They keep trying to make Beryl happen

It seems like they put this name in the list every season, lately.  It's always a dud.

However, Beryl's not expected to last long or pose a threat for South Louisiana: As of a 10 a.m. update, forecasters said the system is expected to dissipate over the weekend east of the Lesser Antilles.

Maybe they should try calling all of them Beryl from now on.

The SELA endgame

Soooon. Very soon. But not yet.

A month-long partial closure of the busy Uptown intersection of Magazine Street and Louisiana Avenue is set to begin Thursday (July 5), according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The closure figures in the continuing construction of a drainage canal on Louisiana Avenue amid the Corps' years-long Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control project, or SELA.

Starting Thursday, traffic on Magazine heading downtown toward Louisiana will have to detour before reaching the intersection. Traffic on Magazine heading Uptown toward Louisiana will be able to pass through the intersection without detour. Two-way traffic on Louisiana will not be affected, the Corps says.

They are saying this is going to be finished by the end of the year at which point it might be possible to move about Uptown relative freely again.

Meanwhile, the latest update I can find about plans to finish the landscaping on Napoleon Avenue is from 2016. 

The exact plan of the landscaping cannot be drawn until the construction is absolutely complete, and Boh Brothers has submitted their own “as-built” specifications of the exact location of each new underground utility line, Wagner noted.


“I’d hate to put an oak tree on top of a new city line,” Wagner said.

Aiming for the spring planting season in 2017 is also somewhat complicated by Mardi Gras, he noted, as the crowds on Napoleon Avenue likely be harmful to newly-planted landscaping.

So, anyway, that never happened. Halfway through 2018 now and no one has planted even the first crepe myrtle out there.  Maybe that's out of the plan now? 

Vigilante code enforcement

Seems like the people are a little bit upset about the Airbnbs.

Sarah Cherny, an NOPD officer who lives with her mother near the house, told adjudication officials she has pulled up to find people vomiting on the home's front lawn. She also disputed whether anyone lived at the house full-time after one of the owners, Jason Darensbourg, told officials the ownership group could claim a homestead tax exemption at the address because he lives in one of the rooms. Darensbourg said he stays at the house when it's not being rented, and with his girlfriend when it's booked as a short-term rental.

"I've never seen you before in my life. You do not live there," Cherny told Darensbourg during the hearing. "This house is completely vacant unless it's being rented to large groups."

Joanna Dubinsky, who lives two houses away, said she became so angry with renters one weekend, she entered the backyard where a DJ was playing and refused to leave until the music was turned down. When the party-goers threatened to call police, Dubinsky said she encouraged them to do so, knowing that police would likely shut down the party.

"It was very interesting how entitled they felt to do all of that," Dubinsky said. "I've lived on this block for 13 years and I've never had anyone be so rude."

At least this sort of thing ought to keep the pressure on the city to stay on the case. Otherwise, I would say the next step is outright expropriation but somebody tried that at this address already.

Serving the city

Source: The Data Center: "Who Lives In New Orleans Now?" 2018

Urban development policy in New Orleans is a confederation of schemes to enrich the few at the expense of the many and people are starting to catch on. It remains an open question, though, whether we're going to demand better of our political decision-makers or if we're going to continue accepting the same approach indefinitely as long as the hollow rhetoric supporting it is updated every once in a while to co-opt the political concerns of the moment.

In Monday's Advocate, we found a  pretty typical example of one such branding adjustment.  "New Orleans's incentives for developers aren't serving the city," says the headline.  That sounds true enough. Unfortunately, this is a story about what a consultant's report commissioned by the Landrieu Administration to evaluate those "incentives" has to say about them. What might such an outfit tell us needs to be done?  Well, of course, we have to make slight cosmetic changes to the process by which we award those same incentives to the same developers.  Problem solved.

Instead, the report — prepared by the national consulting firm HR&A Advisors — recommends that officials issue tax breaks or other subsidies, under four major incentive programs, to firms that earn high scores on a new scorecard aligned to city priorities.

“If you are building affordable housing in a high-opportunity neighborhood, you could get more points for that,” said Ellen Lee, the city’s director of community and economic development. “So you would ultimately get more subsidy.”

Great.  A "points" system. Look, regardless of whatever gimmick they decide to glom on to their let's-shovel-money-to-developers device, it is still, first and foremost, a plan to shovel money to developers. It is still substituting carrots where there should be sticks.

Developers also could get high scores for incorporating sustainable building practices or for exceeding the standards of the city's policies on local hiring, aiding disadvantaged business enterprises or paying "living wages."

Where there ought to be strict enforcement of mandatory environmental, equity and labor standards, there are "high scores" for incorporating and aiding but not necessarily always complying with such practices.  

For decades, municipal governments have overseen a trickle-down process by which public money is directed through various tax abatement programs to finance construction of private for-profit real estate development.  These special privileges are hilariously labeled "incentives" by the same free market fundamentalists who otherwise lecture us that government has no place in the natural and perfect resource allocation function of unfettered capitalism. In these cases, though, we are told that distorting the market with gifts to real estate oligarchs is really in the public interest.  For some reason we're told publicly financed kickbacks are the only way to save our most iconic buildings from "blight" or to put even the most valuable real estate in all of Louisiana "back into commerce."

It is only recently that this rationalization has expanded to include a sop to the affordable housing crisis. And even then, the reasoning is flimsy as hell.  Regardless of how many "points" a residential development accrues setting aside a token number of units that meet a dubiously defined threshold for affordability, the main thing we are doing is putting public investment into building nice things for rich people.

Construction has begun on the Odeon, a $106 million, 271-unit apartment building that will include 12,000 square feet of retail in the Central Business District, the project's developer said Monday.

Once complete, the 29-story building will be the latest addition to the half-billion-dollar South Market District, which has transformed an area between Loyola Avenue and Baronne Street once known for blight and parking lots into five blocks of boutique shops and high-end apartments and condominiums.

$69.5 million of the financing for the Odeon comes through a HUD backed FHA loan  arranged through, and ultimately to the benefit of Iberia Bank. It also benefits from a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) "incentive" agreement issued by the Industrial Development Board last year.  This is the latest high-end development in the section of the CBD re-branded "South Market District."



These projects are eligible for something like $3.5 million in tax credit financing thanks to state laws carried by now City Councilmember Helena Moreno and by State Rep Walt Leger.  The  development is adjacent to property held by the Landrieu family.  While it's true that all of this public investment, including the nearby Loyola Streetcar, has dramatically reshaped the look and feel of a downtown neighborhood, it's difficult to argue that the luxury condos, pied-a-terres, and Airbnb farms being constructed in that neighborhood have done much to make housing more affordable.



A few blocks downtown from South Market along the new streetcar line we find other examples of buildings put "back into commerce" after Katrina through federal grants, loans and tax credits that are being sold off to timeshare operators. 

 Earlier this year, the council approved zoning changes for the CBD that will make it easier for timeshare companies to operate in most areas. The City Planning Commission’s staff backed the move, arguing in a report that a timeshare “does not possess any more unique characteristics as compared to a hotel, hostel or commercial short-term rental,” which are all permitted uses in the affected CBD areas.

