Congratulations, Taysom Hill

Turns out you can be an NFL Hall Of Fame inductee and the backup to Tom Savage all at the same time.

But what about the wax museum?

Good news! The Cantrell Administration is not ready to give up on redeveloping the Six Flags site.  They just need another year maybe.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell wants her shot at finding a developer for the abandoned Six Flags property in New Orleans East, and the Industrial Development Board has agreed to give her a year to try.

The board on Tuesday (June 12) voted to enter into a new agreement with Cantrell's administration after the agreement with former Mayor Mitch Landrieu expired on May 31. The agreement essentially allows the city to control the redevelopment process for the 227-acre amusement park that was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina.

Only one disgruntled former bidder shows up near the end of the article this time. (There's at least one in every new episode of this. It's kind of a running trope.) But it doesn't give us an update on Tonya Pope's Edwin Edwards funded wax museum.  I'd like to read more about that.  Will it exist before a plan for the Six Flags site does?

# City Of Oh Hell Yes

This is how you know it's been a good day in New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS - A cement truck got stuck in a sinkhole in the French Quarter Tuesday morning. Crews were apparently working on the sinkhole when the truck fell in on Burgundy near Ursuline.

Countdown to... ?

We were counting down to a state government shutdown.  We probably aren't doing that anymore. Even though the legislature failed to fund it, John Bel did decide to sign a budget passed in the most recent session. This means, I think, that the shutdown scenario has.. probably.. been averted.  It looks like the state will have a budget no matter what happens next.  The upcoming Ultimate Special Session will determine how much, if any money gets put back into it.

A lot of attention has been paid to the possibility (should the legislature fail to come up with any new revenue) that Louisiana could become the first state in the union to completely shut down its food stamp program. This would be an astounding turn of events for too many reasons to go into but consider at the very least that it is currently hurricane season.

Without the regular food stamp program, Louisiana also won't qualify for the disaster supplemental assistance program, which provides funding for groceries to people who are recovering from hurricanes, flooding and other disasters.

So something has to be done.  Or does it?  Tim Morris says here that signing the budget gives the Governor an advantage he hasn't had previously.  

For starters, the governor chose to sign the budget lawmakers approved in the second special session, which means the battle over appropriations and who gets what is essentially over. The budget, as rewritten by an Edwards-friendly Senate, guarantees full funding for health care.

That safely walls off a huge pot of money in a state agency that has been routinely assailed by conservative lawmakers as inefficient and bloated. That argument is over for this year.

The Senate also structured the budget bill so that any new money must be added pro rata, meaning proportionally to all areas where a deficit now exists.

That means that lawmakers will not be able to direct the new money to a popular program like TOPS while giving less or nothing to something like food stamps. Everybody gets fully funded or nobody gets fully funded. Some House members are disputing that interpretation, which could end up being the most important fight of the session.

But let's not take even this for granted. If there is any one thing, observers of this year long exercise should have come away with by now it is that this is an exceptionally stubborn Republican caucus. After all, as Gambit (and many others) have pointed out this week, the line in the sand they drew in the last session was over, 17 cents wort of sales tax on any $100 purchase.

More importantly, these Republicans... or at least the key members of their leadership..do not actually care if anybody gets funded at all. Cameron Henry doesn't want to cut Medicaid because he's worried about state finances. He wants to cut Medicaid because he literally doesn't think poor and elderly people should have health care benefits. This needs to be explained more clearly.

The state and local press coverage, for all its very good reporting on the legislative drama, still tends to make outdated assumptions about the political dynamics. I think some writers are starting to catch up but most suffer under the belief that there is a political check on the radicals somewhere in the system. Surely, sooner or later something will shame them into a "compromise."

But no such check exists.  In fact, Henry et al's radical ideology is perfectly aligned with the political and financial infrastructure that comprises their power base. Or, at least, it had better be.

Among other things, (State Senator Danny) Martiny asserted that Americans for Prosperity, an anti-tax political action committee financed by the mega-billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, had allegedly threatened to spend $100,000 to oppose any Republican legislator who refused to vote in lockstep with the organization’s political agenda.

“Americans for Prosperity pretty much laid down the gauntlet saying that if you don’t vote the way we like, we’re going to be spending $100,000 against you,” he claimed, “And I’m all for Americans for Prosperity, but they shouldn’t be calling the shots. We need to be voting based on the needs of our constituents, not based on the political needs of Americans for Prosperity.”

But AFP, and the big corporate donors they represent, are the constituents. Here is another Bayou Brief report published in March that takes a look at how Cameron Henry's very healthy machine works. The article concerns itself with how Henry spends the money his PAC raises. But the real big takeaway from all of that is look at all the money he is rolling in by virtue of basically being a monster in politics and the patronage that money can buy for him.  That doesn't come from "voting based on the needs" of people in danger of losing food stamps.  It comes from protecting the privileges of his actual constituents regardless of the cost to anyone else.

Henry, and the Republican caucus he leads and funds, have no real reason to care if anything in the state budget is funded as long as it means their backers don't have to pay for it. And when you don't actually care if anything is funded, then "everybody gets funded or nobody gets funded," probably isn't going to give the Governor much leverage after all. No matter what happens, we can rest assured, they're going to find a way to blame him anyway.

The day she truly became mayor

There is something about being the Mayor of New Orleans that renders your endorsement a near guaranteed kiss of death for whichever office seeker comes upon the misfortune of acquiring it.

LaToya Cantrell’s first attempt as mayor to influence a local election failed recently, but it may be too soon to judge the true length of her coattails.

That’s because she endorsed, not in a municipal race, but in the race for King Zulu 2019. And her candidate, George V. Rainey, lost by an apparently close margin to Naaman Stewart, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club’s president.

So that's normal, anyway.  One thing this article doesn't point out that may be worth noting is Stewart was a heavy donor to LaToya's opponent in last year's election.  Granted a somewhat less prestigious post was up for grabs there but there's still clearly an element of payback at work in all this.

Also, the number of players who got involved in this and the way they aligned themselves is interesting.

Rainey also was backed by state Sen. Troy Carter and Entergy New Orleans CEO Charles Rice, both Zulu members, according to the mailer. Clerk of 2nd City Court Darren Lombard and Constable of 2nd City Court Edwin Shorty also endorsed him, as did City Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer.

Meanwhile, Stewart received the backing of 11 former Zulu kings, former Mayor Marc Morial and three former Zulu board members, according to a separate mailer.

As for me, I'm still a little mad LaToya didn't throw me a shoe when she rode in Muses this year.  At least I don't have to go through her to get a coconut now. 

They don't want you to vote

There is no rationalization or pretense to this that passes any kind of smell test.  The simple fact is they don't want people to vote anymore. That's all any of these "reforms" are about.  Also, what a time to be alive when these people own the courts.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday upheld Ohio’s aggressive efforts to purge its voting rolls.

The court ruled that a state may kick people off the rolls if they skip a few elections and fail to respond to a notice from state election officials. The vote was 5 to 4, with the more conservative justices in the majority.

Imagine you live in a place like Louisiana where *some say* that we have "too many elections" (I would dispute that but it's not important right now.) And say you just couldn't bring yourself to get too involved in the last three heated contests for Clerk Of Court between another random Landrieu and whoever the latest creature they've grown in a jar over at Adams and Reese. Well, too bad, you have forfeited the right privilege to vote. 

