Here is some regulatory capture we can all get behind

As long as nobody is talking about abolishing the Louisiana Economic Development Department Of Corporate Welfare Money Gifting (yet) we might as well keep the pressure on it to use its powers for good. 

Louisiana Economic Development is asking a judge for at least $16.8 million in payments from Bell Helicopter over two failed deals in Lafayette to create jobs at a state-financed helicopter assembly facility.

The state agency said the Fort Worth, Texas-based helicopter company acted in "bad faith" by trying to get the state to accept a revised deal earlier this year, while the firm secretly moved its operations to Texas.

According to LED, Bell was seeking tax breaks from Fort Worth's local government and outlining a new "factory of the future" in Texas this year that would bring 400 jobs, all while failing to meet its obligations in Louisiana.

Y'all, Bobby Jindal gave away a lot of giant novelty checks to some pretty shady grifters while he was Governor.  It might be worth our while to run around clawing back as much of that money as we can that hasn't made its way all the way to Tahiti just yet. 

#CityOfYes we are shutting down your bar

This says that a lot of these are about unpaid taxes. Insofar as that is true, I guess it's fine. At the same time, we've watched this board become more and more aggressive over the course of the past decade. So it's especially alarming to see the new board members described as unusually "punitive" in comparison even to that.

Ethan Ellestad, executive director of the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, follows Alcoholic Beverage Control Board hearings closely and said he cannot recall an instance of its members rejecting a consent judgment in favor of a harsher penalty. Tuesday's decision raises questions about the future of small businesses, especially those that serve as "incubators" for the city's live music scene.

"Skip Gallagher is clearly very punitive and seems to be taking a punitive approach ..." Ellestad said. "For us, it's certainly concerning."

Gallagher is a Palmer appointee. 

Very proud

Last night I think the spray truck came by the house at least three times.

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - The State Health Department said Louisiana has the highest rates of West Nile Virus in the country. Fifty-three people in the state tested positive for the virus so far this year. Two people have died. The virus is spread by mosquitoes and in rare cases, can cause brain damage and paralysis. Officials said most do not show symptoms. To protect yourself, avoid going outside at dawn and dusk, and wear insect repellant that contains DEET. 

Late summer is magic.

It's always the kids' fault

Tyler Bridges has an idea to share with you about what people should and shouldn't be protesting.

Pence and Scalise spent more time in a private session with big donors, including oil company owner Phyllis Taylor, oil pipeline owner James Davison, attorney Fred Heebe and businessmen Alan Franco, Joseph Canizaro and Eddie Rispone.

Trump has caused revulsion among many progressives with his polarizing activities and comments. But only a handful of protesters showed up outside the National WWII Museum.

One reason may have been that the group Take 'Em Down NOLA had already scheduled a march at the same time to demand the removal of additional Jim Crow-era statues in the city, and that event’s organizers decided not to cancel it. About 70 people attended that march.

Stupid kids are doing it wrong, I guess. I don't know what proportion of the local press actually blames groups like Take 'em Down for Trump but I'm willing to bet it's pretty high. 

Meanwhile you've got all these fine upstanding oligarchs like Tayor, Heebe, etc. meeting with Pence and the much venerated Steve Scalise in the shadow of the rising Bollinger Canopy of Peace at one of the many cultural non-profit grifting and money laundering centers that dominate the New Orleans political culture. But the real problem here is some people protested some statues. At least that is what's implied.

Out of sight out of mind

Justin McMillan is going to Tulane.

Former LSU quarterback Justin McMillan announced on ESPN 104.5 radio in Baton Rouge on Friday morning that he was transferring to Tulane, immediately bolstering a depth-shy position.

McMillan, a fourth-year junior who earned a degree this summer, can play right away and will have two years of eligibility left. Tulane has not officially confirmed his enrollment yet.

It's more and more difficult to be a football fan these days. And there's good reason for that beginning with the mounting medical evidence that the game probably shouldn't be played at all. There are also the myriad political problems. The NFL is a cabal of entitled and rapacious billionaires hoovering up public subsidies, spewing out paid military propaganda, and exploiting female employees in a number of disgusting ways some of which verge on human trafficking. The NCAA is arguably even worse given that it runs entirely on slave labor and arbitrary justice. (That last link has a somewhat happy ending albeit one that only further highlights the absurdity.)

The point is, just paying attention at all weighs heavily on the brain. Not quite as much as actually playing football does but, still, it's a lot to overcome. And yet we continue. Maybe out of habit. Maybe we're the last generation to have been sufficiently acculturated to maintain the cognitive dissonance necessary.  If so, that's probably a good thing. The best outcome may be that all of this dies with us.

For the time being, though, we're still gonna watch. And while that happens, we're still going to point out that LSU went out of its way to block McMillan from transferring to any school it might consider a rival. 

As a condition for his release, McMillan was barred from transferring to another SEC school or any team the Tigers were playing in the next two years.

Which is how he ended up at... Tulane. 

Business partners

So long, Lil' Entergy. 

Charles Rice, the embattled president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans, will step down Monday and take a lesser role, part of a broader damage-control effort by a company that's been mired in controversy for months.

Entergy Corp., the local utility's parent company, said Friday that it will launch a national search to replace Rice, who will join the company’s legal department.

In the meantime, Rod West, who serves as Entergy Corp.'s group president for utility operations, will take on Rice’s duties on an interim basis. He was president of Entergy New Orleans before Rice took the job.

I'm thinking about applying for this job.  All they can say is no. That's the worst that can happen, right?  Actually they could hire me, promise me a raise, and then immediately fire me. That might be worse. But that's a story for later. For the time being, it is a job for Big Entergy.

West attended a City Council committee meeting Thursday and pledged to improve relations with the council, acknowledging that the company had not moved quickly enough to acquire renewable energy sources or to address frequent power outages. He also said the company had done a poor job communicating with the public about the proposed rate increase, and acknowledged its power grid reliability is substandard.

"Entergy New Orleans wants to be a good and constructive business partner in this city," West said. "And we intend to win your trust back."

City Councilman Jay Banks said he saw West's appearance on Thursday as a harbinger of things to come, comparing his council visit to a father having to go to his son's school to deal with an issue.

"If 'big Entergy' had to step in, that did not look good for Charles," Banks said.

City Councilwoman Helena Moreno also found West's appearance curious, asking him why he had asked to appear before the council instead of Rice. West told her he represented the entire corporation, saying, "I felt that given the seriousness of our relationship, our presence here as a corporate partner, you need to hear from the corporation today."

Big Entergy Rod wants to be a "constructive business partner." That seems nice.  But really we'd just like him to keep the power on.  Imagine a world where the governmental function of providing people with basic necessities like power and water didn't have anything to do with "business partnerships."  Sounds impossible, right?  It's not a world that would have a lot of use for Charles Rice, anyway.

There are a lot of interesting Charles Rice stories but I think my favorite one comes from the time he served as Nagin's CAO.  Remember Ray Nagin? That was the guy we elected specifically because it was fashionable for the mayor to be a really good business guy. Anyway, the Nagin Administration bought these fancy "bombproof" garbage cans. Nobody knows if they ever prevented a terrorist attack or anything. But they did make for a productive business partnership.. with Charles Rice's brother.

