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Sunday, March 17, 2024

Rats gotta eat

First of all we'd like to thank NOPD Chief Anne Kirkpatrick for choosing to drop this Weed Rats meme on us just after Mardi Gras.  It means that everyone who might have had to scramble for ideas a few weeks ago will now have a full year to really sit with the image and decide whether or not it is truly the costume for them. 

Heavy mold and deteriorating elevators, HVAC units and plumbing are some of the issues that have been plaguing New Orleans Police Department headquarters.

But those aren't the only problems at aging police facilities around the criminal justice complex near Tulane Avenue and South Broad Street. Don't forget the vermin, NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told the City Council's Criminal Justice Committee on Monday.

"The rats are eating our marijuana," Kirkpatrick said. "They're all high."

The great thing about the weed rats is everybody immediately loves them. But also nobody actually believes they are a thing. I mean, sure, there are rats at police headquarters. That's easy enough to believe. But, if anything is being stolen from the evidence room there, it's far more likely the culprits are in uniform.*  Even more dubious is Kirkpatrick's claim that the rats are "high." Rats can and do get high. We learn that from this study where rats were observed with increased appetite and laziness after exposure to cannabis vapor.  The key bit, however, is the vapor. Could the rats get high from just eating the raw plants?  I don't think it works like that. 

Anyway, why is this colorful fantasy being brought to our attention now?  Well, you see, NOPD wants a new headquarters. Actually, that's not entirely accurate.  They aren't necessarily asking for a new building. We just know they want to move out of the one they have

A plan to relocate New Orleans Police Department headquarters into two floors of a downtown office tower is a large piece of a wider vision to leave behind the city’s crumbling justice complex in Mid-City, said chief administrative officer Gilbert Montaño on Wednesday.

About 400 police department staffers are slated to relocate with the pending move to the 17th and 18th floors of 1615 Poydras Street, called the DXC building, he said. The draft 10-year lease, which awaits City Council approval, calls for a May 1 move-in date.

The plan is to abandon the current HQ located in the (geographic) center of the city with its proximity to the criminal courthouse and central lockup and move, instead, into an office tower downtown with limited public access and practically no parking. Oh and also now the city doesn't control the building and is paying rent to a private landlord for at least 10 years. This is short sighted, minor league city type stuff. The police aren't even "allowed" to do police business in the police office. 

Lahasky said the lease will not allow NOPD to conduct interrogations or make arrests within the office building.

“Our agreement with NOPD is that the offices will be utilized as administrative offices, and that certain uses such as interrogations and lineups and things that outsiders perceive as maybe not the kind of uses you’d like to see in an office building” won't be allowed, he said. “Those particular uses are to be held off-site.”

Nothing about this makes any sense in terms of public service.  It does make sense if you come at it from the point of view that the city government exists solely to facilitate real estate deals that benefit the succession plans of fading oligarchs like Frank Stewart.  Which is precisely the sort of thing you might think if you are Gilbert Montaño. 

Negotiations began in earnest about six months ago, Montaño said, when the building was still owned by businessman and philanthropist Frank Stewart. The Monroe businessmen who bought it at the end of last year, brothers Eddie and Joseph Hakim, also own Orleans Tower, the former Amoco Building a few blocks away. The city leases space in that building for the Department of Safety and Permits, Civil District Court clerk and Civil Service Commission, among others. 

Frank Stewart, for those who need a refresher, is a billionaire investor whose fortune derives from his family's funeral home business.  The "philanthropist" descriptor he gets in articles like the one above is an inevitable result of owning lots of things (downtown office towers, for example) and making use of as many tax write-offs as possible.  In recent years, his "charity" work garnering the most attention was his leadership of the Monumental Task Force's attempts to maintain the city's Confederate statues. In 2017, he took out a full page ad in the newspaper denouncing Mitch Landrieu's efforts to have them removed.  Mitch was on his way out of office and working on his national profile at the time.  Because of this, he could afford to ignore Stewart's provincial concerns.  The same could not be said for Stewart's ambitious local ally in the monumental "lost cause," Councilwoman and soon to be Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

On Dec. 17, 2015, the day the City Council voted to remove the monuments, Cantrell, then a council member, gave a speech that must have been music to the ears of the pro-monument crowd, chastising then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu for bringing the issue to light. Amazingly, within the same hour she joined the majority of the council in voting for removal.

In early 2018, within a few months of being elected mayor, Cantrell empowered a secretive working group of Confederate monument supporters to decide the future location of the warehoused monuments. One of her spokesmen stated, “She believes that the future of the former monuments belongs in the hands of those who care about them.”

It’s highly likely that the only reason the mayor didn’t go through with the group’s relocation plan, moving them to another prominent location, was the exposure she received in an article by Kevin Litten published in The Times-Picayune. The article exposed Cantrell’s willingness to placate the side of the argument endorsed by some of the most moneyed and powerful people in the city — the side she voted against as a City Council member.

None of that was surprising. Both mayors (and a number of other state and local politicians) have done plenty of favors for Stewart over the years. In 2017, the same year the monuments controversy came to a head, they all helped swing the deal that gave Stewart's building its "DXC" moniker. That $120 million deal committed the city and the state to a package of subsidies and incentives including an agreement to rebate the payroll of software company DXC in exchange for its promise to occupy ten floors of Stewart's tower. The company and the politicians promised as many as 2,000 new "tech" jobs.

Of course, there were those of us who, just days after the announcement, observed that DXC appeared to be taking advantage of the state's generous corporate welfare offerings in order to facilitate its own global downsizing and outsourcing scheme to cut jobs and wages. But nobody ever listens to those of us who say such things. Anyway as time went on, it became clear that DXC was never committed to hiring locally. Over the following years, they would repeatedly miss the goals set forth in the original agreement. As of 2022, they had nearly scuttled the entire thing and were looking to sub-lease much of their office space in the tower.

In the meantime, The Cantrell Administration has spent plenty of time and energy trying to figure out ways to plug the hole in Stewart's revenue stream.  At one point they even considered moving City Hall into the building.  Which brings us up to last year when we find an aging Stewart trying to liquidate his asset portfolio in a slow market for downtown office space. At the time of the sale, the building was roughly 50 percent vacant. But its buyers, Eddie and Joseph Hakim were strangely bullish on its prospects. Likely the, by then, well underway negotiations over a guaranteed NOPD tenant had something to do with that.

All of this is typical New Orleans cronyism. But it also reflects the conservative ideology at the heart of the Cantrell administration. Gilbert Montano said recently that "the future" of city government should rely more on regressive user fee-based budgeting rather than a reliable tax base for dependable services. Under that kind of regime, there can be no real investment in social or physical infrastructure. City services will exist under continual threat of cuts. City departments won't own their own buildings.  Not even the police.  The only dependable revenue streams created go the other direction. Out of the public coffers and into the hands of corporate landlords.