Ok it's not quite that bad in our state yet. But Cameron Henry has been kind of busy this year crashing the budget. Give him time to get back around to this part of the agenda. 

Anyway, if you haven't come across Nancy MacLean's book about James Buchanan yet, I think this would be a good time to pick it up. It's apparently struck a nerve since she's been making the rounds again lately answering criticism.  Here she is on a recent Dig podcast talking about all of that.  But that's not why I'm bringing up the book here.

I have an economics degree from LSU. The reason for this is I am a glutton for self abuse. The other reason for this is because I accumulated a requisite number of credit hours listening to professors drone on about the virtues of Buchanan's "Virginia School" of Public Choice Theory. It was so central to the econ program at our state's flagship university that it is impossible for a non-libertarian person to come through it without a keen and permanent sense of impending doom.  So, you know, that explains me a little bit.

So it was a little bit surprising to me when I read MacClean's book to see that  this demon who haunted my undergrad years was an obscure figure to her.  Maybe he is unfamiliar to you as well. In which case, you really should read her book. Or at least take a look through the reviews.

Buchanan was strongly influenced by both the neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and the property supremacism of John C Calhoun, who argued in the first half of the 19th century that freedom consists of the absolute right to use your property (including your slaves) however you may wish; any institution that impinges on this right is an agent of oppression, exploiting men of property on behalf of the undeserving masses.

James Buchanan brought these influences together to create what he called public choice theory. He argued that a society could not be considered free unless every citizen has the right to veto its decisions. What he meant by this was that no one should be taxed against their will. But the rich were being exploited by people who use their votes to demand money that others have earned, through involuntary taxes to support public spending and welfare. Allowing workers to form trade unions and imposing graduated income taxes were forms of “differential or discriminatory legislation” against the owners of capital.

Any clash between “freedom” (allowing the rich to do as they wish) and democracy should be resolved in favour of freedom. In his book The Limits of Liberty, he noted that “despotism may be the only organisational alternative to the political structure that we observe.” Despotism in defence of freedom.

His prescription was a “constitutional revolution”: creating irrevocable restraints to limit democratic choice. Sponsored throughout his working life by wealthy foundations, billionaires and corporations, he developed a theoretical account of what this constitutional revolution would look like, and a strategy for implementing it.

They don't want you to vote. It's not good for their "freedom."

Yellow cinderblock

Circa 2009



RIP Tee Eva

When she came home to New Orleans, Mrs. Perry became a walking vendor of pies and pralines. She was a frequent, and quite welcome, visitor at City Hall, where staff would chase her down to buy her sweets.

"I'm very proud to walk the streets with my basket. I strut when I walk the streets with my basket," Mrs. Perry said in 1992, "because I'm part of a long tradition of black women who made a living and kept their independence selling pralines this way.

Mrs. Perry parlayed that business into a full restaurant on Freret Street. She quickly relocated, after her shop was vandalized, to a bright yellow cinderblock building on Magazine Street near Napoleon Avenue that became a landmark of Uptown. From the walk-up window, she sold not only baked goods, but also jambalaya, red beans and snowballs. The shop moved up Magazine Street in 2009 to the corner of Dufossat Street.

That building has been a bunch of different things since she moved out. It's been at least two different middle eastern places. I think now it's sushi... if that's still open, even. I'll have to walk by and check when I get chance.  Everything closes so quickly now. 

Spirit of Charity

Who will win the Charity redevelopment derby? We are down to three contestants already. 

LSU has selected three development teams it says are qualified to bid for the right to redevelop Charity Hospital, the downtown New Orleans facility that was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina.

The three selections were made after a process announced in April that opened up what's long been seen as a prime redevelopment opportunity to competitive bidders. LSU officials said last month that they would select developers that "have the vision, experience and financial capability" to complete a project.

Let's see who is in here. Well there's Pres Kabacoff which is not going to surprise anybody. There's also this guy who is sort of the Kabacoff of Dallas but with a larger, international portfolio. But this group is the true curiosity.

1452 Tulane Partners: This is an ownership group that includes New Orleans-based CCNO Development LLC and El Ad US Holdings, part of the Tshuva Group, a commercial real estate conglomerate based in Israel. El Ad's holdings are in Israel, Europe, Asia and North America. They include the Plaza Hotel in New York, and more than 10,000 rental units in 10 U.S. states. CCNO projects include the adaptive reuse of the former McDonogh 16 school building and a few multi-unit residential developments. Joseph Stebbins, a former Housing Authority of New Orleans official, architect Michael Lee Mattax and contractor Richard Mithun are the principals in CCNO.

Hey, it's a good thing the City Council made sure to reject the BDS movement, right?  Otherwise these guys would be out of the running for this big pot of money and that's the real injustice, right?

We're not yet to the stage of this where we get to see the actual proposals but if we're wondering what they will look like, all we have to do is check out what these same developers proposed the last time this was tried. 

Previous competitive bids outlined a vision for Charity Hospital in 2015 that included a bid from New Orleans developer Joseph Stebbin that proposed a 600-unit apartment building, an extended-stay motel and housing for medical students. The company formed to bid on the property offered $30 million for the 1 million-square-foot building; overall development costs at the time were pegged at $275 million.

Also bidding on the property was New Orleans-based HRI Properties, which proposed a $194 million renovation that included apartments and a medical research tower.

So, basically, they're going to do fancy apartments glommed on to whatever window dressing best flatters the public fashion and/or nostalgia.  Here is Andy Kopplin back in April illustrating that with some empty slogan salad.  I highlighted my favs.

"After more than a dozen long years, this effort to adaptively repurpose the iconic Charity Hospital building presents an exciting opportunity to bring back a place that is sacred to many New Orleanians," Kopplin said in a statement. "Even more exciting to us here at the Foundation is the potential for using this initiative to kick-start long-standing efforts to develop the neighborhood surrounding Charity into a vibrant, job creating, inclusive and equitable innovation district that celebrates the spirit of charity and that everyone in our region can claim with pride."

In recent years, the marketing strategy for these kinds of developers has also picked up the phrase "affordable housing" because they've learned that is something people worry about.  The Advocate quotes Stebbins hitting that note in this story.

“It’ll be a modern, vertically integrated development no matter who does it. You’re going to have residential pieces, and you’re going to have an affordable (housing) piece,”

Although, as we've seen, the developments themselves rarely contribute much in the way of actually addressing the housing crisis. Token set asides (the "affordable piece") are in there to mollify the growing public concern on the one hand and to qualify for various public subisdies and land use exemptions on the other.  The more juice housing gains as a political issue, the better our politicians and developers who fund them are learning to rebrand their schemes in ways that co-opt the language of activism without actually changing the course of public policy.

In a particualry strange episode of this kabuki last week, John Bel vetoed a bill that would have banned  local "inclusionary zoning" requirements.  That's fine. That bill, like most state-level attempts at preempting local political authority, should have been vetoed.   The Governor's  veto statement, though, was almost as nonsensical as the bill itself saying, basically, that local governments will have to use it or lose it. 

“If local governments in Louisiana do not actively pursue these policies over the course of the next year, I will conclude that it is not their will to utilize these strategies and I will be inclined to sign a similar piece of legislation in the 2019 regular session,” Edwards stated in his veto.