Now, the owners of other CBD buildings are already marketing their properties to suit this new option. Several buildings, including New Orleans’ oldest "skyscraper," the 11-story Maritime building at 800 Common St., which has 105 apartments, and the Saratoga building at 212 Loyola Ave., with its 155 apartments, could potentially follow suit, according to real estate experts.

Both buildings were recently brought back into commerce by their owner, architect and developer Marcel Wisznia. The Maritime building was renovated in 2010 at a cost of $38.8 million, and the Saratoga a year later at a cost of $41.8 million. Both renovations benefited from federal and state historic tax credits and, in the Maritime’s case, new markets tax credits, which promote investment in low-income areas. Both properties also have mortgages insured by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Last year, Wisznia came under fire from a local housing rights group for converting many of the units into short-term rentals, which it claimed violated federal rules.

In 2009, I happened to snap a picture of a this mural on the side of one of those buildings.  Needless to say it is no longer there today.




"Incentives for developers aren't serving the city."  The consultants got that much right.  But their report isn't here to condemn the practices that have served us so ill. Instead they ask only that we adjust their "alignment." The objection is not philosophical. It is merely technical.  Read past the nonsense about point systems, ignore the song and dance about altruistic goals and the report basically boils down to one core recommendation:  Do fewer PILOTs but more TIFs.

Tax Increment Financing is, like PILOT, a scheme by which tax revenue is redirected from the schools and roads and drainage it was meant for. All of these so-called incentive programs starve public services of their dedicated money in one way or another. In the case of a TIF, a portion of the taxes is  paid directly to the bank over a period of several years until a developer's loan is paid off.  Why the consultants think this is better is anybody's guess.

In any case, we aren't going to "serve the city" any better as long as we remain mired in an outmoded belief that critical public services are best financed through upward redistribution of public resources and delivered as byproducts of real estate projects that primarily benefit the wealthiest interests. Rearranging the tax credits on the deck of a sinking city is not going to solve our problems.

Well that escalated quickly

Looks like it's gonna rain no matter what they decide to name it.

A large, disorganized area of showers and thunderstorms hugging the central Gulf Coast has an extremely small chance (about 10 percent) of developing into a tropical system, the National Hurricane Center said Monday afternoon. But forecasters concede that possibility doesn't change the overall wet forecast for the coming days.

Whatever happens, I hope we are ready with more emergency exploding GIF tweets.

Congratulations, Jared

You can say this is a story about deciding to run for office. But really it is a story about getting out of politics and into a job where you can just sit around collecting money all day. 

New Orleans Councilman Jared Brossett is officially running to be the next clerk of the Civil District Court.

Brossett has been eyeing the office since shortly after Dale Atkins, the former clerk, won a seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal in March. His plans have now been formalized, with a fundraiser for the campaign scheduled for July 10.

I'm not sure about how the timing plays out.  But I expect Brossett will take his new office shortly after the November election. After that, there will have to be another special election to fill his City Council seat.  Which means there will also be a period where District D is represented by an interim appointment.  Typically, the councilmembers are responsible for selecting the interim person. But the last time this came up, things got ugly and the mayor had to step in and name somebody. This council is still in its post-election unity afterglow where they like to talk about working as a team and whatnot so we're unlikely to see that happen this time around. Still, the choice of Brossett's replacement deserves attention. It could have a determining affect on the city's short term rental policy.

Just to catch up quickly on where we are with that, recall that about a month ago the council, at Kristin Palmer's urging, passed an Interim Zoning District measure which imposes a temporary moratorium on the issuance of one specific type of STR license. This would be the "Temporary STR License" that allows whole home rentals for 90 days in certain areas.  The IZD isn't an immediate ban on their operation, though. Currently active Temporary licenses can remain in use until whenever each individual license expires. And even then, the "pause" as it's been described in the press is just a for-now thing until we get the result of a study due sometime in the fall.

Meanwhile the Commercial licenses are still being issued. These allow unlimited use of property as permanent hotels in areas zoned for commercial and mixed-use.  That zoning terminology sounds restrictive, but actually it covers a lot of the city.  So even under the terms of Palmer's IZD, the most intense kind of STR activity continues to go unchecked. Also, the big players in hospitality are starting to get into the business now. 

The need for a different kind of experience is what prompted Marriott International to enter the vacation rental market dominated by Airbnb, CEO Arne Sorenson told CNBC on Monday.

Formulated with groups in mind, Marriott announced a six-month pilot program in April, in partnership with London-based home rental management company Hostmaker, which does still work with other services, including Airbnb and Home Away.

So, even though Palmer got a fair amount of credit in the media for proposing the IZD, it's not clear that's actually a step toward reining in short term rentals.  In fact, it's possible that, by the time all of this has run its course, the "paused" STRs will be back in play without having missed much business. But all of this will depend on what the council decides to do once they get their new report back from the planning commission. 

As I've stated previously, all of this looks suspiciously like a delay tactic. The further in time we get from last year's election cycle, the friendlier the political environment is likely to be for the pro-STR side. When politicians aren't immediately concerned with being held accountable to voters, the more likely they are to listen to friends and donors.

Already if you listen closely enough you can hear them trying to walk back the anti STR sentiment a bit. We already know LaToya likes to talk about "balance" above all else. Recently, I've heard  Giarrusso and Palmer  express similar sentiments regarding their empathy toward landlords and developers as well as their belief that STR revenue can fund affordable housing in other ways. At a recent Mid City Neighborhood Association meeting on the subject, Giarrusso mentioned the money STR license fees pay into the Neighborhood Housing Improvement Fund established by the city to subsidize developers who might build more affordable housing.   However the JPNSI report found that the money collected all of last year by those fees could probably build just one house.

There are other signs that momentum is already fading. Cyndi Nguyen almost voted against Palmer's "pause" because she is worried about some landlords who she thinks are "the little guy." Jarvis Deberry recently wrote about  HousingNOLA's Andreanicia Morris and her seeming fatigue with the STR issue. 

Morris, executive director of the affordable housing advocacy group HousingNOLA, confesses to being exhausted with all the emphasis on Airbnb. "The problem with the short-term rental debate," she said during an interview in Mid City June 7, "is the energy it takes up."  Expensive housing in New Orleans is an old problem, not a new one, Morris says, and there's a problem in talking about the more recent phenomenon of short-term rentals as if without them, things would automatically be good for renters and homebuyers. 

If even the housing advocates are starting to back off now, how can we expect councilmembers to stay after the STR lobby six or nine months from now? Which brings us back to Jared Brossett's decision to retire from politics and get into the business of sitting around collecting money as Clerk of Court. Up to this point, Brossett was the only member of the council with a consistent anti-STR voting record. If he's no longer around by the time the next important vote on the matter comes around, what happens then?  I'm not optimistic that this is going to end well. I don't think it's going especially well now.

Oh by the way, if you want to submit comments to the City Planning Commission in writing for use in their study the deadline is September 4. In the meantime there is a public hearing coming up on July 10 where you can go yell at them in person. I don't know what the going rate is for paid actors right now but we'll try to get that sorted out in time if we can.