For his part, (potential mayoral candidate) Oliver Thomas wants to put a pause on the NOPD lease because he doesn't feel adequately communicated toward.

“Not only was there a lack of communication about this viable move, but it seems like there was not a lot of thought put into multiple locations that would provide the best access to the men and women that utilize the headquarters, as well as the citizens to whom access is extremely important,” Councilmember Thomas said in his letter to Montano and Chief Kirkpatrick.

Thomas wants to “take a step back” to review other possible locations for the new NOPD headquarters.

He says he’d like to see the new NOPD headquarters be in a location that is more “community-oriented” with easier parking and that could become a more permanent spot that would add “value to the community.” He also says he’d like to see the new NOPD headquarters be in a location that would add overall access to residents in the city.

The kids are already joking that maybe Thomas will suggest putting the new HQ at the Six Flags site his friend Troy Henry is supposed to be redeveloping. But it occurs to us that this would put us a step closer to the New Orleans Cop City we've already speculated that Mayor OT might build one day. So maybe it's not that funny. In any case, it wouldn't represent a change in governing philosophy so much as a slight adjustment in the direction of the spoils.  It's never really a question of whether the rats are going to get a piece of the stash so much as it is which rats in particular.



 *That link references an evidence room scandal from 15 years ago.  When I started writing this post, I hadn't yet seen the latest one out just today.  Interesting that after the weed rats got their fifteen minutes of fame, NOPD has moved right along to blaming the conveniently deceased for what is clearly a systemic issue.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Nobody actually lives here

It's pretty amazing that we're going to live with a persistent narrative of post-Katrina New Orleans (the 2010s especially) as some kind of a boom period. In reality it was a straightforward process of gentrification and ethnic cleansing. The population took a big hit with in 2005 and never recovered. The next 20 years were a time of wealth consolidation. What were once neighborhoods were scooped up by asset speculators. Schools and family services were sold off. It wasn't just raw population numbers that got smaller, the scope of community, the social sphere itself shrunk. It was a truly awful time. But for some reason, it was accompanied by a media driven fantasy about a "new New Orleans" attracting scores of young hip people.

Anyway, it's all still happening. Only now we get to read about it minus the pretense

And the New Orleans-Metairie metro area saw the steepest loss among large metros nationwide, with its population declining by 4.3%. The metro area had traditionally been able to count on fast-growing St. Tammany Parish to improve its standing, but that ended in 2020 when the suburban parish was made into its own metro area.

Even if the population growth St. Tammany saw since 2020 were added into the New Orleans-Metairie total, the metro area would still have seen the third steepest loss across U.S. metros.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Speedily warped

As the regular session of the legislature begins, I just wanted to flag this particularly good Gambit summary of where we are so far in Jeff Landry times.  The "crime" special session alone should be considered a human rights violation.

During his campaign for governor, Landry painted New Orleans as a lawless city that only he could fix, vowing to “bend the city” to his “will.”

While the city has struggled with gun violence and high rates of poverty and trauma, the rate of violent crime dropped significantly in 2023.

Violent crime increased nationally during the pandemic, from 2020 to 2022, especially in New Orleans. But, by last October, the city’s murder rate had fallen by 24%, with similar declines in nonfatal shootings, armed robberies and aggravated batteries. The national rate of violent crimes also dropped, but the rate in New Orleans declined twice as much.

Still, Landry kept his promise to call a special legislative session on crime, which ran from Feb. 19 to Feb. 29. During it, lawmakers speedily passed traditional failed “tough on crime” measures that certainly will put — and keep — more people behind bars in a state that already has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country.

The previous legislature seemed to understand that in 2017 when lawmakers passed a bipartisan set of reforms to the criminal legal system. The changes reduced penalties for nonviolent crimes and expanded opportunities for parole by allowing a state board to release certain nonviolent offenders from prison early.

The current legislature, fueled by Landry’s support, undid much of those reforms last month — in some cases making the system harsher than it was before 2017. He’s already signed most of them into law and is expected to soon sign the rest. Once signed, they’ll start taking effect over the next six months.

I've already said this but those 2017 reforms were the result of decades of hard work and struggle while people waiting on relief from the cruel punishment state suffered.  All that's been wiped out in an instant. It will take generations of more suffering to fix that. 

Much more damage to come this spring.

Friday, March 01, 2024

The backlash is swift and devastating

The 2017 criminal justice reforms were the culmination of decades worth of struggle and effort. They were an imperfect but long overdue compromise born out of years of experience as Louisiana learned the hard way that excessive cruelty and mass incarceration does not make our communities "safe" from violent crime.  And, for a brief moment, even those mild and imperfect compromise measures were beginning to show some small benefit. Here is a recent Washington Post summary of all that.

Embarrassed by his state’s incarceration rate and racial disparities, Edwards set out to reimagine the state’s prison system after he was elected in 2016.

Edwards worked with GOP legislators and national nonprofit groups to figure out how to make Louisiana a national model in criminal justice reform. At the time, the state was sending nonviolent offenders to prison at 1.5 to 3 times the rate of other Southern states, according to state data. Louisiana’s inmate population was so high the American Civil Liberties Union called the state the “prison capital of the world.

In 2017, with bipartisan support, Edwards signed into law 10 bills collectively known as the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI). The legislation recalculated prison terms for nonviolent offenders, gave judges more discretion to offer probation, and made it easier for some prisoners to receive parole, including juveniles sentenced to life in prison.

The Pew Charitable Trusts, which helped develop the legislation, estimated the new laws would slash the state’s prison population by 10 percent over the next decade. The measures were also expected to save the state $262 million, money that would be diverted to community-based groups that work to lower crime and recidivism.

Separately, Edwards signed a law in 2017 that stated juvenile offenders under the age of 18 couldn’t be tried in the adult criminal justice system, although prosecutors could still make exceptions for minors suspected of carrying out heinous violent crimes.

Six years later, state data indicates the reforms have achieved the goal of reducing the number of nonviolent offenders in the state’s prison system.

A December report by the Louisiana Department of Corrections found the state’s prison population has fallen from about 35,000 inmates in 2016 to about 29,000 by the end of 2023 — a reduction driven by a 50 percent decline in prisoners being held on nonviolent offenses. Recidivism due to new criminal offenses or parole or probation violations also dropped sharply. All that has added up to $153 million in taxpayer savings, the report noted.

Yes, well, goodbye to all that. We're boomeranging back the other direction now, and then some.

Louisiana death row prisoners could soon be executed with nitrogen gas and the electric chair under legislation given final approval by state lawmakers Thursday — part of a push by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to toughen penalties for criminals and limit their opportunities for second chances.

