Just taaakee the moneeys

The Advocate editorial board doesn't like LaToya's idea for funding critical infrastructure. They haven't got any helpful advice in that regard. But they do know they don't want anybody taking all the moneys away from their friends at the Convention Center.

The mayor’s chief quarrel is with the convention center board, which is proposing a subsidized 1,200-room hotel project at the upriver end of the massive hall to help draw conventioneers away from the French Quarter. The nonpartisan Bureau of Governmental Research estimates the subsidies at $330 million, but the convention center’s consultants say the value is about half that — and negotiations should trim the sum further. The hotel would benefit the city, and the project has support from the tourism industry. But the center has its work cut out to sell the public on the idea of a subsidy.

If the mayor wants to rebuild the Sewerage & Water Board, though, it may call for more disruptive thinking than just trying to grab at tourism dollars. The S&WB’s water and sewerage functions are largely financed by user fees — which would work just fine if the agency could calculate customer bills correctly.

There are several questionable assertions in that passage.  The Editors tell us the convention center hotel "would benefit the city," without saying how.  A $330 million public subsidy toward a private for-profit venture seems like the opposite of a public benefit.  Maybe they just mean it publicly benefits Joe Jaeger as the Gambit editorial board pointed out earlier,

It’s also ironic that one of the local developers behind the proposal is businessman and hotelier Joe Jaeger. During this year’s regular legislative session, when Harrah’s New Orleans casino sought to build a high-rise hotel entirely with private money — and pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to boot — in exchange for extending its license for 30 more years, Jaeger led the charge to kill the proposal, arguing it was being rushed through to passage. Now Jaeger and fellow developer Darryl Berger seek approval for a much sweeter deal, though the mayor’s letter and media scrutiny seem to have slowed this project’s timetable. Rodrigue says the Convention Center board is waiting for an outside analysis of the proposed project (due later this month or in September) before taking a vote.

Aside: Should note also that during Jaeger's crusade against the Harrah's hotel, the Advocate ran this glowing profile of him and his cause.  The Gambit and Advocate are the same company now.  They say Gambit maintains editorial independence and this episode seems to bear that out.  But one wonders if that is sustainable over the long term.  For a while I thought maybe the plan was to position the two as a lame right/left "both sides" presentation. But that hasn't been developed as fully... or... as the mayor would say... as intentionally as expected.  Instead, they're just kind of co-existing for now. 

The Advocate piece talks a lot about "disruptive thinking" but never really explains what that might mean. The mayor is a "disruptor" we are told. Her proposal to take money away from the tourism agencies "displays her disruptive side." But they also explicitly argue against that plan so we have to wonder whether they actually mean it as a compliment.  Maybe they're saying LaToya is just doing the disrupting wrong.

Typically when we hear that word, the context has to do with regulatory arbitrage. "Disruption" in our modern economy happens most often when a company creates and exploits loopholes in labor and consumer protection laws to position itself as a middle-man in new and legally dubious markets.  The social consequences of this activity are almost always negative. "Disruptors" profit by the subversion of laws meant to protect employees from exploitation or housing prices from out of control speculation.  Another example would be a private company who takes over a municipal water system.  And President Trump's infrastructure plan is deliberately pushing more cities to sell their utilities off to these "disruptors."

Those financial priorities are crystallized in the new guidelines established by the White House. The ability to find sources of funding outside the federal government will be the most important yardstick, accounting for 70 percent of the formula for choosing infrastructure projects. How “the project will spur economic and social returns on investment” ranks at the bottom, at just 5 percent.

In this new competition for federal funds, a plan to, say, build a better access road for a luxury development — a project with the potential to bring in more dollars from private investors — could have a strong chance of getting the green light. By comparison, a critical tunnel overhaul that has trouble getting new money might not be approved.

“Instead of the public sector deciding on public needs and public priorities, the projects that are most attractive to private investors are the ones that will go to the head of the line,” said Elliott Sclar, professor of urban planning and international affairs at Columbia University. “Private investors will become the tail that will wag the dog, because they’ll want projects that will give returns.”

In the midst of all its disruption talk, the Advocate editorial also suggests that the mayor and SWB look to Washington for guidance. "They can also explore whether there is a federal role in the rebuild, since Washington has spent a lot of money cleaning up after flooding in New Orleans," it says. I wonder if the Advocate Editors read the Times-Picayune this weekend, though.  Because it says here that our $2 billion in federal infrastructure funds are basically spent already.  And most of that isn't going to modernize our drainage system. It's going to #FixMyStreets.

According to Green, the city plans to move forward with the first rounds of federally funded road reconstruction projects, even though they may not involve the water-holding features Diaz advocates. That's because many projects have already been designed and risk running up against a 2022 FEMA deadline to wrap up the $2 billion settlement work.

Green also said New Orleans residents and businesses have lived long enough with crumbling streets that have already been earmarked for improvements.

"Do we want to do traditional street paving in this city in the way it's done in other places that don't have this problem? I would say absolutely not," Green said. "But I would also say you have to balance that with the desire that neighborhoods and citizens have to get their streets done quickly ..."

But let's at least give the Editors the benefit of the doubt and assume they pay some attention to the national news.  If they understand that future federal infrastructure funding is going to be predicated on privatization then their argument in that case becomes this. Cantrell is a "disruptive thinker" and that's good.  But she should not think to "disrupt" a status quo where Louisiana taxpayers subsidize Joe Jaeger's private hotel. That would be bad. Instead they prefer she consider disrupting public ownership of S&WB so that some other private actor can profit by that as well.  At least they're consistent.

If the mayor wants to disrupt something for real, she would push on with this idea to take all the moneys from our local tourism oligarchs and put it into something we can all benefit from. Or she could agree with the Advocate and the Trump administration that the only good disruption is the kind that makes rich people richer at everyone else's expense.