The New Orleans City Council voted Thursday to eliminate a legal limit on the number of city employees who may drive their city-owned vehicles to and from their homes.
An ordinance, sponsored by Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and approved 4-2 after heated debate, says any employees who perform "a critical function that contributes to the overall operations and recovery of the city and maintenance of its infrastructure" and who "respond to critical needs on a 24-hour basis" may be assigned take-home cars.
Remember even the Inspector General in his many talk show appearances during the height of this controversy suggested that one way to address the habitual violation of the take-home car limit would be to simply remove the limit. There actually are sensible reasons to make these decisions at a departmental level so long as there are clear guidelines for making them. But that wasn't going to happen until the Dragonslayers stopped frothing at the mouth long enough for anyone to speak sensibly.
Now you could argue that the wording of this ordinance isn't clear or specific enough. However a perfectly reasonable response to that could also be, "stop making such a big fucking deal out of stupid shit" which is basically what this exchange says.
Midura said terms such as "critical function" and "critical needs" were so ambiguous the ordinance should be sent back to a committee for clarification, but Hedge-Morrell refused. She said the law limiting the number of take-home cars was "antiquated" and was ignored until "someone happened to stumble over it and make a big deal of it."
So we're done with that. Now Hedge-Morrell can go make a big fucking deal out something even stupider like making it harder for people to buy beer.
Now the city council has stepped in and said that business owners who want to start a business and sell alcohol in District D--from the Lakefront, to the Upper 9th, and including New Orleans East, will have to come through them first.
Residents hope it entices the right businesses they say they need for recovery, while discouraging the ones who they say are hampering the process.
"What we are hoping is that when businesses renew licenses they will take a hard look at them and see how is this affecting our community, and then bring us in and have residents give our input so they can understand how we feel about it," said Trepagnier.
Morrell said there are two businesses in her district that were granted their liquor licenses in error. She is reviewing that to see if the city can revoke those licenses.
A few weeks ago, Stacy Head was also on WWLTV trying to revoke liquor licenses in her district because they were too close to churches. Could it be that the City Council, previously divided over issues of public corruption and race is putting aside these issues to come together under the noble banner of temperance legislation? Also why is WWL the go-to news outlet for all things teatotaling?
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