The legislation, House Bill 6, headlined a whirlwind 10-day special session convened by Landry in a bid to fight crime. Lawmakers sent 19 other pieces of legislation to Landry’s desk Wednesday and Thursday, marking a victory in the governor’s effort to lurch the state’s policies to the political right by dismantling bipartisan justice system changes enacted in 2017.

Lifetimes of arduous organizing effort erased in an instant. No more parole for any adult (which we will define as 17 yrs and up now.) Extreme limits on conviction appeals. And, on top of that, now also, death by torture. All of this will take another generation or longer of suffering before a new mild, hard-won compromise might hope to undo any of it. 

"Major entertainment district"

This is kind of a story about the mayor's objections to a recently passed concealed carry law.  But the part that draws our interest is where we learn that Alonzo Knox might have a solution. 

City leaders said they hope that after  Gov. Landry signs the bill, legislators will at least agree to exempt the entertainment district of New Orleans. 

Councilwoman Helena Moreno said she believes a proposed house bill might offer some pushback against permit-less concealed carry. According to Moreno, State Rep. Alonzo Knox, whose district includes The French Quarter, plans to author a bill to limit the crime session law's application to his district. 

"It's a carveout of what we are calling a major entertainment district, these are the areas which have the largest crowds," Moreno said. "What the legislation does, is it puts it under a firearm-free zone, so in public places there would not be firearms allowed."

Moreno said she has spoken to Republican legislators privately, who said they would support the bill. 

Something tells me an "entertainment district" bill by Alonzo Knox is likely to be more about heightening surveillance, cracking down on street vendors and removing homeless people from sight during the Superbowl next year and that the guns bit is just a coincidental add on.  Anyway, watch this space, I guess.

Actually, instead of being lazy, I looked up the bill. On its face, it just defines a new term, "major entertainment district" in order to create a zone where firearms are prohibited.

A major entertainment district" means the public spaces within an area that traditionally hosts more than fifteen million people annually, contains a venue for sports and entertainment with a capacity for more than seventy-five thousand people, a convention center with more than one million square feet of exhibition space, and has one land-based casino. 

This shall include the area of the city of New Orleans containing the boundaries of the French Quarter as provided in R.S. 25:799(B), the Downtown Development District as provided in R.S. 33:2740.3(A), and the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center as provided in R.S 33:130.862(A).

Conveniently, of course, this creates a new stop-and-frisk zone for Jeff Landry's "Troop NOLA."  There are other issues as well with designating a larger part of downtown under a term that implies its primary function is to entertain tourists.

The Year of Cloying and Sniveling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Does Billy understand what the word, pardon, means?

 The pig didn't do anything that needs pardoning

BATON ROUGE, La. — A baby pig that was rescued after being tossed like a football near a Mardi Gras event in New Orleans was “pardoned” Wednesday and has found a permanent home with a Louisiana lawmaker. The weeks-old little pink critter — dubbed Earl “Piglet” Long, a play on the name of the former 45th governor of Louisiana — was ceremoniously pardoned by Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser on the Louisiana Capitol steps.

“He will live out his life without any threat of being thrown like a football or being part of jambalaya or boudin in someone's kitchen here in Louisiana,” Nungesser said, referring to two popular dishes that contain sausage. While beads, stuffed animals and hand-decorated souvenirs are frequently catapulted through the air during Carnival Season in Louisiana, pigs are not among those items.

The piglet’s journey to a new home began earlier this month when a bystander noticed men in a park, not far from a Mardi Gras parade, throwing “what appeared to be a mini-football” to one another and laughing, according to the Humane Society of Louisiana.

I mean, clearly, the transgression here is committed by the people abusing the animal. Although, I can't say that's especially pardonable.  Anyway, if anything the pig should have to pardon Billy. Doesn't matter for which offense. Just pick any of them

The rent is too damn high

The median individual income in New Orleans is about $27,000.   That almost gets you somewhere to live comfortably... but not quite

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - A new report released by the real estate marketplace website Zillow says people who want to rent a home in New Orleans need to bring in over $64,000 a year.

The information was released in a January 2024 report from Zillow.

The “income to afford rent” is a new statistic published by Zillow Research. It measures the minimum household income needed to afford typical rent in metro areas across the country.

"Typical rent," according to this Zillow survey in New Orleans is $1600.  Can the typical New Orleanian actually afford that?  Not really, but that isn't who we waste our housing stock on anymore. It's too valuable for that. Which is why the court battle over, even the very mild ("reasonable" in their telling) City Council restrictions on short term rentals, is never going to end. 

Lemelle's ruling is not a guarantee the new rules will survive, however, since plaintiffs' lawyer Dawn Wheelahan said she will appeal. But it will allow Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration to once again ramp up enforcement. The rules have been suspended over the last five months since Lemelle granted the plaintiffs, who are largely out-of-state owners of short-term rentals, a temporary injunction.

The last appellate ruling that struck down the earlier law came two years after the district court's initial ruling.

This isn't to say the city is any particular hurry to resume enforcement in the meantime. There's too much money at stake for landlords. They won't say it that way, of course. Instead they'll say gobbledygook. 

The city's next steps were not clear as of Wednesday afternoon.

"The Department of Safety and Permits is currently working with the Law Department to understand the full implications of the judgment and chart a path forward. The department will be releasing additional guidance for the public on enforcement and licensing very soon," spokesperson John Lawson said.

The court-ordered halt on enforcement has spurred a rise in non-permitted rentals in residential areas, where they outnumbered those with permits by about six to one earlier this month. Council members JP Morrell and Joe Giarrusso urged the administration to quickly resume enforcement.

Just gonna drag their feet until the next appeal garners a new injunction. Then nobody has to do anything until the next ruling. And even then maybe not.  

In the meantime, the rent is too damn high.

Governed but not represented

Get used to this sort of thing under Governor Landry.  The City of New Orleans and its people can consider themselves an occupied territory, basically.  Decisions about their basic infrastructure, even, are going to be made from elsewhere. 

Landry announced Tuesday he had signed an executive order creating the Governor’s Task Force for the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. The 14-member body, consisting of appointees by the governor, state agencies, city economic development leaders and others, will have wide latitude to make recommendations on any aspect of the agency's operations.

It also has a specific mandate to look at the S&WB's billing practices, its governing structure and whether its management should be reorganized to "achieve more direct lines of authority" over key operations.

The task force is to provide recommendations within 30 days, in time for the upcoming legislative session.

Notably, the group does not include any dedicated appointments by New Orleans elected officials — including Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who serves as president of the state-authorized agency — or any leaders of the S&WB, though a Landry spokesperson suggested some local officials could be named.

