"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.