The trash cans were controversial when they were installed, though the controversy had nothing to do with their size. The problem was that the company that supplied them, Niche Marketing USA, acknowledged a business relationship with Terrence Rice, Charles Rice's brother -- though the Rices have denied the link.

The deal was also a demonstrably bad one.

Typically, companies that deal in trash can advertising supply the cans for free to cities -- and give cities as much as 25 percent of the ad revenue as well.

Niche Marketing not only charged New Orleans full price for the cans, it promised the city only 15 percent of the ad revenue. Because of poor ad sales and the cans' short life span on New Orleans' streets, the city's return worked out to only about $6,000.

Anyway, Rice isn't actually leaving Entergy. He's just being reshuffled back to the legal department so the new CEO can continue to benefit from his experience.  

Just get on with it

Can we just skip to the part where they indict Trump for selling asbestos steaks or whatever stupid tax avoidance thing they're going to get him on?  Trump did so many crimes. Just pick something and let's get on with it. There's so much other stuff to do. And the soap opera is boring.

Still Serpas Signaling

We are way beyond post-Serpas world now.  There are cameras on every corner. Police get away with all sorts of deliberately intrusive behavior now. It takes only a few seconds to find the latest egregious abuse of power. Cops are out there intimidating kids and tazing old ladies and, of course, shooting unarmed people.

So it's almost quaint to note that NOPD is out there setting up checkpoints such as this one they are doing Friday night.

NEW ORLEANS – The NOPD Traffic Division will conduct an upcoming sobriety checkpoint within Orleans Parish. The checkpoint will be in operation between the hours of 10:00 p.m. Friday, August 24, 2018, and 3:00 a.m. on Saturday, August 25, 2018.

On the other hand, there are more reasons than ever to avoid any and all contact with police if possible. So if you're out this weekend, just be aware that they are too.

When do we get to see the bids?

Matthews Southwest dropped out of the Charity Hospital redevelopment sweepstakes today.

Officials said the firm Matthews Southwest did not submit plans by the state-imposed deadline of 10 a.m. Monday "due to the unexpected passing of a principal team member last week."

Well that sounds like sad news. There isn't any more information about it, though. We don't know if maybe Matthews could have asked for an extension. Probably not, given the seriousness with which we take deadlines and meetings around here.  Also it is worth asking how or if this affects Matthews's involvement in the Convention Center hotel deal. It may be that they're souring on that as well, considering the circumstances.

In the opening salvo in what could become a lengthy negotiation over whether the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center moves forward with its plans to build a high-rise hotel, Mayor LaToya Cantrell has expressed “grave concerns” about the large public subsidies being sought by the developers.

In a letter last week, Cantrell said she had “grave concerns about the amount of subsidy this project will receive and the future implications of this project on tax revenue in New Orleans.”

That was an interesting turn from Cantrell last week, by the way. It's curious to see her suddenly serious about the problem of public subsidies for private developers in this one specific case. It could just be she has a friend or two at BGR.  I wondered if maybe she was just mad at Joe Jaeger over the job he did submarining the Harrah's hotel earlier this year.  But that's probably not it since at the very same time Cantrell's letter was published, the IDB was signing off on a smaller but similarly flawed package for Jaeger's and Barry Kern's indoor golf house. Not a word from LaToya about that one. Nor do we expect there to be much objection from her over the ongoing "Spirit Of Charity" process which will inevitably lead to more TIF or PILOT giveaways to several of the usual suspects. For now, at least, it's a mystery.

As for Charity Hospital itself, well that's all up to the state and LSU to decide.  And so we are given to understand the mayor doesn't officially have a lot of say in who gets that deal. Although, in reality, she probably does have considerable input.  In any case, nobody is telling us much about it yet.

LSU’s Real Estate and Facilities Foundation, which is overseeing the selection process, did not release the two proposals Monday. But the foundation said it would make them public before Oct. 4, when LSU's Board of Supervisors could select a winner.

How far in advance will we see those bids?  There's only a little over a month left.  The two finalists were also the finalists the last time we tried to get this done so you can probably get a decent idea of what's in play by looking at what they proposed then.

It's back to school week

Try to stay hydrated.

The process started in July 2016. Local officials teamed up to announce they would test school water for lead. School officials commissioned a plan to test 10 schools for $24,336. If any positive results were returned, then they would test like-schools and fixtures.

Then-superintendent of the Recovery School District, Patrick Dobard, shared the plans with the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans in August 2016. According to emails and documents reviewed by The Lens, the water agency wanted school district administrators to allow more lead in the water before taking a fixture out of service.

The water system uses a threshold of 15 parts per billion. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends taking a school drinking fountain out of service if it shows more than 20 parts per billion of lead. But there is no safe level of lead, and children are especially susceptible to lead poisoning.  The schools initially set a threshold of 10 parts per billion. After the Sewerage and Water Board questioned their reasoning, it was raised to 15. Both levels are substantially higher than the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation to shut off any school water fountain with a lead level higher than one part per billion.

The Sewerage & Water Board wanted to take its own samples, causing the schools’ testing consultant to wonder if they would end up with dueling test results. But school officials decided to scrap the plan altogether and go with what experts said was the safest and most cost-effective option — water filters.

Also a reminder that The Lens is one of our last best outlets for investigative reporting in a city that very badly needs it. They are member supported.  Over the weekend they sent out email notifications to members with the subject line "Save The Lens" so that sounds like they could use some help about now.

Mitch and his deadlines

The general project timeline of the Landrieu years was always about beating the clock to something. (Last year we called it Beat The Clock Doctrine.) First it was a bunch of stuff needed to be rushed through in time for the Superbowl. Then it was a bunch of stuff needed to be rushed through in time for #Katrina10. After that there were things Mitch wanted done in time to take photos in front of during the extra few months added to his term for the Tricentennial parties.    It was a great way to jam through a bunch of stuff you might not want scrutinized too closely. 

For the most part, Mitch made it work for him.  He didn't always make his deadlines, though. The airport still isn't ready.  (The road to the airport really isn't ready.)  The WTC remodel got bogged down in a bunch of legal wrangling and shenanigans (some of that of Mitch's own making.) Also the ferry terminal is late and way overbudget.

Oh and now we think maybe it's not such a great idea in the first place.

About $3.8 million has already been spent on design and engineering for the terminal, an amount Palmer said she thinks is too high. She has called on the RTA to stop any further spending on the design process, and said she's concerned about oversight of the project.

"I'm opposed to any more money put to this project," Palmer said.

"I don't have a lot of faith that this project can be done well at this point," she added.

And, you know, Kristin is probably right.  At least the existing facility actually has the covered walkway that people have been asking for. Maybe just figure out how to clean that up and use it.  Sometimes it pays to miss a deadline or two. 

Palmer said in an interview that she is suspicious that the project was rushed to demolish the terminal in time for the city's tricentennial this year. Its original construction schedule had demolition scheduled for July 2017.