No one you've elected gets to appoint anyone to the "task force." Nor does anyone who can reasonably be construed to represent the residents and workers here. Instead, we get bosses and business owners.  

One person appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Transportation and Development

One person appointed by the Executive Director of the Coast Protection and Restoration Authority

One person appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality

One person appointed by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Louisiana

One person appointed by the Louisiana Engineering Society

One person appointed by the Louisiana Associated General Contractors

One person appointed by Jefferson Parish Public Works

One person appointed by Greater New Orleans, Inc.

One person appointed by the Business Council of New Orleans

One person appointed by New Orleans & Company

Four people appointed by Governor Landry

None of these parties has released the names of their appointees yet. But the wind is blowing toward privatization now so keep an eye out for Jim Bernhard

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Oh my god he admit it

Decades of trying to push the bullshit line that we "create jobs" by giving away tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations. And now the minute they have enough power that they don't have to sell it anymore, they just drop the bullshit and say what they mean

Manufacturing companies can qualify for lucrative property tax exemptions even if their investments don’t create or retain jobs, under an executive order that Gov. Jeff Landry signed on Wednesday that marks a significant shift in the way the state incentivizes economic development.

Landry’s order, which he signed Wednesday but announced earlier this month, reverses a big change to the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, better known as ITEP, that then-Gov. John Bel Edwards made in 2016 and again in 2018.

We have removed the job requirement because this program is about capital investment. It is not about job creating,” Landry told a crowd at the annual luncheon in Baton Rouge of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state’s most powerful business lobby.

Does anybody remember Friedman units?

That thing where you definitely expect conditions to improve "within the next 6 months" or so and then keep pushing that ahead as needed.  Anyway, we might have one of those with the NOPD consent decree now

The mood in Morgan's courtroom was relatively convivial Wednesday afternoon at the first public hearing in more than a year on progress with the federal consent decree, and the first for NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick as the city's top cop.

It was a stark contrast to the last series of hearings, where Morgan found the department violated 10 provisions of the consent decree in its internal investigation of Officer Jeffrey Vappie and his work for the mayor. Morgan ultimately declined to hold the city in contempt and accepted a remedial action plan. 

Fulfillment of the plan's 95 actions is among the steps necessary for the department to reach compliance with the consent decree and enter a period of stepped-down monitoring. Of those 95 items, a little under half are done. 

"Our estimated time of completion is June 2024," said Deputy Chief Nicholas Gernon, who along with Kirkpatrick crafted that plan.

We'll check back then, I guess.

Also, here's a somewhat related aside.  On Mardi Gras morning, I got out to take my customary photos of high ranking New Orleans officials leading the Zulu parade on horseback.  Traditionally the mayor does this. But in recent years our current mayor's appearance there has been sporadic. Sometimes there's a councilmember instead. Sometimes it's the Sheriff.  And sometimes, like this year, it's just the police chief. 

Anne Kirkpatrick

Significant in this case, because it is the new Chief, Anne Kirkpatrick. It seemed like a big day for her. Later that night I watched her get interviewed by Errol and Peggy at the Rex ball. This isn't an exact quote below but it does capture the essence. 

 

Basically, she sounded like this whole gig is just a big fun cruise she's booked. Which might not be too far from the truth but we'll get back to that. 

Anyway, walking about 20 feet ahead of her was former interim Chief (and runner-up to Kirpatrick for the job) Michelle Woodfork.  We all noticed because a woman ran out of the crowd to greet her shouting, "That's MY chief! That's my chief right there!"  

And maybe she's got the right idea. Since we're in a world now where there are multiple police forces reporting to multiple District Attorneys applying multiple standards of justice and policing according to political whim, maybe we should all just pick whatever chief we prefer.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Not In Freddie's Backyard

It's difficult to know where, in New Orleans, Freddie King even wants people to be able to afford their rent.  We already know he doesn't want them in the parts of the city he's reserved for tourists in their Airnbnbs. Now, come to find out, he doesn't want them moving to the outskirts either. At least, not too close to the gated community he lives in, anyway

The intensifying fight has been brewing since the spring of 2022, when Zhang’s design team submitted its development proposal to the Planning Commission for the 17-acre wooded plot Zhang acquired the previous year. The land, while undeveloped, is already zoned to allow for multifamily development, but public hearings are still required as part of the permitting process.

English Turn residents, whose ranks include some notable names in politics and business, came out in force against the project at the first meeting in August 2022. King then moved to freeze the permitting process by introducing the interim zoning district, which is considered an emergency measure to strike zoning rules in any geographical area and replace them with temporary rules.

In this case, the measure prohibited multifamily development to allow the Planning Commission to study the impacts the development would have on drainage, roads and emergency services. 

King removed his name from the motion and chose not to vote on it to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. However, he did vote to uphold the measure in subsequent votes and he drafted the final ordinance implementing the temporary construction ban, which was approved by the council in March 2023.

Also, speaking of the STR rules, we had been expecting an "imminent" ruling from the judge considering the most recent version of the regulations. (The version that Freddie already torpedoed with his loophole.) But that was in December. And still nothing. Maybe the judge is waiting until after Jazzfest.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

When a fraud policing tech gets taken down, does it make a sound?

Chicago is finally ditching ShotSpotter. (Although, you might notice here that Johnson is dragging his feet a bit.)

Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Tuesday that he won’t renew the city’s controversial contract with ShotSpotter, making good on a key campaign promise to do away with the gunshot detection system that has come under heavy fire for allegedly being overly costly and ineffective.

After the Sun-Times reported on the decision earlier in the day, Johnson’s office issued a statement saying the city “will decommission the use of ShotSpotter technology on September 22,” meaning cops will have access to the system throughout the historically violent summer months and the Democratic National Convention.

"During the interim period, law enforcement and other community safety stakeholders will assess tools and programs that effectively increase both safety and trust, and issue recommendations to that effect,” the mayor’s office said.

The move comes after several years of mounting evidence that the technology is ineffective and, in fact, actively harmful. 

He insisted the technology is “unreliable and overly susceptible to human error,” adding that it “played a pivotal role” in the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in March 2021.

Many of those concerns were reiterated by critics of ShotSpotter, who frame it as a costly surveillance tool that has led to overpolicing in minority communities. Proponents argue it’s a lifesaving resource that gives cops another much-needed tool to respond to gun violence.

Last week, the Sun-Times reported the Cook County state’s attorney’s office had conducted a review of ShotSpotter that found the technology had a minimal effect on prosecuting gun violence cases.

ShotSpotter was previously slammed in a May 2021 report by the MacArthur Justice Center at the Northwestern School of Law, which found that nearly 86% of police deployments to alerts of gunfire prompted no formal reports of any crime.

