him 10 days.

The seven men will remain behind bars pending the outcome of that appeal.

All of them face serious felony charges — including murder, armed robbery and aggravated rape — and all have been deemed indigent. Most have spent more than a year behind bars, going months without legal help on their cases, attorneys said.

It just makes sense that everyone interested in maintaining a sound and effective criminal justice system would want to ensure that a key cog in that machine like the Public Defender's office would be able to function. Certainly the District Attorney would be able to see how vital an issue that is. Oh, except...

The DA's Office is full of dicks: Because, of course it is.

The deep rancor between the Orleans Public Defenders and District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office boiled over Tuesday (April 12), with the parish's top-ranking indigent attorney accusing the DA's office in open court of unethical conduct and bullying tactics.

"There is concern among my attorneys and staff that they might be charged for doing their jobs," chief public defender Derwyn Bunton testified. "They are scared and concerned, because the district attorney has a penchant for charging them for talking to witnesses."

I'd say the lesson here is try not to get into trouble in New Orleans. But, as we've just seen, even a fender bender can escalate pretty quickly into something ugly. So, for now, just hope trouble doesn't find you. 

Radical idea

Maybe law enforcement funding shouldn't depend on how much loot they can seize from suspects.

The Justice Department's equitable sharing program allowed state and local authorities to pursue asset forfeiture under federal, rather than state law. Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies, allowing police to keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize.

Asset forfeiture is fast growing -- in 2014, for instance, federal authorities seized over $5 billion in assets. That's more than the amount of money lost in every single burglary that year.

Reformers had hoped that the suspension of the program back in December was a signal that the Justice Department was looking for ways to rein in the practice. But that no longer appears to be the case.

DOJ is bowing to pressure from law enforcement authorities whose funding depends specifically on them being goons. 

"This really was about funding, not a genuine concern about the abuses rampant in the equitable sharing system," said Scott Bullock, president of the Institute for Justice, in an interview. The institute is a civil liberties law firm that researches asset forfeiture and advocates on behalf of forfeiture defendants. It has reported extensively on what it calls the "profit motive" created by the equitable sharing program -- because police get to keep a share of the items they seize, they have an incentive to take more stuff.

There is simply no reasonable way to defend such practices. Here's what they do to people. 

Annette Shattuck says that since the charges have been dismissed, the Drug Task Force has returned some of her property. But much of it is damaged. Electronic items are missing power cords and remotes. Her and her husband's phones were smashed. They returned her husband's guns and the safe he stored it in, but they didn't return the key. Two of the kids' insurance cards are missing. Shattuck says her marriage and birth certificates haven't been returned, and since the Task Force does not itemize seized documents in its paperwork, it has no record of taking them in the first place.

This is just horrifying and unacceptable in a non-totalitarian system. But we're sliding in the wrong direction, especially when it comes to police powers and the structure of our criminal justice system.  Hell we can't even guarantee a right to defense anymore. 

Years of state budget cuts to the Louisiana Public Defender Board, coupled with an unstable local funding system reliant on New Orleans court fines and fees, have reduced the number of staff attorneys at the Orleans public defender's office from 78 in 2009 to 42 today. Young felony defenders like Anderson have found themselves juggling 300 or more cases at once, twice the number recommended by the American Bar Association.

Faced with such crushing caseloads, New Orleans' chief defender, Derwyn Bunton, announced in January that his office would refuse certain felony cases where defendants faced lengthy sentences. With a shortage of attorneys qualified to provide competent defense for those cases, Bunton said, the office would focus instead on lesser felonies. As a result, around 110 indigent people accused of crimes in New Orleans have had their cases wait-listed or refused in recent months. More than 60 of them still sit in jail awaiting a lawyer.

Notice also the flawed funding system based on fines and fees. Even the public defender's office relies on traffic ticket revenue in order to do its job. The guarantee of at least some semblance of justice is a basic underpinning of a free society. And we're allowing that to dwindle away over the  principle of usage fees. I'd love to say it's time to do something about this but, as we know, the state is out of money...

Do not go to jail during Carnival

Who knows when you'll ever come out.

When you enter the lobby of the Orleans Public Defender's Office, expect a bit of a wait, because receptionist Chastity Tillman will likely be busy on the phone.