If cities aren't implementing this policy in the first place, why ban it?  I don't know.

Anyway, from the looks of things, our new mayor is something of a branding enthusiast herself.  And, as such, she is as on board as anyone with applying the new language of faux affordability and "vibrant, job creating, inclusive and equitable innovation" or whatever toward the same old program of  handing out money and favors... oh I'm sorry..  "incentives" to the real estate mavens who elected her.

Mason Harrison, a spokesman for Cantrell, said stimulating development activity and business growth are priorities of the new mayor.

"A great deal of opportunity exists in returning vacant buildings to commerce, generating tax revenue," he said. "Businesses, however, must be offered the kinds of incentives that will make that possible, and the mayor-elect believes that we are losing to other parishes on that front."

Luckily, she has friends in Baton Rouge willing to help.  Cantrell has chosen State Rep Neil Abramson to serve as her point person in the legislature.  Last week, he introduced her (and New Orleans Saints mascot Gumbo) to the House so she could greet members with a brief speech about how much fun she had at D.C. Mardi Gras and congratulate them on the fine work they've done this year.  (This is really what she told them. I am not making that up.)

In addition to this service, Neil (on the days the House was not considering anything involving abortion) also managed to pass some legislation on the city's behalf.

For example here is HB 684 passed during the regular session.  What this does, basically, is remove a cap on the size of the tax break the city can give private entities who have entered into cooperative endeavor agreements with them. Previously, if a "private partner" were to donate "cash, equipment, goods, or services" to a city infrastructure project, then they could collect a tax break equal to one half the value of the donation or $500,000 whichever is less.

Say, for example, the management company running the St. Roch Market were to install a new sidewalk or something.  They could then recoup half of their investment in tax subsidies. Now, under Neil's version of the law, the "incentive" payment has no limit. So, in theory, a thousand dollar "donation" could merit a million dollar "incentive."

You go out and buy some new signage.. ooh.. or maybe some cameras...  and the city can more or less guarantee you're going to come out ahead.  That ought to get the ol' spirit of charity up and running. Especially if it applies to whatever deal governs the Charity development which I think it probably will.  But you can see the possibilities extend well beyond that too. 

Dark smoke success fail

In only the latest of a long line of self-authoring punch lines to come out of our fine city, the Sewerage and Water Board issued a public notice yesterday assuring us that the plume of dark smoke is normal.

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) -  Residents may see dark smoke rising from The Sewerage and Water Board's Carrolton Power Plant Thursday.

The smoke is part of a test for the board's recently-repaired power turbine.

Turbine #5 is one of the main turbines that runs the city's drainage pumps.

The result of the test is even more confusing than that. It says here that the test failed.  But it also says that means the turbine works.

A newly repaired turbine at the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board's Carrollton Plant failed a test run using diesel on Thursday, though it is still "fully functional" when using natural gas as its fuel, the utility announced Thursday.

The Thursday test was aimed at seeing whether the repairs would allow Turbine 5 to be switched to diesel in case its main natural gas fuel supply was interrupted during a storm. But officials concluded that "additional repairs are needed" before it'll be able to switch to that backup fuel supply, according to a news release.

After the diesel test, the turbine was tested with natural gas and "continued to show strong performance," according to the release.

Okay, well, good. Congrats on your auspicious, dark smokey failure.  They're still working on the six year money pit that is Turbine 4, by the way. 

Officials had hoped that Turbine 4 would be brought back online by the start of hurricane season on Friday. The current schedule calls for it to be fully tested later in June, though the S&WB may be able to use it if necessary before the tests are complete, Rainey said.

Sure, give it a whirl if you're feeling lucky.  I wonder what color smoke that will make. 

"Most risk-reduced"

What an odd phrase.

The pumps were formally declared complete by the Corps, which is responsible for building $14.5 billion in flood protection upgrades in the metro area.

They've now been turned over to the Flood Protection Authority, which is responsible for the rest of the system of floodwalls, levees and gates that surround the east banks of Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes.

That system is designed to handle storms that have a 1 percent chance of occurring each year, though Col. Michael Clancy, the Corps’ commander and district engineer for the New Orleans district, warned that storms could exceed the its capabilities.

“We still live in a high-risk area and it’s a matter of fact that the full fury of Mother Nature can overwhelm our system as great as it is and it’s safe to say we’re the most risk-reduced city, structurally, in the world,” Clancy said. “But we’re still a high-risk city. With the surrounding area, we’re essentially an island in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Also the word "robust" shows up in this article so, you know, trigger warning. Also, I don't know about you guys, but I am gonna ride out the next storm at the pumping station. 

When needed, the pump stations can operate more or less autonomously. When run in what Derek Boese termed “storm mode,” the stations will automatically determine the water levels in the canals and make adjustments to the pumps accordingly.

Crews can also control the pumps using computers from within a safe-house inside the station or manually at the pumps themselves.

All three buildings are designed to withstand the sustained winds of a Category 5 Hurricane and 200 mph gusts of wind.

Anyway, Happy Hurricane Season.  

Show em what they've won

All those questions we had last week about what the city was giving up to host the Superbowl, the Lens went out and got some answers.  The answers are, predictably, bad. Also they are incomplete because they still don't have access to the full bid.  Also it will get worse because apparently, according to Beau Tidwell, “We are in the early days of this process,” of giving away public money and resources to this giant corporate monster.

Many many Flints in waitng

This is a national problem as much as it is a Louisiana problem.. but it definitely is a Louisiana problem.

Of the state’s roughly 1,300 drinking water systems, about half operate infrastructure that is more than 50 years old.

Other systems have some of the problems — and they will be on a list eventually — but the 10 are the closest to crisis. The governor’s task force plans to work with these 10 systems before they get to the emergency level that the northeast Louisiana town of St. Joseph’s did in 2016, when dangerous levels of lead and copper required the total replacement of the pipes, filters and equipment at a cost to taxpayers of $9 million.

Eight of the targeted 10 systems are under state administrative orders for not addressing the problems inspectors have found. The state has issued 300 administrative orders to systems over the past three years.

Four of the 10 systems on the list have found traces of lead in single or multiple tests and didn’t properly inform the water customers. But lead findings alone didn’t get the systems on the list.

It's a critical public health challenge that could be met with a massive investment but that isn't likely to come any time soon. The federal policy at the moment is more about privatizing infrastructure than revitalizing it.  Meanwhile at the state level, we're... well.. I think we know.

Tone deaf

New boss goes to old boss in record time. 

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is raising concerns about the City Council's "tone" and "demands" made in a letter to the Sewerage & Water Board shortly after the council took office on May 7.

Cantrell sent the May 24 letter to City Councilman Joe Giarrusso, who issued the original letter after obtaining signatures from all of his fellow council members. In Giarrusso's original 10-page letter, he criticized the embattled agency for "terrible customer service, lack of transparency and poor efforts to engage the public," which he said has led to "severe mistrust."

It's impressive, in a way.  But we shouldn't be too much surprised given what we know about LaToya by now. Giarrusso's response is subtle (gotta watch that tone, you know) but he gets the point across. 

The letter serves as a snapshot of Cantrell's transition from the City Council to the city's highest office, a position that often requires defending the actions of city employees or acting swiftly to correct them. After several city neighborhoods flooded Aug. 5, former Mayor Mitch Landrieu began dismantling the Sewerage & Water Board's executive team, which had relayed misinformation to the public about the state of the city's drainage system.