In another scathing report that August, the city’s Office of the Inspector General concluded the technology rarely leads to investigatory stops or evidence of gun crimes.

Ever behind-the-curve, though are New Orleans public figures who reflexively promote the fraudulent technology as a "solution" whenever crime and policing is missing. (Here's JP Morrell doing that not even a scant two years ago, for example.) The more cynical among us would posit that this has something to do with the presence of local political and business personages on the company's board.  But it doesn't have to be that.  This city is backwards enough on its own.

The year of worst fears

Mardi Gras is over.* Time to start facing up to the realities of 2024, most of which will be bad.  Get used to it.  Here they come

Gov. Jeff Landry doesn’t want to make a public school teacher pay hike from last year permanent, frustrating teachers who have been pushing for the pay bump since early 2023.

“Of course, our worst fear came through,” said Cynthia Posey, legislative director for the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. “It’s really devastating to a profession where people are paid so much less than others with college degrees.” 

Landry’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year includes $198 million for a second round of stipends for teacher and school support staff, instead of permanent salary increases.

*Yes, I know there hasn't been the usual Mardi Gras posting on this site this year. It's coming. I've got a bunch of stuff to say about it before JP Morrell's promised April review of the Carnival ordinances, though. Coming soon

Turns out they will have to figure in a way to bribe the legislators too

At first they didn't think they'd have to.  Technically the legislature doesn't have direct authority over whether or not the sale goes through. But the way lawmakers were talking before the hearing was starting to make everybody feel back. So, back to the drawing board. For now, anyway. 

Hours before regulatory hearings in Baton Rouge were set to begin Wednesday, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana officials said they were shelving plans for a controversial $2.5 billion sale to Elevance Health.

In a statement early Wednesday, the Louisiana Department of Insurance said, “Late yesterday evening, Blue Cross notified the LDI that it has chosen to withdraw its Plan of Reorganization. The hearing scheduled for today and tomorrow is therefore canceled."

It’s the second time in less than a year that the Baton Rouge-based nonprofit has tabled its plan to sell itself to the for-profit Elevance, one of the nation’s largest insurers, amid steep opposition from doctors, hospitals, some policyholders and state lawmakers.

I'm sure they'll be back. 

Monday, February 12, 2024

The bribes are un-subtle

We really thought Jeff Landry would have been in jail by this point in his career. But we also thought the same of Billy Nungesser and look at them both just keep chugging along.  Anyway..

The chief of staff for Gov. Jeff Landry has worked as a lobbyist for Pennington Biomedical Research Center, the institute that the governor has singled out to receive potentially millions of research dollars as part of the controversial proposed sale of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana.

Landry aide Kyle Ruckert, who also served as a campaign strategist for Landry’s gubernatorial bid last year, held the lobbying contract until late last year when his wife Lynnel took it over exclusively. The contract, which is for representation in Washington, pays $40,000 per year, according to federal filings.

The Ruckerts have represented Pennington Biomedical since 2020.

Thursday, February 08, 2024

Shut up, go back to work, do not ask any questions

As we've already noted, the sale of Blue Cross Louisiana to a notorious for-profit corporation is a terrible deal. Even your also notorious Louisiana Legislature seems to understand this. 

Legislators, who came prepared with detailed questions about every aspect of the complex transaction, returned repeatedly throughout the marathon hearing to Elevance’s track record in other states. The company has racked up more than $26 million in regulatory fines for violations that included denying coverage of needed medical care, failing to cover preventive service like immunizations and breast cancer screening, and failing to pay claims in a timely manner.

Louisiana, where Elevance administers the Healthy Blue Medicaid plan, was among the seven states where the company has incurred fines.

But, because the deal also grants the new Governor and Commissioner of Insurance seats on the board of the new entity the sale will create, and sway over how some of the proceeds are spent, it will likely gain the approval of both. The Governor, in fact, has already made a public endorsement.  

There appears to be public momentum gathering against the sale. Note the skeptical legislators above and, here, even our reactionary Treasury Secretary John Fleming is militating against it today.  In the meantime, though, let's look at Jeff Landry's stated reasons for accepting his bribe lending his support. To begin with, he says it's a good excuse to boot people off of Medicaid.

Landry’s strongest comments in favor of the Blue Cross sale centered on the nonprofit foundation, Accelerate Louisiana Initiative, that will funded with the bulk of sale proceeds and surplus Blue Cross reserves, for a total of more than $3 billion.

The foundation will seek to operate as a nonprofit public-private trust, a designation that will require a change of state law. It is to have four focus areas, all centered on poverty and health outcomes. Landry praised the first pillar, which supposedly would move people from dependence to independence.

In other words, we’re going to be able to have an organization that is going to work towards trying to move those people off of Medicaid,” the Republican governor said.
It used to be, you had to just pull the inference out of the policy choice itself and explain how hostile the intent was.  Nowadays, they just come out and say what they are doing.  

The other thing they've given up on pretending to anymore is the notion that there are fiscally "conservative principles" at work here. It's about being cruel for the sake of being cruel.

That federal government-sponsored health insurance program for poor people was dramatically expanded under Landry’s predecessor, Democrat John Bel Edwards. Almost half the state’s population is now on Medicaid, most of which is paid for by the federal government.

Landry said Accelerate money will also be used to help get the state’s “safety net programs” working in sync. He used the example of a hypothetical patient with Type II diabetes, a chronic health condition that leads to other health problems. Landry said the patient might receive a “shiny brochure” from her doctor telling her to eat healthy and lose weight to help her condition.

“Then, she puts it in her purse, goes to Piggly Wiggly and goes down the aisle to the soda, chips, cookies, and then she goes to the cash register with her Louisiana Purchase card,” said Landry, using an old trope that criticizes welfare recipients. “How about if we had an organization that helps the government start to integrate the food stamp program with the Department of Health, so instead of getting a fancy brochure we could give her $100” if she engages in healthy lifestyle choices,” he said.

“When else are we going to get that opportunity again?” he said. “Those are the things we will do.”
Poor people deserve to be bullied and shamed by the state.  It's the only way to keep the help in line.  And that is, in fact, all they are good for. Landry is saying that out loud as well. 

The plans for the foundation, which were changed late last year as Blue Cross sought approval from state regulators for the deal for a second time, now specifically prohibit research money for health outcomes from going to higher educational institutions — except for the LSU-affiliated Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge.

Landry said that giving the money to other Louisiana research institutions, a list that would include LSU and Tulane University, would be wasteful.

I don’t want money going to higher education. I want the money used in our workforce because everywhere I go, people are telling me they don’t have skilled labor. And I’ve seen these deals around the country and all the money gets sucked up by the universities and we got nothing,” Landry said.