"The jail calls. We get them every second," Tillman says.

Jailed suspects call to get their court dates and to see a lawyer. But for those accused of the most serious of crimes, there will be no visit from an attorney; no help in negotiating a bond; no investigation into their alleged offense. Public defenders say they don't have the resources to handle the city's indigent caseload after a million-dollar budget shortfall.

So they are turning away some suspects who can't afford to pay for their own legal representation.

Or, you know, if you'll ever come out. 

“The staff are not in control of the facility,” Susan McCampbell, who is overseeing a federally supervised jail reform effort, told U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.

“We had been very hopeful that when the new jail opened there would a decrease in the level of inmate-inmate violence and uses of force (by deputies) in the facility,” McCampbell said. “I’m here to tell you that has not happened.”

QOTD

We cannot afford freedom anymore.

Eric LaFleur, the chairman of the Louisiana Senate’s finance committee, is in charge of vetting next year’s budget. He says that the public defenders “have certainly got our attention,” because some “bad guys will go unprosecuted if they don’t have a lawyer.” But the likelihood of more funding for indigent defense, he says, remains slim. “They can draw attention to their plight, but the basic fiscal situation remains the same: With the budget deficit we have, people who commit crimes are still a low priority.”

No big deal. It's just basic habeas corpus we're talking about here.  And we gotta make sure we protect that Hollywood South tax credit in the meantime. 

What we value

The underfunded Orleans Public Defender's office has reached a crisis point.

The office responsible for providing free legal services to defendants in New Orleans who can’t afford lawyers will start turning clients away this week. The city’s public defender’s office warned last fall that this day was coming. And it came on January 12, when the office announced that it would have to stop taking on indigent clients charged with serious felonies, particularly those facing life sentences. The office no longer has enough staff or resources to handle the heavy load of criminal cases coming across its desk, a problem largely attributable to a paucity of funds from the state.

“Our workload has now reached unmanageable levels, resulting in a constitutional crisis,” said Chief Defender Derwyn Bunton in a January 12 press release. “OPD’s caseloads far exceed national caseload standards, and we simply don’t have the capacity to ethically represent the most serious offenses.”

Now the ACLU is suing, well, they have to sue the office itself, for constitutional violations caused by the funding crisis. 

It’s an odd lawsuit in the sense that the ACLU doesn’t believe that the defenders are at fault.

The ACLU is asking a judge to find that the waiting list violates the plaintiffs’ rights to counsel, due process and equal protection under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. If a judge agrees, says Buskey, that will put the state legislature on notice. If the legislature doesn’t get the message, he says, they can ask the judge to insist on adequate funding.

“We want to highlight the fact that there are people right now suffering while we go through all these funding shortages,” says Buskey. “Our hope is that by doing that we really put pressure on the state to fix this inherently unreliable user-funded system.”

Currently the public defender is funded primarily by traffic fees which, in and of itself, is a problem. But it's especially bad when there isn't enough of that revenue to go around because, well..

The ACLU alleges that some defenders in the state have pressured sheriffs to increase traffic enforcement. According to Al Jazeera America, nearby St. Charles Parish benefits from eight major highways crossing through and has plenty of traffic ticket and court cost revenue to fund its public defender budget.

Public defender offices around the country complain of inadequate funding. In Louisiana, public defender offices representing poor people in Winn, Lafayette, and St. Bernard parishes have also reported wait lists, says Buskey.

“The right to counsel is an empty constitutional promise without adequate funding,” emails Cardozo School of Law professor and ethics expert Ellen Yaroshefsky, who testified in November on behalf of the defenders. “Clients languish in jails and plead guilty (often when they are not) when competent lawyering might have secured their release. They rarely see their lawyers and they may be found guilty at trial because of lack of money to investigate a charge. It is an impossible situation for lawyers who care deeply about providing zealous advocacy and certainly for the clients who are in dire need of counsel. It is the responsibility of the courts and the legislatures to insure that the system has some measure of integrity in providing right to counsel. Poor people of color—the overwhelming number of accused– have the right to counsel that should not be merely an empty promise.”