Giarrusso said he understands the position the mayor is in now. Although she acknowledged in the letter that as a council member she had "the same frustrations over lack of information and transparency," Giarrusso said she now "wants to stand up for her people."

"While all that is understandable, our job is making sure we're getting these reports and that we're asking questions," Giarrusso said. And, he added, "The questions we're asking are questions we're getting from our constituents."

Another way of putting that is, there just isn't a whole lot of there there regarding Cantrell's political motivation.  What does she believe in?  What was her campaign for mayor about? Apart from the proliferation of empty cliches like "spreading the love," I mean.  All politicians are ciphers to some degree, but she seems to have a special capacity for hollowness. That can be a useful talent during campaign season.  But it also can lead to a rudderless and ultimately conservative governing style.

If your campaign has not articulated a cause beyond merely putting one individual into office, then the agenda for executing that office is going to hew closely to the status quo. If your raison d'etre in politics is all about "finding balance, "rather than implementing a program based on well-defined principles, then that is an inherently conservative position.   You're basically just going along to get along. And typically that means getting along with entrenched power.

And this is exactly how you end up with tone deaf actions like trying to hire a public safety official who enabled the Danziger cover-up and then blaming the community for its own "upticked" response. Or the similarly tone deaf empowering of a panel of Confederate sympathizers to decide the fate of Confederate monuments.  Or today where we see this tone deaf and defensive response to the "tone" of the City Council's criticism.

Giarrusso points out that she shared in these criticisms and in their tone right up until only a few months ago. But nothing has changed between that time and now except for the personal circumstances of LaToya Cantrell. In other words, LaToya is concerned only with the who rather than the why of power.  She is the person making the appointments therefore they need to be defended against even the slightest perception of a critical tone. These are "her people" now and she wants to stand up for them. 

When you elect a mayor solely on the strength of her own personal brand instead of any particular belief in anything, then personal loyalty is going to be the beginning and end of that mayor's public policy.  Get ready for four more years of tone deaf tone policing. 

Return to Jaegertown

Always love to pull out our old friend, the NOligarchs Map.  Yes, it needs updating. But for now, please find Jaegertown. (It's the purple strip along the river.



It was on hold for a while but now it is back in play. Thanks, of course, to a healthy public subsidy by way of the Convention Center.

The latest proposal comes after years of stalled negotiations with the same local businessmen, Darryl Berger and Joe Jaeger, who previously were negotiating to build a larger, $1.5 billion development that would have included the hotel as well as retail space, restaurants and entertainment venues on a 47-acre site upriver of the facility.

Under a timeline discussed last week, negotiations for the hotel alone are expected to wrap up by July, with construction potentially beginning in late 2019 and the hotel opening by April 2023.

The development team now also includes Matthews Southwest Hospitality, a Texas-based real estate firm, and Preston Hollow Capital, a Texas-based finance company, as well as Omni Hotels.

Under the latest plans, the total project costs are estimated to be more than $550 million. To help cover them, the developers are seeking $41 million from the Convention Center, as well as a rebate of hotel occupancy taxes equal to 10 percent of gross revenues and 4 percent of other revenues until the bond debt is repaid — roughly 40 years.

In the first year, the hotel is projected to generate almost $57 million in revenue from rooms — making that rebate worth about $5.7 million, according to financial documents that were included in the developers' proposal. It is projected to generate about $44 million in food and beverage sales, making that rebate worth almost $1.8 million.

The group is also seeking a break on property taxes, under an arrangement that will see the hotel owned by a nonprofit

Now we could go on our usual harangue here about how, yet again, the public money generated by the hotel/motel tax isn't going to fund badly needed infrastructure projects in the city, or to benefit any of the wage earners who actually make that revenue possible in the first place but is instead being shoveled into the pockets of the NOligarchs.  But that is just the standard way we go about things.

So let's skip it for now and recall instead that Joe Jaeger, along with tons of help from the Advocate in the form of serial news features, editorials, and an especially flattering in-depth profile by Tyler Bridges here, just got finished leading a personal crusade against a Harrah's deal he and they swore up and down was a shady abuse of political power.  It is by sheer coincidence, of course, that that would have put a competing (and likely unionized) hotel right down the street from his publicly subidized development.

Don't expect too many questions about this, though. 

Countdown to Shutdown

Cameron has decided we're gonna at least push this to another special session. That's pretty much what this is about.

Henry said he hasn't filed a budget proposal, in part, because he didn't think the Legislature should start to vote on a budget "until we know exactly much money we have." Nailing down exactly how much money might be available to be spent could take a few more days, as the tax bills continue to move through the legislative process. By that time, it would be too late to move a budget bill in this special session -- and a third special session for the Legislature this year would be needed to finish up the budget process.

"At this point, I'm trying to find a way around it," said Henry, of a third special session. He mentioned he is working with Attorney General Jeff Landry and State Treasurer John Schroder, both Republicans, on a strategy for speeding up budget approval.

Henry also said a replacement budget bill will would require the House Appropriations Committee to hold another round of budget hearings and public testimony, which typically takes a few weeks. The Legislature has moved budget bills in special sessions previously without going through the whole budget hearing process over again.

Ha ha ha  "working with" Landry and Shroder. OOKAY.

Yesterday they spent the holiday afternoon passing Lance Harris's crappy sales tax bill plus a bill by Katrina Jackson that will limit on income tax deductions. Those tell us we will have some money although they aren't going to be enough money.  In any case, it's more money than was in the "pretend" budget the Governor just vetoed so you'd think it would be time to start making the new one.

But that logic only applies if you assume everyone here is acting in good faith toward the goal of averting the pain of the fast approaching fiscal cliff.  And if that is still your assumption by this point, you really haven't been paying attention. Thus the passage of the revenue bills didn't jump start the budget process at all and instead touched off a farce concluding in a stubborn troll move by Henry to call a vote on overriding the Governor's veto. This is from Sue Lincoln's account of that bit of theater.

“I call HB 1 for a veto override,” he said. “I know we’re all desperate to go home, and I’m with you. We override; we can have a budget; and we can supplement it with another bill. If y’all are so concerned about not having a budget, we can have one right now.”

Rep. Sam Jones rose to question the chairman.

“This seems like a reaction to the previously heated debate. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

“It makes it all easier,” Henry replied. “It’s what I’ve been working on for the last several days – trying to work around having to do the full $30-billion budget again.”

“You said earlier you’ve been meeting with the Treasurer and the A.G. Have you discussed this at all with the administration or the Senate?” Jones asked.

“No, I haven’t talked to the administration in oh…four months,” Henry said blythely.

“Was this your plan all along?” Rep. Major Thibaut asked, clearly stunned at the malicious turn the discussions had taken. “You said you’re ready to get home. I’m ready to do the people’s business!”

Next, Leger rose, and Henry turned away, announcing loudly, “I’m going to stop answering questions. Let’s vote.”

And they did, 52-48 in favor of a motion that required 70 votes to pass.

So, long story short, there's still no budget and it's looking like there won't be one.  Which again raises the question, what are we gonna do during the shutdown?  Back in March we were still thinking about doing a crawfish boil on the Capitol grounds but the season has already peaked. Surely some sort of picnic is in order.  This week, Step Up and The Poor People's Campaign are already doing some demonstrations. A shutdown might be an opportunity to ramp that up a bit.  