The ferry terminal remains standing.

Who will win the Beignet Wars?

The most important thing to know about all of this is that the fix has clearly been in for Cafe Du Monde to take the thing over for a while now.  I do not know the specific reasons for that. I'm sure they are as lame as one might guess. I also am not especially partial to the choice of one brand of sugar-fried-dough over another so whichever side works out whatever bribe wins them the site is fine with me.  But one thing I do know is the judge is correct about this.

While the judge acknowledged that bids can be rejected for "substantial" noncompliance, he wrote that "the late arrival to a mandatory pre-bid meeting cannot be construed as a substantial deviation from the bidding specifications where the lessor calls the bidder to see if the bidder is attending the meeting, the bidder responds by sending a representative, albeit late, other bidders are likewise non-compliant and the bidder addresses the deficiency before the bids are due."

If we establish a precedent that parties are legally liable for showing up late to meetings in this town, we're all going to be in a lot of trouble. 

Anyway, is there a way for Gayle Benson to get a piece of this somehow? Seems like Tom would have wanted it that way. 

Billy Land

For some reason the L.A. Times has a piece on making the Quarter more "family friendly" following on the heels of Billy Nungesser's park proposal a few weeks ago that didn't go anywhere. Anyway the part worth mentioning is at the end.

Many locals say that when it comes to making the quarter family friendly, the focus shouldn’t be on tourists but on residents of the city.

A century ago, 20,000 families lived in the quarter. Today that figure is 3,300, and only 1 out of 70 residents is aged 14 or under. Many of the historic homes have been turned into condominiums and sold to outsiders as vacation properties.

“It’s mostly an absent neighborhood,” Louis Matassa, the 67-year-old owner of Matassa’s Market, said as he walked outside his corner grocery store, founded in 1924 by his grandfather Giovanni, and surveyed the stretch of Dauphine Street he grew up on.

A block that once bustled with Sicilian and Filipino kids was still, except for a few retirees.

“Now it’s all about the tourists,” Matassa said. “The lieutenant governor might as well put a wall around the quarter and charge admission.”

And that process has pretty much been the story throughout the past three or four decades. It's what the hoteliers and the real estate people wanted. Hope they're happy. 

Still can't get there from here

Well this didn't take long.  Pretty much as soon as RTA announces it has a plan to extend one bus line a little bit of the way into Jefferson Parish, the JET people are mad.

The head of Jefferson Parish’s public transit system says she was kept in the dark about plans to run another New Orleans bus line into the suburban parish next year — a move that she says will hurt her system’s profits.

Sharon Leader, the director of Jefferson Transit, said this week that while she knew the idea was being considered, she had no idea the Regional Transit Authority intended to go forward with the new route in 2019.

RTA officials recently announced they plan to extend the South Claiborne Avenue line to Ochsner Medical Center on Jefferson Highway, a move aimed at giving hundreds of riders a more convenient way to get to work or their doctor.

“I knew nothing about this,” Leader said. “And I’m about as regional as they come, but you don’t push things on people without telling them.”

"Profits" is a funny word in there.  I wonder if that's Leader's choice or if it came from the Advocate. Profit isn't really the concern of a public transit service.  Maybe she just means revenue.  Even so, it's another indicator that these problems aren't going to be solved until the whole "Regional" aspect of these systems is better integrated.  

Here they come

This morning people were still disputing their wacky bills but S&WB swears they've found at least 50 people they can send a sternly worded letter to.

The New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board is taking the final steps to notify about 50 customers that they could be among the first customers in almost a year to have their water shut off for failing to pay their bills, Acting Executive Director Jade Brown Russell said Wednesday.

After that, presumably, there are 10 days before shut-offs begin. 

Update: Just to add some things. 

The Mid-City Neighborhood Association heard an interesting lecture this week. 

Several S&WB officials spent Monday evening answering questions about billing, flooding and drainage issues from members of the Mid-City Neighborhood Association. Customer service representatives were also on hand to handle individual account queries.

Yvette Downs, the utility’s new Chief Financial Officer, said her office has addressed and reduced the number of billing disputes by two thirds, with the number of current open disputes around 3,500. Downs said she’s optimistic an automated meter reading system would solve a whole host of issues, but the S&WB doesn’t yet have the cash flow to implement that system. The utility’s billing system is also incapable of receiving data from automated meters, Downs added.

So yeah that seems straight.  The Messenger story also links back to this Advocate report from last month which tells us about some of the largest delinquent/disputed accounts. Xavier University owes $413,000, UNO is "close behind on the list" although the article doesn't give an amount for them. Loyola is in there too. So is Johsua Bruno who owns this Airbnb tower as well as several other not so popular properties.  But Bruno has had the mayor's ear in the past. And we know the universities aren't going to have their water shut off any time soon.  So who do we reckon are the 50 people S&WB is likely to take all of this out on?

Still not a lot of follow up on this

There's a job action at the Department of Public Works. Nobody is reporting on it beside WDSU right now. City workers are represented by SEIU but it doesn't look as if the union is involved here. Or, at least, it doesn't look like anybody has checked up on that. Also there is this back and forth.

Kennan Mitchell operates a vacuum truck for DPW. He said contractors are hired to do the same work that he does, cleaning catch basins, for more than twice the pay.

“I have talked to vac truck contractors that have been here cleaning out drains,” Mitchell said. “Those guys were making $30 an hour. We make $14 (doing) the same thing. I can’t understand why we can’t get the money.”

New Orleans Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Ramsey Green said that DPW does not currently have contractors cleaning catch basins. He said the workers’ safety concerns will be the first addressed by the city.

That seems like it would be a pretty simple matter to clear up.  Maybe it hinges on the meaning of the word, "currently." 

Quote of the Day

"Lowell Narcisse is probably the most talented quarterback that we have"

- Ed Orgeron at the start of fall practice

Well, not anymore. Also they are leaking quarterbacks at an alarming rate.

LSU started the week with four scholarship quarterbacks fighting for their place in the starting lineup. Now, the Tigers have just two.

Junior quarterback Justin McMillan is leaving the program, he announced Wednesday (Aug. 15). This comes one day after redshirt freshman Lowell Narcisse announced Tuesday he's also transferring.

McMillan graduated Aug. 3 and will be eligible to play at another school immediately.

It was just a day or so ago that Ron Higgins was writing about how badly Coach O needed things to go smoothly this week.  Oh well.

Whither Ron Forman's big expensive video board?

Oh look we're "pressing pause" on something again.

New Orleans officials are pressing pause on plans to demolish and rebuild the Canal Street ferry terminal, having dramatically underestimated construction costs.

Though the Regional Transit Authority budgeted $14 million for the first phase of the terminal project, the lowest bid for the work came in at $26.6 million, forcing the agency back to the drawing board.

Officials said they will come up with a new, more affordable design over the next few months. And the terminal, initially on track to be razed in September, will instead be bulldozed by this time next year.