When we consider this is how the Governor view his people; not so much as humans with human appetites for joy and knowledge and experience to be nurtured, but only as a "workforce" to be disciplined; then it's easier to understand why he's keen to sell their health care off to capitalist vultures at the nearest opportunity. It's an extremely efficient way of liquidating lives into profits.  

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

Get this off my desk

Every politician's dream everywhere is to hold the trappings of office; the social recognition, the little privileges, the bankable resume, the power to grant petty patronage favors for kickbacks, etc. without having to solve real problems.  If you are one of these office holders, anything serious, anything that requires you to fight with anyone powerful or, god forbid, actually believe in anything, is a big No Thank You.  You want to get that shit off your desk as quickly as possible. 

So, for example, you may have run for District Attorney in order to be congratulated as a "reformer." But when it comes time to do the job of dismantling the massively unjust carceral machine you promised to oppose, well, that's not really why we're here is it? No, indeed not.  We want that off our desk.   We don't even mind handing the keys to office back over to the very same people we replaced if it means we don't have to deal with it anymore. 

On Monday, shortly after this story was first published, Williams’ office released a CEA between his office and the AG, signed at the end of November. The agreement gives the AG’s office full authority to handle any state police cases in New Orleans from start to finish — from investigation, initiation of charges, trial, and even post-conviction matters. 

It also gives the Louisiana State Police’s Force Investigation Unit authority to handle any investigations related to law enforcement uses of force when they arise from arrests or investigations by state police. Any criminal matters related to those incidents would be prosecuted by the AG’s office. 

(The four page agreement released Monday afternoon, however, was missing one page. The Lens has requested it.)

The announcement comes at a time when conservatives across the country are targeting other local progressive prosecutors, hoping to strip them of power. 

Republican lawmakers in other states have passed bills allowing state attorneys general to step in to prosecute certain crimes refused by local DA’s. Other bills sought to impeach local prosecutors or suspend them from office. Landry seems inclined to take Louisiana in a similar direction. On his campaign website he bemoaned “woke” district attorneys playing a dangerous game of “catch and release” — a clear reference to Williams. 

When viewed against national dynamics, the new New Orleans partnership seems to provide a unique counterpoint. Though the state would not usually have the authority to enter the Orleans courthouse and try cases, Williams has invited prosecutors from within an office run by Donald Trump-backed Liz Murrill, to handle cases instigated by the state police, an agency under federal investigation for racial profiling and excessive force by troopers.

None of this would be possible without the permission of Jason Williams,” said Rafael Goyeneche, director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.

People think this is weird but Jason knows what he's doing.  Sure, it's an insult to the people of New Orleans that the reformed justice system they overwhelming voted for has been replaced by a right wing coup from outside of the jurisdiction.  But, you see, by welcoming the coup himself, Jason still gets to call himself the District Attorney. And that's really all that matters here.

Monday, February 05, 2024

It's called a bribe

Appreciate the legislators asking very good questions about all of this. But, at the end of the day, it will be Tim Temple and, to a lesser extent, Jeff Landry (via bully pulpit agenda setting) who will make the decision.*  So... the deal guarantees Temple a seat on the board of the new entity created by the sale.  And Landry gets this.

They called special attention to a curious provision in the plan to create Accelerate Louisiana, which will be a $3 billion foundation focused on addressing poverty and health inequity in the state. The provision prohibits the foundation from giving money for health research purposes to any higher education institution in the state except the Pennington Biomedical Research in Baton Rouge.

“You have $3.1 billion and the only institution that can receive funding is Pennington?” asked Sen. Adam Bass, R-Bossier City. “Why is that?”

Tim Barfield, a former Blue Cross member who is now board chair of the Accelerate Louisiana Initiative, said the stipulation was a condition imposed by Gov. Jeff Landry and his staff.

“That was a requirement of the attorney general, now governor,” Barfield said.

*Blue Cross policy holders also have to vote on the sale but that may be, in the bag, so to speak.  

Lawmakers also grilled Blue Cross about potential irregularities in the voting process and the way proxies are being collected. Under questioning, Blue Cross officials acknowledged that the same outside firm tabulating proxy votes is also soliciting members by phone to make sure they vote.

“The same group that can take a proxy vote over the phone is the same group calling to say, ‘Did you get your ballot?’” said Republican Sen. Thomas Pressly of Shreveport. “I am blown away.”

Thursday, February 01, 2024

Entergy messaging still not resilient enough

Back in March of last year, we thought this NOLA.com "Talking Business" interview with Entergy New Orleans CEO Deanna Rodriguez would be worth bookmarking for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, there's a part where she literally says it's nice that Austin (the city she arrived here from) is prioritizing crime, jobs, and infrastructure even though, "it is losing a lot of its soul."  You know, the classic soul-for-material wealth exchange that always works out so well for everyone.  Apparently, Rodriguez is excited to help get some of that alchemy working for us too!

But before she does that, she has to lay out her thoughts on the "lessons learned" for Entergy after its catastrophic system failures in the wake of Hurricane Ida left the city without power for over a week leading to at least 10 deaths in New Orleans from heat exhaustion.

What were the lessons you learned from Ida?

One of the biggest ones is that overcommunicating is a double-edged sword. You need to communicate as often as you can. But I realized I was in a very different environment than I had been in Texas, where the relationship between the regulators and the utility is very different. There, the regulators do not tweet everything you say. Here, the City Council does. Everything we shared was being amplified by the politicians either in a good way or a bad way. I think we learned how to share more carefully. It was a good lesson. If we are going to communicate with customers, we need to partner with the media to make sure we get our message out as clearly as possible.

So her main takeaway from the Ida experience is that their PR machinery needs to be a bit slicker. 

As for their actual infrastructure, I'm not sure fixing that has ever been a priority. Not when every disaster presents a new opportunity to slam ratepayers with new fees.  That was the idea behind their proposal before city council this week. It is likely thanks only to the federal funds made available via the infrastructure bill that councilmembers were able to resist giving them everything here.  

The three projects approved Tuesday are funded in part by the federal government through the bipartisan infrastructure law.

The company will replace 97 transmission towers from Slidell to Michoud with stronger poles and pole tops, addressing a key weak point exposed by Ida. The lines feed power to about 48,000 customers. The projects will also upgrade distribution poles serving about 1,300 customers near Chef Menteur Highway and add a 30 megawatt battery to provide backup to its solar station in New Orleans East.

About half of the $106 million in costs will be funded by the feds, while ratepayers will see bills rise by $1.50 a month by 2027 to pay for the rest. If the council had approved Entergy's broader plan, customers would see their bills increase to about $12 a month for the first phase.

Most of the time, though, Entergy loves it when their shit breaks. Stretching back to Katrina, each of these episodes has been an opening to slap on more fees.  It's why your bill looks like this now. 