This still exists, apparently

Extra long and #content packed for the Memorial Day/Looming Disaster weekend

Not even enough time to do some rehearsals

Ready or not, hurricane season is happening, guys.  Actually, why would we even bother to write it that way? Everybody knows we are not ready.  

Two different reviews of the New Orleans area levee system by the Army Corps of Engineers raise troubling questions about the ability of much of the system to withstand surges caused by a major storm nearly 13 years after Hurricane Katrina. The reviews also question the ability of local levee districts to keep up with costly maintenance between storms, as required to remain eligible for the National Flood Insurance Program, records show.

One of the reviews, completed in 2011, gave the 350-mile levee system the second worst classification - "Urgent (Unsafe or Potentially Unsafe)" -- in the corps' Levee Safety Action Classification system. While preliminary because post-Katrina improvements were not finished, the classification remains accurate to this date, a corps New Orleans District spokesman confirmed recently.

The reasons everybody knows this are clear enough.  Anyone living in New Orleans during the post-Katrina saga should be well aware that even the new "risk reduction" system of levees and floodwalls is only rated to perform well during a "100 year" storm event. And, as everyone knows, this just ain't gonna be good enough.

The bad rating was caused instead by the potential threat of even stronger storms that could occur less often. In a 200-year event, levees throughout the New Orleans area would be overtopped, Needham's assessment said. There's a 14 percent chance of a 200-year event occurring in the lifetime of a 30-year home mortgage.

Storms of that magnitude or higher would make a breach in the levee system likely, Needham's presentation said, which "would significantly increase consequences."

Scientists have concluded that the Katrina surge that overwhelmed the Mississippi Gulf Coast was a 400-year event, while the surge in Lake Borgne that overtopped St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans levees was a 200- to 250-year event.

There's a 5.8 percent chance of a 500-year event occurring during the life of a 30-year mortgage.

Aaaand as everybody also knows, phenomena like coastal erosion and climate change are actually making those percentages worse.  Which might explain, for example, why we're getting a tropical event in freaking May now. 

How will Alberto affect New Orleans?

New Orleans is going to get rain, though just how much isn't clear yet. The National Weather Service has issued a hazardous weather outlook for southeast Louisiana, noting the "potential for heavy rainfall and possible flooding" related to the storm. As of 8 a.m. Friday, NOAA predicts 2- 4 inches of rain is possible in the New Orleans area through Wednesday, though forecasters warn amounts could be double that in isolated areas. Forecasters expect heavier rainfall to occur along Florida's southwest coast and Alabama's Gulf Coast, where 6-10 inches is expected.

Showers and thunderstorms unrelated to Alberto are already forecast in the New Orleans area starting Friday. The area is under a flash flood watch until 7 p.m. Friday as a line of thunderstorms moves through the area. Rainfall of 4-6 inches is likely in swaths in parts of the New Orleans area, forecasters said.

Yeah, it is raining now as I write this, actually. That alone is kind of a different atmosphere for the approach of a storm like this. Usually we're all walking around outside saying cliches about how oddly "nice" it is today.  Instead we're all hunkered down before the hunkerdown.  It's unusual but not without precedent. The NWS tells us there have been 14 named storms in May since 1951. But, still, we are correct to be thrown off.

For one thing it's only our new mayor's first month on the job and we aren't even sure if she's ordered her official city logo emblazoned tactical fleece yet. What even are the fashion rules at this stage of the pre-season?  During last week's.. um.. not dry.. run flooding event, she was spotted in the command bunker decked out in seersucker. Because we aren't even quite to Memorial Day yet, this raises even more questions we will probably never get the answers to.  As of this writing, there is still no indication as to when the next emergency press conference might happen so we assume there is time to get these wardrobe issues resolved.

We are very much looking forward to hearing what the mayor has to say, though. After the events of last week, she said certain things we'd like to get updated or clarified if possible. For instance, how is the unclogging of the bottlenecks coming along? Or, I guess, more to the point, has Mitch called in about this?

Much of what Cantrell had to say about funding focused on federal money that she said has been stymied by slow-moving design firms and other factors that have prevented the city from putting resources into capital projects. She sought to cast blame on her predecessor, Mayor Mitch Landrieu, in discussing why projects had "languished in the design stage."

Cantrell said her administration has been "unclogging the bottleneck we've seen within the administration that we've inherited," adding, projects "have been on hold for far too long, and we cannot tolerate that moving forward."

At the end of his eight year term, there were still some problems Mitch was blaming Nagin for. Some of that was legitimate, even. But it's nice to see the tradition carried forward in any case.

The fun thing about LaToya, though, is that she is much more prone than Mitch was to just saying whatever.  Often she begins talking before the thought she wants to convey is fully formed which means a lot of the words that come out are just filler.  For example, there are multiple trains of thought in this statement, each running in a completely different direction and never really getting to where it was supposed to take us.  What does anything that follows the phrase, "in terms of paying," have to do with "paying"?

"Well, in terms of paying, it really speaks to, again, trying to be proactive and trying to building in incentives to help our people live with water and mitigating water on their properties and collecting water, keeping it from running into the drains," Cantrell said.

There's definitely a main idea somewhere in there. The trick for the listener is picking out what it's supposed to be.  Here, she seems to tell us that FEMA wants her to "push" already severely cost-burdened renters in New Orleans into buying insurance. If that is the case, then how on Earth does she bring herself to describe that as "help"?

Cantrell also outlined recent discussions she's had during recent meetings with FEMA. She cautioned that the agency doesn't respond to disasters until 72 hours out, and said officials urged her to tell residents to get homeowners insurance. She said she also asked about renters and was told "push them to get rental insurance."

"What we're seeing, really, at the federal level is that they're willing to help us, and they're ready to," Cantrell said.

A lot of success in politics issues from a person's ability to be vague. That talent comes in various forms. Sometimes it comes from a calculated obfuscating rhetorical style. Sometimes it comes from just not knowing that the hell you're talking about.  Cantrell does a little bit of both but there are days when she definitely tends to favor the latter.

I had a chance to meet every NOPD Chief and Commander today. Health and Wellness starts with us so I brought them some frozen yogurt. I wanted them to know that they matter and we are all in this together. #CityOfYes pic.twitter.com/5hz1lefHEf

— Mayor LaToya Cantrell (@mayorcantrell) May 25, 2018

Health and Wellness matters, guys. Eat your ice cream.

Hopefully the fro-yo helps boost preparedness too. But we'll have to wait until the next presser to ask about that.

Countdown to Shutdown

On yesterday's episode of the Sinking of the Sixth Special Session, we saw the Ways and Means committee reject the Governor's preferred 4.5 cent sales tax proposal  and pass Lance Harris's wholly inadequate 4.3 cent alternative.

Of course the Governor's proposal is regressive and bad but we already know this thing is circling the drain anyway. And at least that bill, had it passed, would have represented a good faith compromise measure toward covering a substantial part of the shortfall.  But good faith went out the window well before we reached this point. Harris all but admitted as much yesterday during a particularly testy committee meeting

"You have to work with the other sides and you have to talk to them," Rep. Major Thibaut, D-New Roads, told Harris Thursday. "I think we have to start working together and not going into our little rooms."