Winning

They say winning begins at the local level, in your state house, city council, congressional district, etc. These guys are taking it seriously.

But all over the nation, people, particularly women, are working with near supernatural energy to rebuild democracy from the ground up, finding ways to exercise political power however they can. For the middle-aged suburbanites who are the backbone of the anti-Trump resistance, that often means shoring up the Democratic Party. For younger people who see Donald Trump’s election as the apotheosis of a rotten political and economic system, it often means trying to remake that party as a vehicle for democratic socialism.

It's a modest start but, in the long run this is how to win. The game for Republicans now is a rush to do whatever they can to make winning irrelevant.  They might pull that off.

Bowl for the people

New Orleans needs to do this when Gayle's SuperBowl comes to town in 2024.

The FIFA World Cup is currently taking place in Russia, and a network of Saint Petersburg-based civil society activists and social entrepreneurs have launched a campaign called “Cup for the People,” providing an alternative program for hundreds of thousands of soccer fans arriving from all over the world. From guided tours held by local residents about LBGT rights or environmental issues to a map of responsible consumption, the campaign hopes to spread awareness about different aspects of social life in Russia, while fostering diversity, tolerance and sustainable development within the food, retail and tourism sectors.

Behind the campaign is Olga Polyakova, a 31-year-old activist engaged in civic education, citizen cooperation movements and circular economy.

"I was in Hamburg, Germany, when the G20 meeting took place there [in 2017], and I saw what kinds of alternative programs local activists carried out – with actions, discussions and performances,” she says. “In almost every country there are people who are critical of such mega events, which are normally financed with public funds but benefit mostly politicians and corporations. So I thought about creating a similar alternative program for Saint Petersburg."

"Detailed look"

On the very first official day of her campaign for mayor, LaToya Cantrell's very first campaign promise was about traffic cameras.  It was a confusing promise even then.

On Tuesday evening (July 18), Cantrell delivered a wide-ranging speech on her platform as one of 18 mayoral candidates. Here's what the City Councilwoman said in that speech.

"We don't know if traffic cameras are making our streets safer," Cantrell said. "As your mayor, I will suspend the use of the cameras until it can be proven that they actually work as intended."

But then, The Advocate reported that Cantrell said after the speech she only wanted to suspend part of the traffic camera program. Mayor Mitch Landrieu expanded enforcement by 50 cameras earlier this year.

The significance of that statement apparently hadn't become apparent to her campaign, however, because spokesman David Winkler-Schmit on Wednesday morning spoke to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune about how the program's suspension could affect the budget. Tickets issued through traffic cameras are projected to generate about $24 million for the city this year.

After further prodding, the campaign decided that, yes, in fact, the promise would apply to all of the cameras.  Still, after the election, the transition team recommended that she leave them in place taking the position that $24 million in revenue is not something we should just let go of.

 But this argument had already come up during the campaign. At the time, Cantrell said that she doubted the figure.  Today, her CAO says they're going to take a "detailed look" at it.

In a statement, Cantrell's spokesman Beau Tidwell said the Mayor's stance on the traffic cameras remains unchanged.

"As you know, the revenue was built into the 2018 budget," Tidwell said, which is why Cantrell couldn't remove traffic cameras upon taking office. "We have to make any changes responsibly and with a full understanding of what the fiscal impact would be. So yes -- the CAO is taking a detailed look at the issue before we proceed."

Couldn't take them offline when she got there. But I guess this means there is a possibility that the next fiscal year could begin with the cameras suspended until we can figure out what is going on.

If so, they'd better have an idea in place as to how they're going to handle that NOPD deficit. That thing just keeps growing.

The New Orleans Police Department is already projecting a need for at least $9.2 million in new city spending in 2019 due to police pay raises and other factors. For City Councilman Joe Giarruso, that expansion in police spending is leading to questions about how much removing all traffic cameras could cost. On Thursday, he said the cameras were projected to generate as much as $25.2 million.

The beastly drafts folder

Too much things happen. I collect a lot of links but don't always write the thing. Eventually it leads to this.

Of particular concern are the stores of notes on short term rentals and on S&WB which keep getting bigger and more difficult to put together the longer they sit unpublished.  It seems stupid... is stupid, I guess But this is a burden on me. I use this blog as a way to keep track of the news. It's how I force myself to think about the stuff I've read. Otherwise, I'm just going to forget everything that happens and it will be like none of us was ever here and... you know maybe that wouldn't be so bad...

The police burden

The new administration has identified a $7.8 million NOPD budget deficit for this year. A few weeks ago they said it was $3.6 million. So maybe I'm missing something in there but that is not an encouraging trend.  In any case, this is bound to cause a problem for everybody once we get into municipal budget season. (Hey when is that going to kick into high gear, again?)

The Louisiana model

So proud to see our state's wildly successful version of "economic development" via klepto-capitalism catching on in other enlightened regions.

The incentive package passed by Wisconsin’s GOP-controlled legislature, during a special session last August, will offer the company $1.5 billion to offset payroll costs and another $1.35 billion for capital expenditures. The state will give Foxconn $150 million in sales tax exemptions on construction materials, and it plans to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on road improvements near the new factory.

 

The town of Mount Pleasant, where the factory will be located, will offer $763 million to help pay for the project, and Racine County gave the company $50 million to acquire the land.

 

In total, Wisconsin, Racine County and Mount Pleasant gave the company nearly $4.8 billion in tax breaks, incentives and taxpayer dollars for improvements. If Foxconn delivers all 13,000 jobs it has promised, that works out to about $370,000 per job.

 

“Foxconn is a great deal for Foxconn and an absolutely terrible deal for Wisconsin,” said Richard Florida, an urban planning expert who heads the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute. He called the deal “a complete and total waste of taxpayer money.”

 

See there? Even Richard Florida (who admittedly is claiming to have found religion these days) hates this shit.  The local folks are still super gung-ho, though.

GNO Inc., Louisiana Economic Development and the New Orleans Business Alliance teamed to secure Accruent's commitment. The company is expected to receive Louisiana's digital media tax incentive and a tax break from the state's Quality Jobs program. Both are performance-based incentives, meaning the company only receives them as they create new jobs. The 350 hires are a company goal and not tied to the incentives, according to Louisiana Economic Development.

The digital media perk provides a 25 percent tax credit on qualified payroll for in-state hires and 18 percent for qualified production expenses. Accruent can only receive the tax break for its jobs directly related to digital media.

Other positions not related to digital media production can apply for the Quality Jobs tax break, which is a state income sales tax rebate of up to 6 percent on 80 percent of the company's gross payroll for new jobs. The incentive is good for five years, after which the company can apply for a final five years of eligibility.

Well you gotta start somewhere

Congratulations to Louisiana on (barely) no longer being the Incarceration Capital Of Earth.

The state's prison population is now under 33,000 for the first time since 1998. The probation and parole population is also at its lowest level in eight years, said Jimmy LeBlanc, secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Thursday (June 28). As of the end of March, the state's prison population has dropped 7.8 percent since the end of 2016.