Storm securitization cost riders 

Static monthly fees may or may not do much in the way of hardening the infrastructure. But they certainly provide a consistent and predictable monthly revenue stream on top of the standard utility rates. That's exactly the sort of thing the shareholders are looking for. Which is the primary motivator behind the creation of schemes like this.

The council also debated the impact of Operation Gridiron on Entergy’s shareholders, arguing that the utility neglects necessary maintenance in favor of replacing overall infrastructure

“Operation Gridiron is really proposed to the public as this altruistic endeavor, but that is not 100% true,” Councilmember JP Morrell said. “Entergy will profit from infrastructure investment… And you would admit that maintenance is not as profitable as replacement.”

“That’s fair,” said Courtney Nicholson, vice president of regulatory affairs at Entergy New Orleans. 

In previous reporting, Verite News found that as bills have climbed, so have payments to Entergy shareholders. As of November, the utility’s parent company has paid out over $3 billion in shareholder dividends since 2020.

Entergy is responding to the hazards brought on by climate change by taking steps to ensure that their profits and dividends stay strong. When you hear their execs talk about "resilience," this is what they mean. 

Still, the fact that the public at large and elected city councilmembers can still see all of this for what it is probably just means Rodriguez hasn't made good on her resolution to be better at lying to them.  It isn't for lack of trying.

In November 2023, the same month the organization was founded, Resilience New Orleans released a study that said that all New Orleanians, including those experiencing social vulnerabilities, stood to benefit from Entergy’s proposed resiliency investments. DeMoss also wrote an op-ed in defense of Entergy’s plan for NOLA.com.

Other energy nonprofits in the city, like the Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, have expressed skepticism of Entergy’s proposal, and representatives for the organizations spoke up at the meeting in support of the Council’s resolution. They also advocated for the Council to approve grid resiliency efforts put forward by community members, not just the ones proposed by Entergy.

Resilience New Orleans’ website advertises that Entergy is a supporter of the nonprofit organization. The company is thus far its only financial supporter, DeMoss told Verite News.

When asked by Verite News about her nonprofit’s connection to Entergy, DeMoss replied: “I know it doesn’t look great.”

DeMoss said Entergy gave her organization $40,000 to pay for the study, which was performed by Maryland-based firm Hedgerow Analysis. Outside of that $40,000, DeMoss said that her non-profit has neither received nor spent any other money.

This is basically just the "paid actors" bit all over again except in the form of a bogus non-profit.  That they called it, "Resilience New Orleans" is almost too on-the-nose.   

Anyway one more point of interest here is the paid actor in this case is Casey DeMoss. The article notes that previous to this gig, she served as director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy which is seen as a more legitimate advocate for ratepayers. That's something to watch. Lately it looks like jobs in the non-profit advocacy and political organizing sectors have been drying up everywhere. As that continues, and as corporations like Entergy seek to better hone their lobbying efforts, I don't expect DeMoss will be the last sellout we'll come across. All these comms and policy professionals are going to need resilience strategies of their own, after all.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Wise allocations of public capital

Why does one city need to dedicate public money and tax privileges to two different golf arcades three miles apart from one another? Well, it's kind of an accident. Or a series of accidents. Not well-intentioned accidents, mind you. These are the kind of accidents that happen when all of your policymakers begin with the assumption that the only lever available to anyone in government is the one that gives nice things to the already wealthy. 

Xiao, a Denham Springs-based businessman whose interests include Airborne Extreme trampoline parks in Louisiana, has been working on the Five O Four project since he purchased it from developer Joe Jaeger in late 2022.

Jaeger and his partners bought the site, the former home of The Times-Picayune, in 2016 for $3.5 million. Originally, he had a deal with Topgolf to build an outlet there. In 2017, after Topgolf pulled out, he struck a deal with rival chain Drive Shack to build one of their facilities.

In 2019, a decision by the Convention Center board to quietly propose a Topgolf on the land they controlled prompted an angry response from Jaeger and questions about why the state-sponsored facility would try to compete with a private development nearby.

Then-Gov. John Bel Edwards said it didn't make sense for two such similar outlets so near together and the Topgolf project appeared to be dead. But the pandemic slowed — and eventually scuttled — Jaeger's plans at the Howard Avenue site until Xiao stepped in with Five O Fore.

Xiao has subsidy deals both from reduced local property taxes and from a deal to recoup an additional 2% sales tax to pay for part of its development costs.

The Topgolf project was revived last year by the Convention Center. Topgolf will pay for the development costs itself and will sublet the land from RDNI, which is a long-term tenant of the convention center on that plot.

Topgolf is not seeking any direct taxpayer subsidy, though it is within the River District economic development district, which means it would raise an incremental 2% sales tax that can be used for River District development costs.
The article could have also mentioned the separate $21 million tax break doled out to Shell as part of that same River District scheme.  But try not to think about that right now. 

Anyway one of the golf arcades is suing the other one now over "unfair trade practices." That's pretty rich considering how both of these businesses got here in the first place.

The best bet is nothing will fundamentally change

It's been over a decade.That's a whole lot of holding out hope that our political leadership plans to do something about the exploitative violence of short term rental proliferation as soon as "the data comes in" or "the stakeholders"have their say, or a judge tells them what to do.

It's not clear when Lemelle might rule, or how he might come down. But more changes for the city's rules could be ahead. City Council leaders have threatened to pass an outright ban on residential short-term rentals if the latest law is ruled unconstitutional.

An ordinance to impose a ban was introduced by the council’s at-large members, Helena Moreno and JP Morrell, in September, within a week of Lemelle's restraining order. It has been repeatedly deferred as Lemelle has presided over hearings over the fall and winter.

The council members have said little about the proposal since introducing it. They declined comment for this article.

Blossom and others want more clarity on what comes next.

They threatened to do this really big thing and haven’t said anything since they threatened to do it — or promised to do it, depending on who you are — and nobody knows what to expect,” said Blossom, who supports the ban. “Are they going to follow through? Are they going to back down?”

The "really big thing" should have happened 15 years ago.  There comes a time when we have to understand these politicians all work for the landlords. If we want something big to happen, we aren't going to have their help getting it done.

Friday, January 26, 2024

CEO

Last summer a judge ruled against the city council in a lawsuit against the mayor's office in pursuit of greater oversight of how the city disperses funds derived from the Wisner Trust.  The already complex matter of the trust has only become more convoluted in recent years after Mayor Cantrell took the controversial step of negotiating a deal with the Wisner heirs and other parties to the, technically, expired trust.