It's the phrase of the year. Off the top of my head I can recall LaToya wanted to "press pause" on her appointment of Warren Riley to Homeland Security. Kristin Palmer said she wanted to "press pause" on short term rental licenses. Sewerage and Water Board recently recently hit the "pause button" on a bond sale. Can we please press pause on pressing pause for a while? I think we have hit the quota.

Anyway, this pause is kind of a surprise. At least to me it is.  The whole course of this ferry re-fit has looked like spending more money on providing worse service. Why (sorry) press pause on that now? The explanation in the article has it that difficulties arising from the location of the construction site and the timing of the project caused the price to go up.  Also they go out of their way to say it is definitely not Audubon's fault.

The higher cost estimate does not factor in the addition of the $7.3 million bridge, a project that is being managed separately by the Audubon Institute.

That implies Audubon was paying for the bridge. I don't think that's true but I could be wrong. This says the city was planning to pay for it out of "(Hurricane) Katrina insurance proceeds that were unobligated." And this says that Audubon had asked to spend $2 million of that on a "video board" which Forman later said they wanted in order to "'dress up' the bridge with 'artwork, lighting or whatever it is.'" We have no idea whether or not that's ever going to be part of the plan now. We do like what Kristin Palmer has to say about that, though. 

Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, one of the most vocal proponents of adding the pedestrian bridge, said the agency should consider simply renovating the old terminal rather than rebuilding it. She said the focus should be on helping commuters rather than building something that might impress tourists.

“I’m not so concerned about the tourists having a pretty vista,” Palmer said. “I am more concerned, quite frankly, about getting people to work.”

Meanwhile, Forman has plenty of other ways to suck money out of the city via the riverfront as Audubon has a cooperative endeavor agreement to operate whatever they do with the Esplanade wharf area. Walter Isaacson says there's gonna be some sort of music venue there. He also says he made that up. 

Isaacson tells Gambit he doesn’t know what the plans are and was pointing to the park project as an example of the city’s vision of tourism expansion, with the wharf turning into something “like Crescent Park or the Moonwalk or other public parks, where there’s venues for art and music and tourism.” As for its specific use as a music venue, “I obviously don’t know for sure, because there have been no hearings or proposals on it,” he said.

We were supposed to hear more about that at a City Council committee hearing today. No word on how that went yet.  More to come after the pause, I guess.

Update: Here is where the money is supposed to come from to develop the new park. 

The deal between Audubon and the city calls for the nonprofit to develop the site as a park and raise $15 million for its development.

So far, Audubon has put together $13 million: $9 million from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center; $2 million from New Orleans & Co., the city's rebranded convention and visitors bureau; and $2 million from Audubon itself.

The port is expected to help raise the remaining $2 million from private sources.

They don't know what it's going to look like yet but they say there will be "significant public input" before that happens so be on the lookout for some 10 AM meetings on a random Wednesday or whatever in the future.

Upperdate: Another point from that article is that the neighborhood associations are already worried about the "disruptive" effects of an event venue like what Isaacson described in that Time piece.  As a footnote to that issue we can look back at last year's election  season when both candidates for mayor talked up the possibility of such an amenity specifically for its revenue generating potential so we'll see how that goes.

Uppestdate: This morning, the Advocate has edited the lede to their article about the ferries from "New Orleans officials are pressing pause.." to "New Orleans officials are going back to the drawing board.." probably in order to gaslight the readership.

We're almost through it

It's okay, guys. We are doing a good job. Do not listen to the haters.

To no one’s surprise, the Gulf of Mexico coastal areas lead the way in oppressive conditions. Louisiana is the epicenter of summertime oppressive weather. Why does Louisiana have higher areas than say Dallas, Mobile or Atlanta? Remember that winds over 10 mph disqualify an observation from counting as oppressive. Louisiana has very light winds in the summer. Also, the dew point temperature is consistently high in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. Lower dew points tend to mix down to the surface as you move away from the Gulf of Mexico. Even when temperatures are under 95°F, there is a strong likelihood that the heat index or dew point criteria will be met in the northwest Gulf coast region.

That study also produces a map where Louisiana appears as," large pulsing red blob on the country's underbelly," as NOLA.com's Jenniefer Larino describes it. 

But, look. We are a hardy folk here. And the thing is almost over now.  Really, we've almost made it through the truly "oppressive" part of the year. Of course, if you are like me, you probably won't start to feel that way for at least another two months. Which is why I like to stare at the charts. Somehow it helps.

Pretty good gig if you can get it

I imagine you could build a pretty healthy law practice out of just suing Sewerage and Water Board.

Months after a judge ruled in favor of a small group of homeowners who said construction of a mammoth drainage project in Uptown New Orleans had caused major damage to their houses, hundreds of more cases continue to remain in limbo.

The Sewerage & Water Board continues to fight against the claims of nearly 300 such homeowners, who say the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project cracked the foundations of their houses or caused other costly damage.

I feel like that particular suit was filed before they SELA digging even started. That's how predictable all of this has been.  As Jason Williams explains at the end of this story, these it's obvious why these suits are inevitable.

City Councilman Jason Williams, speaking at last month’s committee meeting, said the S&WB should go to the negotiating table rather than continue to fight the cases, arguing that the “only people who make out well” at the trials are the lawyers. Williams is a criminal defense lawyer.

“The Sewerage & Water Board is going to have to pay something, and putting it off is not in the board’s best interest and it’s not in the homeowners’ best interest,” Williams said. “To the extent that we can make this right by ending it and not dragging it on, I think that makes a lot of sense.”

Speaking of which, there are now lawsuits stemming from last year's floods. That might not be a "winnable" case either but the odds are it goes to a settlement as well. Either way, these guys get paid.  

The attorneys who filed the suit are with Bruno & Bruno and the Whitaker Firm, the same two firms representing hundreds of Uptown plaintiffs suing the S&WB over damage their homes sustained during work on the massive Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project.  

Wonder what's going on here

Well this came out of the blue.

HAPPENING NOW: employees from the Dept. Of Public Works marching up to try and speak to @mayorcantrell. They’re on strike because they say they’re understaffed and underpaid. @wdsu pic.twitter.com/hy50GBjTB8

— Christina Watkins (@CWatkinsWDSU) August 13, 2018

So far as I can tell there is just one news outlet mentioning this, whatever this is so far. Did they just decide to walk out this morning?  A more planned action might have gotten out a press release. Maybe someone will ask the mayor about it when she comes out to cheerlead for the drug war today.

Meanwhile we can only guess about what's up. Most city employees are already expecting a raise this year.  In 2017, a study commissioned by the Landrieu administration recommended a 10 percent pay increase citing the skyrocketing cost of living. As of this May, a supposed first round of raises went into effect for the 500 some odd employees who had been making under $24,000 a year.  Employees at higher grades than that are still waiting to see if they get bumped up this year or not.  That will likely depend on how the city budget process works out which is just getting started but one can imagine a, "Well we needed to keep all of the traffic cameras to pay for these raises" scenario coming into play.

The other point of contention could have to do with the future of the Public Works Department given that they're considering merging it with Sewerage and Water Board somehow.  But I don't know enough about how that would work just yet.