Harris said he is attempting to compromise. He doesn't like taxes and he never thought he would sponsor legislation to retain a higher sales tax rate. Neither did his spouse. "My wife told me not to come home last night," said Harris.

Harris said he would be unwilling to increase the amount of money that his sales tax bill would raise, even from $369 million to $400 million. House Democrats said that means Harris is not willing to work with them or with the Senate, whose members are likely to want more tax revenue.

"It's a compromise that I'm even bringing this bill," Harris said.

It's a compromise that we're even here yelling at each other in the first place.

What is even happening? On today's episode, so far they've already rejected Walt Leger's expansion of the Earned Income Tax Exemption. This was one of several points of compromise Democrats were asking for in order to commit to any sort of sales tax measure.  So it's no surprise tight now that it doesn't look like they're ready to hop on board. 

NEW ORLEANS, LA - In response to the proposed extension of sales taxes, State Rep. Gary Carter, Jr.  (D - New Orleans) issued the following statement:

“Either today or very soon, we will be asked to vote for a continuation of the sales tax. During the last legislative session, I explained in the below video why I am against the sales tax: 1) It is harder on working people than on the wealthy; 2) It doesn't raise enough revenue to prevent drastic cuts; and 3) There is still no funding in the budget for additional infrastructure and additional educational opportunities.”

Representative Gary Carter added that until the proposal takes these considerations into account he will remain opposed to the continuation of the sales tax.

Floor debate is about to get started this afternoon.  This very bad sales tax bill is the only game in town revenue wise.  Hope everybody has their plans set for the Shutdown holiday.

It might be time to dump Transdev

The T-P ran a pretty good feature last weekend on one of the more striking failures of the "Regional Transit Authority."  It has never managed to become "regional" in any respect other than its name.  Parish participation in RTA is voluntary and, over the years, all but Orleans Parish have opted out leaving the region with separate and largely incompatible transit systems.

This is particularity frustrating for riders in Jefferson and Orleans who need to cross between the state's two most populous parishes on their daily commutes.

No one has tallied exactly how much this hurts riders and our region's economy. But hurt it does, experts agree. Like Stevens, riders must spend hours taking several buses, many of which require a transfer from one parish's transit system to another -- a burden that tends to disproportionately affects lower-income workers who most rely on public transit.

I should point out there are some problems with this article. Despite this bit about the "burden on lower-income workers" the story gives too much emphasis to the needs of employers and of people like Michael Hecht who really just need the transit system to be efficient at getting the low-income workforce in and out of the gentrified city where they obviously are not expected to live anymore.

Also, in that vein, it repeatedly asserts that transit problems were a knock against the New Orleans area in the Amazon HQ sweepstakes, again, under the assumption that "winning" that race to the corporate welfare bottom was actually a desirable outcome.

All that aside, the articles do point out one commonality between RTA and JET.  Both systems are currently operated by the same private company.

One idea floated during interviews is to consolidate the operations of neighboring transit agencies under a single operator. Sharonda Williams, the most recent chairwoman of the RTA, says that could theoretically be done through a multi-parish cooperative endeavor agreement.

It's not a stretch of the imagination: RTA and Jefferson Transit are both currently managed by Paris-based Transdev , though the two parishes have separate contracts with the company. Transdev also runs ferry service for RTA from Algiers to Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, marking a rare stroke of regionalism loosely organized around one company.

Unfortunately no one in this story asks why we couldn't consolidate systems and boot Transdev out anyway. Its RTA contract is expiring next year. Transit activists and watchdog groups are already suggesting that RTA consider other options before renewing.

TransitCenter unveiled a study last year that criticized the RTA’s lack of in-house oversight of Transdev, depicting the arrangement as an example of the pitfalls that can occur under such public-private partnerships.

The groups don't explicitly say the PPP model should be abandoned but they do suggest looking at different operators and the structure of the working relationship.  Interestingly, the newly appointed interim director had a hand in a Landrieu administration push for more hands-on control from the RTA side of things.  Not sure what that means going forward but one thing that does deserve attention is the relative inefficiency of the current arrangement.

RTA collected more than $75 million in state and local sales taxes, and about $18 million in fares last year, according to its financial statements. Compare that with the roughly $13 million total budget approved this year for Jefferson Transit, which makes around $3 million annually in fares and $6.5 million from two millages.

"We don't have extra money," said Sharon Leader, JeT's executive director. "For transit, you need a lot of money."

Ride New Orleans' annual report acknowledged that high costs pose a barrier for more service "both in terms of pure cost and in rallying public support and trust for additional founding." The advocacy group said among 20 comparable peer transit agencies, the RTA had the second highest operating costs in 2015 at $134 per bus operating hour. Only Detroit was higher.

 What is the point of contracting out operations at all, let alone to Transdev in particular? 

Countdown to Shutdown

A little over a day into it and it's not looking great for Special Session II The Enspecialing.

Wednesday (May 22) on how to go about fixing Louisiana's budget or what taxes have the support to be renewed or raised before June 4, when the special session ends. There is not even agreement on how much money needs to be raised overall between the governor and Republican-controlled House.

"I realize why Louisiana is shaped like a boot. Because we are the kick-the-can state," said Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Central.

There is already discussion from both Democrats and Republicans that a third special session will be necessary because lawmakers are not confident they will be able to finish their business in the next 13 days, when the current special session ends.

Already a third installment?  You know typically the reason these franchises keep getting sequels is because they actually make money. But I think this particular cinematic universe is more narrative driven.  The audience is going to see this train go off the dang cliff and we're gonna make it happen, dammit. We don't care what it costs. 

Some budget must be in place by July 1 to avoid a state government shutdown. About $1.4 billion in temporary state taxes expire June 30, creating the fiscal crisis. 

I believe we here at the Yellow Blog were the first this year to call the shutdown a likely, if not inevitable outcome. So, you know, spoiler alert, I guess.  There's still some time for the showrunners to change things up on us but I don't think they're going to.  The Republicans don't care if the budget gets fixed at all. The Governor thinks they're going to help him fix it if he just gives them whatever they want. And the Black Caucus are the only people in the room smart enough to have seen through any of the bullshit at all.

The head of the House Black Caucus, state Rep. Randal Gaines, D-LaPlace, said his members would refuse to vote for a sales tax bill when it came up on the House floor, unless some other measures -- possibly those affecting income taxes -- came along with that proposal.

Gaines also said any sales tax legislation that passed must keep taxes higher for businesses as well as individuals. "It is a nonstarter without that," he said.

 Tell me how any of this changes before the shutdown happens.  I'd love to hear some fan theories. 

"Vocal minority"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#CityOfYes we still randomly stop and search your car

It's been a while. Or maybe I just haven't been seeing the notices in a while. But I believe this is the first official police checkpoint under the new mayoral regime. 

NEW ORLEANS - The NOPD's Traffic Division will conduct an upcoming sobriety checkpoint within Orleans Parish.

The checkpoint will be in operation from 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 24, 2018, through Friday, May 25, 2018, at 4 p.m.

Drive carefully. If they nail you for a brake light, there's a way to address that this weekend. 

Competitive

Well guys, I am afraid I have some bad news and some good news.  The bad news is we're gonna have to deal with another one of these horror shows. 