Anyway so we're scrambling to figure out how to establish and maintain a constitutionally sound criminal justice system.  One would think that the city would be able to find some money somewhere to cover this crucial gap, at least until the legislature can act on the problem. Here's a speech from 2010 where Mayor Landrieu tells us the city budget is a "moral document because it says everything about who we are and what we value."

Turns out right now what we value is being able to dig up enough money to make sure the guy who accepts the fees and bribes or whatever from the French Market vendors is all set. 

NEW ORLEANS – The sudden resignation of the city’s French Market Corp. director last week was met with disappointment from people who hailed him as a transformative leader.

It also fostered an odd secrecy Tuesday night as the Landrieu administration blocked WWL-TV’s attempts to ask ask the public agency’s independent board about Jon Smith’s departure on the heels of a $35,000 retroactive pay-raise approved in hopes of keeping him in place.

Smith arrived from the private sector to lead the French Market Corp. two years ago, and his brazen style had an immediate impact. He called some of the trinkets sold by market vendors “garbage” and demanded improvements.

Residents in the Upper Pontalba Building, one of the French Quarter properties owned by the autonomous public agency, said Smith fixed many problems in the historic building. He also implemented revenue sharing with the city, raising millions more for city coffers through use of the agency’s parking lots.

He polished the agency’s tarnished image shortly after a criminal trial exposed former director Kenneth Ferdinand’s lavish use of a public credit card.

“We never know we’re living in a golden age until it’s over,” said Justin Winston, head of the Flea Market Vendor Committee, told the French Market Corp. board at an emergency meeting Tuesday to address Smith’s resignation.

The board, too, was taken by surprise. Especially since it was just four months ago that they voted to give Smith the maximum pay raise allowable. The raise was also retroactive to Jan. 1, 2014, giving him a lump-sum payment that increased his 2015 annual salary to $147,000.

So that's a problem.  Maybe it's a bigger problem than the Public Defender's constitutional crisis. I really can't say what Mitch's people are thinking anymore.  If I had to guess, though, I'd offer the possibility that the Mayor has elected to allow this all to come to a head in the hope that it will spur the state toward a more permanent structural fix.  In the meantime, though, defendants are still stuck on that waiting list.  Unlike Smith, they aren't going anywhere for a while.

Many things happening Thursday

Orleans Public Defender Derwyn Bunton will speak at The Lens's Breakfast with the Newsmakers event at 8 am.  We mentioned this already but it should be good. Stop by if you can.

HOLY CRAP, it's already city budget day! 

Landrieu will present his 2016 operating budget to the City Council on Thursday.

Though his fiscal priorities, and the actual 2016 operating budget figures, won’t be released publicly until then, some of what to expect can be gleaned from resident gripes, collected by the Landrieu administration in a round of community budget meetings this summer.

That’s because under Landrieu’s “budgeting for outcomes” process, the city says it aims to design budgets with residents in mind, with a stated goal of getting the biggest return on investment of public dollars.

Yeah, not really, though. As we've discussed at length in previous years, those Budgeting for Outcomes meetings contribute more of a political sideshow than they do anything of substance to the budget.  Not that we don't enjoy the meetings. They are always good fun. Although next year, maybe they should spring for refreshments.

Because, hey check it out, we're rich.

All that said, New Orleans’ 2016 budget is poised for some growth, due to booming sales tax receipts and other collections. City officials forecast $30 million in additional money in 2016 at a Revenue Estimating Conference meeting last month.

And the city is likely to end 2015 on a strong financial note. Though the administration budgeted $536.8 million in general fund revenue this year, the city brought in $60 million more than planned. That was largely due to the BP settlement, increased tax collections and the auction of many tax-delinquent properties.

Also at that meeting, city officials said they were working to build up a reserve fund that could be tapped into in case of a natural disaster or other emergency. Bond-rating agencies suggest that should amount to about $60 million. The city’s reserve, as of Sept. 28, stood at about $25 million, Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin has said.

Don't get too excited. We're still probably not paying the firefighters.  Or the Public Defender for that matter.  Mostly they're going to tightening up in order to pay for police and prison consent decree stipulations. You'd think the Public Defender's Office would figure into that but the mayor doesn't seem to see it that way.  Also, of course, they've gotta make sure the tourists all "feel safe" first.