Which "outside firm"?

The new city administration is rooting around the building and rearranging the furniture and whatnot.  They have to go clear the old mayor's creepy murder yearbooks out of the office so the new mayor has a place to put her creepy altar. That sort of thing. It's all very normal.  Another normal thing that happens when a new administration comes in is they like to pick up the piles of money laying around in one corner and see if they like them better in a different corner.  In this case, we're looking at some $31 million in FEMA and HUD grants to see if maybe they need to live in their own little department.

Grants are currently managed within the department that receives them, both on the finance and the program side. Montano said he will move the financial aspects of grants into a centralized system that would pay for projects out of a separate fund.

Montano said he's still in the "discovery" phase of trying to determine whether the city can recoup the $31.3 million from the Federal Emergency Management Association and the Department of Housing and Development. There haven't been problems in that area before, but Montano said that when new administrations take office, there is always a significant effort to examine what the previous administration did to ensure grants were managed correctly.

"There haven't been problems," probably won't be any problems. But the new people like things the way they like them and it's obviously well within their prerogative to find out what suits them best.  Again, all very normal.  None of this is too important other than the fact that when you do go in and move all the money around, inevitably a little bit of change drops out.  So it might be interesting to note whose pockets it falls into.

Montano said he's contracting with an outside firm to ensure the city can match those reimbursements correctly, and he wants to change the city's practice of paying for grant-funded expenses out of the general fund. The CAO said he's concerned that relying on the general fund if grant reimbursements don't come through could be problematic, and he plans to establish new financial controls to avoid using the general fund as a "backstop."

Not that it's a huge deal. It's just that it's probably the most interesting thing in the story. The new CAO wants to separate grant disbursements from the general fund. Okay. Maybe. My guess is they might find that harder to do than they think but it's probably a fine idea.  But, in the meantime, they're paying some accounting (?) consultant X number of dollars.  That's fine, too. But I like to read the names of these firms in stories like this in case they become relevant later.

Oh also, there's some stuff about city credit cards in this story. But everybody agrees that's last year's news so do with that what you like.

Jeff Landry is already on the ballot

We're still over a year away from the election but it's no secret Jeff Landry wants to be Governor.  Last week we found him already trying to elbow other potential Republican candidates out of the race.

With less than 15 months until Election Day and no Republican campaigns launched against Gov. John Bel Edwards' re-election bid, Attorney General Jeff Landry is ramping up the pressure on other potential candidates.

"We're getting into a kind of critical decision-making time. If we're going to have a candidate we need to find one and soon," Landry said in an interview with USA Today Network that was published online Wednesday and during which he expressed his own growing interest in running for governor without announcing his candidacy.

The good news for Jeff is he actually doesn't have to wait until next year to be the only guy on a ballot. He's already there this fall.

Attorney General Jeff Landry, the state's top law enforcement officer, has broken with several conservative leaders and the state Republican Party by not backing a constitutional amendment appearing on the ballot Nov. 6 that would require unanimous juries for convictions in Louisiana.

Landry's political team confirmed that the Republican would prefer to keep the current system -- in which a 10-2 jury verdict can be used to send a person to prison. Only one other state, Oregon, allows convictions by juries that aren't unanimous and Louisiana is the only place where a person can be sent to prison for murder -- which is typically a life sentence -- without a unanimous jury. 

As the lone public figure opposing this measure, Landry has willingly given voters an opportunity to reject him personally in a statewide referendum only a year ahead of the race for governor.  That doesn't seem very smart. But then Jeff Landry often does not seem smart.  On the other hand, his political instincts have served him fairly well so far. So maybe he knows something we don't.

The unanimous verdicts amendment is on your ballot because it passed the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support earlier this year. The public campaign to make it happen was helped in part by a terrific Advocate series explaining what a shameful aberration Louisiana's current law actually is. We live in one of only two states where a person can be convicted of a felony even if two of twelve jurors disagree with the rest of the panel. More importantly, though, the current law's origins, like so much of our criminal justice system writ large, are rooted in deliberate efforts to promote and maintain a white supremacist racial hierarchy. 

The drafters of the state constitution Louisiana adopted in 1898 said they aimed to “perpetuate the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race in Louisiana,” primarily by scrubbing from the rolls nearly all of the roughly 130,000 black people then registered to vote.

But delegates knew they couldn’t simply ban black people from the voting booth or jury service without running afoul of the 14th and 15th amendments. The U.S. Supreme Court had explicitly said so. Instead, the jury laws those delegates drew up allowed for convictions with only nine of 12 jurors agreeing, meaning that if one, two or even three black people made it onto a jury, their votes wouldn’t matter.

These days, 10 votes are required for conviction instead of the original nine, and today’s defenders of split verdicts say Louisiana’s law now stands not for racism but for efficiency, by limiting hung juries and potential retrials.

But the effects are the same, according to an exhaustive, first-of-its-kind analysis by The Advocate.

If I had a dime for every racist/classist policy sold in the name of "efficiency"...  but let's not get sidetracked by that right now. The Advocate series helped educate the public and, it appears, a lot of the legislators since the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 vote in both houses.  It was an honest to goodness triumph of that "reach across the aisle" common ground stuff the John Bels of the world love to talk about.

And maybe that's what Landry is upset about. Edwards's reelection strategy is built around the idea that the Governor is Bill Clinton and he is ready to triangulate like it is 1996. For example, on Wednesday, John Bel, whose wife was a public school teacher, had the nerve to appear as a keynote speaker at the  ALEC gathering in New Orleans. ALEC is well known for its hostility to the very concept of public education, not to mention the right of public educators to organize.  Mark Janus was also a featured speaker there. Edwards rarely if ever criticizes President Trump. The two had what looks to have been a cordial meeting this week.

The Edwards camp is embracing a version of the Third Way national electoral strategy articulated in this article by Mitch Landrieu.

"Republicans have chosen the far right, which means that they have ceded a good portion of the middle of the road," said former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who is considering a presidential run. "The Democrats, in my opinion, would make a big mistake if they decide to run a base election and just say, ‘Our base is bigger than your base.'"

This is familiar enough by now.  As long as Democrats are forever following a reasonable twenty paces behind, Republicans can keep marching as far to the right as they want. Sometimes that even works out. Or at least it allows individual Democratic candidates willing to enact a conservative program to win an election here and there.  The net effect ends up dragging the country to some really weird places but professional Democratic political consultants aren't paid to worry about stuff like that.

In the immediate term, though, Jeff Landry might worry a little bit.  What if the old Blue Dog act ends up working for John Bel again? It sort of did last time. There were extenuating circumstances, of course, having to do with his widely reviled opponent but, still, Edwards did technically win that election. And so now is the time for potential challengers to start thinking about ways to negate his strategy.

Basically John Bel plans to run on a record of having weathered the storm. It's true our colleges and hospitals are still underfunded. It's true our tax burden still rests heavily on the shoulders of our poorest residents. But it could have been so much worse if the Governor's reactionary opponents had gotten their way.  Republicans may have thrashed and whined on Facebook and crashed several legislative sessions along the way but John Bel maintained just enough of his nonthreatening kind of indignation to keep the lights on. That's basically the reelection pitch.