Louisiana has also dropped below Oklahoma as the state with the highest incarceration rate in the nation for the first time in years -- a significant shift that was announced earlier this month.

"I made a promise that, by the end of my first term, Louisiana would not have the highest incarceration rate in the nation," said Gov. John Bel Edwards at a press conference. "We have fulfilled that promise to Louisiana."

That is great news. And as the Governor is happy to point out, it is one of a few areas where the people who elected him cannot judge his first term a complete failure. (The other non-failure being his easy decision to accept the Medicaid expansion. The positive impact of that is being steadily undermined at the federal level, of course, but that's hardly John Bel's fault.) 

There's a lot more that could happen on this front a lot faster. But the sheriff's brother who signed the "Blue Lives Matter" bill and who helped pave the way for security contractors to protect an oil pipeline probably isn't the governor to get those things done.

So sad about the "uncivil" left

Look what they reduce our country's poor beleaguered mayors to.  

A Pennsylvania mayor is apologizing for posting Facebook images urging police to "bring the hoses" against protesters and blast them with water cannons, evoking images of the civil rights era.

Karen Peconi is the mayor of Arnold, a suburb of Pittsburgh.

I'm just glad there's nothing to eat in suburban Pennsylvania besides Dairy Queens and bar wings otherwise some very bad people might deprive her of a nice meal or something.  And that, more than anything else, would make the Advocate sad. 

Here in food-centric Louisiana, where the dinner table is the altar of civic and social life, the thought of turning someone away from a meal seems especially off-key. That’s what happened Friday night when President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was asked to leave a Washington, D.C. area restaurant by the owner, who dislikes the president’s policies.

Okay let's stop right there for a sec because the anonymous troll who writes these editorials is already leaving some important facts out.  To begin with, the restaurant owner quietly and asked Sanders to leave after having asked her employees whether or not they felt comfortable serving her. They voted no. Rather than force them to work under morally compromising conditions, she respected their decision.

The Advocate erases the staff entirely and assigns all agency to the owner who they say "dislikes president's polices."  The editorialist(s) deliberately obscure(s) circumstances here because it is his/her/their intent to diminish the actual reasons for the restaurant staff's differences with the Trump Administration in the first place. Rather than name the abhorrent "Zero Tolerance" immigration brutality that has been ripping families apart and placing them into camps, the Advocate troll(s) merely say(s) "The president and his politics are deeply controversial." They then go on to lament the damper this has put on their ability to enjoy their own charmed little lives.

But in Louisiana, we know perhaps more than most about the value of breaking bread with friends — and even adversaries. It’s a way to affirm our basic humanity amid sometimes painful differences.

Imagine wanting to "break bread with" and "affirm the basic humanity" of someone who is systematically locking thousands of humans up in cages. Most of us can't do that.  The reason the Advocate can, though, is because staying within the relative good graces of the monsters who rule us is essential to the success of any commercial media operation. And a favorite means to this is  negating legitimate anti-establishment criticism by way of the "civility" trope. A recent episode of the Citations Needed podcast explored this rather thoroughly. This is from the episode description.

Mean words or questioning motives are signs of declining civility and the subject of much lament from our media class. However, op-eds explicitly advocating war, invasion, sanctions, sabotage, bombing and occupation or cutting vital programs and lifelines for the poor are just the cost of doing business. What’s rhetorically out of bounds - and what isn’t - is far more a product of power than any objective sense of "civility" or “decency.”

The norms fetishists at the Advocate are sufficiently isolated from the real consequences of the politics they are paid to report on that they can afford to chummily "break bread with friends -- even with adversaries," as they say in their op-ed.  Their professional culture incentivizes flattering politicians and the donor class. By necessity it also minimizes empathy with their victims.

This is why they can pretend the unpleasantness that characterized this year's legislative sessions was a mere matter the governor and Republican leaders not getting together over a plate of catfish.  Louisiana residents who depend on medicaid and SNAP funds for their survival may find this metaphor obscene if not downright uncivil.

Wasting no time

The Koch people are ready to drop in the paratroopers.

Now that the ruling has come to pass, the group plans a flood of social media, mail, email, cable television ads, op-eds and phone calls to spread the news about employees’ opportunity to cease paying union fees. Along with going door-to-door, the anti-union activists plan to visit government buildings at which public employees work.

Similarly, the Heritage people have been ready to drop in SCOTUS nominees since before Trump took office. 

As the conversation evolved, an idea emerged: What if Trump could present to the public a list of Supreme Court nominees? DeMint enthusiastically volunteered to help provide one. When he returned to Heritage’s offices, though, some senior staffers balked. One concern they raised was that it would be counterproductive for Heritage to explicitly endorse possible judicial appointees: Because the think tank was considered to the right of the Republican mainstream, its approval of candidates could make them toxic in the confirmation process. But DeMint was adamant, insisting that this was an opportunity Heritage should not pass up. The head of Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, John Malcolm, ultimately wrote the list in the form of a post for Heritage’s news and commentary website, The Daily Signal. By then, Trump had already singled out Heritage at a news conference, announcing that it was one of the groups he was working with on a Supreme Court list.

That's the genesis of the list he will be working with now. 

President Trump said Wednesday that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's replacement will come from a list of 25 possible nominees that was released by the White House in November.

Kennedy announced his retirement on Wednesday, saying he will step down effective July 31.

One of the possible nominees, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, tells CBS News he would "of course" accept an offer to serve on the high court.

Mr. Trump released a list of 11 potential nominees after securing the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, one that was heavily influenced by the conservative Heritage Foundation. His campaign expanded the list in the fall of 2016, and it eventually grew to the list of 25 names released last year.

Trump is nutty but the oligarchs have money and they have plans. It would take an act of amazing stupidity for him to mess this up for them.

Supreme Court Justice Roseanne Barr

Congratulations

WASHINGTON — Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced on Wednesday that he would retire, setting the stage for a furious fight over the future direction of the Supreme Court.

Well, you know, in the interest of civility, the Senate really ought to put off consideration of the nominee until after the election..... oh wait... no that was the old thing. This year the op-eds will say,  civility demands we give SCOTUS nominee Attilla the Hun a fair hearing and "up or down vote."  Chuck Schumer will probably say it first, actually.

Leon is delinquent

What happens if you ignore a fake subpoena? Is it any less or more a penalty than ignoring an order to turn over your files on fake subpoenas?

Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office still has not provided information to the New Orleans City Council about its use of fake subpoenas, more than a month after Cannizzaro told council members he would. And Council President Jason Williams wants to know why.

In a letter to Cannizzaro obtained by The Lens, Williams is requesting that Cannizzaro provide the information, which the council requested last fall. At the time, Cannizzaro estimated it would be available by mid-May.

“We are now beyond the timeline you provided for disclosure, however several items remain outstanding,” Williams wrote. Williams’ spokeswoman Katie Hunter-Lowrey said the letter was delivered Wednesday morning.

Or maybe it's not an order. Williams only "requested" the information from Cannizzaro's office, right? But then I guess a fake subpoena isn't really an order either so we're back to the original question.

Fittingly, the answer is, the deadline isn't really a deadline.