Let's see.. what else.. oh here is another Governors Show Thurday night. This is only the second televised debate to feature all four of the major candidates. Three of them met Wednesday night in Lafayette for what is probably the most substantive debate yet. (You can get a lot of constructive things done while David Vitter is out of the room.) Stephanie Grace picks out probably the most significant policy distinction expressed during the evening.

A question on Medicaid expansion drew out a key difference between how the three men who attended would proceed.

Edwards said he'd tap into the money immediately, and brushed of his Republican opponents' insistence on market-oriented reforms. Gov. Bobby Jindal already instituted such measures, he argued, when he introduced the Bayou Health managed care program (of course, Jindal has refused to consider expanding Medicaid despite his own reforms).

Dardenne said he'd apply for a conditional waiver to access the money quickly, then proceed with reforms. The timing is key because of the state's budget shortfall, and also because private hospitals are set to pick up the local match if an agreement is reached by April 1.

Angelle said he'd seek a waiver to develop a Louisiana-specific program before accepting the expansion. He insisted that, against all odds, the state and the federal government would work things out in a few months, not a year or two.

Another point of interest occurred when John Bel Gomer Edwards indicated he might support lifting the $180 million cap on the exceedingly wasteful "Hollywood South" tax credit program. Here (via the Advocate) is a Variety article  suggesting the cap still hasn't hurt the state's ability to bring in big budget productions.. for whatever that might be worth.

Beyond that, the three candidates mostly divided their time discussing budget priorities and taking shots at the hated Bobby Jindal as well as the absent and equally hated Vitter. Interestingly, though, neither Angelle nor Dardenne indicated he might endorse Edwards in the likely event that he faces Vitter in the runoff. Yet another poll released this afternoon shows not only that but also gives Edwards  a 52% - 33%  advantage on Vitter in that hypothetical runoff. So, congratulations, Governor Edwards, right?

Well.. we'll see about that. Vitty will be back on the stage Thursday night.  The ground rules are a little strange, though.

The televised gubernatorial debate being hosted by Louisiana Tech University and KTBS-TV in Ruston on Oct. 15 will have some unusual features that will keep media and the public out of the same room of candidates.

The restrictions include shooting the debate without an audience present, even though the debate is being held inside the Davison Athletics Complex, a facility that's designed to handle large crowds. And despite the debate being held in what's described as a "banquet-type room," most of the media covering the debate will be sequestered in a second-floor room where candidates can choose to appear after the debate for interviews and reaction.

The debate will consist of a panel of members of the media, but no other media is allowed in the room. The debate rules describe the room as "controlled atmosphere = no public, media in room except for panel."

Afterward, the candidates will remain in the sealed environment where they will participate in the faking the next moon landing.  

But there may not be any time to deal with that since it's Falcons Week! (Yay?) Hey.. wait where are you going?  Look, I don't care what anybody says. Rob Ryan is still pretty great.

Asked if the defense was on the verge of turning things around, he replied, "I know we're on the verge of breaking through."

Evidence of that confidence is difficult to find, especially after the Saints gave up 519 yards in a 39-17 loss on Sunday at Philadelphia.

After Sunday, the Saints have allowed 409 yards per game, 32nd of 32 teams in the NFL.
"Stats don't mean anything to us," Ryan said. "I know what it looks like."

Even so, Ryan was insistent that progress is near: "You can feel it. (A breakthrough) is coming. I know it is. Just keep blaming me. Keep blaming me and that will be great."

That's right screw your fancy stats and maths. We're just gonna run on out there and #GetWeird and sooner or later the "breakthrough" is gonna happen.  It's a real shame that Ryan's tenure in New Orleans has been so rough after that great 2013.  Everyone is happier when that guy is.

Anyway, I'd love to tell you the Saints are going to win tomorrow since, frankly, that's the only thing that could save this tire fire of a season at this point. But it looks like they're going to be missing two starters from their terrible offensive line again so I wouldn't get my hopes up.  

Brekkies with the newsies

This looks like a good one.

We’ll talk about the harsh realities of indigent defense with our October Newsmaker, Derwyn Bunton, Chief District Defender for Orleans Parish. He’s the guy who runs the office for public defenders, and the one whose Kickstarter campaign was part of a scathing John Oliver piece.