Well, that and the occasional reminder that actually he is the most grown up conservative in the room.  Which is what that ALEC appearance was all about.

Edwards' appearance dovetails nicely with the image he is hoping to convey during his re-election campaign: a Democrat who shares conservative values and works well with Republicans. The governor said he was a member of ALEC when he was a state legislator.

One thing John Bel has going for him here, at least, is credibility. He doesn't have to stretch too far to position himself as a conservative. His record is pretty clear.  It's not only about sticking Louisiana with one of the nation's most regressive tax codes for the forseeable future. It's also about signing a "Blue Lives Matter" bill or supporting yet another big ass pipeline through the wetlands or panedering to the right on a host of other matters such as abortion and gun control.

All of which is why it's strange to find the Governor unable to bring himself to give anyone a straight answer on the death penalty

Edwards, who has repeatedly stressed his position of upholding whatever stands in Louisiana law, declined The Advocate's request for an interview on Friday but in a written statement reiterated his focus on what current law says and again did not elaborate on his personal belief on the topic.

Come on, John Bel, just say you want to kill some mothafuckers.   Landry doesn't have any qualms about that. He's even willing to pick a fight with the Pope over it. So it's hardly surprising he's just as willing to exploit Edwards's wavering. John Bel can party with ALEC all weekend if he wants. He can check every box on the right wing vetting list. None of that is likely to get the Kochs off of his back. Just like the Kochs' difference with Landry over unanimous verdicts isn't going to separate them from him.  Dude does them too many favors.

So Landry isn't afraid of the Pope and he isn't afraid of the Kochs either. He might be a bit worried about John Kennedy, though. That's mostly who Landry was needling at with those comments about wanting other candidates to make up their minds about getting in or out.  In truth, it's Landry who is under the most pressure to decide. Jeff's term as Attorney General is concurrent with the Governor's so he actually has to pick which one he wants to run for.  Kennedy doesn't have to give up his Senate seat unless he actually becomes Governor so he's got less to worry about.

Meanwhile, Kennedy is free to sit back and take pot shots at John Bel much the same way Landry is. Just like Jeff, John can call attention to himself by complaining about our recent criminal justice reforms.  Just like Jeff, John can level outlandish and absurd criticisms of immigration enforcement in the City of New Orleans. And since Kennedy can do all of that stuff in a much more.. um.. charismatic rhetoric than what Jeff typically can muster, it presents a problem.  Landry needs to distinguish himself.

And this might explain why he's okay with the risk that comes with being the only critic of a statewide ballot measure on unanimous verdicts.  It's an opportunity for Landry to set himself apart as a hard liner. If the amendment fails, it's an even bigger win for him.  Landry will then have a unique claim on being more in touch with voter sentiment than pretty much everyone who was anyone in Baton Rouge this year.  If it passes, maybe some of us will make fun of him, but the potential reward here is likely well worth that.

Post-casting

Hurricane season is such an erratic phenomenon. It's really difficult to get a bead on those forecasts. You never know which direction they are going to turn.

Coastal residents, take note: Hurricane season is far from over, but it's looking more likely this will be a much slower period.

Forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center increased the likelihood of a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season to 60 percent -- up from 25 percent predicted in May -- and the chance of an above-normal season has dropped from 35 percent to 10 percent.

NOAA is predicting a total of nine to 13 named storms, which are at least of tropical storm strength (winds of 39 mph or greater). Of those, four to seven will become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater) and zero to two major hurricanes (111 mph winds or greater).

Increased the likelihood of below normal.  That is fun. I feel like the wind just took a violent shift. Stay tuned for the sudden upgrade in forecasted season intensity next month after a few storms finally develop.

Can both of these statements be true?

The consultant Mitch hired to tell us all about the problems at Sewerage and Water Board says there were problems, S&WB was aware of the problems, and everybody blew them off.

The report details now well-known mechanical failures and limitations of the city's drainage system. But it also focuses on breakdowns in priorities and a lack of concern and attention to the drainage system in the "years, months and days" before the flood.

All that contributed to a situation in which the S&WB had only 10 percent of its power available during the storm and the hardest-hit areas had only 45 percent to 70 percent of the pumping capacity they theoretically could have had.

As an example, the report notes that after the S&WB was alerted in March that all the turbines that run the drainage system had failed and were offline, there was "no evident follow-up or inquiries regarding what would happen during a severe rain event."

It says that was true despite multiple meetings of the S&WB's governing board, the City Council and Landrieu's cabinet, which included S&WB representatives. 

Later in the day, former Landrieu Administration First Deputy Mayor Ryan Berni told the Advocate that there simply was no way they could have known about the problems. 

Ryan Berni, who was one of Landrieu’s top advisers, said Tuesday that more could have been done if S&WB officials had been candid with the administration about the state of the system.

“I think you saw in the last year us really run into the fire fixing the problem that we were learning more about,” Berni said. “Clearly there had been a culture of misinformation at the Sewerage & Water Board both in its dealing with the public and with City Hall.”

Does that seem remotely possible? 

Not gonna YIMBY your way to affordable housing

You can keep building nice things for rich people as long as you like. That might eventually drive the price of nice things for rich people down a little bit.  It won't solve the actual problem, though.

“For-profit developers have predominantly built for the luxury and higher end of the market, leaving a glut of overpriced apartments in some cities,” said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. “Some decision-makers believed this would ‘filter down’ to the lowest income people, but it clearly will not meet their needs.”

Poorer city residents have experienced significant rent increases over the past several years. In Portland, average rents for the poor have risen from about $1,100 to $1,600 — or by more than 40 percent — since 2011.

In San Francisco, the average rent at the bottom of the market has soared from $1,700 to $2,600, a nearly 50 percent increase. Seattle’s poor have also had their rents rise by close to 40 percent. Nationwide, rents for those at the bottom have increased by 18 percent.

Rising rents for the poor threaten to add to the nation’s homeless population, and put an additional severe strain on tens of millions of families, often forcing them to forgo other basic needs to avoid losing their housing.

At present the stated policy response to the housing crisis in New Orleans is to "find balance." But so far that has implied more zoning exemptions for more nice things for rich people.

Pothole pizzagate

$5,000 is going fix, like, what? Three potholes?  

Last week, the New Orleans City Council agreed to accept a "Paving for Pizza" grant from Domino's, according to WDSU-TV. The City Council is expected to vote on the $5,000 grant on Thursday (Aug. 9). If approved, the money will go to the city's Department of Public Works. 

Turns the streets into little Domino's billboards, though.  Gets the truck on the news, too.  All in all it's a pretty good ad buy for them.  The last time a corporation tried to spray graffiti ads all over New Orleans, people didn't take too well to that.  Seems like $5,000 is a pretty low price to sell out at now.

Why your city sucks

Football season is fast approaching and Magary is on the Jets today. Not every city in America is New York. But New York's problems are basically urban America's problems amplified to Nth degree.  For example, see if you recognize a little bit of your city in this.