The NFL awarded the 2024 Super Bowl (58) to New Orleans after the city secured a unanimous vote during Wednesday morning's single-city ballot process among NFL owners, snapping New Orleans' two-bid losing streak for the NFL's championship game. 

With each return of this comet, the rate at which our civic democratic institutions and public spaces are corrupted and left weakened by corporate welfare is accelerated. This is from a Lens examination of the city's concessions to the NFL in 2013 and the offer it was making in a bid to bring it back in 2018.

In 2013, local government bodies, including the city and the Orleans Parish School Board, agreed to refund up to $800,000 in local taxes to the league and member teams.* The actual refund came to about $500,000.

Finally, Kopplin wrote that the city could not agree to the NFL’s request for the right of first refusal to buy public-transit ads. A private company, Laurel Outdoor Advertising, controls ads on RTA buses, streetcars and shelters.

“It is understood that Laurel has long-term commitments on such advertising, but they have committed to the Host Committee to provide as much available inventory as possible to the NFL and/or their sponsors,” Kopplin wrote.

The city agreed to every other NFL request without objection, including:

• Passing a city ordinance creating so-called Clean Zones for the event, where non-NFL-sanctioned advertising and sales permits would be banned
  
  
• Providing law enforcement to stop the sale of counterfeit NFL merchandise
  
  
• Committing airport personnel to provide special services to team charter planes, private planes and fan charters

The city also agreed to some items that would not require any city action, such as allowing alcohol service until 4 a.m. at certain venues. And odds are it wouldn’t have had to do anything to meet one NFL requirement: equipment and services to deal with a snowstorm.

Are we going to get a look at what the city gave away this time around? Or is every media outlet going to just publish thousands and thousands of words of breathless cheerleading? For example, here is Jeff Duncan already writing without the slightest hint of irony...

We might not be able to fix our streets or drain them when it rains, but we know how to host a big event and throw a party. And events and parties don't get any bigger than the Super Bowl.

Jeff goes on to prattle on about "economic impact" without interrogating what that actually means much less to whom the benefits of such an "impact" accrues.  No time for that when we've got PR copy to write for Gayle Benson and "civic leaders" who aren't technically even employing Jeff now but who knows maybe someday. 

And it's possible, the mega-events will take place in a glitzy, renovated Superdome if state and Saints officials can execute their plan to upgrade the stadium in the 2020-2022 offseasons. Considering the state of the state's finances, that's a big "if."

Wednesday is a day to celebrate. Landing Super Bowl 2024 is a major triumph for the city. The civic leaders who collaboratively worked to land the big game deserve a toast. Their diligence paid off.

The Advocate doesn't really have a Duncan in the sports department. But it does have Nick Underhill who, at least, knows a thing or two about football and does a serious job writing about it. When he's writing about the people in charge of football and the business of football, though, he does a serious job of flattering them.

The victory was the result of six months of hard work by the GNOSF’s Jay Cicero, Joffray and others, who went back and forth with the league to meet all their demands and ready the presentation. While that group led the charge, they also worked alongside the Saints, Edwards, Cantrell, former mayor Mitch Landrieu, the Mercedes Benz-Superdome and SMG, Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, as well as several hotels and hospitality venues on the bid.

Committing to make upgrades to the Superdome was not part of the bid process or a requirement to be awarded the game. However, during her remarks following the announcement, Gayle Benson said there would be many changes made to the building before the 2024 Super Bowl.

What did they commit to, though?  What did all that "hard work" produce?  We don't know.  We do know it was "competitive,"  though. Which is a neat trick to pull off when you haven't actually been asked to compete for anything.

The process for bidding on Super Bowls changed this year. Instead of having several teams present competing bids, the NFL worked solely with Arizona for the 2023 and New Orleans for the 2024 game. The league realized the benefits of such an approach last year when it tapped Tampa Bay to fill in for Los Angeles, which was facing delays with its stadium construction, in 2021.

Not only did the league realize that it can generate competitive bids by taking this approach, but the new process also cuts back on the bitter feelings losing teams and city’s often harbor after failing to land the game. New Orleans knows all about that after losing its last two bids to Minnesota and Atlanta, which were both rewarded for building new stadiums.

Minnesota was also rewarded for offering the most embarrassing package of incentives and payoffs yet reported on.  Maybe that's why we've gone to this non-competitive bidding process. Fewer opportunities for something like that to leak.

Oh yeah, I also have some good news. The good news is, thanks to any or some combination of factors such as, greater exposure of the untenable health risks of football, the sinking of the city into the sea, or the dissolution of the entire nation into fascism,  the odds of there actually being a Superbowl or a New Orleans by 2024 are so slim that the prospect of a Superbowl in New Orleans is probably not something we're going to have to worry about.

It's always boil order o'clock somewhere

Venetian Isles today.

Venetian Isles will remain under a precautionary boil water advisory Wednesday (May 23), the Sewerage and Water Board said. The advisory covers areas east of Textron Marine & Land Systems on Chef Menteur Highway.

S&WB officials said testing began overnight to see if contaminants had entered the water system. The results are expected to be back around midnight Wednesday.

Too bad there's no money for infrastructure work.  At least not until Gilbert Montano finishes "literally" unclogging the big money pipe by literally poking at a wad of bills with a literal stick probably.

Cantrell: CAO is "working to unclog, literally, the flow of funds and project developments" for infrastructure

— The_GambitLIVE (@The_GambitLIVE) May 22, 2018

John Bel sounds kinda desperate

This is from his speech this afternoon in Lafayette.  Everybody is out of ideas other than the ideas the Republicans have been pushing all along.  John Bel's big idea for the special session is to retain a half penny of the sales tax.  Maybe permanently.

That tax plan is a shift in the governor's position from just a year ago. Edwards had said for months that he did not want to adopt a higher sales tax rate on a permanent basis and would only accepted as a "bridge" to making other changes. In recent months, however, he has become more open to accepting a higher sales tax rate permanently -- an approach Republicans favor.

This is not a compromise most of them are likely to accept.. or even acknowledge, really. Already a glance at the #lalege Twitter tag finds dozens of Republican activists and politicians critizing the Governor's "tax and spend polices."  Amusingly, though, Billy freaking Nungesser (who appeared with the Governor at his event today) is clapping back at some of them. Who knew Billy would turn out to be such a cuck, right?

Meanwhile, the Legislative Black Caucus held a townhall meeting this morning to discuss the special session.  Back in March, they took a particularly hard line against the sales tax. It will be interesting to see if they hold that line in the face of all this (failing) bipartisanship the Governor has become mired in. 

Session gavels in at 4PM.  They have 14 days to figure this stuff out. Or not. 

Oh come on

This is because we moved the embassy to Jerusalem isn't it? 

A sinkhole has developed on the White House’s North Lawn, reporters observed Tuesday.

Did these guys finally get what they were after?

The Rev. John C. Hagee, a televangelist who gave the closing benediction, has said the Holocaust happened because God’s “top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel,” a prelude to the Second Coming. In an email, Mr. Hagee said his comments, in a sermon about the problem of evil in a world of God’s creation, were taken out of context, and he has apologized for any offense.

David M. Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel who presided over the embassy dedication, said evangelical Christians “support Israel with much greater fervor and devotion than many in the Jewish community.”

“You’re running a country, you need friends, you need alliances, you need to protect your people,” he said in an interview.