In a letter to the council, Cannizzaro said that compiling the additional information would take time because it doesn’t keep a centralized inventory of documents in its case files. Finding it would require a manual review of 150,000 cases. That review had begun, he wrote, but it could take “as long as six months.”

“It has now been over seven months since your response to the Council, and we have received no supplemental information,” Williams wrote in his letter. “I hereby request that you provide the supplemental data … or provide justification for why this information is being withheld.”

Earlier this month, Cannizzaro’s spokesman Ken Daley told The Lens that the six-month timeline “was an estimate, not a deadline.”

This is probably as okay with Jason as it is with Leon. It means he can keep writing letters and asking about this for several more months getting us closer to the time when the two end up running against each other anyway. 

How long until Mark Janus is laid off?

The gross Supreme Court issued another gross ruling today.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday dealt a major blow to organized labor. By a 5-to-4 vote, with the more conservative justices in the majority, the court ruled that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be required to help pay for collective bargaining.

The ruling means that public-sector unions across the nation, already under political pressure, could lose tens of millions of dollars and see their effectiveness diminished.

The plaintiff in this case was a child support specialist from Illinois named Mark Janus. He has a job right now thanks to a union he doesn't want to join. 

A drastic provision in the state’s “last, best, and final offer” in 2016 would have given Governor Rauner the right to outsource and privatize state employees’ jobs without accountability. Our union is all that’s preventing critical public services from being privatized.

Our agency would be at particular risk, because Illinois already has a longstanding contract with a scandal-ridden, for-profit corporation called Maximus to perform some of our agency’s functions. They modify child support orders and interact with employers about income withholding—pretty simple tasks, yet state employees regularly have to correct their work. If they were to take over more complex tasks, we can imagine how badly that would go! Their concern is for profit, not kids.

If the governor could get away with it, it’s very likely he would expand the Maximus contract to privatize jobs like mine and Mr. Janus’s. He already did something similar to nurses in the prison system. But our union has to be consulted before the state can outsource anything. And when they do outsource, we monitor the contract and discuss how long it will continue. I go to those meetings for our union. Right now, instead of letting management expand its deal with Maximus, we’ve been pressing to cut that contract.

Stop and frisk on wheels

This weekend we walked for a few blocks with the Uptown Swingers parade and second line. It was very hot out. Luckily there were some guys in the crowd pulling coolers of water and other beverages for sale. Nobody asked if they had permits to do that. Nobody called the police. Maybe it would have been different if they were on bikes.

.@mayorcantrell Look at this: your city's police giving a Black man a nearly $1000 bicycle ticket for nothing. Gentilly & Elysian Fields at 4am... how is this anything but harassment? pic.twitter.com/YkBzLSnswn

— Jules Bentley 🏴 (@julesbentley) June 24, 2018

That is very nearly a $1,000 ticket just because a cop decided to check and see if the dude had a $3 to $35 tag on his bike. Is that real? Jules is reliable source and all but, geeze, is that real?

It's real.

So, there Louis was in the empty pre-dawn, riding that raggedy bike in a striped bike lane, only now he was pedaling against the ghosts of would-be traffic. That is technically a violation, though one every cyclist in the city can attest to breaking. Louis himself has done it plenty of times before because he feels safer knowing cars aren't coming at his back.

That's when two New Orleans Police Department cars rolled up on him, lights flashing.

"I immediately went to the 'don't shoot' position," Louis said.

An officer ran the driver's license Louis handed over while Louis called his father, and he sat on the curb, thinking it all over.

He did not, Louis reasoned, look like somebody out to commit a crime.

So the local bicycle wars have been a subject of some interest here on the ol' Yellow Blog over the years so I feel obliged to say a few words about the political background to these rather expensive citations.

As bicycling has become more popular over the past decade or so, authorities in city government and law enforcement have sought to exert more control over it for various purposes most of which are bad. The city is interested in new ways to shake down residents for fees and fines . Politicians and real estate people like to cultivate at least the appearance.. often only the appearance.. of "bike friendly infrastructure." And, of course, law enforcement is always looking for new pretexts to do stop and frisk.

Here is a Gambit article from 2010 about a proposal to "reinstate a bicycle registration program that hasn't been enforced since before Hurricane Katrina." The fees it proposed were ridiculous, as you can see in the section below, but the reason the measure ended up getting tabled was because it was clear NOPD couldn't be trusted with it.

Jatres says the MBC's biggest concern is the fee hike — a 500 percent increase for non-commercial registration. As for the "commercial" fee, the ordinance does not make clear who would need the $75 license.

"A lot of people bicycle for economic reasons, that's their form of transportation. Having low income people (pay) a $15 fee can be a significant burden," Jatres says. "The $75 fee for commercial use — it's left fairly vague. Could be couriers, bike rentals, anything. If you use a bicycle as transportation for work, could that be broadly defined as commercial? It left it vague enough where that line between commercial and personal could be blurry."

The ordinance does not spell out how NOPD would enforce registration, which Jatres and other cyclists fear could result in potential harassment. The MBC says it's received complaints from cyclists saying NOPD officers have stopped them and told them to ride on the sidewalk or to wear a helmet, neither of which are laws in Louisiana.

"There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding among at least some officers within the department, which leads to the concern — here's one more tool that can be interpreted or misused, either out of ignorance of the law or intentions to harass cyclists," Jatres says. "That was what hit Councilman Carter, 'OK, we really need to get everyone in a room to talk about this.'"

Every now and then a new NOPD initiative proposes to crack down on existing but dormant regulations.  Last year City Council passed an ordinance presented as "protection" for bicyclists but really it just created new ways to bring them under the enforcement regime.  Jared Brossett's quote tips it.  The primary purpose of this was to crack down on cyclists. 

The new rules, recommended by the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee, explicitly prohibit motorists from driving in designated bike lanes or harassing cyclists, clarify that pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks and require that bikes must be equipped with lights or reflectors plus bells or other devices that can provide an audible signal to those nearby in emergency situations.

“All roadway users have a responsibility to use roads safely,” said Councilman Jared Brossett, who sponsored the ordinances.

At the same time, the city has heralded its placement of bike lanes all over town as a signal of its progressive orientation.  But cycling advocates have complained the painted lanes are more ornamental than useful and often are safety hazards themselves.  This suggests our new bike centered infrastructure, including the recently launched for-profit bike share program, isn't designed to meet transit needs as much as it is to boost real estate values.

Those bike-docking stations, however, also give Fleming pause. He resists using the term "bike share" to describe them. Instead, they are "bike rental kiosks," he said.

His reasoning is economic. He worries that a kiosk in a low-income neighborhood would give landlords with properties nearby license to label that block "up-and-coming" and raise rents.

In other words, he sees a bike-sharing program as a harbinger of gentrification and its unsavory cousin: the displacement of the poor.

Over the weekend, I heard a few stories about bikes tied up near the convention center receiving warning stickers that they had been improperly parked. In recent years, new prohibitions against parking bikes in what one would think are harmless places have sprung up in an ad-hoc fashion all over town. We've documented some of these. It's probably a coincidence that we're being made to feel less free about riding our own bikes in downtown neighborhoods at the same time that the Blue Bikes monopoly is spreading out over the same area. But the lifestyle is becoming more regimented in any case. A thousand dollar ticket for not being "registered" is sure to make anyone more wary.