Nothing works. The only people left are billionaire dipshits and angry men in construction helmets. All the new real estate in town consists of 71-story luxury condo towers with one apartment per floor, each occupied for three weeks a year by the hideous nephew of some Uzbek cobalt magnate. New York City, itself, has become the Jets of cities: an expensive, boring wreck.

What a time to be alive. 

Okay so what is a "neutral hearing"?

This looks like a pretty good ruling in the "debtors's prison" lawsuit. (Basically, it says Orleans Parish operates one and that is bad and we shouldn't do that.)But it still isn't clear what the remedy is.

On Friday, Vance declared that "undisputed evidence" shows the 13 judges of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court have "a policy or practice of not inquiring into criminal defendants' ability to pay before those individuals are imprisoned for nonpayment of court debts."

She also declared that the judges have an "institutional conflict of interest" in making such poverty determinations themselves.

That's because the proceeds from fines and fees go directly to the court's Judicial Expense Fund, a kitty controlled by the judges that can be used for a broad range of judicial expenses. Fines and fees have contributed about $1 million a year to the court's coffers.

Vance ruled that the court's failure to "provide a neutral forum for determination of such persons' ability to pay is unconstitutional."

The decision appears to leave it up to the court to decide how to set up a mechanism for such decisions.

So a lot depends on how they decide to do that.

Are they gonna have the yelling-at-mayors tour?

We're coming up on budget season. And, from the looks of things, this is going to be a tough one. 

After a banner year of New Orleans City Hall revenue collections that includes a larger-than-usual number of one-time payments, city officials are bracing for 2019 and beyond as they look to manage tightening budgets as one-time revenues decline.

Back during the mayoral campaign, both candidates talked about how the WTC lease was going to solve a lot of these problems for us.  It figured prominently in Charbonnet's housing plan and in Cantrell's drainage proposals.  In each of those cases, though, the candidates appeared to be figuring in projected annual revenues. What nobody was talking about at the time was the problem Mitch had left them when he paid for NOPD raises out of the one-time advance payment.

One-time revenues can come in many forms, but one example is the redevelopment of the World Trade Center, which will generate an expected $33 million in advance lease payments in 2018. Some of that money is being used to fund the police department raises, but that money goes away in 2019.

The disappearance of one-time payments, and the headaches they could cause in the 2019 budget year, have already been discussed by Cantrell and her administrative team. During a meeting with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in June, Cantrell described the one-time payments as causing a "structural deficit" which was projected at about $3.6 million in NOPD's budget.

This plus a combination of other factors like the possible hit from shutting down the traffic cameras and anxiety over how the "Trump Trade Wars" might affect port business, could make for a tighter fiscal situation.   So this would be a good time to fire up the old public input machine and get a sense of people's priorities.

But that's not really happening right now. At least not yet. Mitch used to do a series of town halls in each council district designed to compile public comments and answer questions about prioritie for the upcoming budget cycle. The actual impact of these meetings on the mayor's budget proposal was likely negligible, but the meetings were a pretty good oppotunity to get a sense of what was on people's minds.  They also made for pretty good entertainment on occassion.  Because they would have taken place in the middle of election season last year, Mitch decided to put them on hold.  At this time it doesn't appear as though LaToya is too keen to bring them back. We really can't fault her if Cantrell decides to shelve the meetings permanently. On balance they were probably more theater than anything else. Some of us enjoy that, of course. But it's difficult to justify carrying on with them for that purpose only.

In the meantime, we'll have to make do with the inferior gamified version of public comment.

What does your version of a city budget look like? That’s the question at the heart of the Big Easy Budget game, which offers an alternative to the city’s town hall-style approach by getting residents to fill out their ideal budgets through an online game.

The game invites residents to “play mayor for a day,” or for about 10 minutes, by selecting how the city spends its money. This year’s game arrives as Mayor LaToya Cantrell prepares her first city budget.

That's not as much fun for a bunch of reasons. For one thing, nobody gets to yell at the mayor, which we all agree was the most attractive feature of the public meetings by far.  Also, the online survey participation skews very much toward the whiter, wealthier, and more educated segment of the city which is to say it is not in any way representative.

So we're not sure how they're going to solve this.  Maybe this year is a learning budget for the Cantrell administration. Although we would think someone with LaToya's years of experience with this process from the City Council side would be ready to hit the ground running. Her office did put out this notice last week which gives us some indication of how they want to run things. The executive order it announces asks for more frequent revenue estimation and requires the CAO to put out monthly budget updates next year.  Maybe those will be ready if and when they bring the public meetings back.

"Experts disagree"

The police in Marksville will choke you to death if you ask to see their warrant.  After that, the Advocate will shrug it off as a "both sides" situation.

A criminal justice expert says Avoyelles Parish law officers who wrestled a Marksville man off a tractor while serving an arrest warrant last year used too much force, needlessly escalating a confrontation that ended with the man's death. A second expert said he doesn't agree the officers used excessive force, but said they may have acted negligently by failing to administer aid once Armando Frank was unconscious.

You can always find a racist "expert" who is okay with cops murdering people. Maybe that should have been the headline.  Instead they went with, "Louisiana man dies after officers put him in choke hold; experts disagree on excessive force or not."  Man dies.. on his own, apparently.  What happened here? Experts disagree.

Tell me that it's evolution

Home Away has a solution to the short term rental controversy.  It involves permitting more STR licenses than what currently exist.

Also included in the HomeAway proposal is a citywide cap on short-term rental licenses set at 6,000, and a removal of the ban on short-term rentals in the French Quarter. There are an estimated 4,300 short-term rental properties in the city, according to a recent study from the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative.

This probably isn't going to be the last set of industry prepared regulations we see before the current cycle of debate concludes. The City Planning Commission is due to release a study next month. After that, we'll start to see whose proposals get absorbed into the ordinance. The STR companies like Home Away, Airbnb, etc. and their lobbying groups know that if they flood the zone with documents like this, they're likely to get more of what they want "balanced" into the "solutions" our political leadership is always looking to land on. That's what they mean when they talk about "evolving" the conversation.

"We need to evolve away from a conversation around banning," HomeAway spokesman Philip Minardi said, "and evolve toward addressing the concerns of the community, but also the need to have a responsible inventory of traditional whole-home vacation rentals."

Someone should write an ordinance that calls for banning STRs outright.  You know, just to try and evolve things back the other way a little. 

It is still a mess

According to yesterday's big conference call, they still don't know how soon the shut offs might begin. They don't know how many account are actually delinquent.  They don't know how the renegotiation process works. And they don't know what to tell people who can't get through when they call.

“We’ve got screenshots of people who have been on hold for two hours,” said Sherae Hunter, one of Moreno’s staff members.

Rainey directed Hunter to a form on the S&WB’s website. But Hunter said that not all residents have internet access and noted that the online form provides no confirmation that someone has been taken off the delinquent list.

So there is a lot we don't know. It's also not clear the billing system itself has even been fixed yet. So this might just keep happening for a while.

How many S&WB guys does it take to change a water meter?