It had been thought that when the original trust expired, its assets would transfer permanently to the city. But the mayor's deal effectively establishes a new, apparently perpetual, arrangement that maintains the terms of the original trust, keeping the Wisner heirs, LSU, Tulane, and the Salvation Army as co-beneficiaries. This sounds like a bad deal for the city. But because it allows the mayor maximum discretion to distribute the city's cut with minimal oversight from the council or the public, it is a very good deal for the mayor. And, really, that's all that matters, isn't it? 

Anyway, here is how that money gets used now

Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration improperly paid a city contractor tasked with cleaning up blighted lots and then tried to rush through a renewal of the contract, according to a report by the New Orleans Office of Inspector General that alleged the payments made by City Hall may have violated the state constitution.

The report, issued Thursday by Inspector General Ed Michel and based on interviews with city employees involved in the contracting process, also includes allegations that one employee was forced to resign after trying to slow down the contract renewal.

While it is not clear if the agreement with the Center for Employment Opportunities was eventually renewed, the OIG found that the administration violated its own contract — and possibly the state constitution, which prohibits anything that could be considered giving public money without a public purpose — by paying the group $500,000 without verifying that work it was hired for had been performed.

It feels like a story as old as time in New Orleans.  You've got a seemingly good cause. (We're cleaning up blight! We're helping incarcerated people transition back to work!) But look further and there is no documentation any of that work is done or information about how they go about it. It's a bit reminiscent of the NOAH home remediation scam back during the Nagin Administration. This isn't likely to draw as much attention, though. We're in a different era now. The volume of graft that goes on has magnified several times over and the capacity of the press to keep up is so greatly diminished that it all seems to wash over us like water from a busted main. If a scandal doesn't involve some salacious bit about the mayor's rumored paramour, it barely even registers.

But, alright, fine. Just for laughs, please tell us more about this Center for Employment Opportunities. 

The Center for Employment opportunities, known as CEO, is a New York-based nonprofit that employs recently incarcerated people and aims to help them get back on their feet.

In December, 2021, CEO signed a $1 million contract with the city to clean up abandoned lots, to be paid using money from the Wisner Trust fund. In addition to providing cleanup services to the city, the contract also required CEO to provide support services for the recently incarcerated people it employed. As part of the contract, CEO was to document the work it did and the services it provided to its workers.

But city employees said that documentation for some of that work was never requested nor submitted, according to interview summaries attached to the OIG report. CEO was also told it didn't have to submit invoices, despite contractual provisions requiring them, employees told OIG investigators.

If nothing else, the name of the organization has to be a red flag, right?  Why does the leadership of a supposedly charitable non-profit want its acronym to evoke in our minds the image of ruthless business moguls?  It's amateurish and insulting on its face. 

Or maybe it's just showing off. After all, there's nothing to stop any of this. Not, really. An Inspector General's report can sound like a dressing down, but the accountability is rarely likely to go beyond that. Especially when patronage scams like this are the bread and butter of city politics. And, frankly, that is the reason City Council keeps fighting with the mayor over the Wisner money. They don't necessarily want this sort of thing to stop. It's just that the way the mayor has structured the terms of the trust has frozen them out of the action. For now, anyway.

What does the "government affairs officer" do, exactly?

Blake Corley is quoted at the top of this article expressing his shock and disappointment at the arrest of the grifters for whom he had been laundering money into political contributions. It's hard to imagine he could be that surprised, though.  I mean if anyone should have known what was going on, it would be the person whose specific job it was to handle the operation.  

The complaint alleges the Patels created a fake lender which they used to “make” a $8,540,000 loan to Precision Powered Products, a Houston-based company, allegedly to expand the company in Puerto Rico. That loan was never made.

However, according to the complaint, the Patels allegedly then had 80% of the fake loan secured by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in October 2021 — and then sold the loan to Memphis broker-dealer Hanover Securities the next month for a profit — netting them millions of dollars. The FBI alleges they then transferred that money into accounts controlled by Trisha Patel.

The complaint further alleges that Trisha Patel gave $2.1 million of that money to an unnamed attorney, bought $500,000 into cryptocurrency, gave $200,000 to her four children’s private schools and spent $81,000 on a new BMW. She spent another $91,000 on rent.

According to the complaint, she used another $1.2 million to pay “various attorneys, lobbyists, and consultants on behalf of Nikesh Patel.” The complaint does not name the attorneys, lobbyists and consultants, but Corley, who denied that he is involved, has worked for the Patels and their businesses, including as the chief government affairs officer and in-house counsel for PPP and American Powered Pumps, a new Florida-based company.

“The majority of the remaining funds went to another business entity associated with the Patels,” the complaint reads, though it does not identify the entity. Trisha Patel is listed in a press release as the owner of American Powered Pumps, which formed last year.

One expects the Government Affairs Officer is the person responsible for the interactions highlighted above. Or at least one expects that he is heavily involved in shepherding them. In any case he took about $100,000 of the fraud money and put it into a couple of PACs from where it was spread to a long list of state political figures. The Gambit article gives a pretty thorough accounting of that.

While it's true that candidates don't always have a lot of control over who contributes to their campaigns and not every contribution automatically implies a quid pro quo and so forth, we can focus on a couple of salient matters in this case. For example, there's the curious case of Corley's fiance's recent campaign for the State House. Despite her status as a complete unknown 27 year old challenger to a well-liked Democratic incumbent, Madison O'Malley immediately attracted immense institutional support from Dem Party insiders. 

At the end of October 2022, Corley and his fiancee O’Malley attended a Diwali event at the White House with Trisha Patel. Also present, according to publicly available information, was Louisiana Democratic Party Chair Katie Bernhardt.

Not long after the White House event, O’Malley set up a campaign committee, launching her bid against Rep. Mandie Landry in New Orleans. Within a month, Trisha Patel, her in-laws Rohini and Ajay Patel, Desai, Caimano and the state Build USA PAC had donated a combined $15,000 to O’Malley.

That race between O’Malley and incumbent Landry, both Democrats, garnered significant attention. The Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee endorsed O’Malley, as did several high-profile Democrats, including Congressman Troy Carter, Gov. John Bel Edwards and former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu.

It was a stunning development at the time. And, thanks to Landry's broad grass roots support in the district, it didn't pay off. (Landry won with an overwhelming 66% of the vote.) But it does indicate just how detached Democratic Party leadership have become from their voters. That they'd spend so much time and energy on public endorsements and campaigning for this one fraudulent candidate in a single house district while doing practically nothing to stem the tide of embarrassment in the statewide races that year illustrates how broken and corrupt an operation they're running now. 

These next few years are going to extremely difficult for Louisiana. The worst people in the state have free rein to max out on their worst impulses. And with the "opposition party" content to sit around collecting checks from criminals and do little else in the way of opposition, we can only expect the worst outcomes.