"That's more than my rent. That's more than a number of different things," Louis said.

"I think the police has a lot of discretion in terms of issuing a citation," Charlie Thomas, Louis' attorney said.

Thomas works with the firm Huber, Thomas and Marcelle. They are statewide attorneys for bike law. He is calling the prices for these citations outrageous and believes there is no use registration ordinance in the city.

"Even though NOPD might have your bicycle information on file, we're unaware of any circumstance where this has led to the recovery of a stolen bike or really any sort of benefit," Thomas said.

The benefit to NOPD doesn't have anything to do with solving bike thefts, though. It's just a tool for city officials to use as they continue to embrace widely discredited "broken windows" policing techniques. LaToya's recently expressed enthusiasm for surveillance "Quality and Neighborhood Safety" cameras indicates that's not going to change any time soon.

On the other hand, that WWLTV story does say that the mayor personally emailed Louis about his ticket this afternoon and is "willing to work with him," whatever that means. So the lesson here for cyclists is, if you get stopped and harassed by a cop, (and manage to avoid getting shot, of course) make sure you get yourself on the news.  This mayor seems to respond if the uptick is big enough. Not sure if that really scales up as a citywide policy but, to be fair, I have not yet fully grasped the #CityOfYes ethos. Maybe it has something to do with being intentional.

Diving deep to new heights

The T-P asked LaToya what the heck "being intentional" means.  She explained it by saying a bunch of words. They didn't make any sense, of course.

"Meaning, touching that family to take these deeper dives, to do the outreach that's necessary, to understand what your people are dealing with," Cantrell said, telling a story about one family she spoke with recently.

"Five children and no one is sleeping on a bed in the property, just on the floor. You can't make it up. But once you know ... as we're building our partnerships to therefore meet their need in a way that is not only intentional, but it helps to elevate the family and build that relationship. Because it does matter, and it also sends the message that we care."

You have to reach out and touch the family so that you can dive deep down in order to elevate them.  Or something.  There is more quotable nonsense in that article but I guess that's what happens when the object of the story is to expound upon the meaningless and annoying "City Of Yes" sloganeering that doesn't look like it's going to abate any time soon.  It's basically Cantrell's version of MAGA. It would be nice if we didn't set out to write articles that legitimize that kind of thing.

Highwaymen

Gill's column today  is about an ethics complaint the Southern Poverty Law Center has lodged against Louisiana DAs  pretrial diversion programs. The Advocate reported on the complaint earlier this week.

There are several problems here beginning with the establishment of a de-facto tiered system of justice that allows a relatively convenient way to avoid prosecution for those who can afford to pay for it.  It also allows the DAs to vacuum money out of local courts and public defender's offices who (perhaps unwisely) are dependent on fines for operating funds.

But the most egregious element is the DAs' use of off-duty traffic officers to shake down motorists with what are basically the "fake subpoenas" of traffic tickets.  Gill writes,

Some district attorneys make sure the money keeps rolling in by hiring off-duty cops just to pull drivers over. They even have their own tickets printed up with instructions on how to pay. It makes a lot of sense to do so; that keeps insurance companies out of it.

Those special tickets also include a warning that, if you sign up for diversion and fail to pay, your driver's license will be suspended, which is a lie. Prosecutors have no authority to impose penalties, but then they have no authority to issue subpoenas either and that has not always stopped them.

SPLC's complaint doesn't name Orleans Parish. Of course we have a system that allows a private contractor to profit off of traffic enforcement by deploying robots all over town.  Hey, LaToya campaigned on taking those down.  What's going on with that? 

Nobody actually lives here

It turns out that when all you build is nice things for rich people, then only rich people will be able to use the nice things.

Now, the city is attracting attention from a new sector of the hospitality industry: timeshares, or at least a new version of the half-century-old business model.

A handful of recently restored apartment buildings and hotels that are now listed for sale could likely go this route, according to some hospitality leaders — a shift that’s partly driven by a recent zoning law change that allows timeshares in areas of the Central Business District where they previously faced permitting hurdles.

One property on Elk Place already changed hands — a move that will displace scores of residents at a time when many neighborhoods are feeling squeezed by rising housing costs and the influx of short-term rentals.

“We all had a sense of place and continuity, and ... to purge us for this purpose, for timeshares, just broke any sense of community,” said Peter Scharf, 73, who lived in a one-bedroom apartment at 144 Elk Place for about three years before moving out in April.

Several of the downtown properties this article names were renovated post-Katrina using public money in the form of historic and new market tax credits.  (The "incentives" LaToya is always so proud to talk about being able to offer developers.) The zoning changes that will allow them all to become timesharse had to be approved through city council. 

When your elected persons make these decisions with your money, ostensibly on your behalf, they use facile justifications based in tricke-down "suppy and demand" dogma. The language they use emphasizes putting "property back into commerce" rather than meeting the housing needs of a stressed population.  They are as clueless as they are corrupt. And unless they and their whole outmoded way of thinking are replaced, they are going to keep selling you out until there is nothing left in this city for you and nobody can actually live here.

Can dance contented to the sound of money

Guys, I believe they may have done it.

The Louisiana House has advanced a sales tax measure seen as a compromise and significant movement in a chamber that has struggled on the issue through three special sessions.

The House had been locked in impasse over whether to renew half or two-fifths of an expiring 1-cent sales tax. Under one scenario, the state sales tax rate would go from 5 percent to 4.5 percent on July 1; under the other, the tax rate would go from 5 percent to 4.4 percent.

In a 74-24 vote and after little discussion, the House agreed to advance a bill that would renew nine-twentieths and set the state sales tax rate at 4.45 percent.

And by, it, I mean they have managed to escape this year's labyrinth of sessions without having achieved anything of substance.  Now everybody can go home and start the 2019 campaign complaining about the same untenable status quo we came into 2018 with. This suits most of the Republicans just fine which is why this ultimately passed. Not sure how the Governor is going to make out.  But, the field is clear for anybody who wants to challenge. That may change now that the script is a little more obvious.

The money pumps are broken

What this says, in so many words, is that S&WB's billing system was working at one hundred percent of like forty percent of actual capacity. 

The billing system "was not sufficiently tested prior to implementation," the letter states, "and does not fully interface with the (current finance accounting system) causing delays and errors in reconciling the billing system to the (utility's) General Ledger on a daily and monthly basis."

Except for some people it ended up billing at like 200% capacity which was also a problem. Anyway they're asking to have their audit delayed. At least until the back end of hurricane season.

70 votes is an absurd threshold

It isn't the sole reason for the "extreme deadlock" but a 2/3 majority is a ridiculous hurdle just to pass a bill.

Morrell and Alario's resolution might have an advantage over tax bills that have stalled in the House. The senators think it only takes a majority of lawmakers -- at most 53 members of the House -- to approve. Tax bills need two-thirds majorities, which come to 70 votes in the House. But it's unclear whether the House will agree with the Senate that the vote threshold is lower for this measure.