So.. some people really were in that number

What exactly happened here? Yesterday the Saints sent out emails informing people that their "number had been called" on the season ticket wait list and they had thus attained the privilege of buying Saints tickets if they still wanted to.

I got one. But that was weird because I'm not on the wait list.  We've actually had season tickets as part of a group since 2006.  We just renewed those, in fact. I already ordered my J.T. Barrett jersey and everything. Anyway, I'm not on the wait list but I am on the Saints' email list. As are a lot of people who got these messages yesterday. 

The offer, apparently intended only for members of the waiting list eligible to buy tickets, instead went to a much broader batch of names in the organization's database, including current season-ticket holders, people who had never signed up for the waiting list and some who had had no history of buying Saints tickets in the past.

Soooo at least some of the people who got the emails were meant to get them.  It would be interesting to find out how many.  Have the Saints announced anything regarding renewal numbers this year?  They seem to say at the end of the article that the wait list is 100,000 names long. I've been wondering about that for a few years now.

Also what is the deal with the Benson sports franchises and screwing up online ticket sales lately?  I'm starting to think that maybe the only person in the office who knew how to work the emails was Tom. 

Pressing pause again

Who knew that when LaToya found that "pause" button during the Riley flap that she'd be starting a new rhetorical trend?

The New Orleans City Council could vote this week to temporarily halt the issuance of new licenses for short-term rentals of entire homes and bar the renewal of those licenses in residential areas until it decides whether to overhaul the long-term rules that legalized such rentals last year.

Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who returned to the council this month after a four-year absence, has drafted a measure to “push pause” on some short-term rental licenses and plans to put it to a council vote Thursday.

Or maybe it's just that shutting things down "until we figure out what is going on" is a standard move in the Trump era. Either way, it looks like that's what we're doing. Sort of.

What Palmer is proposing here is an Interim Zoning District that freezes the issuance of certain types of STR licenses in certain areas for a certain period of time. Because those licenses don't expire all at once,  though,  this means that many or possibly most of them will continue to operate through a substantial part of the "pause" period. In other words, don't expect this action to suddenly shut down every Airbnb on your block.

Meanwhile she's effectively pushing back the timeline on getting to a more permanent solution. The other part of the motion extends the scope of a "study" aimed at revising the STR ordinance thus also delaying the possibility of action from the summer on back toward the end of the year.

There is a risk that such a delay moves us further from the political mandate on this issue generated by the recent elections and thus dampens momentum toward the tougher restrictions voters clearly demanded. One would hope that momentum could carry through but it is concerning to read that some councilmembers are already starting to talk more about "balance" and acceptance of things that "aren't going away" while speaking in support of this measure.

“We understand that there are competing interests here,” said Councilman Joe Giarrusso, one of the co-sponsors. “We’re trying to balance something here that we know is not going away with making sure that quality of life for people who live here is at its highest.”

It would be a shame if that "pause" turns out to be a prelude to a full stop. But don't discount the possibility that that's where we are headed.

Everybody sues Ashton

How many like this are there?

But a decade later, First NBC Bank and St. Theresa are both closed, and in the aftermath of First NBC’s collapse, the Liljebergs’ borrowing is the focus of separate civil lawsuits in which they are both suing and being sued. One of the suits accuses Ryan of fraud.

The Liljebergs borrowed almost $40 million in a nine-year span, much of which, they now allege in court documents, was done without their approval and at Ryan's behest. They say the First NBC president and CEO issued them new loans so that they'd be able to make payments on older ones as they came due. His goal, they claim, was to “fraudulently improve” the bank’s finances.

So far this is only the second such civil case that may have to be stayed while the federal criminal probe against FNBC proceeds.  This "community bank" had a lot of loans out there in the, uh, the community.  Of course all of the recipients are going to claim they were being taken advantage of by Ryan.  But there's probably more to it than that in a lot of cases. I wonder how many we're going to learn about as this goes on.

Resilience fatigue

Take a look around outside this week and see how many palm trees you can spot that are starting to come back now and which ones may not have made it through the Blizzard Of 2018. The chances are most of them did okay. 



You can see a lot of them like this around with the green coming back in on top. A similar indicator is observable at the Broad Theater, by the way.

We will reopen tomorrow around 2 PM. Ticket refunds for today are in the process of being sent. Thank you for all the love and support. pic.twitter.com/9XEiJqRw9q

— The Broad Theater (@BroadNOLA) May 19, 2018

The green shoots aren't always so easy to spot, though. Especially in places where they've had to re-sprout multiple times already.

The rising flood waters came as a frightening sight for Sonnier who runs Gabrielle Restaurant.

"We were probably going to open, I want to say maybe, we were planning to open the week after the flood."

The waters gave Sonnier flashbacks of what happened last year. He says just as he was about to finish renovations, it was hit twice by the July and August flooding. Before that, Sonnier had been waiting 12 years to reopen since Hurricane Katrina took out his old location on Esplanade.

"I was very much thinking of starting to raise equipment and get everything off the ground to prepare for the water to get inside," Sonnier said. He can't even imagine what would have happened if the rain didn't stop when it did.

 Well we might get another chance to ask, what would happen this weekend. 

Danielle Manning, a meteorologist at the Slidell office, said the forecast currently has the metro area getting four to five inches of rain over the next seven days.

But, she cautioned those totals depend on the disturbance and said the forecast will likely change.

"Keep an eye on the forecast and be prepared for a potentially wet weekend," she said Monday morning.

 Eh but what are you gonna do? We live in a "City That Floods," right?

Atomic Cannon

Vice President Nixon: "Congratulations to this young weightlifter or whatever."



Because Menckles is not from Louisiana, yesterday I found myself in the unusual position of having to answer the question, "Who is Bill Cannon?"  That took a while to explain but I think I started with, "Paul Bunyan but for Louisiana football," or something like that.  Anyway, this is a better explanation.

Nationally, LSU’s best known sports figures are probably “Pistol” Pete Maravich and Shaquille O’Neal. But on the home front, Cannon is the legend of legends.

Nearly 60 years after he stepped off the field at old Tulane Stadium after his final college game in the 1960 Sugar Bowl, Cannon remains the standard by which all LSU football players are judged. It is easy to get all hyperbolic over the latest five-star recruit as being the best this or that. But there are still plenty of Tiger fans who will look at the helium-filled recruiting rankings and huff, with justification, “He’s great, but he’s no Billy Cannon.”

The window flags on every RV in the state are gonna be at half-mast for the rest of the year. 

Fear not for the fading of your myths, though, Tiger fans. Legends do indeed continue to walk this earth. 

They're rare at LSU, famous for its night games. All but three were played in the evening last year with one 11 a.m. tucked in Nov. 11 against Arkansas. A handful of former Tigers recalled the locker room scene that preceded that brunch in Baton Rouge.

Ed Orgeron got primal before that morning game.

"He walked in there and said it's time to set your jaw," said former Tiger offensive lineman K.J. Malone. "And started punching himself in the jaw."

Astros pitcher Ken Giles recently went viral for smoking himself in the face. That was punitive.

Orgeron, LSU's 56-year old head coach, sacrificed for motivation.

"Punch yourself in the face in the morning if you're not ready," center Will Clapp remembered was the message.

Self harm is kind of the unofficial state passtime anyway.  We'll be right back at it tomorrow, in fact.