Bunton will be interviewed by Charles Maldonado, The Lens’ government and politics reporter. The office’s always-short budget will be one of many topics they’ll cover.   Join us Oct. 15 at 8 a.m. to learn more and why this is an issue important for the entire community, not just those who can’t afford an attorney.

And it's one I'm going to have to miss because of work things. If you can go, tell me how it went. 

Opening Week

No, this is not about the Saints season opener. (I'll get to it. Really.) It also happens to be Opening Week at the shiny new Orleans Parish Prison. It was a big draw. They're packing them in over there.

The first two busloads of inmates passed through the giant metal doors of Orleans Parish's new jail facility Monday (Sept. 14), in what Sheriff Marlin Gusman called "the end of an era."

"This has been a long time coming," Gusman told reporters a few minutes before the yellow school buses and deputy SUVs pulled up to the new 1,438-bed, $145 million jail building dubbed "Phase II."

It's September in New Orleans so it may be difficult to distinguish this scene from the one that happens every fall where loads of school buses deliver young people to their designated institution of draconian spirit-crushing discipline. The secret to telling prison from school, though, is the schools are more strict about contraband.

Even with the new school opening, Principal Gusman is under scrutiny again regarding his selective admissions policy.

The latest disagreement came over the shipment of some local prisoners to facilities in north Louisiana by Gusman. The city said the move sent some local prisoners who had court dates and needed to meet with lawyers about four hours away. Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin, on the Eyewitness Morning News, suggested Gusman send more of the state inmates being housed here to north Louisiana.

Gusman countered by saying that the group of prisoners moved out included some state prisoners, but that those who remained were prisoners participating in a re-entry program that required them to meet with local counselors.

“The old way of doing it was letting them out at some state facility in the middle of nowhere and giving them a bus ticket and saying, ‘we hope you don’t come back,’” said Gusman.

Kopplin said the re-entry program could easily be moved to the facilities up north and that continuing to prioritize some state prisoners over local prisoners causes local taxpayers to pick up the tab, which he said was about $30 per day, per prisoner over what the city already pays to run the jail.

“We have plenty of room in the sheriff’s facilities for all the people we are responsible for in New Orleans,” said Kopplin. “What we don’t have room for is all of Bobby Jindal’s prisoners in our local jail.”

Turns out there's still plenty of room for Bobby Jindal's prisoners at the Governor's Mansion. But in New Orleans they pretty much have to go in the jail. Even the semblance of "house arrest" is bound to make the mayor's people uncomfortable these days. Kopplin has a point, though. If Gusman is choosing to house state prisoners in the new jail while shipping local inmates awaiting trial to points north, that doesn't make sense for anyone but Gusman.

Beyond just being a worse deal for local taxpayers, it's also a shitty thing to do to pretrial defendants and their lawyers. 

Further complicating matters has been the sheriff’s indefinite relocation of some 250 pretrial inmates — many of whom face serious felony charges such as murder — to jails several hours away in East Carroll and Franklin parishes.

Gusman has said those inmates would not fit in the new jail. But several defense attorneys said they were blindsided by that move, which will greatly restrict their access to their clients.

“I think it’s a little early to tell how much of this (confusion over court appearances) is due to the shipment upstate and how much of it is due to the transfer to the new facility,” said Colin Reingold, special litigation director for the Orleans Public Defenders Office. “It didn’t sound like (the Sheriff’s Office) had a solidified system for knowing where the inmates were housed in the new facility so they can efficiently bring them to their court appearances.”

Another defense attorney, Kevin Boshea, said he learned over the weekend that Clifford Williams, a client of his scheduled to stand trial Tuesday in a second-degree murder case, had been among the inmates sent several hours away last week. He filed a last-minute motion to postpone Williams’ trial.

Unfortunately, the extra mileage is hardly the worst obstacle the Public Defenders Office is faced with right now.  There's also this thing where the city won't give them any money to operate.

A New Orleans judge Friday (Sept. 11) postponed for more than two months a hearing he called to examine whether poor people charged with crimes in his court are receiving adequate legal representation.

Criminal District Court Arthur Hunter sought Friday's hearing last week, after reading an op-ed piece in The Washington Post written by New Orleans public defender Tina Peng, who wrote about lack of funding for public defenders.