Alario and Morrell think they might have a workaround for that.  See the rest of that article for that.  Anything they can think of is worth a try.

But the problem here is systemic. The 2/3 rule is a deliberately anti-democratic impediment to progress. The fact that it is a primary obstacle to averting the fiscal crisis in Louisiana is no accident.  Even the House has demonstrated that votes to raise the necessary revenue exist if such a measure required a simple majority. But the 2/3 rule allows a minority of Republican hardliners to obstruct those efforts.

It's also important to note the anti-democracy reflex in American politics is deeply rooted in the tradition of elite white supremacy. We've talked about James Buchanan a few times this year. He plays a pivotal role in maintaining that tradition.

Over time, Buchanan and his allies tacitly admitted that they had no popular constituency; that the voting public — even those who had supported Reagan and cheered the congressional “Contract with America” — hesitated “when they learned that freed markets would leave them with sole responsibility for their fates.” The solution, first floated in the early debates over Social Security privatization and starkly evident in tortuous repeal of the Affordable Care Act, is to “crab-walk” around the issues, to claim that frontal assaults on popular social insurance programs are efforts to “shore them up” rather than destroy them.

The second, and more chilling, solution is to junk the rules entirely; to tilt an already unlevel playing field decisively and irrevocably against the popular will.

The American political system is already strewn with veto points and eagerly attentive to the demands and resources of the wealthy. But, for the Right, holding sway in “the least responsive of all the leading democracies to what the people want and need” is not enough; the goal is to make it “all but impossible for government to respond to the will of the majority unless the very wealthiest Americans agree full with every measure.” Calhoun would be proud.

Buchanan and his associates advised the framers of Pinochet's Chilean junta to design a “constitution of locks and bolts,” that required super-majorities for any action undertaken by a representative body.  Presently the Louisiana House finds itself bound by similar restraints.  If Alario and Morrell can figure a way to pick the lock, they ought to try to do that.

Fake radio show

Kind of hovering around a once a month schedule as of late. About as frequent as legislative sessions, I guess.

Okay but did Irvin make it back yet?

All this says is that Irvin Mayfield is going to face additional charges now that he is back from Soweto.  He did come back, right?

In a related matter, the American Library Association is holding its annual conference in New Orleans this weekend. What do those people do, exactly?

Object permanence

So by now I believe even CNN is starting to get a handle on the fact the executive order Trump signed yesterday doesn't have anything to do with "caving" on child detentions but is instead another move toward establishing a legal right to detain everybody indefinitely.

 Anyway here is a look at what comes next.

What happens if the government fights it up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court says that detaining kids is totally fine?

They might well decide that detaining kids is fine! It’s hard to say. I mean, the Supreme Court did issue a decision this March basically stating that immigrants in long-term detention have no constitutional right to a bail hearing because—get this—they are not legal “persons” and are not, as a matter of law, “present in” the United States. I mean, they’re physically here, but they’re not legally here, you know? “Why do we allow people to become judges who are apparently too stupid to grasp the concept of object permanence,” you may be thinking, and you are correct. Any court that would accept reasoning that morally callous and comically divorced from reality is really capable of anything.

If the Supreme Court gives the green light, the government could keep moms and kids interned together in longer-term detention facilities. This will have a number of consequences. One is trauma to children: being ripped away from your parent is horrific, but being trapped in a jail or a camp surrounded by armed guards is also horrific.

They might get the 4.5

Signs they might be ready to put this year's fight to bed.

House Republican leaders are pushing the 4.4 percent sales tax rate in House Bill 10 by Rep. Paula Davis, R-Baton Rouge. House Speaker Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia, is a co-authoring this legislation.

Davis did promise Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee that if her bill came back changed -- or with a higher tax rate -- that she would allow it to come up for a vote. That means if Edwards and the Democrats can get the support for a 4.5 percent sales tax, Davis might not stop her bill from being changed.

House Democrats, particularly the Black Caucus, have said they aren't willing to vote for less than 4.5 percent or cut some government services.

Maybe they still won't find the votes for it. But there's an argument to be made that Republicans have thrown enough fits this year to score all the political points they need to go into next year's elections.  They've also managed to stave off more meaningful and lasting reforms. They've managed to protect the bulk of the corporate privileges bleeding the rest of us dry.

Also of note, Cameron Henry has attached his proposed budget re-vamp to the Davis bill.

It’s co-authored by Speaker Taylor Barras, and the amount of revenue it generates served as Appropriations chairman Cameron Henry’s number for the amounts he plugged into his supplemental spending bill, HB 1, on Wednesday evening.

“This removes the priority list in the original budget bill, and appropriates the money from the Davis bill,” Henry told his committee. “I picked the Davis bill, because we needed something to get the conversation going, We need to move along and get something over to the Senate.”

Even if the Senate revises it to a 4.5% sales tax that barely funds state government as it is. It also preserves what most Democrats consider an intolerable burden on the poor and it effectively "denies the Governor a win" by ensuring a continuance of the argument we've been having for the past few years.  It might be time for Republicans to declare the mission accomplished and allow this thing to end. They've done enough damage.

Update:  Wait a minute. Somebody might have found them some free money. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — States will be able to force shoppers to pay sales tax when they make online purchases under a Supreme Court decision Thursday that will leave shoppers with lighter wallets but is a big win for states.

More than 40 states had asked the high court to overrule two, decades-old Supreme Court decisions that they said cost them billions of dollars in lost revenue annually. The decisions made it more difficult for states to collect sales tax on certain online purchases.

This just happened so I'm not sure how much revenue this produces. A law passed earlier in the year provides for Louisiana to take advantage of the ruling immediately. Although how immediately is also in question.

Upperdate: Here is a full clarification as to what today's SCOTUS ruling means for Louisiana's fiscal crisis. In short, not much. 

The Supreme Court ruling doesn't actually allow any state to start collecting more internet sales taxes. The court has decided to send the case, which involves a South Dakota sales tax law, back to a lower court for another trial. It could be years before the ruling has any effect on state revenue.

"It's not going to result in immediate income to the state," said Rep. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe.

Even if the Supreme Court ruling could take effect immediately, Louisiana isn't ready for it. States that want to collect more internet sales taxes must have a streamlined system and central collection point, according to the ruling.

Louisiana has none of these things.

"Louisiana is probably the farthest from being in compliance," Drenkard said in an interview. 

So much for that, then.  Of course, Cameron Henry's Facebook page hasn't weighed in from alternate reality yet, so we'll see. 

Meanwhile, the House rejected Davis's bill at 4.5% this evening so, so much for that as well.  They still haven't moved any revenue bills.

Constitution can kicked again

One thing that seemed like a possibility going into the latest special session was a deal to pass the 4.5% sales tax in exchange for getting the ball rolling on a constitutional convention. We've already talked about why that would be a bad idea if you would like to review that. In any case we don't have to worry about it now because  it doesn't look like that's going to be the deal.

On separate 3-3 votes Wednesday, the House & Governmental Affairs committee, rejected two resolutions that would have organized a study commission to consider the feasibility and possible issues surrounding the possibility of changing the state constitution to better address the state’s ongoing fiscal problems.

