Kern Reese is sick of everyone's crap

The mayor of New Orleans is an outlaw.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu may have some quiet weekends at home ahead of him — by court order.

A decades-old legal fight over $75 million worth of back pay — plus $67 million in interest — the city owes to firefighters took a dramatic turn on Friday as Civil District Court Judge Kern Reese finally made good on a threat to hold City Hall in contempt for refusing to pay up.

Reese said he would place the mayor under house arrest on weekends if the case isn’t resolved in a week.

“I understand the budget of the city,” Reese said, addressing Landrieu and five members of the City Council who joined him in court Friday.

“I understand the travails that the administration goes through to try to provide services for the citizens of the city. But this is a legal issue, and everyone has to have deference and respect for the law. It has to be done, and we’ve waited long enough.”

Judge Reese is sick of everyone's bullshit. This was also the gist of his ruling in the Tom Benson mental competency case back in June.  He even got Blaine and Barry Kern to knock it off last month. Is Reese getting ready to retire or something?  He is on a mission to wrap up everybody's loose ends.

Or maybe he's just looking out for the mayor's well being.  Consider what the pending "weekend house arrest" now prevents Mitch from doing.

Shortly afterward, Landrieu canceled an appointment he had to “swim with the sharks” at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas and held a news conference to say that City Hall cannot afford to pay a judgment that, even spread over several years, could eat up a large share of the city’s roughly $540 million annual general-fund budget

Also, there's killer mosquitoes out there. If I were the mayor, I'd want to stay inside all weekend too. And it does sound like that's what he wants. 

“I am prepared to stay under house arrest for the next two years of my term, because this is too important for the city,” Landrieu said.

He joked that this his wife, Cheryl, has been asking him to take weekends off for 25 years and has a long “honey-do” list ready for him.

He should invite Gusman over to attach an ankle monitor to his leg just for fun. The more you think about this whole situation, the better it all looks for Mitch.

There's also the public interest to think of.  It would be nice to get out on a Saturday and not have to worry about running across this sort of thing for a while.



Thanks, Judge Reese.  Looks like everybody wins.  Oh, except the firefighters, I guess.  But why would that surprise anyone by this point?