But Hunter postponed a discussion on the matter at the request of Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton, who said he's involved in ongoing discussions with the Louisiana Public Defender Board on whether the current funding woes are "an aberration."

Bunton asked that the hearing be reset for November, and Hunter agreed to scheduled it for Nov. 18.

If you hadn't seen the Washington Post article, you might still have heard about this. John Oliver covered it a few weeks ago.

In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled that "any person ... who is too poor to hire a lawyer cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him." But as John Oliver explains in his latest Last Week Tonight report, the public defender system has been warped beyond recognition – leading to underfunded departments, pressured guilty pleas and the absurd notion of being billed for a supposedly free attorney. 

Here is that segment.


Oliver mentions an ongoing fundraising campaign for the OPD's office this week. In addition to the crowd-funding effort, which you can donate to at that link, there is a series of public events you might like to attend listed on that site as well.

Of course, we shouldn't have to provide for minimum constitutional standards in our criminal justice system this way.  But that's what it's come to. Anyway there are worse ways to fund a public defender's office.. like, say,  the one we have already.

The public defender's office is partially funded through the collection of traffic tickets in Orleans Parish and is expected to get $300,000 less this year. Bunton said if the deficit is not resolved in the short term, it's going to cost taxpayers in the long term to house people awaiting their day court.

"We are the only state in the entire country that funds district defenders through local fees, local court fees and that system really just doesn't work," Louisiana State Bar Association President Mark Cunningham said.

Setting aside the perverse incentive built into such a system, we're never going to squeeze enough money out of people this way.  We know because we are trying.

A group of people convicted of crimes in Orleans Parish lodged a federal class action lawsuit Thursday claiming that the dozen judges of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court and court staffers routinely violate the law by jailing people for failing to pay fines and fees without giving them a chance to plead poverty.

“The result is an illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust modern debtors’ prison,” the complaint says.

The lawsuit claims the court has authorized illegal arrest warrants for failing to come up with the money without giving defendants “notice of how or when they would be released or when a hearing would be held.”

It claims that the half-dozen named plaintiffs, and others like them, are deprived of a constitutionally mandated hearing over their ability to pay.

The suit describes an “illegal scheme” in which convicts are jailed until they pay their fines and fees or are forced to post a preset $20,000 bond. The suit claims the judges have a conflict of interest in doing so, because the court’s Judicial Expense Fund is filled largely with those moneys.

Oh yeah, the judges depend on this racket for their budget too. Anyway, when I noticed the State Treasurer was in town this week advocating for more aggressive police tactics I thought he was just demagoging our overblown hysteria over street crime in order to impress out of town voters. But, on second thought, maybe he's just offering fiscal advice.   Need more money? Go shake some fools down.

Where has this ever gone wrong?

But... we're rich, right?

They keep telling us Tourism Matters! and tourism is doing really well right now and we're pulling down all that sweet moolah.   

Money collected from the New Orleans hotel occupancy tax is on pace to reach a five-year high, totaling more than $43 million so far this fiscal year. Healthy travel growth means tax revenues could continue to rise next year and beyond.

So where did all the money go?

Three years after purging nearly a third of his lawyers amid a steep budget shortfall, Orleans Parish Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton has told his staff that a new round of stiff cuts — lengthy furloughs, possibly layoffs or some combination — is coming.

Bunton put his austerity plan on paper last week, alerting the City Council, the mayor, judges and Sheriff Marlin Gusman that it “will likely cause serious delays in the courts and potential constitutional crises for our criminal justice system in New Orleans if no solution is reached timely.”

Bunton said he would institute a hiring freeze beginning July 1, the start of a new fiscal year in which he says he’s facing a $1 million shortfall from the current year’s budget of about $6 million.

Oh wait. Nevermind. We only get to use the tourism-generated revenue to pay for promoting more tourism.  

The 13 percent hotel occupancy sales tax is collected on hotel stays in Orleans Parish. Revenues are split six ways.

The bulk -- 8 cents -- goes to the Louisiana Sports and Exposition District and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The LSED oversees the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and the Smoothie King Arena.

The City of New Orleans and Orleans Parish School Board each get 1.5 cents for every dollar. The remaining 2 cents are split between the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Regional Transit Authority.

Because, you know, Tourism Matters!