Democratic New Orleans Rep. Neil Abramson said 13 mid-year corrections and a string of special sessions, including this one, to address ongoing budget problems underlined the need for fundamental changes in the way state government collects and spends taxpayer dollars. The most efficient way of accomplishing that goal would be to change the financial structure in the constitution that, among other things, locks away money for specific programs.

Don't worry. Neil will be back with more of the same ideas next year. But first he's sponsoring the least helpful of all the sales tax bills that came out of his committee today.

Bills now advancing to the floor, where they will need 70 House votes, a two-thirds majority of the chamber:

House Bill 10, sponsored by Rep. Paula Davis, R-Baton Rouge, would extend .4 percent of a one-cent sales tax set to expire June 30 and suspend some sales tax breaks.

House Bill 9, sponsored by Abramson, to extend .33 percent of the expiring sales tax and also suspend some sales tax breaks.

House Bill 4, sponsored by Rep. Stuart Bishop, R-Lafayette, to extend half of the expiring sales tax for the start of the next budget cycle but automatically drops to .2 percent over time. It does not address the sales tax breaks, commonly called "cleaning pennies" on existing sales taxes.

None of the bills that advanced out of the House Ways & Means Committee exactly matches the half-cent and "clean penny" proposal backed by Gov. John Bel Edwards and narrowly defeated in the last special session.

Bishop's bill would get most of the trick done, if you consider the trick just getting us out of this mess and into another one in a year or so unless some dramatic tax reform package gets done between now and then but I think the time is well passed for that kind of optimism.

Actually, transit should probably be transit, primarily

I'm as excited as the next guy for New Orleans-to-Baton Rouge passenger rail and all.  But I'm not exactly holding my breath for this.

Planners in charge of the long-discussed Baton Rouge-New Orleans passenger rail service will unveil conceptual designs for the two rail stations in the Capital City Tuesday evening at a public meeting designed to gain input and provide and update on the project.

The East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority and HNTB, the consulting firm hired to explore the rail service project, will host the meeting at 6 p.m. in the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church at 185 Eddie Robinson Sr. Drive. The organizations in recent months have conducted technical analysis, met with political and community leaders in the proposed areas and designed the preliminary concepts for two “state-of-the-art, multi-modal” rail stations.

"Conceptual," is the operative term in that first paragraph.  Rest assured we're not anywhere close to getting anything built yet. Not with this state fiscal climate or the current federal political nightmare serving as context.  You aren't going to get any infrastructure built without first raising a ton of money from people who can't afford to pay and second handing that money over to one or several corrupt "private partners."

So it's probably a good thing that this thing isn't especially close to being a shovel-ready project at the moment. Otherwise we wouldn't be designing transit for people so much as building some developer's "economic development engine."

Jones said the rail stations could also include retail, residential or office developments, as well as sponsorships, to make them into economic development engines.

"The most successful projects of this type around the country are not transit centers in and of themselves but are part of a more attractive development that includes a lot of commercial and pedestrian activity," Jones said.

Best of intentions

She's always talking about "being intentional." What does that even mean?

There can be no better investment in our future than our children. Our families are the backbone of our city. When we are intentional about the bonds with the children in our community, we all move forward. It’s about we. #CityOfYes pic.twitter.com/y1kuStbUwG

— Mayor LaToya Cantrell (@mayorcantrell) June 18, 2018

I'm especially curious what it might mean to be "intentional about the bonds with the children" since she tweeted this at the same time that Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were at the Convention Center endorsing the Trump Administration's policy of intentionally separating children from their families and putting them into cages.

Speaking at the opening session of the National Sheriff's Association annual conference, Sessions suggested that people entering the country illegally are endangering children in order to avoid prosecution.

“We cannot and will not encourage people to bring their children, or other children, to the country unlawfully by giving them immunity in the process,” Sessions said.

The attorney general also said that if the country builds a border wall and passes legislation to close some "loopholes," then "we won't face these terrible choices."

The sheriff’s association gave Sessions a lifetime achievement award before his speech, garnering a standing ovation from the crowd at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

Meanwhile, outside, "at least 5 people were detained" as a group of protesters confronted sheriff's deputies who may or may not have been 1) on duty or 2) within their own jurisdiction.

At least five people were detained outside the convention hall Monday morning. Deputies from the St. Charles Parish and St. John the Baptist Parish sheriff’s offices, who were in attendance at the conference, were seen physically restraining protesters.

Some of the protesters were spotted getting intentionally kneed in the back.  Others were intentionally run over by a truck.  I don't know if anyone has asked the mayor for comment yet. But, in light of her concerns about "the bonds with the children in our community," somebody probably should.

Specifically, they should ask her whether or not her office's attitude toward immigration policy differs at all from Mitch Landrieu's. Recall that just six months ago Sessions met with Mitch and Police Chief Michael Harrison to discuss city's practice of sharing information with federal enforcement entities such as ICE.  Sessions came away from that meeting pleased with what he had learned.

"We are pleased that the attorney general and Senator Kennedy have come around to agreeing with the point we have made all along -- New Orleans is not a 'sanctuary city' and the NOPD's policies have maintained consistent compliance ..." Landrieu said in a statement.

Asked for comment after the meeting, Sessions' office issued a statement saying New Orleans "has committed to sharing information with federal law enforcement authorities ..."

Over the course of the last few years, we also learned that Mitch and Harrison used tools like Palantir, private security firms like Trident Response Group,  and a network of surveillance cameras wired in to a 24 hour monitoring center to collect and analyze data which, again, according to Jeff Sessions, they were obviously willing to share with federal enforcement agencies.

Recently, our new mayor along with members of the city council announced a major expansion of that surveillance apparatus involving a highly questionable partnership with yet another unaccountalbe private contractor.  They were very intentional about it.

“Any assistance I can provide from this position I am in, y’all can count me in,” said Banks, who began his first term on the council earlier this month.

(Jason) Williams, who is in his second term, added, “It’s not whether we can afford to do it. It’s that we can’t afford not do it.”

A focal point of the partnership’s $1 million first phase involves plans by Bryan Lagarde’s ProjectNOLA group to install more than 300 street-facing surveillance cameras on places of worship and congregation members’ homes in neighborhoods such as the 7th Ward, Gert Town and Central City, all of which are plagued by drugs and violence.

Today, Willliams co-signed a largely symbolic City Council resolution condemning Sessions's "zero tolerance" immigration policy.

"I will continue to publicly condemn the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions' enforcement of their new immigration policy to separate families," said Council President Jason Williams. "Forcibly separating children from parents as a matter of course is inhumane and unnecessary, and as an African American and a descendant of American slaves, this policy is evocative of some of darkest days in this countries young history. This policy is truly self-inflicted wound, and like many we have seen from the current administration, is antithetical to American values and basic humanity."

That sounds pretty good.  But if he's making these statements at the same time he is supporting a dangerous surveillance network that feeds the very beast he's performatively railing against, what do those words really mean?   What does it mean to be "intentional" about protecting families when those intentions don't match up with your actual policy decisions?