Looks like 13 of them can do as many as 50 a day 

The Sewerage & Water Board does not plan to shut off water for around 17,000 customers all at once, but a staff of 13 field investigators could stop service for up to 50 delinquent customers a day in the coming weeks, according to utility officials who spoke Wednesday (Aug. 1) via conference call.

So I guess that's a pretty good rate when you do the math.  Imagine how many they could do if there weren't 500 something vacant positions over there.  There wouldn't be a "bad actor" left in town by the end of the week. What's really interesting here is it also says they "will make every effort to restore service the same day if an account is resolved by 2:30 p.m." which means either that these meters go in faster than they come out or that they just aren't expecting a lot of people to pay up at once.  That's good, in a way, because, wow that sure would be a lot to process.

Delinquent customers with the highest outstanding balances will be prioritized when scheduling shut-offs, Rainey said. Officials have said around 17,000 customers are late on their bills, totaling nearly $22 million owed.

"This is the normal collections process," Rainey said. "This is the way the agency worked before the moratorium, this is the way the agency works now and this is the way it will work going forward."

Okay but the moratorium happened for a reason. And that reason is everybody's bill is so screwed up that it's hard to see any claim of delinquency as legitimate.  So it's still pretty shitty to go make everybody come in and haggle on a case by case basis.

Customers can still dispute their bills within the 10-day window after receiving a delinquency letter, Rainey said. He noted that each problematic bill has to be disputed separately.

What would happen if everybody just refused to pay?

Why do we keep losing to these guys?

Our program is so much more popular than theirs is.

Key Finding 9: The least popular progressive policies are more popular than Republicans’ signature legislative proposals. By a lot.

It’s important to keep some perspective here. According to the Real Clear Politics average, the Republican tax cut currently stands at net -7 percent approval. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that their failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act polled at net -24 (meaning that the Republican healthcare bill is less popular than reparations). Six -- six! -- percent of the public supports cutting Social Security, according to the American National Election Studies. We did not find universal support for every progressive agenda item we polled -- nor did we expect to. However, we consistently found that voters are more likely to want big-ticket progressive agenda items that are dismissed by the pundit class as electoral doom than policies that Republican candidates regularly commit to on the campaign trail and pursue while in office.

Those "big ticket progressive agenda items" polled here,  ending cash bail,  a jobs guarantee program, a public internet for all, and a generic drugs program all proved to be much more popular across the board than the conservative program of cutting taxes for rich people and destroying Social Security. 

So why do we keep losing to these guys? Maybe it has something to do with the "radical centrists" we keep propping up.

Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu distinguished himself from budding voices in the left wing of the Democratic Party on Sunday and called for a "big tent" approach in the run-up to the midterm elections.

"I have always talked about governing from the middle," Landrieu said on CNN's "State of the Union." "I am what they call a radical centrist. There're not many of us left anymore. And yeah, it is really important for us to make sure that if we are given the responsibility to govern, that we govern in a pragmatic way, in a big tent way that makes sense."

Kind of hard to take advantage of these popular left of center ideas when you keep running away from them.

Bad actors

You really have to hand it to LaToya. She is developing a knack for saying exactly the wrong thing at the right time.  It's the surest sign that the job of Mayor Of New Orleans suits her.

"Mayor Cantrell supports bringing accountability to delinquent bad actors who have taken advantage of the billing problems to avoid paying their fair share," Tidwell said in an email.

New Orleans City Council members have pushed back against the plan, arguing the Sewerage & Water Board has not proven beyond a doubt that it has distinguished scofflaws from earnest but struggling ratepayers among the estimated 17,000 delinquent customers. The City Council, however, does not have authority to order the utility to continue suspending shut-offs.

This is the Cantrell paranoid style in evidence again.  Whatever the issue, she finds a way to connect it to some imagined foe or, well, "bad actor" trying to get away with something. Everything is defined in very personal terms. Every argument is more about "tone" than substance.  Have any of these bad actors been identified?  Not that we've seen so far. The stories we have read are all about ordinary people struggling to pay or even understand their absurd water bills.

There are many examples of those. The T-P article linked above found another one yesterday. It's confusing that her name happens to also be Cantrell but her story is typical of what's been widely reported. I don't want to lift the whole thing from the article but, after some months of no bill followed by months of unusually high bills and a dispute process which was denied we get to this part.

Payment on the balance was due immediately, the letter read. Rather than fight it further, Cantrell paid the full $228.75 for her July bill. She couldn't risk having her water shut off, Cantrell said, because her daughter is homebound in a wheelchair.

"I can't afford to leave her without water," Cantrell said. "So I just paid it."

That bill also showed a $140 credit, which took care of the $139.27 she was charged for July. Cantrell said she does not know why the $140 credit appeared because she had not called to discuss the bill.

"Einstein couldn't figure all this out," she said.

Yesterday S & WB offices were crowded with people in similar situations. Exasperated with the billing problems, but too exhausted and intimidated to put up a fight, these are the "bad actors" being extorted to cover the mismanagement of administrators with six figure salaries.

In all, the agency says there are more than 17,000 delinquent accounts, amounting to about $21.8 million in unpaid bills. It warned the City Council last week that as a result, the utility's cash reserve is running low, threatening vital projects.

So a day ahead of the moratorium lifting, there was a steady stream of customers like Lopez, either settling up or trying to convince the agency that their bill is wrong.

"We have to pay for their mistakes," Lopez said. "Good luck dealing with these people. It’s like a black hole."

Like Lopez, many of those standing in line Tuesday said they still think their bills are bogus — officials have acknowledged widespread problems implementing new billing software — but didn’t want to risk losing water service.

Cassandra Carmouche said she’s been “battling these people for months and months” but was told she had to pay off her $1,600 bill or be considered delinquent. She said she could hardly afford the typical $90 monthly charge.

“How can they cut off water when people need water every day?” she asked.

Do we see anyone here "taking advantage of the billing problems to avoid paying their fair share" as the mayor alleges?  Maybe such entities do exist. But they sure don't seem to be taking the brunt of this action.

Regardless of how we got to this point, everyone understands the utility has to get its finances in order one way or another. But there has to be a better way to do that than shaking down 17,000 vulnerable people already victimized by the billing errors. At the very least, the mayor could show a little more love, as she likes to say, than what it takes to accuse them all of criminal behavior.  Better than that, though, why not take the opportunity to fix the revenue problem and resolve everyone's billing issues at once?  Just collect a fair, uniform one time payment and restart everyone's account at zero.  Like this.

If S&WB has a serious need for cash,  it should offer all delinquent accounts a fair deal to pay an affordable amount and cancel the rest of the debt. This would restore the flow of revenue into the utility without unfairly burdening customers. But it would also require that S&WB step up and acknowledge the gravity of their mismanagement.

Oh but they do have to admit their well paid upper management screwed up the billing process.  We've already tried blaming the line employees and the general public. That hasn't worked out so well. Maybe it's time for a little introspection.  Naah we're bound to find some nefarious "bad actors" to lay this on eventually. Keep looking for those.